Genesis 3:1-24
The Fall of Man
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."
13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
"Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel."
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."
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
1 Corinthians 10:13
Temptations in Life
13 No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.
I have wondered, if the Garden of Eden was actually Paradise, why was the evil one be allowed in our Paradise...And why did God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, right beside the tree of life and right in the middle of Paradise... Couldn't He has put the tree of good and evil in an out of the way place, that would be very, very hard to get to...
There would be complete goodness in the Garden, at the time of its creation...God on the sixth day (not seventh) saw all that He made and said that it was very good (Genesis 1:31)...(I might add here, that on the sixth day, God did not say earth was perfect)...Why would the evil one be allowed in the Grandest (and the very good) Place on earth?...We know that the evil one is more crafty than most, and took on the form of the serpent, in the Garden...We know that God could have kept the evil one from Paradise, but He didn't...So, by allowing the evil one access to our Paradise, He has to have a reason or reasons...God allows evil with good...Just as He planted the tree of knowledge of good and evil right in the middle of the Garden of Eden...
The only thing I can think of is that God allows the evil one in Paradise and our lives out of His knowledge of love...It is important here to realize His knowledge of Love is wiser and much more eternal than our knowledge of love...Allowing evil in the Garden of Eden sounds like a contradiction, but He must put our free choice and our free will above many and most things in our lives...For some reason, free will and our daily free choices sometimes seems so paramount in the way that He shows His love...Yet, our personal choices and our free will many times get us into trouble...It not only gets Eve and Adam into trouble, but because of their choice of eating the forbidden fruit, we are all now banned from the Garden and seem to follow the sin path...But God gives us a choice, to sin or not to sin...The decisions we make in life are up to us -because He gives us free will...But I wish Eve and Adam would have made a better decision on this one temptation (however, given the myriad of choices each of us make and have each day, I think the clever, crafty evil one would have came up with another way to make us sin)...
Since we know that God is Love, free will and our free choices must be a major part of His love, and the way we love...I think the best way to look at the issue of why God allows the evil one into the Garden of Eden and why He allows temptation is to look at the ones we personally love...We are not told how long that Adam and Eve are in the Garden, before the meet up with the serpent...But I think it is years after His creation of the Garden...I think a Loving Father at first would protect His children and teach them some of His and earthly way's guidelines...This would be much like a father and mother raising their children, and at first providing them the protection they need (and holding back on some of their choices) -before they adventure out into the world...This "protection mode" can only last so many years, and then we, as more mature adults, must make our own free choices...So, even the best of fathers and mothers -know that there is a time when they must let their sons and daughters go and let them make their own decisions...
Or suppose we are very mature and know all the characteristics, chemistry, personality, background, and appearance -we want in a spouse...We have a list of everything pros and cons, with hundreds of listings on both sides of the ledger for our future spouse...We now know exactly what we want in our future spouse...We meet this most unique person and then over a period of time get to know them...They are everything we ever could want in a spouse...They have met each and every one of the criteria on our long list...After getting to know them, we find out that they are very much in love with someone (else) already...After trying for months, we find out that they still love the other person more than us...We know that we will never meet someone like this again...Do we have the enough knowledge about love (and love them enough) and what it takes to let them make the choice of not choosing us?...God does just this very thing...He gives us the free will and free choice not to believe in Him or seek Him (and I suspect it hurts Him greatly, when we turn our backs on Him)...
St. Augustine wrote about creation and the privation of goodness...In trying to sum up St. Augustine's comments -he defined evil as the privation of goodness, just as blindness is a privation of sight...Since evil is not an entity in itself, just like blindness is not an entity in itself, God could not have created evil...Instead, evil originates from the free will possessed by angels...Evil also comes from humans doing their free will and making their own choices...Both the angels and humans, who do their own personal free will have turned their backs on God and settled for a lesser form of goodness -thus creating a privation of goodness, as the narrative of ‘the fall’ in Genesis 3 tries to explain. As a result the state of perfection was ruined by the sin of Eve and Adam...God has the right to intervene -but also the right not to intervene -and put a stop to evil and suffering, since he is a Just God, but man is worthy of punishment...It is by His grace and His infinite love however, that we (some of us, those to whom he chooses to give grace) are able to accept His offer of salvation and eternal life in heaven...
We can conclude that free will allows for bad decision making...We also can conclude that free will allows evil -for without our (and the angels) free will there would be no evil...The evil one is smart and can take on many forms...We often settle for a lesser form of goodness...If God were always just and in this "protection mode" and we did only His will, evil would have not came into play...There is a time we must mature and make our own decisions...Love is not about control and someone else making our decisions for us...Sometimes our free will turns into disobedience against God...God does allows evil and temptation...St. Paul teaches us we have that God gives us the power to stand up to our temptations...But in the end the decision is ours on the temptations we decide to make...
God wants us, from the very beginning our our creation, to do His will -but allows us instead a choice...We can do what we want or we can do what He wants...