Friday, June 24, 2005

Dealing with Eden

Milady has been using Answers in Genesis' wonderful series Firm Foundations as the kids' summer homeschool curriculum. They've been studying the Bible from Genesis 1 & 2 all the way to the resurrection. Since the kids also use A Beka's good Bible study texts, they've had a very deep understanding of the fundamentals of Christian Theology the whole way through.

I was surprised yesterday when Milady called me around 11AM yesterday. They'd been covering The Fall, and Number 1 Son started crying. He was terribly upset that God had created Satan, and placed the Tree in the Garden of Eden. He wondered if God didn't set us up to fail. Milady tried to help him understand this, but it's a hard problem. God did set up the situation where Adam and Eve would sin, but can you have a choice without something to choose?

Adam and Eve did have a choice. They weren't forbidden to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life. Instead, they were only forbidden to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They could have lived forever with no problems. Instead, they did listen to Satan, and here we go.

That said, we still can't blame Satan entirely. It was Adam and Eve's choice, not Satan's. Adam knew full well it was wrong, and he could have explained to Eve how it was wrong so that she would not have been tempted.

The Millenial Kingdom shows us that the sin nature is in our hearts. Satan will be bound for 1000 years, and Jesus will be ruling on Earth in person. Even so, Scriptures talk about nations having to be punished some with droughts, and that there will be some number of wicked people. When Satan is unleashed at the end of the 1000 years, he will convince a large number of people to oppose Jesus, even after they've seen the miracle after miracle that He and the believers do. Until the choice is done, and God can completely remove the sin in us, it will be OUR sin, and our fault. We can't blame Adam, or even Satan, for our problems. If we were in Eden, we would have eaten the fruit too.

No comments: