k so in my last blog(not the reverend one, the one before) i mentioned that there were more thoughts rattling around upstairs...i'm going to attempt now to spew them out of my head onto this computer screen...i predict this will take me several hours cause it always takes me a long time to be able to take what's in my mind and actually present it so it makes sense, but i'm gonna do it anyways.
ok so here's the rub...and this first part may be where i go wrong and the rest of this may be a partial waste of time but whatever...as i have always kind of understood things and how it seems to me when i read the passage, in genesis one generally understands that man was created without knowledge of good and evil. we understand this because God plants the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden of eden and commands adam and eve not to eat of it, and it seems that it is not until they do actually eat of it that adam and eve's eyes are opened to "good and evil". now god creates man with free will, that is, the ability and freedom to make our own choices. and god gives man one command. actually let me change that. God gives man many commands(such as name the animals, be fruitful and multiply, etc.) but god gives man one command that differs from the rest, that being not to eat of the two trees, the tree of life and the tree of good and evil.
k...so the commands that god gives to man are for the most part hardly even seen as commands..."they're really more guidelines". God is just kind of explaining to mankind his role in god's created world or something like that. there is no reason for man at this point to have any reason to question god. it'd be like this guy made me, he's pretty righteous and i like him...i have no idea what i'm doing here, so this guy says do this, sure i'll do it why the heck not? but then there's this one other command that god gives which is different...rather than god saying "DO this" he suddenly says "DO NOT do this". here flags go up in my mind. man is suddenly faced with the possibility of a choice.
k hopefully i haven't lost you yet cause i'm really not sure how this is coming accross. not always the most eloquent in expressing my theological and/or philosophical thoughts.
now if you skip ahead a bit, you see that in the end man does make the choice to eat of the tree of good and evil, breaking God's command(incidently just a little rabbit trail...i wonder how things would have been different if man had eaten from the tree of life instead of the tree of good and evil?). Now it is at this point that God punishes man for breaking his command. so then i am led to believe that God considers this action by man to be a sin; for it to have been a 'wrong' choice. this doesn't add up to me though, becuase until man actually eats of the tree of good and evil, man had no real knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong...so how could god punish man for doing something wrong when man doesn't really even understand 'wrong'? this doesn't seem like it would be a just thing of God to do and i've always been taught that God is a just God.
this presents another problem to me. if man really had no knowledge of good and evil, what kind of free will could he really have? what is the point of having the freedom to make a choice when you have no idea what the consequences will be? and we're not talking like there's consequences you just miss or forget or something like that...we're talking like there's consequences that you simply are not able to understand...it's just not possible. it's like god created man with the freedom to make his own choices, and then took that freedom away by not giving him the knowledge of what making a choice is really about. when eve ate of the apple, i don't know that it's so straightforward as her making a choice. the snake in the garden told er to eat. he told her that she would not die as God had told her, but that she would be enlightened. now at this point eve did not understand good and evil, so it could be argued that all she was doing was listening to what she was told, same as she and adam had been doing when god told them to do something. so was it really much of a choice? and was it really 'wrong'? and even if adam and eve had such knowledge and knew what they were doing, if god didn't want adam and eve to eat of those trees, then why would he put them into a position where that would be a temptation for them. again this seems like setting them up to fail and it just seems off somehow...
also another side note...anyone who believes that death entered this world when god cursed man following the original sin simply can't be correct...death must have existed previous to this. this is proven by the very existence of the tree of life in the garden. God states "he must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." it is pretty clear from this that mankind was not at all imortal but would die. unless he ate from the tree of life in which case he would indeed live forever. there is also the possibility that maybe death was introduced in a different manner after the original sin or maybe it's interpreted in some other way that i'm missing, that's very possible. either way this isn't as big an issue in my world...i don't even know if people really believe that mankind was imortal previous to the original sin, but it seems an idea that i've heard before, i dunno. i just thought of it very briefly while i was thinking about all this other stuff so i figured why not throw that out there too while i'm at it?
anyhoo, i've done as well as i can for right now trying to explain my thinking process here. this isn't about doubt, this isn't about questioning the legitimacy of the bible or even god or anything like that. like i said in my previous blog this is only about exploration, about seeking to know my god, to understand him as much as i can that i can grow in my relationship with him. i haven't gotten so far as to make much sense of what it all means, what it may say about God yet, but this is part of that process. and i'd love to hear any feedback that can help me to either make sense of it or to point out my foibles and errors in understanding/interpretation, etc. cause that can only help not hinder. so ya, i'm out. peace.
posted by braderick at 1:52 AM
2 Comments:
These are some interesting questions. We have already talked about this in person, and I don't really have much else to add, except to say that I'm glad to hear your philosophy on how to read your Bible, namely to look at what you read and ask yourself what this teaches you about God. Too many people just sit back and accept what they read and never think about it. I always encourage the youth I work with to ask questions and think about what they are learning. Great jorb, Jeff. And yes, I still don't really have any solid answers for ya.
1:30 PM
Well, quite an interesting topic you have going here, Jeff. Let's see if I can add some thoughts to the mix.
First of all, a small, but significant, correction. According to Genesis 2:17, it was only the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they were not allowed to eat from. There is no restriction on eating from the tree of life. I've often wondered whether this was something they would have to continually eat in order to have eternal life, or whether one fruit would grant it to them ferever. Either way, after they sinned, God didn't want them to have access to it in their fallen state.
Did Adam and Eve have the knowledge of good and evil? Well, yes and no. I guess I feel like they had an understanding of what was right and wrong, but they didn't have the experiential knowledge. That might be splitting hairs. In Spanish, there were two verbs that could be used for "knowing" something. One was used for more factual information, the other was used for more personal, intimate knowledge. So I could know that 2+2=4, but not in the same way that I know my wife, or my family. I strongly suspect that Adam and Eve had a good grasp of what right and wrong was, especially since God laid out the ramifications of their decision pretty clearly (death!); however, I don't think that they had that first-hand, intimate knowledge of right and wrong (having never yet chosen the wrong). As a side note, I don't really think that there was anything special about the fruit on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, I think it was more about the choice that the fruit represented. I could be wrong on that, but it's a thought.
The bigger question that I'm hearing is, did God set them up to fail? I struggled with that one for a long time, until I finally came to the conclusion that yes, he did. I don't think that there's any way around that. The question then becomes, why? The best answer that I can come up with is that in order for us to become what God wanted us to be, we had to go through an experience of sin. Some say you never know what you have until you lose it. Perhaps we could never understand the joy of being in God's presence, and experience true love with God, until we had gone through a period or state when we were separated from that. I guess for me it comes down to realizing and accepting the fact that God knew this was going to happen, and that he did it anyway. As well, I look through the Bible and see countless other occasions where God's long-range plans make the short-term pains worth it. I take the same attitude toward humanity and sinfulness. God has allowed it, but I'm sure that what He will bring out of it will be far better that what would have been otherwise.
I'd love to comment more, but I've been sick for the past few days and I'm having trouble concentrating. I feel like I'm writing in a dream....Hope I haven't rambled too much.
10:36 AM
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