bling
bling
Bling, sorry this took so long to answer. I have been covered in work.
I have thought about a lot of some of the things you are saying. A lot of your ideas are based on scripture, which is good. But let not that deceive you, or me, into thinking we are right because we have a good base for our foundation.
Please allow me to write what I believe your thinking is, correct me if I am wrong: The object of the garden was to establish agape love. With that being said, what is the best way to show agape love? By having a world that puts people in need, such that they have the best understanding of love. This idea can be derived from the verse that says "he who is forgiven much loves much." among others.
If this sums it up, please allow me to add some more statements to that. If the object of the garden was for good, the bad that came from it is worth while. This frees God from any part played in the situation. Do you agree with these points? Is that how you try to explain the Garden to your agnostic friends if so?
I have said all along that Agape love is achievable without a fall. Had Adam never ate of the tree, agape love could still be enjoyed by God and Man alike. I also questioned a while back why Agape love is the one and only love desired by God and the only love possible as the objective to the garden. Why are other loves just ignored? After all, a relationship is built on many types of loves. Also, agape love requires no relationship to be given or received.
Lets say I have an important meeting to get to. If I miss it, I will get fired. But on my way I see a stranger drowning in a pool, what would I do?? I would gladly throw him a life-saver. I love him enough to do that, selfless of my needs. He would grab on, I would pull him in, he would say, "Thanks," and I would answer, "No Problem," and that would be the extent of it. I may never see him again. No relationship was required for that act of love. However, if that man were my son, there would me more kinds of love involved, and a relationship would be a part of the act.
A relationship with God is far greater than just agape love. God can agape love me all day long, but so what if he never gets to talk to me? If the objective were only agape love, God was selling himself short, and us also.
Don't get me wrong, Agape love is necessary. But it is a part of the bigger picture. The overall goal of God's creation of man was not primarily Agape love. God desires relationship. And in that relationship all kinds of love are felt and exchanged, including agape.
So what do I think? I think the objective of the garden was to provide man a place to develop his relationship with God. Be it an extremely close relationship, or one less close than others, it was man's choice.
God is so loving in his relationship to man, that he does not trap man, but provides a way out should man want out. And that is where the tree comes in.
I hope you can understand my one huge problem with the settled view, and that is that - God foresaw the evil his creation became and did it anyway. According to the reasioning behind your view on the garden, you reason it away with "it was for the best" because "it was for agape love." So God lovingly created us to rebel against him, such that all man on earth would be destroyed by a flood say for 4 and their families, and then countless millions to follow.
When people ask the questions of the Garden, they look at their own lives, and lives of those they hold close to them. They feel the effects of the garden to this day, and question God because they think he looked ahead to their lives, knew everything that would happen, all the bad things, and didn't care, and said "let's create this anyway."
You had some problems with my ideas. I hope to show you that many of our problems are not real because they lack being fully thought and rely on misunderstandings:
1. He seems to not understand ecology very will, if this Garden is to potentially to support a large number of people for a long time, it is not ecologically balanced, will require constant monitoring and continuous changing. It appears to be a set up for a very few people for a short period of time.
You assume the Garden was small. There is no way to know how big it was. As I said, people would eventually outgrow it, and In my thinking, this is the functionality of the tree. Those who were ready could eat of it and receive wisdom for when they leave. Also, the Garden is alive. Why is it unable to grow and populate the earth as people are? Are the garden's trees seedless? There is too much to consider that I think you should. If man never fell, is God unable to make a place for his children if the garden is too small? What if man populated to 900 trillion and never fell? Is God unable to create a new earth, or make the existing one bigger?
2. He does understand probability, if you have even a small possibility of a negative out come but repeat the circumstance an infinite number of times (eternally) you will eventually get a negative reaction. Adam and Eve will eventually sin.
If a drug pusher carries a gun everyday, is he guaranteed to shoot it? If a severe diabetic goes out to eat everyday is he guaranteed to order coke? It is impossible to answer because you know that there are drug pushers out there who do not kill, and there are diabetics out there who drink only diet coke. So odds are, either can happen. The point is that there is no guarantee. Adam and Eve were not destined to sin, that has been my understanding and belief from long before I was an open viewer. If all I had to do was not eat a tree's fruit to stay in good with God, I do not think it would have been a problem. I say that for many people I know, including you.
You can't tell me you can't pass up one tree? When you know that it will kill you? And when you know you will leave God in your death? No more eden, no more Eve no more God.... Can you really say you would still eat?
Adam's evil was great the day he ate that fruit. More evil than anyone I ever heard of. It was a simple command, and look what he caused. And even then, God loved him enough to give him clothes! And he showed him how to deliver babies. He was taking care of him until he was ready to go it alone.
Adam may have not realized what he did fully, but he knew his actions would bring death, and he did it the same. The death count of Hitler's actions has nothing on Adam's actions. And we are so harsh on Hitler... Adam's sin was worst. And God was fair, Adam could resist the tree for a zillion times had he not desired his own wisdom instead of Gods... But Adams desires made him evil.
You are confusing opportunity for desire. Just because the opportunity is there one can not assume that someone will take it, even if that opportunity is there every day.
3. He does not understand coveting, if you present a convenient and attractive item to people that is desirable and do not give them the indwelling Spirit to help them control that desire, the people will start to covet. Coveting takes place in the mind and humans can not control their thoughts all the time. It is an extremely difficult frustrating situation for humans.
It is only in the last 2000 years that God has sent the spirit to dwell in us. He was with people before then, but not like now. We in the body have a special gift, but those who were before did not have this Gift like we do.
So for a good 4000 years, people who covet were out of control because God's spirit was not poured out until Pentecost?
You are right to study the cross and apply it to your life. But you are mistaken if you try to apply that law to the lives of those who lived before it. They were under a different law. They did not have the spirit living in them as we do. While it is true that Jesus' death did save them, they were not under grace, they were under the law. And before the law was written, they were under the laws of their hearts, which came from the tree. You cannot say that God was not understanding of coveting, or any other sin.
This is not an open view topic. Law and Grace are explained very well in the Bible. You should know how it works. So why say this of God?
4. He does not understand Godly love. People are not born with Godly love and can’t be programmed with it. It will have to be developed and the Garden does not provide the means for that development.
You again narrow God's love to agape love only, and limit the relationship aspect. The Garden was obviously a perfect sinless place. You make it sound like it was created to be broken so that a few people might have "godly love". I saw it was created to be sustained forever! That everyone might know God and experience a relationship that includes many types of love. The fact that Adam broke it has nothing to do with God or his understanding of the situation when God did not foresee it happening. And the fact that God planned for the "just in case" shows how much God did understand.
5. He does not understand people. Giving people everything they would need and want does not automatically produce Godly love. People can be your close friend, love you like a father, and feel very indebted to you, but that will not keep them from have a little selfishness.
God never spoiled man. God only provided their food and shelter. Man should have felt indebted because it is only right, had man not felt so, he would have been unappreciative. That is not the point tho... So what, God does everything good for man. Now it's man's turn, and that is the reason... will man love God or not?
6. He does not understand Satan. Satan is much more powerful then humans, he is the trickster and can play on human selfishness with lies to get them to do what they really do not want to do.
Satan did not threaten man to eat. God understood Satan very well, and the limitations he had. He could not force them to eat, he could not make the decision for them. He could only confuse the issue. And if you think Adam wasn't smart enough to discern between the words of a Snake and the words of his creator, you are mistaken. Adam's responsibility was fully his own. I think it is you who over estimate Satan, and our ability to resist evil.
7. He does not understand sin. People get caught up in sin with Satan’s help without thinking about all the consequences. For humans not to sin takes a lot more then humans have. Every mature human will sin and He does not realize that.
God understands sin and man's tendency, that is why he only holds man accountable for those actions he knowingly does wrong, and more of the reason why there is grace in the love God has for us. It is the same answer you would give me.
8. He does not realize that humans will be better off outside the Garden after they do sin, then inside the Garden having to keep from sinning.
Bling, may you never fully understand what you are saying, that we are better off today than we would be if we were with God in the Garden.
You, yourself, said the garden is like heaven to you. It is a place we will one day go for piece. No more sin, no more hurt, no more death. A wonderful place. When I get there I will look for you. And I will offer you this: If you really think we are better off after the fall, then leave heaven, go back in time and live on earth. I don't think you'll do it.
You are right too. The Garden is like Heaven will be one day. It is like Earth will be one day too. But it is not like heaven and earth are today. For there is pain in both heaven and earth because of this great and wonderful giving in to sin you seem to endorsee.
I say 1 year in the garden and of resisting sin is billions of times better off than what we have today. You do not see the sins that happen, the rapes, the killings, the beatings, the hurtful words, the betrayal and all that other sin. You think this is better of?
I say we had Grace in the garden and out of the garden. You say it is only out of the garden that we have it.
I say God holds us accountable to sins we knowingly commit. This is why it is the tree that represented the one chance, the one sin, to let us out of that heaven on earth we had.
bling, may you never have to see the hardships that you seem to think make us better off. You will never stop your eyes from being wet if you do. But if you did see them, you would never again say we are better off.
This is hell on earth. No Garden means hell on earth, bling. I do not understand how you justify this.
When we actually have Heaven on earth again, I hope you do not say we were better off before.
Think about all the baby's who are aborted every day. Millions of people who never had the chance to experience Sin on earth. Never had the opportunity to receive the indwelling because they went straight to heaven. According to you, they are cursed for not having the opportunity to sin in the flesh. They don't get agape love in heaven. How do you explain their ability to love god and to remain in heaven with him forever?
Bling, your views are based in scripture, but not to the means you take them. You are building your own rooms in the house that are not a part of Gods plan, you do so thinking you are right because you got the idea from God's plans, but they are still your own.
You should know that doing evil that good may come of it is still doing evil. And you should know that God shuns sin, and does not plan sin. He cannot tempt. He cannot create sin. He cannot make us to be sinners. He cannot look ahead knowing what we will do and create that anyway.
Alarms should be going off in your heart when you think that God would create us knowing we would sin. They should sound above the roaring of the sun's fires that God would have anything to do with sin and planning it into our discovery of love.
I beg you to reconsider that my ideas are not problematic because you cannot account for the solutions. And I beg you to reconsider if your ideas are as I said above.
