why didnt God just do this?

by sowhatnow 39 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  objectivetruth

  Original Sin is a Christian Belief.. It gives humans an excuse to Sin, and since they have the Human Sacrifice story, they Justify their actions even more so. What is missed when reading the Genesis account :

  "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. (3:17)

  Adam and Eve were not changed, rather their Diet was restricted, and because of this they were not able to Live long anymore. - This is confirmed in Revelation 2:7 " I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God."

  If you read non canonical writings, you will see that Adam & Eve were forgiven after they were removed from Eden, and they were given a promise of 5,500 years. This 5,500 years arrived at the death of Christ.
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  Island Man

  "This snake could talk, but possibly all snakes could, at least before they were cursed"

  And they evidently had legs too, which they only lost after they were cursed.

  It is clear that the Genesis account was designed to provide answers to questions that ancient people thought about. Questions like:

  ~ Why do women have painful childbirth?

  ~ Why do men subjugate women?

  ~ Why do people grow old and die?

  ~ Why do men have one less rib than women?

  ~ Why do snakes crawl on their belly instead of having legs?

  ~ Why are people ashamed of their nakedness and wear clothes?

  ~ Why do rainbows appear in rainclouds?

  ~ Why do people speak different languages?

  This kind of literature that seeks to provide mythical answers to the origins of certain phenomena is not unique to Genesis. This kind of writing is found throughout the ancient world.
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  prologos

  island Man, The early bible writers also nedde to brush on their arithmatic, because even then, earlier in evolution, men did not have one rib, or pairs of same than woman. and

  trueism even today, the less you eat, the longer you will live.
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  EdenOne

  Even IF the story of Adam and Eve was real (it's a myth, but for argument sake, let's pretend it was real), the reasoning behind it is: Sin is transmitted in some mysterious hereditary way, perhaps genetically, so, when Adam And Eve sinned, their offspring was inevitably sentenced to inherit their sin by birth. The reason God allowed this was so that thefirst couple could generate offspring, thus fulfilling God's will, but, at the same time, fulfilling God's justice, The first human couple couldn't escape the capital punishment they were warned about. No worries, because, oh rejoice! Jehovah would eventually after waiting 6000+ years of human suffering make things right for mankind through the ransom provided by his only-begotten perfect Son, Jesus, even bringing miraculously back to life those who died because of that 'inherited sin.'

  Sounds neat and plausible? To most Jehovah's Witnesses it does. However, consider this:

  If you ask any Jehovah's Witness if God is the paradigm of the perfect father to whom keeping the well-being of his children is paramount, you will hear a resounding YES! It follows then, that it would be unthinkable that Jehovah would subject his children to unecessary suffering unless there was no other alternative, right? Another resounding YES! It follows, then, that it was absolutely impossible to Jehovah to keep Adam and Eve's offspring from inheriting sin, without God breaking his word of judgement, right? A hesitating YES would follow.

  Well, in that case, please explain: How come God was able to protect Jesus, who was fully human, born of a sinful woman, from inheriting Adamic sin, but he couldn't protect Adam and Eve's children from inheriting their sin? If God did it for Jesus, why didn't he do it for Cain, Abel and Set and other children? Because, as far as we can see, God would still be true to his word if he sentenced the first couple to death, while allowing them to generate a perfect offspring in the meantime. And even if Satan challenged that every human being wouldn't keep their integrity towards God, that challenge could be answered just as well (and even more so) by a perfect human offspring, thus eliminating the need for a 'perfect redeemer' that only God could provide.

  So, either:

  a) God isn't a good father, because he allowed his human creation to suffer unecessarily - it was in his power to stop the transmission of sin, and he didn't. This also caused his Son Jesus to suffer and die as a redeemer unecessarily, because, if every generation after Adam and Eve was born free from sin, and would only become sinner on their own doing, there would be no necessity at all for a perfect man coming from heaven to die for mankind's sins.

  or

  b) In order to be sin-free, Jesus wasn't born from a human woman, and therefore he wasn't fully human. Therefore, his life wasn't the equivalent of the perfect human life that Adam lost. This invalidates the ransom ideology.

  Which one is it, then?

  Eden
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  prologos

  eden one , we have to go with one, I mean "a)", because he missed the first chance to correct himself, and by then deliberately putting the twirling swords to block the way to the tree that could have cured the curse.

  bsw

  He struck Zakaiya, the father of John the baptist (izer) with speechlessness, why did he not do it to the serpent. so much easier for him and us.
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  EdenOne

  The above reasoning is what led me to see the absurdity of the ransom doctrine, also the flaws of the 'original sin' tale, and the purpoted transmission mechanism of sin. It's just men trying to make sense of evil And misery in this world, nothing else.

  Eden
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  Apognophos

  To be clear, though, the Genesis account does not speak of sinfulness or imperfection being inherited. That's a Christian concept introduced by Paul. The only things being inherited according to the story itself were the specific curses on man:

  Man:

  - Enmity with snake (will have his heel bitten, now that snake is low to the ground without his legs).

  - Ground will not be as fruitful.

  Woman:

  - "Sorrowful" pregnancy and painful childbirth.

  - Enslaved to man through sexual desire.

  And snake:

  - Legs removed, and will now (literally, or perhaps poetically) be eating dust.

  - Will get its head stepped on by man when it attacks, since it is now low to the ground.

  But I agree with your basic reasoning point, EdenOne, namely that from both the Jewish and the Christian standpoint, God chose to design us a certain way which allows imperfection or a curse to propagate to each one of us. He could simply have chosen to not design us that way.
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  Tenacious

  There are many things written that lead me to speculate on why, how, when, and if. The one thing that God did was give us the ability to choose as we see fit (free will). He did the same with the spirit beings and this is where it all went down-hill, fast.

  My theory is that when God created the spirit being that eventually became Satan, this spirit being must have been used in a special way perhaps working closely with Jehovah and Jesus. In being assigned such a prominent position in the spirit realm, he must have been given additional responsibilities and perhaps even more power than the average Angel such as the Seraphim's. In theory, Satan could have actually believed his power coupled with more spirit beings could very well overthrow Jehovah. Hence, the rebellion and the eventual war in their realm. It sounds looney for us but we do not know much about their world to know what led Satan to actually believe he could destroy or at the very least topple his Creator.

  I've always had a difficult time trying to reconcile some Scripture passages and what I have studied regarding the Universe, Quantum Mechanics, Consciousness, Vibrational Beings, lead me to believe that the Bible with all its wisdom may have been an interpolation of myths, legends, and actual happenings or events.

  My 2 cents.
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  EdenOne

  Apognophos, naturally, you're right. We're seeing things from the viewpoint of Paul. Still, that reflects the jewish concept that sin was introduced to mankind by the original sin of Adam and Eve and that's who evil came into the world.

  Eden
• 

  Apognophos

  that reflects the jewish concept that sin was introduced to mankind by the original sin of Adam and Eve and that's who evil came into the world

  Well, that's true. I was focusing too much on the curses pronounced on Adam and Eve, but the fact remains that they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and it "opened their eyes". Apparently that means that we inherited the potential for evil thoughts from our first parents. So I stand corrected on that point.

  My intention was to make the point that it was only post-Paul that Christians began to say that man was created perfect. This was because the idea of God had advanced from (a) a powerful man who created life from clay, or a tribal war god (in the oldest Jewish stories) to (b) the most powerful tribal god (later Jewish writings), to (c) a unique, omnipotent, omniscient being (Christianity, modern Judaism?). So Christians could no longer conceive that this kind of God would ever create something flawed.

  Thus they changed the Jewish concept of inheriting death and "sin" (the potential for evil thoughts) into the inheriting of "imperfection" (a general failure of the body and mind to function as God originally intended). They ignored the significance of the tree of life in the Eden story (viz, that we were not created to live forever, but required the tree to sustain eternal life) and they ignored the fact that God only pronounced specific curses on man and woman.

  Now that we know about DNA, this leads to an incredible deviation from the original Jewish thought, because a science-minded Christian is left to try to ponder how imperfection actually works on the genetic level. How did Adam's sin cause his DNA to become flawed? Which workings of our body are flawed and which still function as intended? Were we supposed to have body odor, to get gassy from time to time? Were women really designed to bleed every month? And why did God design Adam and Eve with a genetic booby-trap triggered by disobedience? Et cetera.

  Paul would be totally baffled by this whole way of looking at things. When he said that Jesus was needed to redeem us from Adam's sin, he didn't mean that Jesus was perfect like Adam -- he meant that Jesus was another son of God in human form. That's why there's a genealogy tracing Jesus back to Adam, "son of God". God was the father of two humans, Adam and the incarnated Jesus. That's why Jesus could be the redeemer, according to Paul -- not because God somehow prevented the baby Jesus from inheriting genetic imperfection from his mother.