Question:

You are kidding right? The fact that God offers a “last chance” to people before he destroys them does not change the fact that he did indeed kill them all. What about Eden? Now since God knows all, past present and future; he knew that Eve would take of the fruit and he then would persecute all women from that point forward with pain and agony as well as mental anguish for all their lives as payment. Question here is – why (knowing what would happen) did he put the tree down in the first place? Just for fun?

Answer:

I detect a note of anger and bitterness in your comments. Given the emotional nature of the question, this is really understandable. I can relate somewhat to your anguish. Although the tone of your question is perhaps not ideal, I believe the questions you raise are very good ones. Please let me give the best response I can.

I believe that you are making one or two assumptions that are incorrect, which may help explain why you ended up in a bit of a dead end. You seem to be assuming that God sends people to hell–that he chooses to condemn certain people. That is not the biblical view, at least as I understand it. What we see in the Garden of Eden is about God’s desire for a relationship with us. God created Adam and Eve different from the animals. They were created “in his image.” (Genesis 1:26). The exact meaning of this is not certain, but I would propose that we are in God’s image in that we are self-aware, that we are “conscious”, that we have a will which is free. That we are sovereign. In God’s case, his sovereignty is over the universe, whereas our sovereignty is over ourselves and the part of the world we influence. Genesis 2 tells me that we were created by God so that he could love us and that we could, in turn, love him. Creation is about relationship.

Why, then, if God loved us so much, would he put that tree in the garden? The answer is really quite simple. The tree was in the garden because God gave Adam and Eve (and us) free will. Love always gives a choice. Love does not demand love, but love waits for love. God loved them and us so much that he lets us choose whether we will love him in return. Those who choose to rebel against their Creator and to reject his love in their rebellion and disobedience, God accepts their decision and he allows them to go to a place where he is not, called Hell. This is a place of separation and of a lack of love. God gives us a choice and he loves us enough to accept our choice.

God did not persecute women. Far from it. He loves women very deeply and intensely. He loves women enough to send his Son to die for them. He did discipline Adam and Eve. Who he disciplined more strongly is debatable, but discipline is about love, not punishment. He did these things so that we would remember and so that we would reach out to him and find him, and, to some extent, to return to the garden.

About God knowing all, I agree that this creates logical difficulties for us humans. For us it is inconceivable that pre-knowledge could be separate from pre-determination. In other words, for us, we cannot image (or at least it is difficult for us to imagine) how could could preknow what will happen without at the same time predetermining what will happen. But that is because we view time linearly. God exists outside of time and for him, to foreknow what will happen does not mean that he predetermines what will happen. God gives us a choice. It gives me a headache to think that, on the one hand, he gives me a choice, but on the other hand he knows what I will choose, but that is the nature of God.

I hope this helps.

John Oakes