Would Eve have taken a bite of the forbidden fruit if the serpent had not had a conversation with her?
If the serpent had kept his two cents worth out of it, would Eve have sinned?
You may be quick to answer,
Quick to say, ofcourse she would have, she was a sinner from the start
Or quick to say, no, she fell when she was tempted.
I say, ofcourse she would have she was in the garden with her spouse. (LOL)
But consider it for a moment, and it may not be that obvious of an answer.
Adam and Eve were living in the garden, with only one tree they were not to eat from, and they had yet to sin.
That’s right, pre-bite of the fruit, Adam and Eve would have been living side by side, perfectly sinless.
Imagine if your spouse was sinless, boy the pressure would be on for you to clean up your act, HUH?
If he always put the seat down, you would always have to put the cap on the toothpaste.
If he always took the trash out before it overflowed, you would always have to run the dishwasher before it was packed.
If he always sat down on the couch immediately upon coming home from work to see how your day was, You would always have to hang up the phone from chatting with your girlfriend about the latest town gossip, did i say gossip, I think that is a sin too, which would have to stop if your husband quit cursing at the basketball game.
Imagine Adam, loving Eve perfectly as Christ would one day love the church. And Eve respecting Adam seamlessly. Imagine each fulfilling his or her role completely, perfectly, contentedly, without question or conflict.
Hard to imagine isn’t it? Hard to imagine what it would be like to live along side your spouse sinlessly.
Hard to imagine what it would be like to live in the image God created you, without the noise of the world encouraging you to be something else.
So back to the question,
The temptation existed from the time God said not to eat from that particular tree.
Did the serpent push Eve over the edge from temptation to sin?
Would Eve have jumped into the abyss of sin of her own accord?
What’s the point?
The point is, we have temptatin before us all the time, is there a serpent in our lives, pushing us over the edge?
Are we jumping off cliffs all on our own?
Are we a serpent in someone else’s life?
Are we bringing people to the line between obedience and sin, and inviting them to join us, on the wrong side of the tracks?
When you stand before the tree, how do you avoid temptation, serpent or no serpent?
On The Vine 
I’ve heard from sources in the higher realms that this story is symbolic and after thinking about it I’m prone to agree.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the forbidden tree, represents Judgement and polarization. If you think about it good and evil are relative concepts. What is good for one may be evil for another and vice versa. Thus, our “fall” from paradise happened because we ate from this tree and started Judging. We started looking at murder and rape and said, “this is bad.” We started looking at altruism and compassion and said, “this is good.” I think in the highest perspective though there is neither good and bad – just action and consequence. People are free to experience ALL of god’s creation – and that ALL includes what we judge as “evil”. A poor person who robbed a bank to feed their dying children would consider their act good and noble while the bank owner would consider their act evil and without integrity. Who is right? They are both right and they are both wrong. The perspective determines the truth of the matter but perspectives are not constant – they are prone to change. Another poorer thief could rob the first man who robbed the bank in order to feed their dying children. Who is right then? The fall from paradise is trying to make one more worthy than the other. By trying to take one thing and calling it right and the other wrong. Judgement and the knowledge of good and evil indeed became our fall from paradise.
One example that supports this is how they suddenly felt ashamed of their nakedness after eating from the tree. They were ALWAYS naked – even before they ate from the tree. It was only after eating from the tree did they realize it. Nakedness was never bad in itself – it only became bad because they JUDGED that nakedness would be bad after taking the bite of the apple. Thus they felt shame for their nakedness – even though in essence they were always naked.
Nakedness was never a bad thing until they JUDGED it as such. Thus they fell from paradise because they took certain aspects of paradise and made some more worthy than others.
I think our life journey back to paradise from the fall is to once again love unconditionally and stop judging. When we can look at everything we love and everything we despite and love them both equally then we no longer would have any reason to suffer. By denying this truth and trying to make the world good by “destroying” the bad is in effect nullifying 50% of God’s creation.
Sure God can make a world that was always “good” – but then we’d never experience evil and seperation from God. God is master of all and therefore he does not hide from his fears by making everything good. God will create the monsters and then claim mastery over them. Mastery is earned from solving problems – not denying that they exist.
I must say I am intrigued by your comments, and it has had me thinking.
I am curious who the ‘sources in the higher realms’ are?
I have heard that the ‘story’ is considered by some to be symbolie, but have never quite heard the interpretation you offer. And I think there are some holes in the theory.
I don’t believe good and evil are relative,nor can they be based on our perspective.
Good and Evil are defined by God.
Everything He made in creation He deemed to be good.
He defines and gives examples of evil throughout His Word.
The ten commandments are definitions of good and evil.
In Jeremiah 44:11 God says “Behold I will set my face against you for evil”
Why would he set his face against one because of the perspective of another? I think God is far too objectivce to fall into that trap.
As for their nakedness in the garden, in your interpretation this would be symbolic, not truly nakedness. So perhaps it wasn’t their body they wanted to cover, but their sin.
What God made is good, what evil He allows to enter is not created by Him,but rather by his adversary and the sin in all of us.
I think the garden as symbology came from one of these channelings – not sure which one there are tons.
http://www.salrachele.com/channelings.htm
Now before you get all scared and frightened and call any form of divination demonic because it says so in the Bible I’d like you to give this an open mind and try it out. One of the big reasons I moved away from Roman Catholicism into Truth/Spiritualism were the huge number of logical incongruences in the Bible and mainly the emphasis of fear as a motivator rather than love.
In my own life experience I used fear as a motivator once – I was God FEARing and I had a much too healthy dose of fear in my lives. Thus – my life decayed and I got to the point in which my fear stopped me from doing anything which eventually made my life hellish. Thus I equate ANY use of fear to hell. I think fear as a survival mechanism is elementary at most – a stepping stone to be grown out of kind of like training wheels. Fear is useful for babies to be scared of multicolred snakes when they don’t even know what a snake is but at a certain point in time logic can do anything fear can in regards to your survival. Thus I think fear is useless beyond infantile instinct to avoid death.
Anyway I think unless we move past the level of fear we can never truly understand God in truth – God as a loving being. It’s one thing for a religious person to say, “I will worship God because I fear going to hell” while it is a more powerful statement to say, “I worship God because I believe his tenents radiate love and harmony.” Here’s another look at it – fear is not the baseline state of the human race. Why is it that you don’t come home and stab your family to death, burn down a few city blocks, and then run over children in a park? One could say, “because I fear punishment from God, the police, the law, etc…” but it’s another thing to say, “because I love these people.” To bring it closer to home – think about a loved one. Do you need fear or law or external forces telling you to destroy those you love? No you don’t – your will and love is the only law that is needed. Thus I think willingness and love is humanity’s baseline state and any teaching that uses fear to accomplish it’s points is false. This makes many of the “fundamentalist” religions evil cults in my book rather than true teachings.
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Back to the whole story though. In “The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ” Jesus does make a claim that everything God makes is originally good and that evil is a creation of man because man mixes good things in a disharmonious way. I think this meshes with what you are saying. As each tone on a piano is beautiful by itself but combined may sound horrible if out of scale things we do in the world are always based on what we think is good and best but when we mix 2 good things in the wrong way sometimes the result turns out bad.
A lot of wars in our world were fought in the name of promoting the greatest good and harmony but war always brings suffering and destruction no matter the justification.
If good and evil are defined by God and are constant things then why does God permit evil in the world? Many say “it’s to test our faith” but if God is all powerful why would he need to test us? He could have just taken away our capacity and concept of evil altogether. Testing does not make sense if God is a perfect creator. If you made perfect software since you were God would you have the need to test it over and over?
It could be true that evil is from an Anti-God of some sort but if so then why is evil also inherent in our nature? Why is it in our life that we don’t always do everything good ( a term I call optimalism ). Why are we attracted to evil? As Jesus once said, “let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.” We have all sinned and we will all continue to do so. I think the point I’m trying to make here is that we won’t “conquer” evil until we face it and experience it head on. Sure we can duck our heads and not do evil things out of FEAR but which is more the master – the man who has not sinned or the man who has sinned and vowed to not sin because of the wages of sin? Can you really understand something by avoiding it? In this sense I think evil is an illusion and as you said there is only good. I say this because evil only leads to 2 places:
1) evil leads you back to love
2) evil leads you to physical suicide/eventual suicide of the soul
Since we are born and created of love I don’t think anyone can really be evil forever without one of the above taking place. It may be true that God defines “good and evil” statically but I think the real issue lies in our “fear of evil”. I was wrong once and I paid the price for it and I have to admit it was the greatest growth experience I have ever had in my life. One that led me out of the darkness of fear and negativity into a life of willingness and love.
Truthseeker…
Keep searching. You haven’t found truth yet.
Truthseeker,
I have to agree, you need to keep searching.
Your pendulum seems to have swung from unhealthy fear, to no fear and that is a dangerous place to be.
The bible is clear about the ‘higher realms’ you wish to tap into, and I certainly will not play with that fire! Not out of fear, but because of wisdom.
I came from a Roman Catholic background as well, and they are missing the mark on a few things, but aren’t we all.
You are explaining away His Word in a very inconsistent manner. so I am going to pose the same quetion again, because you didn’t answer
Based on Jer. 44:11, why would God set His face against one, based on the perspective of another?
You need to ask yourself:
Is the Bible the Word of God?
Then you need to seek out the character of God, and that will help you figure out if your bible interpretations are in line with the character of God.
Read the book of Job, God was in control of it all, and Job lost it all, but God was still God. What happened to Job was allowed by God, but done by the enemy.
Do you know you need God when everything is peaches and cream in your life?
Are you keenly aware of your need for God when things are running a muck?
God allows it, so that we recognize our dependence on Him, so that we grow in faith.
If you believe in a God that is the creator of evil, that is something to fear!!!!!
I will answer the following 4 questions at the same time
>> Based on Jer. 44:11, why would God set His face against one, based on the perspective of another?
>> Is the Bible the Word of God?
>> Then you need to seek out the character of God, and that will help you figure out if your bible interpretations are in line with the character of God.
>> Read the book of Job, God was in control of it all, and Job lost it all, but God was still God. What happened to Job was allowed by God, but done by the enemy.
I believe the Old Testament is not the word of God. Thus I don’t believe God would set his face against another based on their perspective. God’s testing of Job is fiction. The story was probably put in there to encourage submission among the masses by asserting that they have no personal power over our lives – only God does. How disempowering that is – how that makes us all slaves. The Old Testament justifies all sorts of murder, rape, and disharmony in God’s name. The Old Testament is judgemental and win/lose. You are good, You are bad. The character of God is love as love is the thing we all strive for inside. If we are all made in God’s image then God must be love because we all strive to be happy and loved. No one comes into this world and wishes for death. Our genetics themselves our geared towards survival. The Old Testament cannot be the word of God – it reads more like a history book of man’s dealings with each other. Look at it this way – if God’s character is consistent with the Old Testament then God is no better than man – because man acts without love and feels justified for doing so. If the character of God were really judgemental then there is no need to perfect our world or perfect ourselves – because we’d already be perfected – because we’d be an exact mirror of Old Testament God. Hateful, judgemental, and unable to create win/win situations.
>> Your pendulum seems to have swung from unhealthy fear, to no fear and that is a dangerous place to be.
You may be right – maybe fear has a place in our world. I only know fear is disempowering though – it is looking at the world glass half empty. At a certain level of consciousness one need no longer be motivated by fear as willingness and love become the higher motivators. It is one thing to fear murdering someone for punishment by the law while it is another thing to not murder someone because you love them. In that sense an anarchist community with enough love for each other can live without the concept of fear. They do things out of love for each other, not out of fear of punishment or judgement.
>> Do you know you need God when everything is peaches and cream in your life?
Are you keenly aware of your need for God when things are running a muck?
God allows it, so that we recognize our dependence on Him, so that we grow in faith.
If you believe in a God that is the creator of evil, that is something to fear!!!!!
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The bible is clear about the ‘higher realms’ you wish to tap into, and I certainly will not play with that fire! Not out of fear, but because of wisdom.
I don’t think God creates anything evil – man creates evil by it’s misuse of the powers of God. It is the same thing with a toddler and a set of paints. As people grow and mature the paintings become less splotches and scribbles and more works of art. I don’t claim to be the ultimate source of truth as I am a seeker myself and yes I will make mistakes. In all truth you may be entire correct. God gave us the capacity to reason though and if they didn’t want us to reason then God should have made us all born sheep. If the Bible really is the word of God then the truth should be self evident. Instead I find myself reading the Old Testament and questioning, “is this the true state of the world?” The New Testament seems closer to truth because it inspires what is highest in all of us – tolerance and love. The Old Testament does give me something to fear – every other story is full of war and punishment. The Old Testament appeals to the worst within us – it separates us rather than unifies. Thus it cannot be the true word of a loving God.
Truthseeker,
If you discount the Old Testament, you are discounting half of who God is.
The New Testament speaks of the wrath of God, that wrath is demonstrated in the Old Testament.
Read any history book, and you can verify that validity of the information in the OT. The culture, the war, the disease and death.
The World then and Now is populated with sinners.
Sinners that Christ died for.
Without the evil, without the sin, we have no need of a Savior, to suggest that we can reach a place of love, harmony without judgement, is to suggest we don’t need a Savior.
If we don’t have need of that Savior, you discount the NT which you say is the Word of God. Because the entire thing is devoted to Jesus, His life, His ministry, His example and instruction to us. And He quotes the OT,many writers in the NT do, and they say, they are quoting the Word of God. (You may be familiar with the phrase Thus saith the Lord).
A loving parent disciplines their child, not to instill fear but to instill wisdom and self control. i teach my child not to go out in the street because I love him, and I don’t want him to be hurt.
All the love in the world won’t stop him from stepping off the curb, but proper training and discipline will keep him from stepping down into the street.
Sin permitted without consequence or judgement would not be an example to me of something a loving God would allow.
The New Testament intructs us to confront sin, and to rebuke it, and if the confronted does not change acknowledge and change his ways to cast them out of our fellowship. That is judgement, and consequence, and love for those in that fellowship, and for the one cast out. That sinner gets a chance to see his sin for what it is and repent and align himself once again with the Lord.
The Bible from beginning to end is about Sinners and their Savior.
If you discount half of it, your perspective will always be a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
After reading your entire post I agree with the entire spirit of it. I think like many things in this world we see the same thing but in different ways. As they say, “the devil is in the details :D.