First of all, God didn't lie. Satan's lie was ingenious - it convinced Adam and Eve that what
he meant with "life" was more trustworthy than what God meant with it. "You will not surely die"... how many people will vouch for the truth of that today? Name one person who won't die. Satan had something sinister in mind - he definitely knew that "the righteous will live by faith", but his deception was therefore all the more devious: if he could convince only
these two people to desire life more than faith - their own lives more than the life God had in mind for them - they would exchange their godly existence for his watered-down version. You know the story from there on, and it's the same lie you're believing. Only by God's power is it possible to say Satan was telling the truth, otherwise it was a blatant lie.
The power of his deception was that he
to took God out of the picture.
atheroy said:
Jenyar,
Death=condemnation, no matter how it is arrived at.
The analogy has nothing to do with dying. The child running out onto the road and getting hit by the car was meant to symbolise adam eating the apple.
Both result in death. In this case the difference between a warning and a condemnation is just the tone of voice. Maybe your hear God's voice differently than I do.
You could say that the mother "condemned" her child by predicting death in a busy road.
No. Because again, the mother did not condemn the child if the child was to run out onto the road, but simply told the child not to because the mother knew the road was dangerous; just like god with adam. The mother condemned the child only after the child got hit by the car; symbolising god condemning adam after adam ate the apple. God then used the event to condemn everyone to hell. What a nice understanding fellow you worship.
Read the story in Genesis 3 again: their
existence and circumstances were cursed - death and suffering begun to rule their lives. First of all, only the serpent was personally condemned, but Adam and Eve were promised children, although their birth would be associated with pain - like their own birth into the world of suffering and death.
They were now on the highway, with cars flashing by. Before, death was evitable, now it was
inevitable. I ask again: who proved to be true, God or Satan? Can Adam & Eve survive life without God?
The ultimate irony is of course that today, thousands of years later, people are still trying to justify their sins by trying to prove Satan was right after all.
Did she invent that condemnation, or was it merely "fulfilled" when the child disobeyed?
No, as I explained above. The mother should know to hold the child's hand and not let it get near the road. It's a child damnit. You'd have to be a retard to leave a child alone next to a busy road. You're asking for an accident to happen- i.e. god leaving adam alone- it was only a matter of time before he ate the fruit. Why did god even let that stupid tree exist in eden, he was definitely out there looking for a reason to condemn adam and eve.
But consider this: the faith you have in our fallibility and disobedience (because that's what it is: you distrust our ability to obey God) is because it has become ingrained after millennia without God. You'd rather trust your own human weakness than God's strength. Adam and Eve had no reason to doubt God, but they believed the serpent. It was a 50/50 choice at worst, unthinkable at best. Just as sin and inhumanity today seems unthinkable but is more than prevalent nontheless.
It wasn't a matter of time - it was a matter of choice.
Informed choice. God's word vs the serpent's word. God's creation vs the serpents perspective on it. That "stupid tree" was the essence of God's presence in Eden - it represents the realm of God (cf. Revelations), which no man can enter without his nature being judged... and as I said before judgment and condemnation always equals death, because that's what happens when you purge something. The death of faith and innocense was no less significant than that of the body - and no less disruptive of the relationship between God and man.
Even if it's she herself who ends up driving over her child. Think about that.
It may as well be the mother driving over the child because she was foolish enough to let the circumstance occur when the child could run out onto the road. It doesn't matter whether the child was told by its mother not to cross the road. The mother should know that this is a child. Likewise god should've been able to foresee adam eating the fruit. If adam had no concept of good or bad, eating the fruit after god had told him not to wouldn't have spiked his conscience; because he didn't have the ability to comprehend what he was doing was bad. It's simple. God drove over adam.
Does being a child somehow exclude you of the consequences? Does it prevent it from dying? Nature doesn't ask your age before it runs you down. In fact, under ideal circumstances it's your
youth that betrays you. Nature runs you down on the very things you take pride in. To borrow from Terry Pratchett, you don't need to stand on a hilltop wearing wet copper armour shouting 'all gods are bastards' to be struck down by nature. It only takes life, and never gives it back.
How many times do I have to drill the fact that Adam and Eve had a meaure of right and wrong: they had God's discernment at their disposal. You can't wish for a clearer authority of what is acceptible and what's not, than the Creator himself. Your objection comes down to that it wasn't
internalized (as if that's the only valid form of knowledge) -
but it was the very internalization of such knowledge that was undesirable in the first place. They drove over themselves - they shot themselves in the foot, exactly like people are still doing when they ignore God.
God promised death and destruction in an eternal fire as the result of sin, and to safeguards those who believe in Him
WOW. NICE GUY. Create something unable to comprehend sin. Give it more than a chance to sin. Then condemn all it's offspring throughout eternity to eternal death and destruction in an eternal fire by giving them the ability not to sin because he set the originals up to fail. What a dick! I can't believe you worship this guy.
The comprehension was there. It's still there. You know the difference between right and wrong, but I'm sure you also only follow it up to a point that's convenient
to you. Doesn't that make a mockery of the concept? Would you hesitate lying if there was clear gain and no chance of being found out? If not, what stops you? Your conscience? God is greater than your conscience - if it can condemn you, how much more couldn't God?
But you miss the point: we're
not condemned to die - Christ bore our condemnation, our death, for us. That doesn't take us out of a cursed world, because it is still just a creation, and there are still people who live in sin. It's sin that condemns us - the serpent was condemned, and he became our accuser (satan). If the one who is condemned has
any evidence on you, then in all fairness you should be condemned with him. Only God can save you. Things haven't changed since Eden. Everybody's pointing fingers but no-one accepts responsibility. And
that will be their downfall.
You propose that you're
more competent than Adam and Eve (having the knowledge that they had to gain "the hard way") - prove it. Prove that you can resist sin and temptation now that you know it's seriousness, now that you know both good and evil.
God is holding your hand even while you're standing in the fire, but still people are letting go of it. You have let go of it, have you not?
This is a common christian misperception. I never had god to let go of. I grew up without god or religion. I didn't know anything about it till I was maybe 10 or 11; at which point the more I came to know about religion, the more it conflicted with what I had already learned about the world around me. If there is a god he isn't the flawed one you can read about in the bible, or quran or any other 'holy' text.
The
conflict between the Creator and his creation made you doubt Him? Doesn't that prove that there's a
problem? Doesn't that rather support the case for sin, and our state of need?
What do you say now that you have found the Creator of your life? Still nothing to hold on to, even while He wants to pull you out of the way of the oncoming traffic? You've been facing the traffic all your life, and it was evident to you that it couldn't come from God - but if dodging it has led you next to Him, what prevents you from accepting His protection?
Isn't your condemnation deserved, as Paul would say, for persisting in sin and letting go of your only salvation?
Didn't paul believe the world was going to end during his life time?
No, certainly some people did, but Paul maintained that it will come like a thief in the night (1 Thess. 5) . Therefore we should expect it as if will come today, but persevere as if it will never come. There's no excuse for persisting in sin.
Eternity in hell is the road you are warned against.
No. It's the alternative existence one god chooses to let perpetuate even though in all his perfection he should be able to realise he created imperfect beings which he should therefore accept as his charge. Your god is not one I would care to associate with.
It's you who don't realize what it is that perfection requires. Even Jesus "was made perfect" through suffering during his lifetime, and said: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Corinthians 12:9). Perfection is only realized within a relationship with God - He never intended to bestow it upon us as an independent quality, because that would be
less than perfect.
Nobody forces you to walk it, in fact - God sent His son into the fire to endure it with you while you remain faithful that you will be delivered from it.
Yes, god forces us. By letting hell exist we have only one other choice for our afterlife which is presumably preferable to an eternity of death and burning and other such things which couldn't physically harm a soul anyway. Where's the bio matter to burn? Heaven isn't much of a consolation prize anyway. Eternal boredom. Sweet
"By letting hell exist"? Should God have pardoned the serpent and told us "very well, continue", even though hell
is simply our undoing. It's what happens when a creation returns to the state from which he was created - but without God. Then indeed would God have condemned us to hell, without any hope. To put it another way: when nothing existed everything was equally hell and heaven. The fact that there is a difference between God and not-God neccessitates other differentiations, such as good and evil. Existence is just the same polarization between nothing and something.
Death or Hell is not a choice, life is. Our existence and the path that leads to Him was chosen by God, but our deaths will be due to our own decision - for following the path in the other direction.
Letting go means accepting your fate - whether you call it hell or just "death", in the Bible they're the same thing.
Trust the bible to be wrong again. I don't really need to explain to you what death is but there is an obvious difference between death and 'hell'.
Oh, is there? Have you ever experienced death to know? I suggest you look at the means, modes and manifestations of death again. You have an abundance of clues to work it out from. Even a so-called peaceful death is no match for a vibrant youth. Talk about boring.