Re: The puzzle of Adam

Don Perrett wrote:

"...Beginning with Adam, and continuing through today, man was given a chance to know God on a personal level through the power of the Holy Spirit. YHWH gave us an opportunity to live in perfect blind bliss, connected and NOT separated, but WE chose to know what was right and wrong. Had we followed our spirits/souls and not our bodies/minds, we would have been just fine...."

In the resurrection we hope to live without sin. But to do so our persons will need to undergo change. In this life we can indeed know God on a personal level, and while we do, we do not sin. But given ourselves the way we are, such knowledge of God is not sustainable. And it's not always just that we have an urge to know evil. Under certain (rare) circumstances evil found and embraced me before I had a chance to say yea or nay, and I was powerless to resist. Demons are real. If Adam were historical and like us, he would be no more able than any of us to maintain himself in perfection.

Don (W)

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Don Perrett<mailto:donperrett@genesisproclaimed.org>
  To: Don Winterstein<mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com>
  Cc: ASA Discussions<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Sent: Saturday, November 27, 2004 1:44 PM
  Subject: RE: The puzzle of Adam

  Don W. wrote (in reply to George):
    George Murphy wrote:

    "...For if _all_
    humans beings are sinners for their entire lives, and have been all the way
    back to whatever we understand the first group of humans to be, then we have
    to ask _why_ humanity is in this condition. It's not enough to say "we just
    are" because that implies that God created humanity sinful - i.e., that God
    is the creator of sin...."

    Input from an opposite corner: One can rationalize the fall, but I don't think it's ever going to sound reasonable. --So a genetic change occurs that causes pre-humans to develop a conscience and become accountable humans. But this change is not going to be big enough. That is, those accountable humans (as we all can testify) are still dragging along the baggage of the flesh that made their unaccountable ancestors behave in ways that would have been sinful if they'd been accountable. So in one way or another God made humans incapable of avoiding sin. That's reasonable.

    This inevitability of sin doesn't have to be a serious problem for Christianity. People by nature are still separated from God and always have been. They still need salvation, reconciliation: a Savior. No one can come to God through his own devices.

    But there remains something of a problem: "...Why does God still blame us?...." Can God legitimately condemn if no one ever stood a chance? For this reason I've gone soft on hell over the years and would much prefer simple annihilation for those who reject God. The problem is that this softness goes against many of Jesus' clear teachings in the gospels.

    Putting this detail aside for the moment, we can say the world is the way it is because it couldn't be otherwise and still be compatible with God's objectives. The old paradigm says that humans are God's children, and when they do wrong they must be punished. The new paradigm says that humans collectively are adults with whom God seeks to come into a relationship; he does not punish for shortcomings but overwhelms deficiencies in those he loves by the power of his Spirit.

    Don (W)

  Don Perrett:
  For what it's worth, I like to think of it this way:
  God did not create sin. Nor did he create circumstances for our downfall. First I start with the premise that there were hominids before Adam and there were even Homo Sapiens before him. Beginning with Adam, and continuing through today, man was given a chance to know God on a personal level through the power of the Holy Spirit. YHWH gave us an opportunity to live in perfect blind bliss, connected and NOT separated, but WE chose to know what was right and wrong. Had we followed our spirits/souls and not our bodies/minds, we would have been just fine. But having free will, WE chose to understand things that were not relevant to our survival, spiritually and physically. In doing so, God did not condemn us, rather we condemned ourselves. If one considers that God gave us free will, then I suppose we could transfer blame to him, but what good is it to be a puppet/robot. That would have defeated the very purpose of communion with the creator. Throughout history, and even in the future (Revelation), it is man's own actions that CAUSE the "wrath". God need not step in and perform some sort of punishment. The laws of nature, physics, humanity, etc, were pre-established. Breaking them has consequences. Everyone knows that gravity exists, whether we understand it or not. If you jump off a cliff you will most likely die from the impact. God does not need to step in and PUNISH anyone for breaking this law. It is a law he created in the beginning and therefore when broken it creates it's own punishment. So it is with all God's laws. He may from time to time step in and save someone from this apparent fate of death, such are miracles. Some laws have direct and immediate consequences, such as gravity. Others have a consequence which cannot be seen immediately, such as immoral acts, but will nonetheless bring destruction and death upon us. Now God certainly could have changed things in order to allow us to disobey the laws, but this again would not have served his purpose. Imagine a universe without gravity. Everything has it's place and is created perfect, not in perfect order, like the thinking of old, but in perfect chaos, which abides by the laws (order) he established. We too were given limitations, a specific range of values within which we could operate. Unlike the rest of nature we have the ability to disobey the laws of nature, physics, humanity, etc. Like a child who tests the limitations set by his parents, so do we all when it comes to God's limitations on us. AND this is the nature of our FALL. We were given everything in the garden save one thing, and even this one thing, one limitation could not be avoided. We just had to disobey. This is the start of all sin. WANT. If everyone focused on our needs and only our needs. Forget about the wants, the coveting, etc, then and only then would we find ourselves without the need for anything. God fulfills our needs and if all we want is that which we need, then we need nothing and if we need nothing then there is no grief, fear, hate, anger, etc. All sin comes from the want for something which we do not yet have. All the laws, Mosaic, Levitical, etc are focused on one of two things, obedience and worship of God and those which seek to control our wants/desires. Focus on God and not our wants of the world and all will be as it should have been.

  Thanks for the pulpit.

  Don Perrett
Received on Sun Nov 28 03:42:19 2004