continuation of the above
4. As we seek an answer, consider this:
a. Who, then, is to blame for the terrible things that have happened to the human family? Much, but not all, of the blame must rest on people themselves. Human dishonesty and frustration cause crimes. Human pride and selfishness cause wrecked marriages and dysfunctional families, racial prejudices and religious hatreds. Human error and unconcern cause pollution, filth and disease. Human arrogance and stupidity cause wars and when entire nations blindly follow political leaders into those wars, then they must share the blame for the suffering. Hunger and poverty are primarily due to human neglect and greed. Consider: the world now spends many hundreds of billions each year on armies and armaments. If all of this money were properly spent on growing and equally distributing food, improving infrastructure and providing health care and medicines, think what could be done! Especially when we consider the above, the money and time that are lavished on producing weapons of war and indulging the selfish whims of pleasure seekers, it becomes undeniably obvious that every child that dies of starvation is a victim of an inexcusable injustice.
b. Nor is God to blame for the wrongs committed in the name of religion. For instance, clergymen pray for God’s blessing on the wars of their respective nations. Yet often, though on opposite sides, the soldiers killing each other belong to the same religion! God could not be to blame for that, because he condemns what they do, saying that those who truly serve him must ‘have love among themselves.’ (John 13:34, 35; Luke 6:27-30; Matthew 26:52) If they do not have this love, then God says that they are “like Cain, who originated with the wicked one and slaughtered his brother.” (1 John 3:10-12,15) Killing people in the name of God, whether during inquisitions or in wars, is similar to the ancient practice of sacrificing children to false gods, a thing that Almighty God says he ‘had not commanded and that had not come up into his heart.’ (Jeremiah 7:31) The clergy’s political meddling, support of wars, and false teachings, such as saying that God is responsible for this world’s suffering or that he even burns his children in a literal hellfire forever, is repugnant to reasoning persons, and to God. No, God is not to blame for the wrongs that humans themselves commit. And he is not to blame for the wrongs blessed by clergymen who claim to serve God but who do not speak the truth or practice it. Well, then, was there something wrong with the way God made mankind? Did he give the human race a bad start?
c. When a person reads the first two chapters of the book of Genesis, it becomes very clear that when God created man and woman he gave them a perfect start. He created them with perfect bodies and minds, so that sickness and death would never plague them. Their home was a lovely, parklike garden of delightful flowers, lush vegetation and fruit-bearing trees. There was no lack. To the contrary, there was abundance. Also, God set before our first parents interesting work and stimulating goals. He instructed them to extend the parklike conditions of that paradise throughout the entire earth. In time the many perfect children that they would produce would assist them in this. Thus, eventually, the human family would become a perfect race of people, inhabiting an earthly paradise, enjoying life forever, and even having the animals in loving subjection.
d. But why did things turn out so disastrously? Was it because God did not really create humans perfect in the first place? No, that is not the case, because Deuteronomy 32:4 says of God, “Perfect is his work.” However, human perfection did not mean that the first human pair knew everything, or could do everything, or could not do what is wrong. Even perfect creatures have limitations. For instance, there were physical limits. If they did not eat food, drink water and breathe air they would die. Nor could they do such things as violate the law of gravity by jumping off a very high place and not expect to get hurt. Also, they had mental limits. Obviously, Adam and Eve had a lot to learn, since they had very limited experience and knowledge. But no matter how much they learned, they could never know as much as their Creator. Hence, although perfect, they were limited by being in the human realm. Perfection simply meant that they were complete, that there was no flaw in their physical and mental makeup.
e. In addition, God also created humans with free will or as free moral agents, not to be controlled or guided just by instinct, as are animals, or by fate or some predestined plan, like puppets on invisible, indiscernible strings. And surely you appreciate such freedom. You would not want anyone dictating to you, every minute of your life, what you should do. However, that freedom was not to be absolute, that is, without limitations, but was to be relative. It had to be exercised within the boundaries of God’s laws. Those fine laws would be few and simple, designed with the greatest happiness of the entire human family in mind. His requiring that they obey his laws, since he knew that respect for those laws would bring them unending benefits, showed God’s love for humans. Disrespect for God and his laws would interfere with their happiness. It would bring nothing good. In fact, it would bring certain calamity, because God warned Adam and Eve that if they abandoned him they would “surely die.” (Genesis 2:17) So to keep living, they needed not only to eat food, drink water and breathe air, but also to be guided by God and his laws.
f. There is another very crucial reason why our first parents needed to keep depending upon God. That reason is that, as part of the reasonable limitations that came from being human, God did not create humans to govern their affairs successfully independent from God. God did not give them the right or the ability to do that. As the Bible says: “To earthling man his way does not belong. It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step.” (Jeremiah 10:23) That is why the Bible declares: “He that is trusting in his own heart is stupid.” (Proverbs 28:26)
5. What went wrong and with what consequences?
a. With such a fine start, what went wrong? This: our first parents, Adam and Eve, used their freedom of choice wrongly. They decided to go their own way instead of submitting to God’s rule. In fact, the woman thought that they could become “like God, knowing good and bad.” (Genesis 3:5) Relying on their own self-centered thinking, they wanted to determine for themselves what was right and what was wrong. They did not foresee the unintended consequences and the vast damage that would result from such thinking. When they pulled away from God’s rulership, what resulted is, in a broad sense, like what happens when you pull out the plug of an electric fan. Cut off from its source of sustaining power, the fan slows down and eventually comes to a dead stop. Similarly, when the first human pair pulled away from the Source of life, their Creator, they eventually deteriorated and died, as God forewarned that they would.
b. Since our first parents rebelled against God before they had children, imperfection set in before the birth of their first child. Adam and Eve became like a defective pattern. Everything produced from them was also defective. They could pass on to their children only what they themselves now had—imperfect bodies and minds. They were no longer perfect because they had withdrawn from the Source that sustains perfection and life, God. So in line with what the Bible says at Romans 5:12, everybody born since then has been born in imperfection, and is prone to sickness, old age and death. But God cannot be blamed for this. Deuteronomy 32:5 says: “They have acted ruinously on their own part; they are not his children, the defect is their own.” And Ecclesiastes 7:29 notes: “The true God made mankind upright, but they themselves have sought out many plans.”
c. But is it reasonable that disobedience by just two persons should result in such tragic consequences for everybody? Well, we know that human carelessness by just one person in handling a small safety factor in the construction of a building can result in a disaster that may cost the lives of many people. Failure to care for a similar feature in a dam could lead to its rupture and a flood that could cause enormous destruction. A single act of corruption by a ruler may open the way for a chain reaction of wrongdoing in a government, leading to great harm for millions of people. In a family, when a father and a mother make a wrong choice, their children can suffer serious consequences. Our first parents made the wrong choice. As a result, the entire human family was plunged into imperfection and disaster.
d. Since God’s law was involved, and his integrity too, he could not let the violation go by without affirming and enforcing that law. What respect would anyone have for him or for his law if he did nothing about it? Do we respect rulers today who do not obey their own laws, or who allow certain people to break them willfully without penalty? Hence, God carried out his stated penalty for disobedience, which was death. But he mercifully allowed the first pair to have children, which mercy we should appreciate, otherwise we would never have been born. And although we are imperfect due to Adam and Eve’s failure, do we not prefer to be alive rather than dead?
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