by Farkel 103 Replies latest jw friends
Gweedo,
Lighten up! That scripture verse I posted was meant to be taken that as good natured ribbing. Sorry if you missed that. You've done the same to me before. And I've missed it too. : ) Sorry. I would try to word things more clearly for you. But it all seems clearly worded to me. But then Bibleman says the same thing. Now you have me really worried. : (
Farkel,
Gweedo and I have had many conversations. I've told him more than once that I think his heart is in the right place. He has ridden me kind of hard at times when I knew and he told me he was just being overly dramatic. I thought he would recognize that my tongue was firmly planted in my cheek. I think he might have missed it. If so I apologize.
You, on the other hand, are starting to disappoint me with posts like the one which started this thread. Years ago you used to show some flashes of insight. Lately all you do is attack everything you have any trouble understanding. Any fool can criticize a complex written work as being "stupid." However, in such cases, the truth often is that the "literary critic" simply lacks the wisdom to understand what he has read. Such critics also often lack the humility to consider the possibility that the writer whose work they are belittling for supposedly making "no sense," may have been a bit more cerebral than themselves.
AC
OK, point taken. But you always gotta wonder when christains start throwing verses like that one at yah. Had it happen to me before, and all of them meant it.
Seriously, i can usually understand what your saying...but...wow...those posts are spaced. Too much red wine maybe???
anyway... enjoy your easter i guess.
Gweedo,
You wrote: you seem to be saying that Adam and Eve were doomed to eat from the tree that God told them not to.
They were. It was a set up. It was not a "test." It was actually a demonstration. For any "God" would certainly know the outcome of the events He orchestrated in Eden. Heck, any dope could have guessed how things would turn out.
God told Adam that if he ate some fruit he would die. God then put Adam alone in that garden for how long? Then God gave him a beautiful naked woman as his new best friend, "helper" and lover. Now this gorgeous babe tells Adam she thinks they should eat the forbidden fruit. Besides, she tells him, she's heard that if they do they wont really die at all.
God didn't need to see into the future to figure out what Adam was going to do under those circumstances. Anyone could have guessed who Adam was going to care most about pleasing. After sleeping with squirrels for what some say was quite a few years, what man wouldn't have risked his life to make sure he didn't lose that lady's love and affection? Even if God then "chose not to" look into the future, as JWs say, the God who created man would have had to have had a very poor knowledge of His own creation not to have known that Adam was certainly going to fail that "test."
The only way the story of Adam and Eve makes sense is to understand that God not only knew how things were going to end up in Eden, but that He deliberately set the whole thing up to make a point. What point? This one. If Adam in paradise, without a problem in the world, could not manage to obey one simple command from God, what chance does any human being have of living their entire trouble-plagued life without sinning either in word, thought or deed? No chance at all. That is the lesson that was illustrated in Eden. Human beings have a "sinful" nature. A nature which God gave us.
You wrote: As if they had no freedom to choose not to eat...as if they were created without freedom.
They had freedom. We all do. But how many of us if starving and broke will not steal a loaf of bread to save our lives? I say every one of us will. Does that mean we are not free? No, it just means we are less righteous than God. Looking out for #1 is a part of our nature. God knew that. For He is the one who gave us our instinct for self preservation. He did so because He knew it is a necessary quality for all physical beings to possess. Yet, at the same time, He knew that total selfless love is a much higher quality, a quality which He possesses and which Jesus Christ clearly demonstrated at the cross.
God knew what Adam would do. As I said, He didn't have to look into the future to figure that out. Why? Because God knew Adam was human. And because he was, God knew he would act human by putting #1 first.
Doing so didn't prove Adam was a bad person. It just proved that he was like God made him, by physical necessity. But it also proved that he was undeserving of eternal life. For God always shows total selfless love. But man, by his own created nature, does not. We are not as righteous as God. So we don't deserve to live forever. But, hey, God made us that way! So how can God hold the way He made us against us? He can't and He doesn't. He gladly overlooks our unrighteousness, at least the part of it which is ours by nature. The Bible tells us that He is able to do this because of what Jesus Christ did for us, dying a death He did not deserve to give us eternal life which we do not deserve. Of course, God expects those who have learned and who believe what Christ did for us to show appreciation for this great gift from God.
You wrote: You threw too many terms around like good, and evil ,and freedom, and love without any real definition of what they mean. That made it confusing to me too. They are big words that probably need a little more defining.
I think you are complicating matters. "Good," "evil," "freedom" and "love" are all pretty simple words. Their common definitions will work just fine in this discussion.
You wrote: You drew a real long bow when you tried to tell us God didn't punish adam and eve.
I don't believe He did. He introduced them to the real world. Most of our parents do that to all of us sooner or later. When they do, are they punishing us?
AC: What about the ground being cursed?
: What about the ground being cursed?
According to The Interlinear Bible, the Hebrew text of Gen. 3:17,18 reads as follows: "And He said to the man, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat from it, the ground shall be cursed because of you; you shall eat of it in sorrow all the days of your life. And it shall bring forth thorns and thistles for you."
Many have understood this to mean that at the time of Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden God "cursed the earth," by making its soil much more difficult to cultivate and introducing various forms of weeds into earth's flora such as "thorns and thistles."
This is only an interpretation of this passage and I believe it is an incorrect one. I believe God was only telling Adam that, due to the fact that he and Eve had proven that they were unworthy of living in paradise with God (I think Eden pictured heaven), that they would from then on have a much harder life than they had in Eden. I believe Adam was the one who would from then on be cursing the ground. As all aspects of life in the real world, including food production, would not be nearly as easy as they had been in Eden.
An old thread I had totally forgotten about.
The only reason I'm commenting about this is that, in re-reading it, it is the poster child of what is known as "a massive thread hijacking." ("Massive Thread Hijackings is Bible-Based(tm). For some.) First, my old and current friend AGuest hijacked it, and then a whole bunch of other people hijacked it. Most of the comments have nothing to do with my topic.
This one should go in the "Thread Hijacks Hall of Fame." Take a perfectly decent topic someone else wrote and use it to promote one's own crap.
Farkel
Kind of neat to see some of these Oldies But Goodies resurfacing.
Another note on the Adam and Eve story - for me, it's always felt too "neat". For example, it would have been a much more interesting and challenging story had sin not come into the human family until after Adam and Eve had some kids. Then you'd have some perfect and some imperfect humans around.
Also, how long did God expect humans to avoid eating of this tree? Even if Adam and Eve would have avoided it, could all their children, then their children, etc, etc, avoid eating of it? You'd think that if it were around for any length of time, somebody would eventually take a bite. And with Satan in circulation at the time, there's no way I can imagine A&E's descendants not taking a bite.
So God's "Purpose" to have a race of perfect humans filling the earth seems to me to have been doomed from the start, especially as long a Satan was around and tree-tests were in vogue.
BTTT
A lovely read farkel.
I've always had a problem with the Adam and Eve fruit thingy. Made in Gods image - God wired their brain because they were born adults, so ALL there reasoning experiences, the way they choose to do things was Gods own work. So if they screwed up it was Gods brain schematics that screwed up. Its all Jehovah's fault.
steve
As usual Farkel - a great read thankyou
