Even as a child, when I started to question how a perfect god could have created this very imperfect world and very imperfect man could have taken place. Well the stock christian answer to this is "because Adam sinned" which never sat right with me and always seemed pretty far fetched and very unintuitive.
Don't we first of all have to ask "why" Adam sinned? And why his sin falls on our shoulders?
Do you value free will? Would you rather God have created robotic creatures who just operated on instinct or programming like machinery? He did not give animals a multitude of choices to enhance their existence....that is exclusively for his children, made in his image, both angelic and human.
Have you ever seen a cow or a sheep admiring a beautiful sunset....or preparing a meal for company.....or planning what they will do for the summer? We alone are made in God's image and we alone were given choices as to what we would do with an imagined outcome to our activities. We alone can plan for tomorrow, or next week, or next year because we have a concept of past, present and future. Animals have no idea why they do anything.....they are just programmed for life and procreation, for the perpetuation of their kinds....all very self sufficient. We are created to be dependent on our Creator. (Jer 10:23)
It's like a car manufacturer making a car and then blaming the car for all it's dysfunctional attributes. I have this argument with my older brother who still believes this argument, it just doesn't make any rational sense and when you really think about it it's a total cop out.
Don't car manufacturers test their products for defects? When they find a defect, what do they do? They devise a way to fix it and then recall all the affected vehicles so that repairs can be made. God has issued the recall and we are waiting for the repair work to begin.
If free will wasn't free, then we wouldn't be able to make choices...even bad ones. It wasn't a mistake to give it to us....it was meant to be a gift. But the gift turned into a curse when defective humans began to impose their will on others. "Man dominates man to his injury" Solomon said.
Adam made a bad choice and it affected his children genetically like an inherited disease. (Romans 5:12) There was no way for humans to fix this on their own, so God devised the perfect way to "fix" mankind and sent his best 'mechanic' to implement the repairs. It was then written into a manual so that anyone in the future would be able to see how it happened, and how it was fixed, should there ever be a breakdown again.
The fact that all of humanity should be tainted because of the first man's so called poor decision, which is utterly absurd, that humanity collectively should be forever punished for this act, really?
Who said that mankind is collectively punished forever because of what Adam did? God opened the way for his adversary to prove that independence from God works better than obedience to him. There is no better way to demonstrate to mankind collectively that he is the better ruler, than to allow his opposition to fail utterly.
Every human alive will have either chosen Yahweh as his God or he will have abandoned him and upheld the devil's claim that man is better of without God's interference in his life. Every human is on the test track, proving what he can do with the 'vehicle' he has been given.
And due to man's innate nature I'd wager if you had a hundred different Adam's, over half and probably more would have eaten the fruit because man is what he is, a very flawed and easily influenced creature.
That is where you are dead wrong. Man was not created with defects...he was created perfect, but with free will. He was not easily influenced and flawed in the beginning at all.
Reading Genesis is interesting when you put down your pre-conceived notions and really read what it says.
The rebel spirit who became satan the devil questioned God's right to set limits for his earthly children. He was there in the garden the whole time, observing the interaction of the man with his instructor. After a very long time, God said that it was "not good for the man to continue by himself" so he finally made a mate for Adam.
Since Adam had named all the animals, he saw how God had created mates for all of them, but he remained alone as the only one of his "kind". When his mate was brought to him, he immediately bonded to her as "bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh". The devil played on that bond by targeting the woman when Adam was not with her. The devil slandered God and called him a liar...planting seeds of doubt. As the newer and less experienced of the two, she fell for satan's deception. If Adam had been there with her, there may well have been a different outcome. But having already eaten of the forbidden fruit with no apparent bad outcome, she offered some to her husband.
He was now in a real predicament....would he be loyal to his wife or loyal to his God? This is exactly what the devil planned....he made Adam choose between the two loves of his life.....divide and conquer is still his favorite tactic. We are all in the same position as Adam.....we all have to choose Yahweh as our God and demonstrate loyalty to him, as the equally perfect man Jesus did. The devil tried to tempt him to disobey God as well. He is our exemplar.
For Christians those who still believe this I'd like to hear your argument on why you still believe this. I haven't looked in to the origins of this idea yet but I highly doubt that it was part of the belief system of the early church and probably came along with St Augustine but I could be wrong. Either way it makes no sense and I reject it.
Please don't reject it until you understand it. It makes perfect sense because free will is never going to be taken away from us, so the propensity to disobey will always be there as a natural consequence of being given choices.....but the precedents are now set for all eternity. The case has been tried and heard and all written down as proof that the devil's way is not the best way....humanity have suffered greatly under his rulership. Independence from God hasn't led to a happy and secure life...it has just led to people abuse their free will more and more until life for many is just not worth living. The world we have now is degenerating into more and more chaos, and unless God steps in as he has promised to do, the killing will not stop.
God is a rewarder, so all those who remain loyal to God during this 'road test' will be glad they did. Everlasting life in paradise will be given to all who pass the test. (Job 42:12-17) Who could ask for more?
