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Depends on the intent of the inflicter. In Genesis, God literally punishes all of humanity for Adam and Eve's actions. It's right there, black and white.
Genesis 3:
16 To the woman he said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."
17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."
I read the whole pasage and don't recall anywhere that said God was punishing anyone but A/E. Everything since has been a consequence of their action.
As numbskull said, your analogy is flawed. Fine if you are told and understand the rules but A+E didn't. They had no knowledge of what was right or wrong before they ate the fruit.
Well, actually, they were told that they would die, according to the story, and if they had no knowledge at least that death was "bad" (at least physically), then God probably wouldn't have bothered saying it as a warning, because it would have gone right over their heads...right? I don't actually see in the story where it says they had absolutely zero knowledge of good/bad or good/evil at all before the Tree and the pomegranate or apple or raspberry or whatever. People can know a little about "yes" v. "no" or "good" v. "bad" and still be innocent...very young children, for example.
I'm not really a Christian but I have an interpretation of this story. (Hard to explain that sentence so...just go with it.) I don't believe the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was supposed to actually impart anything in and of itself. I think it was called what it was called because the act of eating was an act of disobedience, and that act was what would put in motion Adam and Eve being forced to "grow up" by being kicked out of the garden. It didn't have to be a Tree of Good and Evil. It could have been anything. It could have been the Sour Nerds of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It could have been the Matzoh Soup of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The tree (as I see the story) didn't have "magical" powers. It was the act that God was concerned with--it was whether A&E would choose to obey or choose to not obey; choose to remain children under him (God) or try to go out on their own and do it better by themselves, in their view.
When I read this story (it's weird--there are a few Bible stories I just "like" for some reason) I always think of God as speaking the way a parent would speak to a toddler. "Don't eat that bad thing or you will have to go to the hospital." Now actually, if the child ate the thing in question (um...let's see. Maybe Mommy's medication or something? as an example), going to the hospital is not the ONLY thing that could happen. The child could die, actually. Or...the child could eat just a little and not wind up in the hospital at all. The child could sustain permanent damage and all that...
But when you speak to a 2.5-year-old, you don't say, "Honey, don't eat Mommy's Synthroid because it could cause a range of symptoms up to and including coma and death, which might necessitate you winding up in the hospital, or just going to the doctor and being told to go home, or dying and going to the morgue. This is because your body isn't capable of handling excess synthetic thyroid hormone."
No, rather, when you come upon your 2.5-year-old who has, in the space of the two minutes it took you to go to the bathroom and come back, climbed to the cabinet where she's seen Mommy going for what looks to her like candy; and has somehow jimmied off the child-safety cap...you scream, "NO! YOU COULD GET HURT. VERY VERY HURT! NEVER NEVER NEVER!" and that's it.
Another thing I think of when I hear the Adam and Eve story (or other similar stories) is that it isn't necessarily true that Adam and Eve had no knowledge whatsoever of what good v. bad was, nor that the Tree had ALL of this knowledge, period. Instead I believe it was called The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil because eating it (disobeying) would result really in now understanding not just basically what "yes" v. "no" meant, or "death" (bad bad bad!) v. "life" (good good good!) meant, but all the intricacies that that entails when one is made to live an earthly life.
It doesn't say in the Bible (AFAIK...someone correct me...I'm no Biblical scholar) that Adam and Eve had no clue, zero, what good v. bad was. It just...doesn't say that. God must have known (/created them to know, I guess) that they could at least distinguish "do" from "don't" and that they could understand at the very least that "death" was a bad/scary concept for them or he wouldn't have said they'd die if they ate the fruit. Saying such a thing would have been completely useless.
I also (but this is just me) don't necessarily believe that God "knows all," at least as far as what his creations will do, any more than we know what a child, with our and our partner's genetic code, will do in any given instance. We know what they will probably do because we have experience and we have developed adult brains. And children must see this as magic, flawless and scary...and psychic. Remember your Mom yelling from the living room, "Don't you DARE touch those cookies in the kitchen!"? How did she...know? She couldn't see you. Remember how she said, "If you do such-and-such, you'll only wind up hurt" and you thought, "Eh, she doesn't get it" and you did it and you did get hurt?
People say God is supposed to be omniscient but I'm not sure that's true and I'm not sure where it says in the Bible that he literally sees the future as a direct linear thing, all the time, flawlessly, like he was viewing a past/present/future map. Does he, really (in your belief? Just bringing that up for discussion).
In the Bible I know it says over and over that God is good...just...perfect. But "perfect" doesn't necessarily mean psychic. Why would it? I know it shows that he sees *some* things that are going to happen (or at least sees which way the wind is blowing, so to speak). And he tells people that if they do X, Y will happen. But does that mean omniscience? Why would it? I can tell you right now that if I drop a ball from the roof of my house, it will eventually hit the ground.
Again, I'm not saying this from either a Christian or atheist perspective so I don't really have an agenda...This is just how I've always seen things when I've thought of this story.
I also do see the input of "humanity" (which isn't always so human!) and culture in the actual writing of this and other Bible stories...stressing man's dominance over woman in various ways, etc. sounds to me a whole lot more like a cultural construct...but I feel like the story is an allegory to something bigger than just itself, and something about it intrigues me.
So it's just a terrible oversight on "God's" part?
Maybe, at least in my view. But again, I don't see God as necessarily being "perfect" the way we think of perfect...I'm sort of a heretic. Seriously, though. The more I think about it over the years (and I do think about it a lot), the more I think, why would God need to be perfect? Nature isn't perfect. Right? Lots of mistakes are made, lots of accidents happen, lots of species or subspecies die out or change...it's always in a learning process. Why wouldn't God then be the same way (or vice versa...if you believe God created nature, and creatures, including people, ESPECIALLY in his own image, and we see how nature and creatures and we are always needing to change and always learning, wouldn't it only make sense that, coming from God, God is still learning too? Again, just how I see it.)
I don't actually see in the story where it says they had absolutely zero knowledge of good/bad or good/evil at all before the Tree and the pomegranate or apple or raspberry or whatever. People can know a little about "yes" v. "no" or "good" v. "bad" and still be innocent...very young children, for example.
Well Yahweh did say.... "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.."
Gen 3:22. So clearly, before they scoffed god's prize apples, they had no idea what good and evil was.
Quote:
When I read this story (it's weird--there are a few Bible stories I just "like" for some reason) I always think of God as speaking the way a parent would speak to a toddler. "Don't eat that bad thing or you will have to go to the hospital." Now actually, if the child ate the thing in question (um...let's see. Maybe Mommy's medication or something? as an example), going to the hospital is not the ONLY thing that could happen. The child could die, actually. Or...the child could eat just a little and not wind up in the hospital at all. The child could sustain permanent damage and all that...
But would you punish not only the child but the child's children and their children ...and so on?
Quote:
It doesn't say in the Bible (AFAIK...someone correct me...I'm no Biblical scholar) that Adam and Eve had no clue, zero, what good v. bad was.
"Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.."
Gen 3:22
Adam and Eve knew what they were doing. The were told the consequences of their actions. They just chose to disobey God.
How do you know, they knew this? How could they be sinful(being disobedient to God) if they had to eat of ,the tree of good and evil, in order to know what that evil(sin) consist of?
Well Yahweh did say.... "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.."
Gen 3:22. So clearly, before they scoffed god's prize apples, they had no idea what good and evil was.
Yeah, but I'm still not convinced. "As one of us, to know good and evil." They may have known right from wrong but never yet known true evil. I guess I'm just not getting why they'd have to know the depths of evil if they did know basic right v. wrong. My three-year-old knows eating chicken is "good" and eating berries we find on a nature hike is "bad" but he sure doesn't know the depths of depravity humans can occasionally go to.
They were protected until they disobeyed, and after that there was no longer the same degree of protection since they were outside of the garden--that would be a HUGE difference, a dramatic one and one that never could be taken back. In fact, IMO, if they had been cast from the garden for a number of years and had to live "real life" in the wild and then came back, they still never would have been innocent again. I have a feeling that's what that story meant.
I think seeing it in black-and-white is more of a Cliffs Notes version. I think you're really supposed to think about this as far as your own spiritual maturity goes and I think the assumption or the hope is that as you mature more and more in all ways, so too will you mature spiritually.
I always link that idea with Jesus constantly telling parables. You're supposed to view God according to how far along you've come in thinking about him/her/it but depending upon where one is in one's spirituality, any humongous book WOULD have to give the bare-bones so anyone could understand it and go from there. Like a primer.
I'm not making excuses for the Bible. I'm saying: it seems coarse and unevolved to pick bits of it apart to say "That means the whole thing is untrue." Fables, parables...they all have something to say...in all religions...IMO.
OTOH, I didn't always feel that way, so who the hell am I to say? And I could be 100% wrong now...but *in my opinion*...people who don't want to believe in Biblical teachings will find fault, and people who do want to believe them will manage to find no fault at all, and then again, people who want to keep an open mind and who really do want to know what God is, one way or another, or what it is (if they believe in the concept, that is), will try to find out what real truth is beneath the odd veneer of agendas we humans naturally seem to paint over everything.
I...hope that made sense. (she said, in utter confusion)
Oh...as far as the children of A&E being punished for A&E's sins, that's not what happened as far as I can tell from what's written. What I think would have necessarily happened is that, once life outside the garden began, there pretty much was no way in hell (yar har har) for people *not* to ever ever ever sin at least in the smallest way...since real life does call for some not-so-moral moves every once in a blue moon, even if only to save our skins. So I would think the Bible was saying that God pretty much saw that once the ejection from the Garden happened, people would be, you know, sinners, Bible-style ones, anyway.
I'd imagine that's the point there: that people will more or less sin (according to the rules of the Bible on what sin is, I mean).
I don't know if any absolutely perfect people have ever been born...my guess is no...I don't see how. Obviously, in the NT the belief is that Jesus was in fact born without sin and lived without sin, so that would be one person...I personally have never known a perfect person.
I believe that's the idea...not punishment per se. Much the same way that karma is considered not a punishment unless you want to see it that way.
Here's one other thing we may not be considering. Or, maybe I should make it more personal and say it's one thing I never considered. In fact, it relates to the single most unjust part of the story in my view...I have wondered about this and that's how it has brought about the question.
As several here have stated, and as I myself have stated about a thousand times in the past, even on here (sorry guys!), a "forever" of punishment for one transgression--no matter how "bad" that transgression may have been--does seem excessive. And ridiculous. And a power play and sadistic and downright mean and borderline psychotic...
...until you realize this: Maybe they weren't punished "forever."
I mean, okay. They were in fact ejected from the Garden of Eden forever. That part was forever: the ejection. They couldn't go back.
But what if it was because God knew they would never be happy there again? What if that's why, once innocence was lost, he knew they could never come back? Because maybe...just maybe, even if they thought they wanted to, they really didn't? They'd never be that innocent again so they'd never see the garden that way again...?
Let me explain. And this hearkens to human nature (something I'm fascinated with). So maybe this is more psychology than the Bible. But it makes so much sense to the story and other "you can never go home again" stories. Okay, so A&E have been ejected from the garden. They go off into "the real world" outside the garden...to...eternal punishment?
Well, that's how God presented it at first...when he was still p*ssed as hell and screaming at them as he pointed his finger to the garden's exit. When his kids had completely disobeyed and he was pissed, maybe even at himself for having thought he wanted them to make a choice...but now realizing that, sure, he wanted them to make a choice but he definitely wanted them to choose him. Maybe he was realizing that he didn't actually want them to have as much freedom as he'd pretended to himself that he did, way back when deep down, he thought they'd NEVER make a choice that wasn't him.
So there God is screaming and pointing his big celestial finger or what-have-you and telling them to get the f*ck out and just wait, just WAIT until they see what the real world has in store for them. THEY'LL BE SORRY.
Sound familiar? As a teenager, did you ever say to your parents, "I can't WAIT to get away from you and your STUPID RULES" and your mom screamed back at you, "Oh yeah? Well wait, just WAIT until you're in the real world. You know what's out there? Unemployment. Boyfriends who will be horrible to you. Bosses who just don't care. Dirt and smog. Diseases you can catch and NOBODY, NOBODY loving you as much AS YOUR MOTHER does. Or...did! Just you wait. You'll come crawling back but you won't be able to come back!"
Hmmmmm.
What she didn't tell you was that also in that big, bad, horrible world of freedom, there was also pride in a job well done when you did it. There were boys (or girls) who were cute and who liked you a whole lot. There were beautiful places to go in a car you were "allowed" to drive yourself, because you owned it. There was scenery. There were museums.
There was some great sh*t out there!
But in the heat of the moment, that's not what your semi-hysterical mother actually said. In the heat of the moment, she was afraid for you. And she was bittersweet knowing that even if you came home again...you, the little boy or girl she had known, would never actually be back. Once you were out on your own you'd be different and she was sad and scared even though she knew it was inevitable. She was helpless, though. In the very end *you made a choice*. You made perhaps the only human choice: to risk failure...but to have freedom.
Do you ever *really* want to be a child again? Do you ever really want to go back to a time when, yes, choices were easier...peanut butter and jelly or grilled cheese...but were nonetheless limited (ONLY either peanut butter and jelly or grilled cheese)? Do you really want to go back in time? Maybe not just to your childhood but to a "simpler" time? Do you want to go back to when the air smelled wonderful all the time and there was no smog and families sang around the fire...but there was no internet? No movies? No artificial heating or cooling? S*ckful medical practices?
A few people would say, "Yes." Most would look around them and realize, "I FEEL like I would...but when I truly think about it...I just wouldn't want to be without the things I know now. I love science. I love the kind of music we have now. I love travel. I'm fascinated. This world is awesome. I wouldn't want to go back."
And a few who don't realize it, once put to the test and sent back in time, would realize very quickly that they really can't ever go back...at least not back to true innocence...were they to be transported backward in a time machine. (Ugh, awkward sentence...I'm typing fast.)
Maybe that's why the "punishment" was forever...because (in the story) God did know what he was creating...he did know which way humanity nature could possibly lean and he knew that there really was no going back...even if He had opened the gates of Eden wide again and said, "Come in."
They'd have wandered in, been in their own form of heaven for two months, then in a sort of mellow but not as amazed state for a couple more weeks, then...later...in a state of...well, total boredom, in addition to grief when realizing that even though they were geographically back...*they* had changed and it would never be the same.
Maybe this is why God made the world so beautiful. Yes, there are awful things about it. Absolutely. And there are some dreadfully ugly places, I admit. But there is also incredible beauty. Absolutely incredible. Holy cow. Go up to the mountains one weekend on a spring day and look down and try to tell me how ugly the world is and what a punishment it is to have to live in it. Go fishing on a quiet lake and try to tell me that, too.
I think God would have made the world beautiful in addition to difficult, rather than just a horrible firey flaming awful pit of foul-smelling dung, kind of like Newark, NJ (can I give a shout out to Newark? Hey! ). He did it because he knew it was possible A&E would decide against Eden. And because even if they did decide against Him, against God, He was still going to offer them something of beauty. Something maybe only occasionally transcendental, but to be sure not without its rewards in so many ways.
I do think that this is supposed to be a story of God's love. Time was I thought it was the most damning indictment against God's sanity there could ever be, and a real argument for his sadism. But now, when I think about it...I realize that if you look at it from a mature way...it really *is* a story about making one's own choices. And it really is a story about forgiveness.
In my opinion.
ETA: In many ways I feel this is an allegory for some kind of cultural memory of before ancient man left the rain forests or what-have-you and ventured out to new things, new places, a new environment, and even though it was pretty much inevitable, they really did lose that sort of "innocence" they'd previously had and things became waaaaaaaaaay more complex.
JerZ, I read your post and found it quite interesting. I haven't quoted for simple size reasons but I wanted to comment on it just the same. Why do people think that A/E's punishment was eternal? Sure, they were kicked out of the garden and died without stepping foot back in it again, however what choices did they make once outside the garden? Did they continue to reject God? God's goal is to restore to A/E, and their descendants, what was lost in Eden. That is why Christ is referred to as the 2nd Adam. He came to do what Adam did not. Adam died knowing the mistake he made and seeing the consequences of it, but he also knew that God promised that Adam could still choose Eden through living a life of obedience. A/E will receive the beauty and wonder of Eden once again. After Christ's 2nd coming, this whole struggle between Christ and Satan will come to an end and the entire universe will understand all that has occurred throughout that struggle. It is then that this earth will be created new and those from A/E to those alive today who chose Christ, will begin their eternal lives in the paradise God has in store for us. Never again will sin arise, not because we will lack the ability to sin, but because we will have witnessed the effects of sin and the scope of God's love for us. The things God has in store for us in eternity are beyond anything we could ever picture here. You think you love science now, I can't wait to have God explain all the intricacies of light travel to me and how an atom is held together and what exactly goes on in a black hole. Just imagine being able to visit every single planet in the universe and studying each one in depth. A bible commentator claimed to have a glimpse of eternity and I thought I would share her quote on the subject:
"Every power will be developed, every capability increased. The grandest enterprises will be carried forward, the loftiest aspirations will be reached, the highest ambitions realized. And still there will arise new heights to surmount, new wonders to admire, new truths to comprehend, fresh objects to call forth the powers of body and mind and soul."
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Seriously, though. The more I think about it over the years (and I do think about it a lot), the more I think, why would God need to be perfect? Nature isn't perfect. Right? Lots of mistakes are made, lots of accidents happen, lots of species or subspecies die out or change...it's always in a learning process. Why wouldn't God then be the same way (or vice versa...if you believe God created nature, and creatures, including people, ESPECIALLY in his own image, and we see how nature and creatures and we are always needing to change and always learning, wouldn't it only make sense that, coming from God, God is still learning too? Again, just how I see it.)
