My Question About Eden

My Questions About Eden

            The Garden of Eden sounds like a heavenly place, but there are many questions I have that I have never heard discussed. Am I alone? Doesn’t anyone else wonder about a few things or do you have the answers?

            In the first chapter of Genesis, after God had completed creating everything spiritually and perfect, He was satisfied “He saw all that He had made and behold it was very good.”

            My first question, one of many is, was evil, sin, sickness, and death a part of that good? If evil was any part of God’s plan it will exist for all of eternity. If sickness is included in His plans for us we have no right to seek healing. Actually what doctor, or medicine or surgery could reverse God’s decision? If sickness was not created by God it does not exist! How can we suffer from something that is nonexistent?

            I wonder why God felt the need to create man the second time? This time using dirt for man and a rib for the woman, when man had already been created in spirit and perfect in the Creator’s image? Could the story of Eden be an allegory?

            The rib that made Eve was taken from Adam. Does that make Adam the first mother? Why did God change His method? First He created with spirit, then with dirt and a rib, and finally Eve emerged full grown from man. Now the mother gives birth to helpless male and female babies.

            What would we look like if Adam had approved of one of the animals as a help-mate? Perhaps an elephant, a giraffe, or a kangaroo? I’m glad that he held out for Eve.

            It seems to me that God was almost tempting His children, which is very un-God-like, when He planted a tree bearing beautiful, luscious, ripe fruit in the center of the garden where it was seen daily, and told them, “This is not yours to eat! Don’t even touch it or you will die!”

            There is no mention of a talking serpent in the spiritual creation. I wonder what Satan looked like before he tempted Eve and God cursed him to crawl on his belly?

            If Satan had once been an angel that wouldn’t obey�"don’t you think that God would have stripped him of all Angel power and authority before letting him loose on the world? What then is left to fear?

            Satan conned Eve into believing that God was holding out on her. That there was knowledge that God didn’t want her to know, that would make her life more exciting, thrilling and stimulating. Satan convinced Eve that this was just a little sin and worth it for all that she would learn. Satan might have said, “Don’t worry, there is plenty of fruit on the tree. God won’t even miss just one.” Eve ate the fruit. She sinned.

            Satan was right. God didn’t take their life. God made them pay with banishment from Eden. And to pay with toil and pain and all the troubles that flesh is heir to and their children from that day to this to suffer because of a sin committed a long time ago by people we never knew.

            What is the real sin here? Yes, she disobeyed. God’s laws aren’t to be ignored. However, Eve believed in a power opposed to God. Evil that opposes God. Gneisses 1:1 is the spiritual, scientifically Christian record of man as created by Mind. In the image and likeness of the Creator. Matter, dirt, evil and sin are not part of that creation. What did Eve gain with that false belief? Fear, shame, sickness, death and war. What can we do about this curse? As Jesus said, “Get thee behind me Satan.”  Take our mind off of all evil and fill it with Truth. What God did not create has no existence.

            The fact that Cain found a wife, when Adam and Eve were the only humans, convinces me that we need to reevaluate and reexamine this story to find the flaws in our own belief system.

 

            687 words  Loretta Ellen Edwards