[Trapped]

Nell and ZNP, I think I agree that Lee's incredibly erroneous teaching about the garden of Eden seems to be the major source of this saying.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil wasn't death. It was good for food and it made you like God, knowing good and evil, so under no logical extrapolation could the tree itself be death or signify death. It was a tree and God forbid eating of it. I personally think the tree was named what it was precisely because it was the forbidden one. If you eat of a non-forbidden tree, you wouldn't get the same experiential knowledge of good and evil as you do eating from the forbidden one, because you haven't participated directly in the evil of disobeying God in order to partake of it.

The tree wasn't death. So knowledge, good, and evil, are not death. There is no "x = death" in the garden. It is disobeying which brings in the punishment of death (being cut off from the tree of life) as the consequence.

God cared so much for right and wrong that He drove man out of the garden so we wouldn't have access to the tree of life and live forever in a sinful state of having committed un-redeemed wrong. In fact if God didn't care for right and wrong and in that situation only cared for life, the worst possible scenario would have resulted: a fallen, sinful, disobedient creature that has unrestricted access to eternal life.

I see how easy it is to make it about "the two trees" and "choose life or choose death". I understand the temptation to boil it down to that. But that is not the story. That is a deviation from the actual story. And making it that story and propagating the forced application of that false principle creates some hellish situations where wrong and evil are allowed to run unchecked and unchallenged while ignoring it and "see/hear/say no evil, only care for life, lalalalaaaaaa" with your fingers in your ears cause almost irreparable damage to many, many people.

Ohio, you're right they don't have verses to support it, but they apply the analogy "you are on the wrong tree" (which is actually a very difficult starting point in trying to dismantle that thought) and the Noah scenario. You would be surprised (okay, maybe you wouldn't, but I certainly have been surprised) at how tightly LCers hang on to these "infallible" interpretations. It is almost impossible to get them to see the verses are saying something different.