Why food?

Have you ever wondered why Adam and Even fell by eating? Why did God set that up as the parameter. Why didn't God tell Adam not to kill Eve, or not to lie? Why such a random thing as eating? Clearly Satan had already sinned at this point, and Adam and Eve had the capacity to sin it would seem. And yet, they hadn't sinned yet. I wonder, before the curse, the state of man's heart. After the curse, we are all now depraved, incapable, apart from Christ, anything but sin. But in the garden, pre-curse, Adam and Eve had no sin in their lives; yet they were capable of it.

This idea I must admit is quite confusing and perplexing to me. Could, say, Adam have killed Eve? I seem to think not, sense at that time, God saw no need to warn Adam of such a sin.

God also made everything good. What does that mean in relationship to Adam's capacity to sin? In his good state, he must have had the capacity to choose evil. He wasn't condemned until after eating from that which God forbid. And equally so, God would not have warned Adam unless there was a danger that Adam might have picked the apple. If Adam weren't capable of sinning, it seems irrelevant that God would warn him. It would be like God warning us not to sprout wings and fly. It's an irrelevant warning since we lack the capacity to do so.

So what does this mean about man's ability to choose something for God, or not. What does this mean about the goodness of God's creation. I mean, God said, it was very good! Those are God's standards, not ours. So that must mean that it was VERY, EXTREMELY good! And yet that goodness seems to have allowed man with the ability to sin. It allowed Satin with the ability to sin as well.

This also brings into question the intent of the original creation, and the intent of the new heavens and the new earth. I don't believe that anyone will ever sin in the age to come, but will we lack the capacity to sin? Why won't there be sin? Well, one thing that is obvious is that we will have glorified bodies and appetites like Christ. We won't be wired for sin at that point. Which seems to me then, that our glorified state will be much better than the original state of Adam before sin. Maybe that's obvious to you, but I'm just trying to work logically through these issues.

Once agian, I don't mean to say that God's original creation was somehow flawed, but at the same time, it does seem like the new heavens and new earth are going to be much different than the original creation. There are other things that point to this difference as well. The fact that Jesus will be our sun, so we will have no need for an actual, physical sun.

The difference to me, seems to come down to a pre-cross creation, and a post-cross creation. In the center-piece of all reality is the cross, then the original creation from the beginning, was not intended to be the fullness of God's glory. It doesn't mean that it wasn't very very good, it just wasn't everything that God had in store. The original creation I believe leaves soooo much room for the cross, and was created for the very purpose of the cross; mainly to display the glory of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Thus, sin had to be part of the equation of the original creation. Without sin, there's no cross. And this gets into a huge, incredibly mind-boggling debate about God's ability to ordain that something be without actually being responsible in any way for that action coming to pass. I don't intend to get into that now, but to merely say as I've been taught, that the Bible sees both as true, and has no problem with that seeming contradiction. As a man of the book, I'm prepared to have no problem with it either (that statement or sentiment did not come easy to me. It's taken me maybe 5 years to say that, and I'd be lying if I said I will never have to come back and go over the argument one more time in my head).

Now I've gone off on a tangent, and I've left little room for my purpose of writing this post. Mainly being, "Why the apple?" And I think the apple is the representative sin of all of mankind because it reveals to us the nature of all sin. Any good church-going person who's heard enough doctrine would agree that the route of the first sin, that of Satin, is pride. And it is this same pride that Satin uses to tempt Adam and Eve. Pride doesn't want to submit to a higher authority, but wants to take charge. Pride leads in one main direction, as it relates to God. It leads to distrust. It leads to doubt. Only a prideful person would doubt their maker. No one humble would have the ego to do such a thing.

When I look my own sins of doubt and disbelief, it's hard at that time to say it's pride. I wouldn't say, at first, that pride leads me to doubt God's plan for my future. If anything, it seems like the opposite. How can pride lead to a lack of confidence? Usually the most arrogant people are the most proud. So how can I say that pride is the route of doubt in God? I say that because the moment you say that God can't do something, you put the responsibility on your own shoulders. The moment you doubt God with your life, the only place you can place your life's burdens are on yourself. That's exactly what happened with Adam and Eve. They thought, maybe God doesn't know what's best for me? Maybe I should eat that apple and see what all this good and evil is all about, they acted out of pride in their own judgement over God's supreme wisdom. And isn't that the nature of every sin.

The best example of this sin is shown in our appetites. And thus, food is the symbol in the Bible. Our appetite tells us to eat that last piece of pizza even though we know it's glutony. Even though we know the Bible says something different, we think our judgement is somehow better. And this could be any appetite. Whether it's an appetite for food, fame, sex, money, respect, the list goes on, we all make decisions out of pride that says we know better than God what's best for us.

I've been reflecting a lot on the wisdom and loving nature of God as I've been reading through Deuteronomy. The law, in case you haven't noticed, in the Old Testament is pretty strict, blunt, and often harsh. I think anyone if we're honest would say at a first glance, God seems a little extreme in his decrees. And we would all probably go about listing off in our heads the ways we would do things differently. But the more I read the law, the more I see it's all out of love that God commands the things he does.

First, there's a ton, especially in Leviticus and Numbers, about cleanliness. I think a lot of this is just really practical. Touching dead people is not a very healthy thing to do. And God wants his people to be healthy. In Deuteronomy, God keeps relaying to Moses to say, "Be careful to obey all these words that I command you, that it may go well with you and with your children after you forever." God here is saying, "this is good for you." I don't give my laws to hinder your lives, but to make them better. Any parent or caring teacher understands this concept very well. And God knows that we won't get it on our own, so he has to lay down very very strict boundaries because we're so stupid at times. Lastly, I saw in Deuteronomy, over and over again, the warrants for death. They're all over the place. After every warrant for death, Moses ends with, "So you shall purge the evil from your midst." God knew how deadly and infectious sin is, and he knew that any source of sin must be cut off immediately. God's tactic against sin was all out war, and we should have this ame attitude in our own lives towards our own sin. We shouldn't let it meander. We must kill it, we must "purge" our bodies. If sin is like cancer, it will effect our whole lives and eventually destroy us. No good doctor is going to let a little bit of cancer just stay in the body. The surgeon's job is to get ALL of the cancer out of the body. And the most devistating news you can hear after a surgery is, "we didn't get it all out." It's the same with God's attitude toward sin in Deuteronomy. If you understand this principle, I think the Old Testament law makes much more sense, and is perhaps easier to deal with. Obviously, we must always remember the theocracy they were under at the time, and the Old verse New Covenant differences. But even so, God is immutable, and we must take God for who he is in the Old and New Testament, and love and worship that same God!