fhansen
Oldbie
I would much prefer that justice produces justice; that love produces love, IOW; that I not only know and accept God’s love but that I also, with His help, come to love Him with my whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. This constitutes man's justice, as it's intended to be.I will address your comments but I asked other questions your response does not address so could you answer them?
Let me ask you this: “Would you prefer to be in a situation where your eternal close relationship with God was dependent on your personal ability to obey God forever (the Garden) or in a place where your eternal close relationship with God is dependent on your just accepting God’s charity (where you are today)?
It may well be beneficial for man to experience evil directly in order to gain the wisdom to hate it, as God does. In this case He brings a greater good out of the evil that befell man due to the Fall.God allowed Adam and Eve to sin and He allows all mature adults to sin, so would that mean sin has purpose and is possible necessary and also inevitable?
It’s not impossible for man to refrain from sin. The message of our faith from Genesis on is that it’s impossible for man to refrain from sin-to be righteous or who God created us to be-without Him. Adam chose the wrong path-to be apart from God, ‘apart from whom we can do nothing’.Should we be grateful to Adam and Eve for going through the Garden situation to show them and all of us how impossible it was and would be for humans to fulfill their earthly objective in such a situation?
No, it was the same afterwards.Our situation is very different than Adam and Eve while they were in the Garden, but was it that different after they left the Garden?
The existence of the tree simply symbolizes man's freedom to obey, or disobey. The eating of the fruit was an act of disobedience, of Adam placing himself and his will over God and His will. When God commanded Adam not to eat of the fruit did He actually want Adam to eat of the fruit? By the same token if God created beings to sin, if He’s the ‘author of sin’, then He’s worse than satan, and certainly not trustworthy in any case.You did address: Is sin really the problem since we all sin or is unforgiven sin the real problem?
You say: “God didn't create anyone to sin.”
Did God create Adam and Eve to not sin? Why have the tree of knowledge in the center, why make the fruit look good, why not have angels around the tree, why make it be knowledge and not the ability to spit 10 ft., and so on?
Because God didn’t make Christ; Christ is God. And that’s the difference: can God make another God, or is creation always inferior-less perfect-relative to Him who is infinitely perfect?Adam and Eve were made “very good” but that is not perfect like Christ is perfect, so why did God not just make more Christs?
From his creation Adam was neutral in will, still possessing the potential or possibility of disobeying God. Wisdom would’ve precluded his act of disobedience, just as it would preclude our own sin, by informing our wills. He had yet to learn of the vast difference between himself and his Creator, and of his Creator’s incomparable goodness and wisdom, and of his, Adam’s, absolute need for that goodness and wisdom, of Adam’s need for God. We’re here to learn that truth now, and Adam has presumably learned it by now as well after his sojourn here in exile from God. The “reward”, so to speak, of turning back to God and following Him is to experience fully in the next life what we now know only in part, and that full knowledge finally, completely, cinches the deal; man is incapable of turning away from God in will once he’s “seen” Him face to face-because all desire is completely satisfied at that point.Christ did not sin, when we go to heaven we will not sin and it appears Christians do not have to sin (although most do seem to sin), so what is man including Adam and Eve lacking from their birth?
No, Adam could’ve remained subjugated to God, if he had so chosen. Perhaps this choice was indicated by the eating of the Tree of Life, demonstrating a turn towards God more fully than the otherwise neutral orientation he was created in. God doesn’t force the will to act.You said: “cause of sin is a basic injustice in man.” I do not get that at all since God is perfectly just/fair. It would be an injustice to hold in anyway me responsible and/or punished for what Adam and Eve personally did. Adam and Eve did demonstrate the fact humans could not fulfill their earthly objective in a Garden type scenario and we can be grateful to them for that.
God has no problem; man does. Man turned away from God, preferring himself to God, while believing a lie about Him and His will. Man preferred his own way, man preferred darkness, man preferred to be God for all practical purposes. Man was jealous of, mistrusted and ‘hated God without reason’, and at the same time feared Him in the wrong way, primarily as an angry God, aloof in His superiority. Jesus came to reveal the true face of God when the time was ripe, after God had dealt with and graced man via His chosen people, and after man, like prodigals, had spent enough time historically in the pigsty away from God (apart from Him in terms of personal communion), so that he may learn with God’s help of the need to turn back to Him again, which begins with the virtue of faith. Jesus makes atonement for and reconciles man with God, to make this possible.I like and agree with your statement: “we love God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength and our neighbor as ourselves. Then we've become who God created us to be, and then sin is automatically excluded.”
But you say: “And this injustice consists of non-communion with Him, a state we're born into now, a state Jesus came to rectify and reverse”
Does God have a problem that Jesus “rectifies and reverses” or does man lack something that he needs to commune with God?
Adam lacked full knowledge of/communion with God. He knew enough to remain in obedience, however, but failed to do so.the fact Adam and Eve sinned showed they were lacking something internally in the Garden?
Beyond, way beyond. Man was meant for great things. God has always had man’s best interest at heart and has unimaginable plans for him.Are we looking to “return” to the Adam and Eve state before they sinned or are we looking to move beyond just being sinless?
And it all starts now.
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