I wonder why there is a difference between disobedience and evil... or obedience and good...

What happened??? That doesn't look right??
Kat

of course there is. If someone told you to do something evil such as kill someone and you didn't then disobedience wouldnt be evil.

Hi Kat...


Kat asked:

" How many of us knew we were naked before we were born? If we have not been taught that being naked is shameful...how then would we know? "

>>>>>>> Fear based insecurity would indeed cause shame.<<<<<<<

Chaz:

" of course there is. If someone told you to do something evil such as kill someone and you didn't then disobedience wouldnt be evil. "

>>>>>>> This is a good point. Well taken. Would this situation apply though in the garden of Eden. Obedience is required to an authority, which in this case was God. The rule was not to eat of the tree of knowledge. Murder and others did not exist at the time.<<<<<<<

CS

I am with you my friend

women are not behind men at all, even though some women seize the advantage and play both sides against the middle once in a while

aleegories not withstanding, my observations are pervasively drenched in the depth of the meaning behind the collective writings in the Holy Bible and quite conclusory in my response but limited to the body of work that describes the OP inquiry.

Suitable for me, since, as you know of me in that regard.

But then, my abstractions find the fruit in underlying principles that can make sense to me.

I have the good fortune of being indwelt by the Holy Spirit and am in love with God.

But I am also abit of a rebel in that I do not follow the generally accepted rules and image as a christian man.

I am a ram in the herd and not sheepish

I would prefer to butt heads with a wolf, than be safe and warm and timid in the midst of the flock.

The sheperd and the flock are one in the voice of the sheperd, but diverse in our individuality.

I am done with defending the Biblical historionics and have been for many years.

But I am never done with questioning every interpretation and import of Biblical passages.

It is a never-ending source of deep contemplation and the greatest study of the human condition and its propensities that I have ever found in all my years of seeking truth.

I am always amazed at the genuine revelations that occur and test my own mettle ( )) within its rich and complex content.


I've been out and about lately and enjoy the days....

Good to chat with you my friend.

say hello to your rumi-nescent love for me

Hope all is well with you both!!

The hidden assumption is that one can properly define "good and evil" and also be able to distinguish these in a particular context or circumstance. Disobedience to an order of killing someone might be the right or wrong thing to do. It all depends on the situation.

Wouldee,

Ah yes... to be out and about...

I also have enjoyed some of this...

I will relay the 'hello', as I am sure she will appreciate and reciprocate...






This statement say it all my friend...

" But then, my abstractions find the fruit in underlying principles that can make sense to me"

Therein lies so much truth...so much truth...





Peace and love be with you my friend,

The original sin was pride, Satan was so proud that he believed he could over throw God. God banned Satan from heaven, 1/3 of the angels followed Satan.


God has the POWER to control everything, but I do not believe that he controls everything. I believe he CHOOSES NOT to CONTROL some things to an extent.

That's why Satan was allowed to becomed so proud of himself. That's why man was allowed to become sinful. It's not that God wanted it to be that way, he just allowed it to happen.

I believe he has allowed these things to seperate the TRUE followers from those who may just choose to believe simply to be rewarded by things such as heaven.

Ok, so have we taken the idea of SIN, quite a bit too far here?

First of all, if one equates sin with doing what God tells you not to; then anything one does that goes against what God says not to do, is indeed a sin.

But here's the rub folks. If your mother tells you not to interfere, as she beats a sibling near to death, when exactly is it that God expects 'sensibility' to override leading to the committment of the sin of disobedience?

Being given free will, means God expected that freedom to be exercised. Acting in accordance with the free will given, MUST include the sensibility of knowing when and how to act (or what actions to take or not).

This means that if Adam and Eve were not given the sensibilities to act RIGHTLY while engaging 'free will' then they were not perfectly created.

Even going down the path that Wouldee takes us makes no sense at all. That the man and the woman did not SHARE the love that God 'expected' them to have for one another, CAN NOT be their fault. Their actions CAN ONLY be attributed to the way they were created - that including free will.

As other posts have indicated, if free will is part of the PERFECT creation of God, than it was intended to be used. If God punishes those who use that free will, becasue he doesn't like their choice in the matter, than the the error is not with man, but with God, who created a being INCAPABLE of 'acting' as God wants.

If free will displeases God, and that displeasure brings punishment, than God is niether, loving, nor just, or maybe, it is just that man is way too sure that imperfect humans, could not possibly have created any Biblical imperfections.
(oxymoron or paradox, you choose)

These words obviously mean different things to different people and we all know that the Bible is ultimately ambiguous in such matters.

As a Christian I was taught that sin is willful disobedience to God. And only sin is evil. Actions are neither sin, nor evil.

In other words, if a lion ravages and kills a child no sin had been committed and no evil act has occurred. The same would be true if that same child was ravaged and killed by a storm or other natural disaster. Even accidents (like highway accidents) are not sins, unless they were caused by willful disobedience of God. That can get complicated obviously.

So only sin is evil, and all sin is willful disobedience to God (by definition)

Therefore, sin, evil, and “willful disobedience of God”, are all just different words and phrases that mean precisely the same thing.

Therefore if Adam an Eve understand that it would be wrong to willfully disobey God, then they already knew the knowledge of Good and Evil. The fact that God had only given them a single commandment to obey would be totally irrelevant.

It doesn’t matter whether there are many sins, or only one. If you know what sin is, then you know what it is. Eating from a tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil would be redundant.

However, it is possible that the whole thing is just yet another metaphor (but here we go again moving away from verbatim scripture into the murky waters of metaphor). Once we do this anything goes!!!!

But his is what we must do this case. Which only goes to prove that the Bible must be taken allegorically and not literally.

So apparently what must have been the case, is that Adam and Eve were fully aware of the difference between good and evil. Good is to obey God, and evil is to disobey God. The only thing at this point is that they were only given one commandment, and that was to not eat the fruit of a certain tree.

Once they disobeyed and willfully and knowingly disobeyed God then all hell broke loose and God instantly made them aware of many more rules.

Clearly, it was ok by God that they were naked before that. It was not a sin to be naked because it wasn’t against the will of God at that time. But not that they had disobeyed God, God changed the rules and decided that being naked is not allowed and therefore it would be disobedience to be naked before God. And Adam and Even were instantly aware of this new rule when they ate the forbidden fruit.

The only problem with this whole scenario then comes later when it is claimed that God cannot look upon “sin”, like as if sin is something absolute. Obviously it didn’t bother God to see Adam and Eve naked before they ate the fruit so why should it bother him afterward?

So even though we can solve the problem microscopically here, it only produces inconsistencies and contradictions later in the book when it is claimed that God cannot look upon sin, etc.

Trying to make the Bible consistent is impossible. It’s just not consistent and that’s all there is to it.

I don’t care whether a person believes in it or not. If they are going to believe in it, then they’ll just have to believe in inconsistencies. That’s all there is to it.

I think a lot of people turn to religion as an answer to the paradoxes in life. But the Bible is nothing more than one huge paradox. It doesn’t contain any real answers to anything, it only brings up more questions.

Happy New Year Wouldee and thank you

Abra noted:



They can't. However you are assuming that Adam and Eve did not have moral discernment - and they were told that if they ate from the tree, they would die. In your scenario you ae asking us to equate right and wrong - with good and evil, making them equally exchangable. Wouldn't we call that a "shifting middle"?
I'm a little concerned over having to accept these questionable premises to follow along with your concluison.

Moral discernment?

Knowledge of good and evil?

There’s a difference?

Just sounds like different phrases that mean precisely the same thing to me.

As far as I’m concerned, if they had “moral discernment” then they had a “knowledge of good and evil”.

Changing the wording doesn’t change the concept one iota as far as I can see.

Let me explain this a little more clearly,…

Imagine that men wrote the Bible and made up the story

It’s told as is. It talks about a tree with the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and if they eat of the this magical fruit they will suddenly and mysteriously be bestowed with the knowledge of good and evil.

And this is precisely what happened. As soon as they ate of the fruit of the tree they knew that they were naked and they were sore afraid.

A typical manmade fairytale. (sorry if that offends anyone, I’m just saying what it sounds like.)

Now imagine the book was really divinely inspired and is the words of a real God

Then the same scenario would have been told “correctly”.

Adam and Even knew the difference between good and evil, and the Lord God gave them one commandment that they shall not eat the fruit of his perfect tree.

Adam and Eve knowingly disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit.

The Lord God then came to them and said, “You have disobeyed me, and because of this now I will make many rules which you must not break.

Conclusion

The first story is a concoction of men who screwed up the fairytale and didn't get it right. Bad screenwriters.

The second story rings with clear unambiguous "truth". If a genuinely all-knowing perfect God had written the Bible and preserved every word perfectly over all these millennia, then it would make perfect sense.

But this is not the case.

Also, if we allow that maybe the story did start out perfect but then deteriorated over time,… well, all that’s saying is that it’s time for God to get down here and publish a new version because the old one is all screwed up!

I still don't see what the sin was if you didn't know any better.I mean why put the damn tree there in the first place if you didn't want to anyone to eat from it.I think Adam and Eve were pawns in a game between Satan and God.I find this to be a tad unfair.In every story about entities and mortals,us mortals are always in the middle of some bet between two immortals then we get blamed for the outcome.I feel the eating of the fruit was a forgone conclusion and man shouldn't be held accountable for something that was predestined.

Too bad you weren’t Eve Jax.

When God came to you with the apple in your hand you’d let him have a piece of your mind whilst you sat their under the tree eating the damn apple right in front of him.

I can just picture it now. What a vision!

Poor God wouldn’t know what to say.

God and the Devil would just look at each other and shake there heads.

Then the Devil would say to God, “Did you create this bytch? How are we going to play our silly games with her. She ain’t buying it”

Happy new year James !!

lets hear it for the resident nihilist here, but i think i can clear this up

god is infallible, perfect therefore he would have known man would sin, and (the other posters are right) it does have to do with free will

the big question is knowing that man would sin, would he still create the human race?? maybe he needed an army of souls to fight the devil come the apocolypse (and he forsaw that man as ignorant as he is, has a good innocent heart and therefore go to heaven so he'd have a bigger army)?

but i digress my answer here is now we are verging on the meaning of life (why did god create man?), which no one knows, so the answer here is...

no one knows so just accept it like everything else that goes along blind faith... have a nice day!