Enigma of the garden of eden and god benevolent

Enigma of the existence of evil and the Garden of Eden and God the Benevolent.



I will try in my own humble way to answer this most difficult question.



How can we ever reconcile the fact of evil, suffering and pain, existing side by side with a benevolent holy God of light?



Let us go back to the story of the Garden of Eden God says to Adam in Gen,Chp 2 Verse 17 that he may eat of any tree except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Note the tree of knowledge of good and evil, so evil existed before Adam.



However, God being all-knowing knows before hand that Adam is going to fail the test so why did he give it in the first place? I hear a loud reply from the congregation of saints out there, “because he wanted us to have a free will and not be robots”. I don’t buy this, completely, as God could easily given Adam free rain and said to him “Adam your can do anything you want without any reservations”



Surely, the above would be free will without the necessity of any test.

Nevertheless, God in his infinite wisdom goes ahead and gives Adam (and Eve) a test he “knows they are going to fail, Why? Was this fair seeing the awful consequences for humanity down through the age? Yes absolutely as I will describe later in this essay

Let us go back to the origin of evil, where did it come from.



Now this might be hard for baby Christians3/26/2008 to understand but it is absolutely true and right out of The Word of GOD.



Isaiah Capt. 45 Verse 7 I form the light and create darkness: I make peace and create “evil” I God do all these things. God made every thing so he must have made evil but why?



Let us go back to Adam and the pampered environment of the Garden of Eden. If Adam and eve had remained and by obeying God ( as God knew the would not) they would have existed in forever a paradise setting of beauty warmth, comfort, never ever have to toil work just reach out and eat do any thing they want . This would be wonderful for say a hundred years or a thousand years, but having never ever experienced cold they could not appreciate warmth, never being hungry never appreciate food never being thirsty they would not appreciate the taste and satisfaction of sparking water They would have existed in a one-sided reality never knowing the opposite. Therefore, after countless years what is paradise to us would become a boring hell to them. Therefore, God simply had to banish them into the world



So God being fair and just gave them the test, which they failed and drove them out into the present reality world of thorns, cold, dark, pain, evil etc, etc. This reality is based on a duality we know evil so we know the beauty of goodness; we know truth so we can hate the lie, and we experience the light so that we know dark.



We yearn for paradise lost and when we finally reenter it, through the blood of our lord and savior Jesus Christ, we will be able to appreciate it as we have known and will always remember the opposite.



I do not for one moment believe the nonsense that there is an eternal battle between God and the Devil and that the Devil is almost Almighty Gods equal. The Devil can only do what God permits him to do as we read in the book of Job.



Good and evil

Light and dark

Truth and lie

Deception and honesty

Love and hate

Positive and negative

Faith and despair

Holiness and depravity

Warm and hot

Life and death



And so on and so on……………………



God bless



Alan

McDougall

 

If you're taking eden literally, then it could have been millions of years. He had to name all the animals, after all.

 

The word of God is not written down anywhere except upon the hearts of Saints. And I don't mean Catholic ones either.

Holy books are little more than counterfeit money. They won't get you into the kingdom.


x

 

Good and evil are human ideas.

 

Hi Alan McDougall,
In your opening statement you have made the same mistake that others have made. You have failed to think "Free Will" through completely and thus have made several fallacious statements leading to fallacious conclusions.

 

I think the whole shebang was a setup because God couldn't stand being alone.