[Trapped]

Originally Posted by SerenityLives

I also wonder why all of humanity is judged based on the actions of A and E.

I totally understand where you are coming from, and I thought this, quite angrily, for years.

Then I came across an example online a few years ago that helped me. I tried to find it again yesterday but couldn't so I'll have to try to convey it as best I can.

Imagine you've got a man who owns a large property. On this property is a deep pit. This man tells his gardener "you can go anywhere on the property to do your work, but just stay away from that pit. Once you fall in, you're out of luck. We can't get you out."

And the gardener goes and jumps in the pit. He was told not to, he was told what would happen, and he knew he would be doomed. Is he at fault? Yep. Is he stuck in the pit and needs someone to get him out? Yep.

Got it? Okay. So now pretend that gardener is actually a pregnant woman. The pregnant woman is told “you can go anywhere on the property but stay away from the pit. We can’t get anyone out of the pit who falls in. You’re doomed if you do.”

And the pregnant woman does the same thing as the gardener. She jumps into, or gets too close to and falls into, the pit. She was told not to, she knew what would happen, and she knew she would be doomed. Is she at fault? Yep. Is she stuck in the pit and needs help to get out? Yep.

And let’s say the pregnant woman is in the pit long enough that she has her child, a little boy. The baby boy is born into the pit. This is akin to our situation. We are the babies born into the pit.

Is it the baby’s fault that he is in the pit? Nope. He was born into it. But does the baby still need to be saved out of the pit? Yes, a thousand times, yes.

I recognize this analogy isn’t perfect, and I can think of a few ways already that it isn’t (God’s judging us for our actions, although if a baby grows up in a pit and murders someone else there, it’s still an evil action whether in a pit or not). Being in a pit doesn’t make sins not sins.

But I personally was helped by the analogy because it’s the first time I’d heard something that recognized we were not the ones who originally “jumped into the pit” (sinned) but also shows that we need saving regardless.

Originally Posted by SerenityLives

Here is a thought experiment: if God created Eve and Eve, would Christians today frown on straight couples? If Adam and Eve were black, you get my point. No diversity in the Garden of Eden so how do we know which aspects were there before or after the fall? How do we know gayness was an attribute before or after the fall?

If God created Eve and Eve, and said a woman should leave her mother and mother and marry another woman, and if "women lying with men as if with a woman" was repeatedly spoken of negatively in the Bible, of course Christians would look askance at heterosexual sexual activity because THAT would be contrary to scripture.

How do we know gayness was an attribute before or after the fall? Well, what we are told is that Adam was there. God created woman from him. Adam really seemed to like the woman. Adam and Eve had sex and had kids. I don't see evidence for even a hint of gayness in any of that. They were the only two people before the fall and theirs was clearly a heterosexual relationship, so, no, there is no evidence that gayness was an attribute before the fall.