For life as we know it there are three essential needs – air, water and food. Without air we die in minutes. At most we can live only a few days without water and without food a few weeks. Take the need to breathe. Both plants and animals need air. But instead of competing with each other for air to breathe, plants and animals complement and benefit one another. Plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. Animals breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. In using air, each one produces what the other needs. The relationship between plants and animals is symbiotic – each one complements the other in a relationship that benefits both.
Living things need water. But unlike air, water has only one ingredient and both plants and animals need water itself. Yet the use for this vital need is still a model of cooperation. Plants and animals do not compete against each other for water. Plants take water from under the ground where it is not usually available for use by animals. Animals take water from the surface of lakes and streams that are not generally sources for plants. Also, the use of water by plants benefits animals by influencing the climate to produce rain. And the use of water by animals benefits plants by adding nutrients to the soil.
The third need for life is food. Here it would seem natural for the cooperation seen in air and water to continue. Nothing has to die for us to breathe and nothing must die for us to drink water. But here the cooperation in the natural world breaks down. Food is different. While we can find remnants of cooperation between living things for the most part something must die for something else to eat. Most people accept as normal, after all we live in a dog eat dog world. But why is food different from air and water; why is it that something must die for there to be food for another?
It appears that there has been a breakdown in the natural order of the universe. On one hand the universe was created with the precise exactness that is necessary to support life. But on the other hand the amount of life in the universe that wasted must cause us to question. Would a man build a fine stadium that could seat fifty thousand people and then allow only one seat in the stadium to be used?
When we look to the stars we see the vastness of empty space. The universe expands into nothingness with a highly uncertain future. When we look on earth we see the exact opposite. On earth there is a critical shortage of space for life. If life was meant to be as well designed as the physical universe then something catastrophic has gone wrong. One can marvel at the miracle of life that is contained in just one seed. Could man build anything as wondrous as a seed? Truly this is precisely engineered work of God. Something made by God with such care surely was not meant to go to waste.
In the book of Genesis we are told the order in which God created the universe. His work was good and perfect. Then on the sixth day God opened door for mankind to make choices that would determine the future of all life. We often hear of the Ten Commandants but this is that very first commandment given to mankind and therefore the most important.
Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." And God said, "See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food.
Genesis 1:28-29
Here we see a double emphasis on growth. These commandments were given in the context of the creation of the universe. They were interwoven into the fabric of creation itself. Both these commandments are linked to procreation and the increase of living things. Foremost in God’s mind at the creation was the importance of and the increase of mankind and as well a other life.
These commands assume there would be enough room for all of mankind to fit upon the face of the earth. In a world like that of the Transfiguration this would be possible. There would be room for everyone who could ever possibility be born. But in our world there is no room for unbounded life to grow. Instead most of the life that is possible never comes into being. The amount of life that is wasted is a very large number, number large enough to continually fill the entire universe.
“Everyone” is another impossibly large number, enough to fill the earth many times over. But the people living a world that was like that of the Transfiguration would have found would have found our earth very spacious. Perhaps one’s space in the Garden would be the size of our world. This is the space that Adam and Eve had it may have been the standard meant for all couples. Nor would living in your own “world” have isolated people. In paradise contact and communion with others and God was close at hand.
And this all depended on obeying God’s commands:
And God said, "See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Genesis 1:19
If given this command there are two very important questions that one would naturally ask. First, how would one know whether a fruit has a seed in it or not? There are kinds of fruit that do not have seeds and one can not tell this simply by looking at them. Secondly, what would happen if a seedless fruit was eaten? Both of these questions are answered later by God in the Garden of Eden:
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
Genesis 2:16-17
In the Garden mankind and the animals ate fruit and leaves. Death was not present in the Garden and one animal did not eat another. But at some point this began to happen. Today most people may think that it is necessary for animals to eat each other to live. But this is not true. For at some point the in the food chain the animal that is eaten is one that eats plants. Plants provide the basis for all food that is eaten. Without plants as food the animal kingdom would soon starve. The plant kingdom feeds the animal kingdom and light from the sun feed the plant kingdom.
It is light that is the primary source of all food. So awesome is this process that brings us food that we cannot have direct knowledge of it. Just as we are unable to look upon God directly:
The Lord said . . . "you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live. " Exodus 33:20
Light flows to the green plants, which use light to make the food that flows to the animals. It would be an advantage for an animal to be able to make food from light the way that plants do. But there are no animals that can make food from light the way plants do.
Plants that receive their food from this ultimate source are unconscious and unseeing. There are no plants with eyes that can see or minds that can know. Life, it seems, is shielded from ever coming face to face and knowing where its life comes from. Life is divided in two. The living things that receive their “food” as light are unconscious and unseeing. And the animals that can see and think receive the “light as food” only indirectly from the food that the plants produce for them.
God gave plants to all the animals as their food
"Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food"; and it was so. Genesis 1:30
Plants produce enough food to feed the animal kingdom many time over. But not all animals eat plants. Some animals eat plants while some animals eat other animals. While it is possible for all animals to eat food from plants they no longer do so.
In Genesis we are told that in the Garden all animals ate fruit and leaves, that is, the plant kingdom provided food for the animal kingdom. This then would put the provision of food in harmony with the overall design for life. According to Genesis, the plant kingdom provided food for the animal kingdom and in return Adam “tended the garden”.
If we look again at Genesis 1:29-30 we must conclude that the exact diet that was given here consisted only of fruit and leaves. In Genesis 3:18 we find this fact reinforced, as when leaving the Garden God tells Adam and Eve that they will now eat the plants themselves:
“and you shall eat the plants of the field” Genesis 3:18
This verse implies that before this, whole plants were not eaten. The point here to remember is that in the Garden death did not exist. If animals had eaten the plants themselves, then death would have been present even if it were of something that was unconscious.
The restriction to only fruit and leaves meant that death was not present in the Garden. For example if one eats a leaf from a plant the plant need not die. Nor is the leaf itself a living entity but can be taken without the loss of life of the plant. The same is true if one eats fruit from a tree. The seed of the fruit is a living entity and can die but it is not meant to be eaten. Later in Genesis, when Adam and Eve had left the Garden of Eden, we find that plants themselves were not eaten; rather mankind was given meat as food.
“The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon the fish of the sea, they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.” Genesis 9:2-3
This is part two of the answer - please start with the post above
We have gotten ahead of ourselves here and need to go back to the beginning. Before us now the stage is set in the Garden of Eden as it was before Adam and Eve sinned. Here God give Adam and Eve fruit with seed in it to eat;
“I give you every seed-bearing plant” and “every tree that has fruit with seed in it.” Genesis 1-29-30
But at the same time there was one fruit that they were forbidden to eat:
“Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in that day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Genesis 2:16-17
Here we have two commands. In the first command God gives Adam and Eve every fruit with seed. In the second command God gives Adam and Eve every fruit except the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. For both of these commands to be consistent then the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil could not have had a seed.
In the context of the creation of that time there would be two consequences of this. First, without seed there would be no need for additional space for new plants. From Genesis 1:28-29 it would appear that in the beginning life and its need for space were linked together into one organic whole.
Looking at the universe is like looking at the pieces of a broken watch. We know what it was suppose to do but it is very difficult to know how the different pieces fit together and actually worked. We know that God commanded that the earth be filled with life. And we know that the earth as we know it is far to small to hold the life that God intended for it.
For the universe to work as God intended it to then the “room” on earth would have needed to expand with in introduction of new life. Original sin broke the link between the growth of life and the room for new life. Life became trapped in a microscopic portion of the universe while the universe continued to grow in size. This is truly a fantastic idea. But it answers the question of why the reproduction of life is so dysfunctional in a universe that was precisely designed for it.
Consuming something without a seed will lead to scarcity. When something is scarce it becomes a source of conflict between competing parties. But consuming fruit with seeds will lead to an abundance of what is being consumed because the seeds can be planted to produce more of what is being eaten. With just a few words the story of the Garden of Eden gives us an insight into how a perfect world would work. When Adam and Eve ate what was forbidden they broke fellowship with God. They shattered paradise where consumption and reproduction actually created more space to live and food to eat.
