I do not think God expected the world to be perfect. The way God acts in the Bible reminds me of the way a parent treats their kids. A parent may yell at their kids and punish them, but it isn’t because parents expect their kids to be perfect, they just want them to be the best they can be. God gets frustrated many times throughout the bible, but this frustration is because he believes humans have potential to be better than the way they sometimes act. One example of God demonstrating that he does not expect the world to be perfect is the way he dealt Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. God gives Adam and Eve one command, “Of every tree of the Garden thou mayest freely eat; But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not …show more content…
God punishes Adam and Eve by banning them from the Garden of Eden and various other ways to make their lives difficult. This incident shows two ways that God didn’t expect the world to be perfect. One way is there was a tree of evil in the first place. I do not think a tree of evil exists in a perfect world. God had to of created this tree, meaning he expected evil in the world. Also, God says they if Adam and Eve eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they will die. This turned out to be an empty threat as when Adam and Eve betrayed God he did not kill them. God must have expected Adam and Eve to disobey him, so he makes a threat in attempts to scare them from wronging him, but never had intentions of following through on the threat. If God expected the world to be perfect, he would have not made a threat in the first place because he would not think the humans would betray him. If he thought they would betray him, he would have made a threat he could follow through on. Although God doesn’t expect the world to be perfect, he does have very high expectations for it. So, when people mess up, he has to learn to dial down his punishments. When Cain killed Abel, God was …show more content…
I think God places his chosen people through hardships as a way to show his power. A big example of hardship endured by God’s chosen ones were that the Israelites were slaves in Egypt for over 400 years before God intervened. God demonstrates that he has more than enough power to free his people, but he chooses to wait to free his people. Even once God started the plagues in Egypt, he hardened Pharaoh's heart, making his people stay even longer than needed. Also, once the Israelites were out of Egypt, God sent the Egyptians after them one last time. I think all of this hardship for the chosen people ultimately displays God’s power because it shows to all the people of Earth that God is capable of causing mass destruction any time he wants to. God shows that he wants to use the Exodus from Egypt as a way to gain power and recognition as he commanded his people to “observe [the feast of] unleavened bread, for in this selfsame day have I brought your armies out of Egypt: therefore shall ye observe this day in your generations by an ordinance for ever,” (12:17). This way, his might will be remembered for generations. I think God also puts his people through hardships to test his people’s faith. When God sent the Egyptians after the Israelites one last time, God’s people became angry at him. They question, “Hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness?” showing
When wisdom is mixed with disobedience it opens the door for evil to abound. Although Eve was the first to take of the fruit and Adam the second, both shared responsibility in the transgression as Arnold describes it. (62;67,
During the peaceful time in the garden God gives Adam and Eve a specific rule. God allows Adam and Eve to eat off any tree except nothing from the tree of good and evil. God explains that death would be the result of eating off this tree. This part of the story relates to the heroes journey’s step of the call to adventure or the problem. Now the decision of obeying or rebelling became upon them. Eve begins to wonder around in the garden, she discovers the tree of good and evil. She notices something different, Satan, in the form of a serpent. Satan tries to entice and persuade her to eat fruit from the tree. Satan begins to ask her, ‘Has God indeed said, “You shall not eat of every tree in the garden’? (Genesis 3:1).” She feels hesitant at first, not wanting to sin against God, but Satan begins to persuade her with all the right words. Eve feels reluctant and does not know what to do. Satan encourages Eve in a negative way to disobey God. As
Adam was the first man that God created and was created to be the image of God himself. God planted the beautiful Garden of Eden in which there was no sin and the trees were filled with delicious fruits, everything a person would need to eat. In the middle of the garden was the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” One day, a serpent came into the garden and convinced Eve to eat an apple from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge. The fruit did not make Adam and Eve any better than they already were. Instead, the jealousy, the desire to eat what was forbidden—and then the physical eating of the fruit that was forbidden—allowed sin to enter humanity. God punished Adam and Eve, and all their descendants, by making their lives hard. Likewise, in the novel, peace and innocence left the Devon school and Gene and Finny's friendship, and after the winter session, discipline and hard work began. Eve eating the apple can be paralleled to Gene jostling the limb of the tree while Phineas was standing on the edge of it for in that second, both of their lives ch...
In Genesis 3, the Fall of human beings is described. The serpent asked Eve if there were any trees that Adam and Eve could not eat from in the garden. Eve told the serpent that God said that they could not eat the fruit from the tree or touch the tree in the middle of the garden. The serpent told Eve that they would not die, but they would be open to the knowledge of good and evil like God. When Eve and Adam ate from the tree in the middle of the garden, they were opened to the knowledge of good and evil (The New Oxford Annotated Bible: With the Apocrypha...
This is an important point, because if our understanding of God is that He is purely good, then why would so many of this heinous events occur. “Theist reply that because God is necessarily good, He would never do anything morally reprehensible Himself nor command us to preform heinous acts.” (Anderson, 2007). However, God is seen punishing not only those who are considered to be evil, but also those who are innocent, He causes floods, plagues and death to many people because of one person’s act, or if He was angry. This is completely opposite to our understanding of God loving us all and to our most important idea that God is perfectly good. Even if these acts were seen as punishing those who are considered evil, then God would have not done any act that would harm someone, nor would He permit us to do so. The bible is filled with these inaccuracies, is God loving of all, or just the few that follow Him, it states different allowances in stories (Infidels.org, 2016). It is my understanding that these stories are proof that God is not purely good, which itself is an argument for Him not to exist or that the stories themselves or false. Murder was perfectly fine for the soldiers of the First Crusade, who slaughtered every man, woman, and child, however it is written in the bible that murder is prohibited, it is a sin. Many other events like this occurred. When we look
“And the Lord said, ‘But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die (KJV Gen. 2:17).’” In History there has always been a debate on whether or not knowledge is helpful or harmful, such is the debate in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, a story in which society has banned books and shunned learning so all citizens will be oblivious to the nuclear war the government is raging in their own land. This is also the message in one of the most famous biblical stories in history, the story of Adam, Eve, and the Tree of Good and Evil which opened the eyes of Adam and Eve to see their own sins. The poem “Tree of Knowledge” by Bee Lovett quickly summarizes the story from Adam’s point of view. Both
The God of Genesis is portrayed very differently. God is a forgiving God. One sees this when God states, "of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die" (Genesis 2:17). However, when Adam and Eve do eat the apple-though he does make them mortal-God allows them to live. God also does not strike down Cain. The God of Genesis is also a personable God. God talks directly to the h...
If God exists and is all-knowing, then there is no evil that God does not know about. If God exists and is morally perfect, then there is no evil that God would permit that He cannot prevent.
All in all the actions of Eve were neither good nor evil, but instead necessary. Through her actions she brought to light the evils of the world, and as a result man is able to appreciate that which is good. Moreover one cannot blame Eve for what she did because although as we have seen God did instill upon mankind free will, he used his threats as a means of manipulating this gift. Although there were many trees in the Garden of Eden, having the tree of knowledge of good and evil forbidden created mystery for Eve, and therefore drew her to it over the tree of life. And once both Adam and Eve choose with their own free will to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil immortality is no longer an option. Now that man is knowledgeable enough to appreciate immortality, God removes it as an choice. In a way this story shows us the flaws of both man and God. Man in that he is tempted by that which is forbidden and does not always respect the orders of those in a position of authority; And God is shown to be somewhat devious and perhaps even malicious at times.
The creation story in Genesis refers to a serpent classically interpreted as an evil entity. If we consider God’s warning that eating fruit from a certain tree would result in death the same day and that the record indicates that the only two humans on the planet did not, we must reconsider the role of the serpent and reevaluate the roles of good and evil and how they apply to ...
The “Fall of Man” story in The Bible, better known as the “Garden of Eden “story or “Adam and Eve”, is the story of how sin entered the perfect world that God had created.According to the Genesis 3, the book and the chapter in which the story is located, God gave Adam and Eve, the only two humans ever to be created at the time, a perfect place to dwell, a paradise called the Garden of Eden . This garden contained everything they needed and it was good. They had only one condition, they could not eat from the tree that was in the center of the garden, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, because God said that if they ate it the would “ surely die”. Well one day a snake came along, or should I say Satan disguised as a snake, to tal...
As previously, stated God uses difficult situations as a way to improve the relationship we have with Him. Why suffering though? Frederick Sontag wrote in his book that evil or suffering are the best circumstances in which to find a God, unlike times where everything goes well
Additionally, man’s freewill action—like Cain killing his brother—causes God to have a willed reaction—punishing Cain to roam the earth for life. Judaism determines Cain deserved his punishment because he sinned. However, Cain was the first killer of man, so how was he supposed to know that a mere blow could end up killing his brother? Murder was not known at the time that Cain was alive, so from a logical perspective it makes no sense to make him suffer for something he didn’t know was probable. Therefore, it can be said that Judaism’s perspective of suffering as a punishment for sin needed to be done in order to showcase the extent of God’s
of good bought dear by knowing ill” (Milton 215-222). In short, the lines mean that God created the Tree of life because he regarded Adam and Eve as royalty, and wanted both to have the necessary sense they need whereas the Tree of Knowledge brings death. In the journal Aspects of Knowledge in Paradise Lost, Anthony briefly mentions how mankind has a knowledge that differs from God (Anthony). Meaning that what one infers to be right is very different from what God knows is right. If God told Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, then they should not do so. Because of them, human nature causes mankind to be curious, and participate in activities that are not considered right. Overall, the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life