A brief introduction to what I’ve been dealing with from atheistsfor 15 years ha ha.
Why did God lie to Adam and Eve (as recorded, “on the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die” - they didn’t), and Satan tell the truth (“you shall not die, but God knows you will be like Him, knowing good and evil”)?
And why is there a “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” in the garden at all? Leave the tree out, and the problem of evil never happens. What’s the good purpose of it?
Everybody chime in please!
Another busy day so my participation will be spotty.
Right, I guess this is where the “rubber hits the road?”
You ask why God “lied” in Genesis 2:17, so let me ask you, where does the Hebrew verb mût (to die), intensified by the infinitive absolute mōt tamût, ever require instantaneous physical expiration, when the narrative itself shows death entering the human condition the moment they ate, seen immediately in wayyippāqĕḥû (their eyes were opened), wayyēdĕʿû (they knew), wayyiṯḥabbēʾ (he hid), and finally wayyĕgāreš (He drove out), all verbs marking rupture, exile, and loss of life as it was given, so that death is not delayed but begins that very day as separation from God and access to the tree of life, with physical return to dust stated as the now inevitable outcome in Genesis 3:19.
You say they “didn’t die,” so I ask, what happens immediately in Genesis 3:7–24 that looks like life continuing unchanged, when the verbs wayyippāqĕḥû (their eyes were opened), wayyēdĕʿû (they knew), wayyiṯḥabbēʾ (he hid himself), and wayyĕgāreš (He drove out) all describe rupture, exile, and loss of access to the tree of life, and when Genesis 3:19 explicitly states “to dust you shall return,” using the imperfect tāšûb to mark inevitable death now introduced into their condition?
You contrast God with the serpent and say Satan told the truth, so let me ask you, why does the serpent’s statement lōʾ mōt temûtûn (you will not surely die) directly contradict the divine infinitive absolute mōt tamût (dying you shall die), and by what exegetical move do you treat a partial statement as truth when the serpent omits exile, curse, pain, toil, and eventual death, all of which the narrative immediately unfolds?
You say they became “like God,” so I ask, where does Genesis say the serpent’s promise was fulfilled in the way he framed it, when God Himself says in Genesis 3:22 “the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil,” followed immediately by preventative action lest he eat from the tree of life and live forever, indicating not elevation but danger, and if this likeness is beneficial, why is it treated as a threat requiring expulsion.?
You ask why the tree exists at all, so let me ask you, where in Genesis 1–2 is humanity described as autonomous moral legislators, when the verbs rāḏāh (to rule) and ʿāḇaḏ (to serve or cultivate) describe delegated authority under command, not self definition of good and evil, making the tree a boundary marker of trust rather than a booby trap.
You say remove the tree and evil never happens, so I ask, how do you define obedience without a command that can be obeyed, and by what definition does “good” exist in Scripture apart from God speaking and humanity responding, since Genesis 2:16–17 is the first moral instruction given to humans, not an arbitrary test but the condition of covenant relationship.
You invite everyone to chime in, but I’ll ask one more question directly to you, are you reading Genesis as a courtroom transcript with modern assumptions about time, language, and intent, or are you willing to let Hebrew narrative do what it actually does, describe covenant breach through verbs, actions, and consequences without importing modern categories of deception, literalism, or philosophical problem solving?
What you are doing, and I say this plainly, is reframing the text by isolating single clauses, redefining Hebrew idiom through English literalism, “flattening” narrative time into instant outcomes, and then charging God with failure to meet conditions He never stated, while granting the serpent credibility by ignoring what he leaves unsaid.
The text does not present God as lying, the serpent as truthful, or the tree as a mistake, it presents God as commanding, humans as transgressing, the serpent as deceiving by reduction, and death as entering history not as a moment but as a condition, all of which the verbs and narrative flow state without apology or philosophical defense.
If you want to challenge the Bible, challenge what it actually says, but the moment you require it to answer questions it never asks, you are no longer exegeting Genesis, you are cross examining a text that is not on trial.
Guess it’s “you don’t play fair” and “game over” for me.
I understand that what you shared are the kinds of irrational statement-questions posed to you from atheist; from those who oppose the truth. Only The Truth can set free those bound in chains of ignorance; who “walk in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart… (Ephesians 4:17-18) They are spoken of as “dead” spiritually, and as long as The Truth is rejected, there is no hope of resurrection to newness of life. We plead to the giver of life for their repentnace and their enlightenment.
It is difficult to get a dead person to realize they are dead, especially since they can feel their animated mortal bodies “living”. But even with heart pumping, and lungs cycling, the Word of God considers unbelievers to be dead, “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1,5) (Col 2:3), tragically separated from life. We see this spiritual reality in the response of Jesus to a potential follower: “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God." (Luke 9:60), and when speaking of the recently deceased Lazarus He says: “Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him up.” (John 11:11). Adam and Eve did die that day, and immediately became in need of a Savior.
Regarding the assumption made by your atheist friends: “Leave the tree out, and the problem of evil never happens” is a little like saying “remove the engines from an airplane and the problem of plane crashes never happens”. “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. (Romans 8:20-21). “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Romans 5:5
I’m sure trying to share truth with someone determined to reject it must feel less successful than trying to train your cat to make coffee. Yet, this is the ministry we have been given, our testimony of faith, demonstrating that only reasonable men accept The Truth.
Thanks brother for the work you put in on your reply, and the validity of it as well.
These atheists are often fairly networked, so they exchange tips on how to defeat Christians in debate. Once a few try something that seems to have good results for them, they pass that around, so I might see the same arguments coming from several of them.
I personally am not interested in a flame war with them, or “owning” them in an argument. For some backstory, one of the reasons I spent so much time on this was because I had my own questions to get answers for. And so I did.
My answer goes like this - “God did not lie, He told Adam and Eve that “on the day that you eat of it, dying, you will certainly die.” We’ve seen this sort of sentence from other societies. Im pretty sure one of them is the Auca Indians that Jim Elliot evangelized. One of them might say: “A leopard jumped out at me on the trail, so running, I ran.” It signifies a state of affairs in which a process with an unavoidable end has been set in motion.
In the case of Adam and Eve, it’s a simple explanation to say that on the day that they ate, death was introduced into God’s wholly good creation, and His warning of death was initiated. And they did die, as a result.
And, Satan will use the truth to deceive every chance he gets. Satan’s nature and purpose is beyond the scope of this thread, but it makes for an enlightening discussion.
On your reply, it almost seemed like you were talking to me (instead of the imaginary atheist asking the questions) and I will confess that I chuckled a little. Atheists argue in a very predictable pattern. They come at you with canned questions/answers, I give them a circular butt-kicking, and they resort to ad-hominem, at which point I remind them that an ad hominem argument is the same as waving a white flag and admitting defeat. They have nothing left to say about the question at hand. So you played the role well when you said “Guess it’s “you don’t play fair” and “game over” for me.”
Brother, maybe you don’t realize the value of your arsenal in taking down every imagination that raises itself up against the word of God?
One last word about “philosophy”. You know what the word means. In my mind, the exercise of philosophical argument is an exercise in the exposition of truth, which all comes from God, and not necessarily shunned by any means. It takes true statements (as premises), and yields a necessarily true conclusion.
As an example, let’s say one is defending Darwin’s theory of evolution as the means of producing all the living creatures that we observe on the earth. One of the characteristics of the theory is that takes only one Knock-down argument to defeat the whole theory.
“Every living creature descended from a common ancestor through mutation and natural selection.”
To defeat this, I would offer the following logical syllogism:
A universal common ancestor (UCA), entails evolving body plans through genetic variation in the developing embryo.
Body plans are set in the dGRN of every living creature. (Developmental gene regulatory network)
Experimentally, any perturbation (change, deletion, addition) of nucleotides in a dGRN of any developing living creature always brings about the death of the embryo.
Conclusion 1: New body plans could not have evolved through mutation and natural selection of living creatures since every mutation in the dGRN always kills the embryo.
Conclusion 2: Without new body plans, no new creatures can evolve.
Conclusion 3: Darwin’s theory is defeated.
After this argument is offered, anyone who disagrees is free to challenge any of the premises. If the premises are true and can be effectively defended as being true, it necessarily follows that the conclusion is valid and true.
Here’s another:
Premise 1: A tree of the knowledge of good and evil was present on the earth in the garden of Eden.
Premise 2: Everything that God created in the universe was pronounced “very good” by God when He finished creating.
Premise 3: God created the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Conclusion: It was very good that God created the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and placed it in the Garden of Eden.
All the premises are true, and it seems to me that the conclusion validly follows from the premises. If so, then the conclusion is necessarily true.
So this is long enough. We’ll continue to discuss!
This is by far my absolute favorite post to lurk on but now I gots to jump in. If I am to understand the general consensus is that Adam allowed evil to enter the world. Then I have a few questions:
How was evil not already here? God cast satan down like a ‘bolt of lightening’ Luke 10:18 - Satan was here in the begining although (for me) the time line is fuzzy he was here so maybe creation was all ‘good’ but the seed of evil had been planted.
Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. – So was satan THE serpent? controlling a serpent? why was he allowed to even talk to Eve? why toss him here? The horseshoe nebula wasn’t available? Even in the perfection of the Garden he was allowed to operate. Would obedience have been assured had he been not allowed to speak?
Evil had to be a part of us already. Eve was tempted. James 1:13 “When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”
@Pater15 The only thing worse than apologetics with an atheist is practicing it with someone who both knows the word and God but harbors anger for both of him.
I want to apologise for taking it out on you instead of keeping the focus on the atheists’ questions, that was misplaced and unnecessary. I have been in hard debates before, including one years ago with three imams where I had to work directly from the Quran to argue that the Messiah is the Christ and that He was crucified, so I know how quickly discussions can sharpen and spill over onto the wrong target.
Do you know of any online sources that deal seriously in polemics with atheists, material that actually engages the arguments head on rather than drifting into rhetoric or surface level responses?
Genesis 3 explains how sin came into the world but does not patently state why God allowed Satan into the Garden of Eden. However, a viable answer is discernable in God’s plan of salvation.
The Genesis narrative reveals that God created Adam and Eve—the first man and woman of the human race. They were made perfect and sinless, and God gave them everything they needed to enjoy and thrive. He did all this out of His fathomless, unconditional love for them. God desired them to love Him in return and express that love through faithful obedience.
For love to be proved genuine, God gave Adam and Eve and all succeeding people the freedom to choose. We can choose to love or not to love, to obey God or not to obey Him, to do good or evil. If the human will had never been allowed to be tested and proved, then people would be nothing more than robots. God could have created us to love and obey Him automatically. He could have put a fence around the Garden of Eden and never allowed humanity to be tempted. But God’s desire was and is for people to love Him sincerely, obey Him willingly, and worship Him wholeheartedly (Deuteronomy 10:12–13; Matthew 22:37; John 14:15; 1 John 4:19).
God placed a restriction on Adam and Eve. He commanded, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Genesis 2:16–17). The tree was God’s test of obedience and love.
Even though Adam and Eve were in paradise without sin, rebellion and evil had already come into creation through the angel Lucifer’s fall (Isaiah 14:12–15). Lucifer was created perfect and beautiful and may have been in the Garden of Eden prior to his rebellion (see Ezekiel 28:13). Lucifer’s undoing was his proud desire to “be like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:14, NLT). After his fall, Lucifer became known as Satan or the devil. Evil and sin came into the world through Lucifer’s rebellion.
Satan lured Eve with the same sin he had committed—the ambition to be like God (Genesis 3:4–5). Both the tree and Satan presented a test. Eve took Satan’s bait, Adam chose to follow Eve into sin, and the fall of humankind was complete (Romans 5:12). The couple and all subsequent humans would pay the consequences of their disobedience, beginning with separation from God. Sin breaks our fellowship with God. Born in a state of estrangement from our Creator, we all desperately need a Savior to reconcile and restore our relationship with God (Romans 3:9, 10–12, 23; Psalm 51:5; Ephesians 2:3).
Why did God allow Satan to enter the Garden of Eden? At best, we can speculate that God allowed it as a means of testing Adam and Eve’s love and obedience.
Why did God let His beloved creations fall into sin?
These questions have NO definitive answers IN Scripture.
The Bible does not tell us everything we want to know, but God, through His Word, does provide everything we need (2 Timothy 3:16–17; 2 Peter 1:3). We can stand firm on the truth Scripture does reveal. We know God is good, wise, and loving (Luke 18:19; Genesis 50:20; 1 John 4:8, 16). Everything He does is in our best interest, for a good and loving purpose (Romans 8:28; 31–38).
Some things are hidden from us in Scripture and not for us to know:
“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law” (Deuteronomy 29:29).
We are allowed to explore, research, and discover much in God’s Word, but there is infinite knowledge beyond our finite reach (Psalm 44:21; Daniel 8:26; Romans 11:33; 16:25).
When we are left with unanswerable questions, we must be willing to accept what God has not revealed and cling to what He has.
Yes, God placed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden. He knew Adam and Eve would disobey. I do not believe this was a setup for failure, but rather the condition for real relationship.
Love that is coerced or robotic isn’t love at all.
Without the possibility to reject God, the choice to love Him wouldn’t be meaningful.
I want to re-insert briefly a foundation of explanation. Everything we are discussing ties back to a baseline reality. God (the all powerful, self-existent one), does exist with His own framework of “limitations”. Things He can’t do. He can’t be tempted by evil, He can’t do any evil, for example.
And He can not deny Himself. This is why logic is a useful tool - God is the source of all true logic. It’s similar to mathematics in that respect.
God’s Problem of Evil - In every case that God creates a substantially morally free, rational person, the possibility of evil comes into existence concomitantly. It’s an unavoidable entailment.
We know that it’s unavoidable because our very loving Lord, the actual Son of God, the Savior of the world, prayed 3 times, sweating great drops of blood, in deepest agony, to His own loving Father, that if there be any way that He wouldn’t have to drink the cup of crucifixion, to take it from Him.
Nevertheless, He submitted to God’s will, because there was no other way. He believed God and trusted God and submitted to God. He did what every human has the opportunity to do - He did what He believed was ultimately in His own best interest, by aligning His belief in His own best interest with God’s will.
This is the righteousness that God wants from us. Be like our father Abraham, who “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness”.
But going back to what I said earlier - the possibility of evil is entailed by God’s very nature, as exemplified in His love. He could not have done it differently.
There is no other way. That’s the starting place of understanding.
PS - Also keep in mind - the lamb of God was slain before the foundations of the world. Again, there was no other way.
Okay, you got some awesome observations here. One question, do you think Adam and Eve ever argued? I mean, they’re husband and wife, right? Duh!
To say that “evil had to be part of us already” seems logical, until we compare to God’s assessment that “He saw everything that He created, and behold, it was very good”. But my opinion is that your are on the right track.
There was something about the humans that God created, that caused them to sin.
Psychology calls it “Psychological Egoism”. That is, that, theoretically, every human always does what they believe is in their best interest.
God calls it “self love”, as in “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. “Husband’s should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.”
Adam and Eve didn’t decide they wanted to run their own lives. The scripture plainly says what they did. They saw good fruit, pleasant to look at, and good for gaining wisdom. In this case Adam didn’t put up any argument. They did what they thought was in their best interest at the moment.
If only they would have believed God instead….
We are free to make our own moral choices, we are free to believe what we want to, we always do what we believe is best for ourselves at the moment.
All of these fundamental properties of humans are very good, exactly as God said. In order for very goodness to translate into our every action only requires us to believe what He says at every moment.
@Johann Dude no worries at all. I remember the first time i had an atheist call God a liar - I said to myself “yeah you ARE going to hell and you deserve every second of it!” Lol
I can’t recommend William Lane Craig’s debates highly enough, and they are all online for review. Also their website - reasonablefaith.org is just a wealth of resources, including full classes on apologetics for free.
Keep in mind, atheism is a temporary condition. I believe that over half who make that claim are actually angry at God. “Why did my innocent sister die” or “why am I so short” or “why did my husband leave”.
Cognitive dissonance is real. “How could a good God allow the holocaust?”
But we know that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is lord. Or they may get saved eventually before its too late.
Anyway, I hope you don’t give it a second thought - totally understandable.
Yeah I call it “the mystery box”. It’s where we place everything that we don’t understand. The scripture also says that it’s “God glory to conceal a matter, but a kings glory to search it out.” And I’m sure that no one has ever claimed they fully understand the Bible.
Maybe you will agree that in some cases, things may seem to be hidden in their particularity, but not in their generality. For example, I offered a syllogism on the “very goodness” of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil being in the Garden of Eden.
So that narrows the field on the possible “whys”. Could it be that knowing good and evil will make us more like God? Well, that is what God said. So maybe that’s a good thing. We know we will live forever in Heaven, and we also know that there was at least one war in Heaven. So maybe it’s true that it is good to have the knowledge of good and evil before we go there. As long as we believe every word of God, that is.
And since God immediately blocked Adam and Eve from the Tree of Life, which was also in the garden, after they disobeyed, maybe God has a plan for keeping knuckleheads out of heaven, and maybe they learned their lesson on believing God, and we will get to meet them someday. Certainly, it’s a mystery for now.
I agree with you that God holds some unknowable secrets, but I don’t think that means that we leave off searching out truths, in as much as the word and the Spirit allow.
The Spirit was all the world had for thousands of years. I’m not detracting from scripture, and would never do that. But it doesn’t have aunt Becky’s heavenly biscuit gravy recipe. And it doesn’t have the canonical list of perfect church doctrines. It doesn’t have the best counsel for ministering to teenagers dealing with masturbation. And the list goes on.
So it’s obvious that God’s expectation is to hold to every word there, and to find the principles that the actual words portray, and to discover true deductions that increase our knowledge, and allow us to more effectively live a Godly life and evangelize others.
I want to again emphasize what a marvelous gift you have and how much we all appreciate you. It’s just stupefying how quickly you put together all those translations and clarifications of the original languages. Keep on brother - it’s the Lord’s work you are doing!
I understand the point you are trying to make, but Scripture itself already answers it, because the Spirit was never given apart from God’s revealed word, and nowhere does Scripture suggest that the Spirit’s role is to replace revelation with endless new instructions for every conceivable situation, but to illuminate, apply, and bring to remembrance what God has spoken through the prophets and apostles ~John 14:26, ~2 Timothy 3:15–17.
The Bible was never intended to function as an encyclopedia of recipes, procedural manuals, or exhaustive case studies for every pastoral scenario, yet it claims something far stronger, that through the God breathed Scriptures the man of God is equipped, trained, and made sufficient for every good work, which means Scripture provides the governing principles, moral boundaries, and redemptive framework by which wisdom is rightly applied, not a catalogue of modern specifics.
The Spirit does not add missing content to Scripture, but takes what Christ has already given, centers it on the cross, convicts, corrects, and guides believers into faithful obedience within their concrete circumstances, and that is precisely why the early church, long before printed Bibles and formal canon lists, still preached Christ crucified, called for repentance, and formed holy communities grounded in the apostolic word.
So the issue is not whether Scripture contains every modern detail, but whether it is sufficient as God’s authoritative revelation, and Scripture itself answers that without hesitation, the Spirit works through the Word, not around it, not beyond it, and not in competition with it, so that no one who has access to the Scriptures and the Spirit can finally claim ignorance of what God requires.
I concur.
I agree that there are mysteries God has not chosen to reveal, but Scripture is not silent about what it does reveal, and it never invites us to speculate beyond what is written, even when the subject stirs curiosity or wonder ~Deuteronomy 29:29.
Genesis tells us why access to the Tree of Life was barred, lest fallen humanity live forever in a corrupted state, and Revelation tells us that access is restored only through Christ, the last Adam, whose obedience unto death secures life for those united to Him ~Genesis 3:22–24, ~Revelation 2:7, ~Revelation 22:14, so the trajectory is not guesswork but redemption centered in the cross.
Whether we meet Adam and Eve is not addressed in Scripture, and therefore remains outside our mandate to assert, but what is clear is that God judges justly, saves graciously, and restores life only through His Son, and that clarity is not diminished by mystery.
So yes, we pursue truth diligently, but always within the boundaries of what God has revealed, letting the Word and the Spirit lead us as far as they go, and stopping where God Himself has chosen to be silent.
First, I don’t think you have adequately proven your postulate:
“God knew that without the knowledge of good and evil, maximal love is not possible.”
I’m still thinking about your assertion, I don’t contend with it, but I cannot prove it from Scripture. Maybe you can, or maybe it is a logical conclusion you have come to from aggregating the facts at hand.
I understand how you have demonstrated how there are concepts that are impossible for Holy God, namely, anything unholy. But since what you call “Maximal Love” is not unholy, how can there exist a condition where it is “not possible”?
The second loose thread is this. You said:
I understand you here, and I conceptually agree with it, but I don’t think either of us have proven from scripture that God created “rational, substantially free moral agent human beings”. He created mankind “in His image”, but not “in His exactness”. It seems too obvious from scriptural declarations and hundreds of scriptural examples that if mankind were left a completely free-moral-actor, he would consistently choose unholiness:
Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5)
Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. (Ecclesiastes 8:11)
The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; There is none who does good, No, not one. (Psalm 14:2-3) also (Ps 53:3, Rom 3:10-12)
If mankind always chooses B over A, is he actually free?
When we witness man choosing, A, must we not draw the conclusion that God has, in LOVE, “overridden” man’s “free-moral-agency. That while man was in a terminal state, addicted to being an unholy sinner, dead in iniquity, separated from life, God, in His pure holiness, died for him, reconciled him? Can we not acknowledge that God (by His own arm) brought man back to life and Godliness, even while man remained unwilling to acknowledge God?
Yet, we all must admit, in our present state of being “raised from the dead, existing in “newness of life” we have not lost our “knowledge of good and evil”; we actually have not lost our proclivity (addiction) to submit ourselves to our own destruction. So, I’m not quite ready to acquiesce to the idea that evil was an unavoidable entailment. But I do understand your point that the knowledge of evil IS the knowledge of Good. To know goodness, there has to be an ungoodness to compare it to.
I think I’ve proven that evil existed before the fall; evil existed before human sin existed. I’ve shown that evil was already present in the serpent, who seems to have derived his wickedness and ability to lie from an evil spiritual source who is called the “father of lies”. Also, when the serpent lied to Eve and promised her that upon disobedience, she would not die, but only be enlightened with the knowledge of “good and evil”, Eve understood what he was suggesting. Eve already understood the concept of “Good and Evil” before she ever experienced it herself. If Eve understood the serpent’s proposition, (and it seems she did) how can we say she didn’t already intellectually understand good and evil, even before she had ever disobeyed, and personally experienced the promised death of disobedience? Adam and Eve surely “knew” (experienced) “Goodness” before the fall. God had declared all that they experienced as “good”, and had even declared them to be “very good”. It seems Adam and Eve also understood something of it’s contrasting “evil” (good’s privation) for some period before they actually “knew” (experienced the consequences of) evil.
So we are left to deal with this scripture, speaking of the fall, and of God’s stated reasons:
“For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. (Romans 8:20-21).
Creation, especially mankind, was imprisoned by (subjected to) worthlessness (futility). Mankind did not ask for it (not willingly), but mankind was made the subject (slave) of evil, made into mere flies, dependent on their evil overlord (Beelzebub), BECAUSE of God, who did so in HOPE; God subjected creation to futility in order to deliver it from bondage, to remediate the corruption, to bring mankind into the glory of true liberty, life with God. God subjected mankind to futility because God is a savior. God planned Hope, recovery from death, and we can surely KNOW (experience) hope now, “…hope does not disappoint (will never fail), because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Romans 5:5)
So, I do not see evil as the price we pay for love, but evil is the tool God used to demonstrate His redemptive Love through righteous deliverance.
Am I off track here @Peter15?
Now where is that recipe for Aunt Becky’s heavenly biscuit gravy?
KP
Addition to the above, added here due to the 6000 character limit,
I'll go quietly
(OK, this is the point where I get mercilessly thrown into the uncomfortable “Calvinist” box, and the lid is slammed shut, without discussion. No one seems to like to entertain the idea that maybe God acted in fiat, in true LOVE, subjugating our wayward will by His undeniable Holy Spirit, to bring us into His perfect will. I think that in this mortal life, the last thing a man will relinquish to God is the notion of his own free agency – his right to choose, but relinquish it he must; relinquish it he will.)
A demonstration of maximal love is not possible in a deficient context. The persons involved in the love relationship must share a compatible perception/response system. That is, the persons must at least have minimum capacities of rational thought, logical deduction, and emotional appreciation.
A donkey isn’t going to care if you die for it. A blind person can’t appreciate a stunning sunset. And so on.
So for God to demonstrate His maximal love, the persons who are the objects of His love must have the capacities to appreciate that love. Hence He created us “in His own image”, so that we are capable of appreciating His love. We can cognitively understand it, and emotionally feel it.
Love is demonstrated through giving, unlike our common understanding. In many cases, when someone says that they love something or someone, they are saying that they enjoy some benefit from that thing or person. Biblically, love involves helping, giving, or sacrificing for the benefit of another person. For a person in a love relationship, it’s not about what you’re getting, but rather what you give for the benefit of the object of your love.
A “maximal” expression of love would be one that has given everything possible, including giving your very life.
In God’s conversation with Satan about Job, God pointed out Job’s righteousness. Satan suggested that if God were to change Job’s context (take away all he has, allow his children to be killed, and destroy his health) that a different person (the true person) would be revealed. One that curses God to His face. So God is willing to allow extreme suffering in order for the real person to be revealed, and in Job’s case, the real person that was revealed was exactly what God had previously described.
When Jesus said “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”, He set the standard for maximal love. He later demonstrated His maximal love on the cross.
So what was required for His demonstration? A context that included evil men, willing to torture and kill an innocent man. Obviously, it would be inappropriate for God to create evil killers. We know that would contradict scripture.
God instead created a context that included free moral agents who always do what they think is best for themselves, and laid the requirement on them to believe every word He says. All of that is very good. When we believe Him and do good, we are accepted. If we don’t believe, sin crouches at our door, seeking to become our master.
It was men who freely decided to not believe God who orchestrated and executed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. God allowed that to happen in demonstration of His maximal love, for “God so loved the world (and the persons He created) that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever should BELIEVE in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
You raise an important point about the choices that we make. My contention is that Eve made the choice to not believe God, based on the deception from the serpent. Why would she make that choice? Because she thought that the choice she made was in her best interest at the moment. This impulse of always deciding in our best interest is a good thing, created in us by God, to help us always make good choices, AS and IF we continue to believe His every word.
When we don’t believe every word from God, and we choose to decide in what we believe is our best interest, EVIL is the result.
Jesus said “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” The truth is, we have a light load. And very straight forward. Always believe God, no matter what.
You seem to might be willing to accept that God authored the evil we see in the world? Or somehow injected evil? My argument is that everything that God created was good. It’s good that we have moral choices. But choice entails the POSSIBILITY of evil. And herein is the irony. Adam and Eve didn’t have the knowledge of good and evil that could have warned them away from disobedience. She had never heard a lie. So I don’t quite agree that they understood the concept of good and evil, beyond what God had told her.
God doesn’t allow the absolute maximum of evil in every life. Yes there is a lot of evil. Jesus said we shouldn’t worry about tomorrow, because “sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.” That can be interpreted a couple different ways, but one way you may not have heard before is this - “Today’s evil is plenty for you to learn your intended lesson.”
Hey brother - not ignoring you. I have, in fact, undertaken to formulate a productive answer (twice) and upon review rejected each, because I didn’t think I was making myself adequately clear. And I didn’t want to appear argumentative.
So maybe a question and a clarification.
What do you think about apologetics in general? And what about the witness of the Spirit?
I know that when the truth of God’s word is shared, that the Holy Spirit attends and brings conviction to the heart of the hearer. He does the work of drawing all people, when Jesus is lifted up.
So let’s say you’re in a conversation, and the person you’re talking to says “I don’t believe in God, and I don’t believe the Bible, so keep your verses to yourself.”
You ask the person, “how do you believe you came into existence?” He of course says we evolved. You take a moment to prove logically and scientifically that that isn’t possible, removing his excuse. Since he believes in science and logic, he has no answer. Then you show how it is true that living creatures are intelligently designed. Beyond question, defeating all of his arguments, and suggesting a creator. Now he is open to hearing a description of the living God and the gospel of Christ.
The Holy Spirit attends, brings conviction of sin, righteousness, and judgement to come, and he becomes a believer. I won’t say “happens all the time”, but I have seen it happen and had the joy of participating - atheists get saved. And not because of clever arguments, but because their cognitive barriers have been taken down to the point that the Spiritual truth can be appreciated.
And cognitive dissonance for believers is a real problem. Believers read something in the Bible about the way life should be, and it turns out to not be that way at all. What do you suggest for them?
I understand and share your commitment to the scripture. But I don’t agree we should be tossing everything that we don’t understand into the mystery box. I think that God expands our understanding, and deepens the wisdom of His word, for ALL of us who diligently seek Him.