Quote:
Originally Posted by Trapped
ExChurchKid,
So glad you decided to stick around. For reals.
I would say that the garden of Eden story is probably one of the all-time single most botched interpretations that Witness Lee disgraced us with. He twisted it until it is unrecognizable, and used that twisted version to control saints, excuse sin, cover unrighteousness, and oppress many consciences.
It wasn't bad for humans to seek knowledge. It was bad for humans to disobey God.
Knowledge, and distinguishing good and evil, are spoken of as good things in the Bible (or as being bad to NOT have):
Hosea 4:6
my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. "Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children.
Hebrews 5:11-14
11 We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand.
12 In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food!
13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness.
14 But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
Witness Lee taught that knowledge was bad/death/poison. But the Bible never says that. Death was not a part of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is what Lee taught. Death was the punishment from God for disobedience.
There are numerous verses in Romans that speak of what the problem was, and I'll spare you from reading all of them, but I'll include two:
Romans 5:18-19
18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people.
19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
The problem was not obtaining knowledge, or good and evil being "of death" (they aren't)....the problem was "the trespass" or "the disobedience". Adam and Eve had....probably.....100s or 1000s of other trees to choose from, and God only forbade one of them. God punished them for disobedience, but not because knowledge was bad.
Trapped
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I would like to add, after having puzzled over these questions myself.....the elements that caused Adam and Eve to disobey, included
doubting God. Choosing not to trust Him, to reject His instruction to them as a lie, and instead, trusting the evil one, to their own peril.
'Without faith we cannot please God' [Hebrews 11:16] 'Faith was attributed to Abraham as righteousness' [Romans 4:9]. Not just to Abraham but all of us. What 'the law' failed to accomplish, is accomplished by us having faith.
Faith is the only antidote to doubt. It is the risk we can choose to take to 'undo' the breakage of the fall. Adam and Eve 'broke
faith' with God by their trusting the words of the serpent over His words to them.
I believe God put the two trees at the center of the garden because they were both critically important for Adam and Eve. The tree of life, his love and gift of life to us, His sustaining power for us. And to know good from evil. I think God would have had a plan to teach this knowledge to Adam and Eve Himself, as He had lost one third of all the angels of heaven already. They had fallen in a very similar way to Adam and Eve, trusting Lucifer over God, choosing to follow him instead in rebellion, and being lost to God forever.
Two of our biggest lessons of this life are 1. to 'trust God with all our hearts, lean not into our own understanding' [Proverbs 3:5-6], and 2. Know good from evil, from the perspective of God's training and guidance, not ours or satan's. [As per Trapped's scripture references above]. Only then can we know God and that there is no darkness in Him and no shadow of turning. We have to know what darkness (evil) IS to be able to know God as not!
It is the end goal of this forum....to help us all here to distinguish good from evil: God's true character from the LC system, in this particular case. It makes this journey worthwhile, and as an eternal lesson, the cost though great, worth bearing.