They sent forth Barnabas, that he should go as far as Antioch (Acts 13)

Acts chapter 13 opens with a bunch of believers fasting, looking for direction from God. The Holy Ghost says Barnabas and Saul are chosen to go do missionary work, so they pray for them and send them off. So when they get where they are going, there's a government official who wants to hear their message, but a false prophet and sorcerer named Elymas tries to keep them away. Paul apparently pronounces a curse on this man, temporarily blinding him. I answered whether we are all God's children in John chapter one. I answered whether magic was okay in Acts chapter eight.

Barnabas and Paul continue on their journey, John Mark leaving them to return to Jerusalem. (This is notable because Paul later expresses the feeling that John Mark had abandoned them.) They eventually come to Antioch (a different one, there were several in Asia Minor) and visit a synagogue. When the teacher finishes his message, he asks if anyone has anything to add, and Paul jumps in. He tells the history of the Jews up until David, and segues from David to Jesus. When did Solomon's reign begin? The SAB is clever to note the math here, and while I usually side with the earlier source, Paul's numbers sound right, so I don't know why 1Kings gets it so wrong. The SAB notes that what Paul says in verse 22 is not found in the Old Testament, but perhaps Paul doesn't mean to be quoting any specific scripture? I'm sure I've answered whether Joseph was Jesus's father somewhere (it's in Matthew chapter one), but it's worth pointing out particularly that while Joseph was not Jesus's biological father, Mary was also descended from David, so Jesus is indeed the descendant of David. I answered who buried Jesus in Matthew chapter 27. I answered who raised Jesus from the dead in John chapter two. I answered when Jesus ascended into heaven in John chapter 20. I answered whether there was an unforgivable sin in Matthew chapter twelve.

Paul's message over, most of the people go home, but a few, apparently mostly Gentiles, are excited to hear the message, and ask Paul to preach again next Saturday. The next Saturday, there's a huge crowd, and some of the Jews are unhappy to see people turning out for Paul. Paul says if the Jews won't receive the gospel, they will happily preach to the Gentiles, and a lot of people come to faith.

Do humans have free will? This is a big philosophical question that goes even beyond theology. At the time I'm writing this, the contradiction page has some technical issues, so I don't know what verses in the Bible are referenced over this, but I have some general thoughts about free will and predestination. I don't believe they are mutually exclusive, which of course I will have to explain. The thing that is important to understand is that God is omniscient, and exists outside of our spacetime continuum. Allow me to illustrate with an example I use commonly. I write these posts linearly, so there is a sense in which I am constrained by time; however, you the reader are not constrained, as you see the whole of the post at one time, outside, if you will, of my time constraints. So you can play the part of God, and this six-sided die I have in my hand can play the part of free will. Look to the last sentence of this post and read it. If you did that, you now have knowledge that I did not have at the time of me writing this. The die is still free to land on any number, and at the same time, from your "omniscient" perspective, the number is already predetermined. I'm actually going to wait an hour to finish this post to leave myself in suspense, but you've already been there. Okay, I'm back! Sorry, I'm writing this at work, so I have to wait for my breaks. So, time to end the suspense for me and roll the die. The die came up a five.

And great was the fall of it (Judges 16)

Ah Judges 16, and the story of Samson finally defeated. Here we see him fall to what must be his greatest weakness, his lust for women, and apparent unfailing trust of them despite all evidence against doing so. Yes, Samson goes to visit a prostitute in Gaza, but this is not his downfall yet, although one might wonder if the whole thing was a set-up for a trap. The Philistines fully expect to catch him in the morning and kill him, but in the middle of the night (I assume while the soldiers are asleep) he gets up and rips the city gate out of the wall and carries it to a nearby hill. There may have been an actual purpose to this act, such as the possibility that's easily suggested by the text that they were trying to trap him in the city by barring the city gate. The SAB marks the act as absurd, and asks, "Did God make him do it or was he just showing off?" I'd lean towards showing off, as practically, all he really needed to escape was to knock the door down. It's possible that the practical purpose was to leave the city unprotected, as fixing a city gate that is knocked over is easier than fixing one that's been carried off. All of the angry, showy things that Samson does in his life end up being to the general detriment to the Philistines in the end.

Into the story comes Delilah, a Philistine woman that Samson has a crush on. The Philistines continue their campaign to take advantage of Samson's weakness for women, and offer Delilah a reward if she can help them take Samson down. She proceeds to question Samson as to the source of his strength, to which Samson makes up several answers. Seriously, this has got to be the stupidest guy in the Bible; every time he tells her what can be done to defeat him, she proceeds to immediately do it. To tell this woman the true source of his power has got to be the biggest bonehead move ever. (Actually, for the first time I find myself wondering if, in fact, Samson didn't even mean it when he said his hair was the source of his power. In truth, the Bible never says it's the case that his hair is giving him power; I've always thought the possibility existed that this was all psychological on Samson's part.) Whatever Samson expected to happen, I truly marvel that he didn't know Delilah was out to get him. Despite what Hollywood has portrayed, there's also no evidence in the story here that Delilah was in it for anything but the money.

The SAB says of his hair being the source of his strength, "And I thought his strength was from God." Well, everything comes from God, particularly Samson's strength, which seems to be supernatural, but his hair seems to have been a part of it for whatever reason. The fact that his eyes were gouged out probably didn't help Samson much either (an act which the SAB does not mention as being cruel or violent, and I'm curious as to why).

Samson ends up killing more than 3,000 people (Wells, you may want to update your tally, as 3,000 is the number of people upstairs alone, while many others were downstairs, no doubt) in his death, taking down the building on top of them all. The SAB does not miss the chance to mark this as violent, cruel, unjust and intolerant, but I must question some of those. Sure, Samson was an awful guy, but does that make it alright to gouge his eyes out and bring him out to publicly humiliate him? Are the Philistines right in oppressing the Israelites? (Unlike many of the nations the Israelites had to contend with in Canaan, the Philistines were not locals, but invaders.) Violent? Yes, but as for the other things Samson is accused of here, this final thing is really the closest he comes to a noble act in his spotty life. This one time especially, the Philistines really have it coming.

So, what is the final lesson of the life of Samson? What is the answer to the question I put off answering a few chapters back? Why does God take one of the worst moral examples in the Bible and continue to give him power and blessing time after time? Actually, I already answered this question in the beginning of the book. The book of Judges and the life of Samson in particular should be an inspiration for anyone who is hoping to find favor with God. Why? Because if God wants to use your life to make a great thing happen, He's not going to allow your failings, even if they are catastrophic ones like Samson's, to stand in the way of that. No doubt God could have taken Samson, had he been an upright and moral man, and made him a brilliant military leader and inspiration to his people who would than have rallied around him like a king and rose up to drive out their oppressors. Instead, God used Samson's very weaknesses to maneuver him into a place where he would end up destroying the leadership of the Philistines in a surprise attack from within. Samson was chosen from before birth for this purpose and, despite his own free will subverting the best opportunity for resolving the conflict, the purpose of God was served. I'll say it again: the Bible is a book full of massively screwed-up people that God used to do great things despite themselves. It gives hope to billions around the world and throughout history. If I don't have the moral fiber to be a Daniel, maybe I have just enough faith in God that he'll make me a Samson? Something to think about, anyway.

Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom (Joshua 24)

Here in the final chapter of Joshua, Joshua once again calls the people together for a speech. It may be that this is a continuation of the speech from the previous chapter, or it may be at a later time. While Joshua did say in the last chapter that he expected to die "this day", I have discussed before that the word "day" is often figurative, and not necessarily always a 24-hour period. I suspect that rather than saying he was to die at once, he meant that now that the conquest was complete, a new day was dawning for Israel in which it was to go on without him.

Joshua gives a bit of ancient history, sort of summing up some of the important points of the Bible so far. He reminds the people that back in the time of Abraham's fathers, they lived north of the Euphrates ("the other side of the flood") and worshiped pagan gods. The one true God called Abraham out of that culture to give him a promise that would not be fully realized until the time of Joshua, a over 500 years later. After the passage of years, the growing of the children of Israel into a large nation that was ready to truly possess the promised land, and near-uncountable miracles, God had finally brought this nation into being. Joshua reminds them of all of this, and entreats them to always remember what God had done for them.

Verses 12 and 13 are a reminder of two things, one of which is labeled absurd, and the other unjust. They really go hand in hand, and in a sense, the very point of these is the absurdity and unjustness (from a certain point of view) of the actions. God miraculously caused the very forces of nature, in the form of hornets in particular, to drive out the inhabitants of Canaan, and as a result, there are large portions of the land that they were simply able to take with little or no effort on their part. The only thing just about this is that there were moral reasons of one sort or another for driving out the previous inhabitants; the Israelites weren't reaping the benefits of God driving out the Canaanites because they were somehow such terrific people, just a bit better than the previous tenants of the land. Joshua reminds them of this because they need to remember they are recipients of God's grace, not owners of the land in their own right. If they were to become like those whom God chose to destroy and/or evacuate from the land, they could expect pretty much the same treatment. As I have also said before, this came to pass eventually.

I have addressed the two questions raised in the SAB for verse 14 already, but it's worth a brief revisit here. There exist other entities that people in the world worship as gods, whether they be completely imaginary or some sort of spiritual power. The Bible often acknowledges these entities as "gods" because that's what they are, regardless of their powers or lack thereof. When Joshua tells them to fear the LORD, he is pointing out that all other "gods" are inferior to the LORD, and a wise person will give their respect only to Him.

Can people truly choose to give themselves to God, however? The SAB asks "Do humans have free will?" and this is an important philosophical question that people of all religious beliefs have struggled with. Actually, on a personal note, before I became a Christian, I went through a period of introspection during which I was convinced that free will was an illusion, and surely in a materialistic universe there was no room for free will. Although there are some Christian schools of thought that claim there is no free will, it was Christianity that convinced me that people do have free will, something I still believe despite being a Calvinist. I'm not going to attempt to unpack the issue fully, as it's not an easy issue to deal with, but I do need to address the apparent contradictions.

Honestly, there isn't a uniformity of opinion on this matter at all throughout Christendom, and probably not among Jews, either, but I don't know. My own opinion is that there is no contradiction between free will and predetermination, although it's not easy to explain why. My best attempt is usually something like this: I've got a coin in my pocket. Let's assume, as most people will I think, that free will and random chance exist. That means that the coin can freely come up heads or tails on a toss. There, it came up heads. From now on, the result of that toss is fixed. At the moment I did it, anything could have happened. At the moment you read this, only heads actually did occur. For God, who is omniscient, the future is something He has already seen, so while our choices are as free as the tossing of that coin, if not moreso, God already knows the result. Where is the contradiction? I don't see it. I have no plans to go any deeper into this discussion within this blog, or at least this particular post.

A bit of a discussion ensues wherein Joshua warns the Israelites that while they should serve God, it's not going to be easy. While false gods don't seem to care so much what a person does, the LORD "...is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins." At least in particular where it comes to apostasy, He won't. The SAB comments on this little exchange that it is unjust, cruel and intolerant. I would only agree that it's intolerant, and I've already given my opinion that intolerance from the right point of view is a non-issue. As for unjust, the context seems pretty clear that God is giving them the land, and He expects a certain level of obedience in return. I think that is just. Some Jews have pointed out that in fact, God does not demand worship of Him, but rather prohibits false worship. While most Christians clearly do not feel this way, it as not an uncommon belief among Jews that being an atheist is okay so long as you live a moral life; it's being a pagan and reverting to immoral pagan practices that is the real problem. As for cruelty, well, that's a matter of opinion.

And so Joshua dies, having been one of the greatest leaders in the history of Israel. He is buried, and shortly thereafter, the bones of Joseph are also buried. (The SAB points out a contradiction as to the nature of Joseph's final resting place, which I actually already addressed in Genesis.) There is something interesting about the fact that these two men were buried at about the same time, as one of them led Israel out of Canaan into Egypt, and the other led them back.

Although the book of Joshua is at times a bit dry, and often an apt example of violence and cruelty in the Bible that seems easy to pin squarely on God, it is also really a great book that people overlook for these reasons, and miss out on the richness of some aspects of it. As the last few months of comments on this book have examined, there are a number of truly deep questions the book raises, and a number of odd examples of flawed people who can be an inspiration to believers throughout history. If a lying pagan prostitute can find faith and lay hold of the grace of God, can't any of us? If a nation of stubborn unfaithful people who had to be sent to wander for forty years in the wilderness can be reconciled with God to become conquerers of powerful nations, what then could we achieve in our lifetimes through the power of God? As Joshua, whose name in Greek would be "Jesus", says to his people and all of us throughout history:

And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve...but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

Harden not your hearts (Joshua 11)

Well, I didn't have much time today, but when you toss out the main questions of violence and fairness of Holy War as I've been doing, you're not left with much for this chapter. So, I figured I try for a quick one. Actually, the two remaining notes here are both going to relate back to things I've already discussed.

First of all, the SAB notes some cruelty in the fact that Joshua houghed, or hamstrung, the horses. Honestly, I'm not sure what the deal is. Apparently, they were ordered to do so by God, and it was related to the destroying of the chariots. This actually goes back to the issue of Holy War in that God wants to make sure that they keep very little of what the Canaanites leave behind. It seems that chariots were among the things that God didn't want them taking, although we are not told why if this is the case. It may be that God wanted them to fight without what would have been more modern techniques of the time. If they fought with chariots, they'd be tempted to say "Isn't it great we have chariots on our side?" rather than "Isn't it great we have God on our side?" Even with that speculation though, I don't understand this method. If they were to keep the horses for themselves, then they ought to not harm them. If they weren't keeping the horses, why not just kill them as humanely as possible? I may be missing something, I don't know.

The only other thing here is the issue of the hardening of the hearts of the Canaanites. The SAB says, "...God hardens their hearts so that he can have an excuse to kill them." Well, that's right, actually, but it's not quite as arbitrary as it sounds. I discussed it way back in Exodus in the matter of Pharaoh. There comes a time for many people, if not everyone, that God will cause them to be set firmly in the way that they have already chosen. If you really want to hate the Bible, then God will let you; and in fact, He is likely to find a way to make you so strongly hate the Bible that He can use your hatred to bring glory to Himself. The Canaanites were hostile, and God gave them over to their hostility so that the war would proceed according to God's plan. God works that way sometimes, and if you don't like it, He's more than content to let you not like it.

And so death passed upon all men (Gen 3:14-19)

I've always thought it was a little strange that God doesn't ask the serpent for his version of what happened. Maybe God was tired of hearing people pass the buck, or perhaps since the serpent is apparently Satanic, He's just not interested in hearing any lies at this point in time. Anyway, after asking questions of the man and the woman, He just goes straight to pronouncing the curse on the snake.

Now a part of this is definitely my own opinion, and I'm not sure whether more formal theologians share this viewpoint, but I don't think God has much of a choice in this matter. A lot of Christians seem to operate under the assumption that God makes up the moral law, and that apart from God creating moral law, it simply wouldn't exist. I tend to believe that there may be certain aspects of the rules of morality and spirituality that God has no control over. I know many skeptics would ask whether that means God is not omnipotent after all.

I think omnipotence, while still being omnipotence, is actually limited by logic. I believe there are certain things that are a part of the world that are that way simply because having them not be that way would be absurd. The concept of 1+1=2 is a concept so basic that I don't think even God can make it not be true, and I don't think it's reasonable to expect Him to have that sort of power. Mathematics, geometry, logic and certain aspects of physics are, I believe, beyond God's control: they simply are true. If that's the case (and I leave it without proof as such proof may be well beyond my ability) then might it not also be true that at least some aspects of moral and spiritual law are beyond God's ability to change?

God is a being that is entirely good. Interestingly enough, that creates a difficulty for God, as He is by His very nature repellant to evil. Once the fruit had been eaten, God was unable to have the same sort of relationship with mankind that He'd had before. As I said previously, Adam "died" to his relationship with God. This in itself was a curse, as having an intimate relationship with God is (so a Christian believes) the absolute best thing one can have. So part of the curse that now comes upon Adam, his wife, the serpent, and the whole world is actually not by God's choice, but simply the logical conclusion of God having to step back and let Adam live without Him. Some of it is by God's choice, either to punish, to fix the situation, or both.

The curse God gives the serpent in verse 14 seems to be clearly punitive. Essentially, as just about everyone reads this, God takes away the serpent's legs, forcing it to walk on its belly and "eat dust". I don't see any reason to take that latter concept more literally than the fact that, having its face always on the ground or mere inches from the ground, it probably does swallow a fair amount of dust on a regular basis. (Note that this serpent takes on a curse that eventually affects the roughly 3,000 modernly known species of snakes. Perhaps all those species evolved from this one and its mate?) The part of the curse in verse 15 is part natural and part, well, something else. Simply because of the role that the serpent played in all of this, and because of the form snakes took afterwards, they became despised by humanity. (In general, of course; I've owned pet snakes myself, and think they're quite nice.) But of course, many Christians have also taken this verse to be a prophecy of the crucifixion: that one day a man would come who would be injured by Satan, but would, in the injuring, cause Satan utter destruction.

God then turns to the woman, and tells her that she is to be cursed with painful childbirth and an apparently subordinate position under men. I once read an interesting analysis of this concept from an evolutionary point of view. Of all the animals, humans seem to have the most painful process of childbirth. Interestingly enough, this is due in part to the fact that the pelvis is shaped differently due to our being bipedal, and our infants having very large heads. Thus when we, as a species, were separated from other animals, it was when we walked upright and became intelligent which led to change in social structure, development of tools and language, changed sexual practice, and difficult childbirth. Whatever your views on this, I think it's true that being intelligent can be painful at times. The woman wanted to be smarter, and it cost her, whatever the reason was. The fact that she ends up in a subordinate position to men is, in my opinion, not because God wanted to push her down, but because men, in their fallen state, have a tendency to do this anyway, which doesn't make it right. Maybe I'm too much of a feminist to be a good Christian.

Then God turns to man and curses the ground. (The SAB notes that Adam is cursed for listening to his wife, but I don't this is a sexist thing; only that Adam should have listened to God rather than anyone else at all regardless of gender.) Adam now has to work to get his food, rather than having lovely fruits to eat in a beautiful garden. Whether new types of plants with thorns and such came about because of this curse, or that they simply didn't exist in the garden, and man had to deal with them when he was tossed out, I don't know. I think there was a bit of both. The garden was meant to be an ideal situation, and probably had only fruit trees, and perhaps soft grass underfoot. Outside, things were wilder, and work was needed to produce something edible for mankind. And of course, after working hard for years and years to make things comfortable for himself, in the end physical death would come.

Now, natural consequences or choice of God, why are these curses a good thing? As I said above, the assumption we work with here is that the relationship that mankind had with God before the fall is the highest good that man can enjoy, but eating the fruit has destroyed that good. If God is righteous, and by His very nature that He cannot change, demands righteousness, how can an unrighteous human being come to have a relationship with God? The answer is justice. Man must pay for his crimes against God, and the payment is death. God doesn't allow them to live forever separated from Him, but causes them to live in a world that is difficult and deadly, so that they will always remember that their aim is to make it through life to a better life with God after they pass away. The full details of this really come out in the life of Jesus, of course, but some of it will be in the rest of this chapter.

And the eyes of them both were opened (Gen 3:7-13)

I think many children go through a process like this at some point in their life: having their eyes opened, as it were. There comes a day when you realize that you have the freedom to act against your parents' will. This happens at different ages and in different ways, but whatever it is, you suddenly realize your own power as a free individual, and it changes the way you see the world around you. Oh my gosh, mommy and daddy don't know everything! Well, in this case, God is the parent, and He does know everything. But the fact that He knows everything and has the ability to control everything doesn't mean that it's something He's going to flaunt. Still, the man and woman had their outlook on God change.

The very first manifestation of this was noticing that they were naked. There's once again something literal and figurative in this. All throughout the Bible, there's a linkage between the themes of clothing and sin. In particular, I've always thought it was interesting to look at the parallel between this chapter and the story of the crucifixion. The man and the women sin against the will of God; Jesus becomes sin according to the will of God. The man and the women are separated from God's presence by guarding cherubim; the curtain of the Jewish temple which is embroidered with cherubim and separates man from God is torn open. God gives mankind clothing by killing an animal; mankind takes Jesus' clothing and kills Him on the cross. It's an interesting symbolic and literal reversal on many levels. In any case, they suddenly realize they've got something shameful to cover up.

The next thing that happens is that God "shows up". I put it in quotes because, as the SAB points out, there's some trouble you run into if you take verse 8 fully literally. Here's God in the garden, walking and talking like just some other guy, it almost seems. But we do know both from scripture and from commonly accepted doctrine that God has no body. A very likely possibility is of this passage being figurative; to some extent, it must be since God is also omnipresent. Then again, having no corporeal substance and being omnipresent at the same time is also a problem. I think it simply has to be accepted that God was literally there in the garden in some form, because even if he has no "body", He's everywhere, which includes the garden. So the sense of omnipresence is a spiritual rather than physical thing necessarily. (I hope this is making some sort of sense, I'm not feeling really well today for some reason.)

Another thing that is also often accepted, though, is that God does, at times, cause Himself to take on a physical human-like form (if not actually human). The man and woman perhaps experienced Him often in this form, visiting them in the garden. This time, when they heard Him coming, they hid. The fact that they hid from an omniscient being doesn't pose a conundrum, nor does the fact that God asks them where they are. My own children sometimes climb into my bed and pull the covers over their head to hide, completely missing the fact that the child-sized lump in the bed discloses their location. If I say, "Where are you?" I'm not admitting ignorance, but feigning it for the purpose of playing along in a little hide-and-seek. God's not playing, but throughout the Bible, God asks people questions He already knows the answer to in order to give them a chance to confess and seek forgiveness. I've heard some pastors muse that if Adam had only popped out and said, "Alright, I was hiding because I was ashamed that I ate the fruit, and now I'm afraid I'm going to die, please forgive me?" that things would have been, well not back to perfect, but better in any case.

God even gives Adam a second chance, hinting at the truth. Adam takes the chance to put the blame not only on his wife, but God Himself: "The woman (yeah, it was the woman, that's right, I was just standing here!) whom thou gavest (wait a minute, wasn't it God's idea that I had to have this trouble-maker with me? Yeah, I think this was His fault; I want my rib back!) to be with me..." The woman even tries to pass the buck as well. In the end, though, God's not buying any of it.

I think the Bible is a strong supporter of the idea that everyone is responsible for their own choices. I think it may sound odd coming in the middle of the story of original sin, and how this one act of eating a piece of fruit ended up changing the world for every human that ever lived, but it fits here. Yes, we are all stained by original sin, and have that sinful nature within us that we inherited from Adam, but at the same time, God will expect us to take responsibility for our own lives and our own destinies. In tomorrow's entry, I'll talk about the curse that came on the world, but I'll also talk a bit more about God's plan to take care of lifting the curse. God does His part, and we do ours. And it's not a meet me halfway deal, it's God coming 100% of the way, and only asking for your response.

They shall be called the children of God (Gen 3 and beyond)

I suppose everyone has their favorite way to look at theology, their favorite way to envision God, you know. A lot of us use metaphors of things we know here on earth to explain a glimpse of what we understand to be going on in Heaven. Some metaphors work better than others. Some work really well in some particular areas, while others fall short. As I said a couple days ago, my personal favorite metaphor is the parent-child relationship. The Bible in fact calls God the "Father" often, and we are referred to as His "children". Sometimes it's just Israel; sometimes it's the church; sometimes all people. Being a half-Jewish Christian I get to fall in all three categories, but that's just a personal matter.

There are a few things I like about this metaphor. One of them is its flexibility. I once heard a sermon that explained the second coming of Christ in terms of a basketball game, believe it or not. It was actually a good metaphor at the time, but I hardly think basketball is going to work to explain all or even a good portion of what people need to understand about God. On the other hand, the parent-child relationship is very telling. You have small people of varying levels of maturity who are growing and learning constantly who are created by and under the authority of a larger being who is older and wiser and wants to look out for the best interest of the former. Granted, not everyone's relationship with their parents is this way. My father was somewhat emotionally abusive at times, and my stepfather was a high school dropout who knew a lot about car engines and construction work, but not much else. Every parent is less than perfect, but most of us can imagine an ideal parent. I like to imagine God that way, because it makes sense of a lot of things.

The other thing I like about this metaphor is now that I myself am a parent, I often get examples from my own life that help me understand God's view of me through a lens of my own view of my children. It's fascinating that hardly a day goes by that being a parent fails to teach me something about being a child of God.

Case in point: My wife had gone to church one weekend without me several months ago, so I missed the sermon, but it was about one of the great mysteries of Christianity, to both Christians and non-Christians alike. Christians just shrug their shoulders and accept it for the most part, while non-Christians tend to think the idea is ridiculous, and scoff at this basic idea from Christianity. What is it? That the one and only thing that will determine who gets to go to Heaven is whether or not you were kind to God's children in general, and particularly God's Son, Jesus Christ. The pastor had said something like, "Take my word, what God cares about more than anything is how you react to His Son."

Why is that? My wife left the sermon with the question emblazoned across her thoughts, unsure what it all really meant. Then she brought the kids home to where the cats were waiting. We have two cats, you see, a white one and a black one. (I always joked that we got a white and a black one so we could be assured of having nothing that we owned without visible cat hair on it; she didn't think it was so funny.) We'd had these cats for nearly five years before we had kids. The white one was sweet, friendly, gently playful and cuddly, and slept quietly at the foot of the bed at night. The black one hissed at strangers, tried to beat up the other cat, brought in nasty dead and/or alive animals it would find nearby, constantly knocked things off of shelves and tore up furniture, would climb repeatedly into the laps of people that it could tell didn't like it, and at night would climb up to the head of the bed and hit you in the face with its paw until you gave it the attention it wanted. As you might guess, the white one was our favorite, the black one was...tolerated.

Then we had kids. Twin girls. Two little toddler girls wandering around the house looking for things to play with all the time, and their favorite things to play with were the cats, even though it was a long time before they were able to figure out how to catch them. Now the white cat decided it wasn't going to have it, and when the girls get taken out of their cribs in the morning, it runs outside and disappears largely until bedtime. It hisses and scratches if cornered by the girls, and won't go near them if it can help it. The black cat? For some reason, it puts up with them! When they chase it, it stops and lets them catch up. It allows them to carry it around. Occasionally it will sit on their laps and it always lets them pet her. If they pull its tail (which they do a lot), it meows at them to warn them, and if they don't quit, it gives them a little bite that never breaks the skin. The thing is, the cats haven't changed the way they act towards my wife and me, but since we've had kids, the black one has become our favorite. Why? Because of the way it reacts to our kids. Why should God be so different? No, you may not like Christians, but let me tell you, don't make the mistake of being unkind to God's Son, Jesus Christ.

That example was a bit longer than I meant to have it, because it wasn't my main point at this time. My point was how the metaphor works for chapter three and so much more that follows in the rest of the Bible. Why is rebellion against God's law such an issue to God? Why can't we just do as we please? The answer is that it's because God's older, smarter, more powerful, and has our best interests in mind.

My children do this odd thing when we go to the local park. The park is separated from the street by some thick metal poles, not a fence, but a barrier to keep cars out of the park and protect the children. My girls sometimes do this thing where they will go to the first pole in the line, hug it, and actually say to the pole, "I love you!" and then move on to do the same thing all down the line. They're two years old, so while this is an absurd bit of behavior, I pretty much take it in stride, so long as they stay on the park side, and don't walk into the street. Sometimes when I come home from work, I say, "Hi girls, Daddy's home! Can I get a hug?" to which they reply with a shake of the head and run away laughing. It hurts my feelings a bit, you can imagine, that they'd more gladly lavish affection on a metal pole than Daddy sometimes, but I know it's two-year-old silliness, and not that they really like the poles more than me. But what if they were older, and it was a serious thing? What if they were, say, fourteen, and they said, "Dad, we've decided that this pole is our father now, and we're going to live at the park and let it take care of us from now on." That would be highly disturbing. My options would be to drag them back home and punish them in some way or let them stay at the park until they came to their senses and came home hungry, cold, and tired. Neither is a fun option.

God is looking down on earth at all of us, and He's our Father. He created us, He gave us everything we have, He loves us. Some of us, however, are saying no, I don't need you, Dad, I love this other God, and I'm going to let him take care of me; or even, I don't need anyone, I'll take care of myself. God is saying, "There is nobody who loves you more than I do, nobody who knows how to take care of you more than I do, nobody who is more willing to look out for your interests and help you than Me. Why would you want to settle for second-best?"

In chapter three, this is the beginning of this sort of thing. For the first time ever, the idea is planted in someone's head, "What do I need God for? Why should I trust Him?" Throughout history, starting with this story, people have made the wrong choice far too many times, not really knowing what they were rejecting. But some have made a better choice:

John 6
67 Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?
68 Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:15-17)

Frankly, if you've heard any apologetics concerning the first few chapters of the book of Genesis, you've probably heard a lot of what I have to say here. Clicking around the Internet in my spare time and looking at a few sites that are like the SAB, responses to the SAB and sites like it, and others still giving rebuttals to responses, I'm frankly finding it a bit depressing. In that middle category where my blog fits, there seem to be largely two types of folks: absolute geniuses and muddled hacks. I don't think I'm one of the former, but I fear it places me in jeopardy of being grouped with the latter. Hopefully my willingness to admit that I am not a genius in this area will lend me a certain air of credibility for my honesty at least. I'm not a theologian, I don't know all the answers, and admittedly very little of what I write here proves anything. The SAB suggests some problems with the Bible, I suggest some explanations for them, and the Bible is neither proven to be infallible nor utterly wrong, but only ambiguous. Even if I were a highly gifted apologist, the reader would still of course decide for themselves how to take the Bible's claims. It's nice to get that off of my chest.

Okay, it's finally time to get to the topic I'd mentioned twice before: the tree of "the knowledge of good and evil." What is it, and why does God put it in the garden? It seems like putting your children in the backyard to play and saying, "By the way, don't jump in the pit with the spikes lining the bottom that I dug in the back corner by the swing set, okay?" You'll find that my favorite metaphor to illustrate the relationship between mankind and God is the relationship between children and their parents, so expect a lot of this now that we're discussing humanity.

The tree itself is never said to be an apple as is often believed, and in fact, we don't know what kind of fruit it was (but see comments for interesting speculation!). The fact that we often think of it as an apple is interesting, as I think it does the job of my first point, which is that there was nothing particularly special about this tree. Apples are good and healthy; there's nothing deadly about them, nor particularly wisdom-imparting. I believe that this tree was a tree much like any other in the garden, with the singular exception that God points it out as special. In other words, the tree has nothing that intrinsically sets it apart, but God uses it as a symbol.

What is it a symbol of? Well, knowledge of good and evil, of course. God creates man with understanding, obviously, since God is talking with him. If man did not understand, God would have known, and made it clearer. God was giving a simple message to man: "Evil" is the things that you're not supposed to do, "good" is the things that you should do. The only thing you need to know about "evil" is don't eat from that tree. It's a completely arbitrary distinction between that tree and the others, but an important one. It's so important that man's very life is claimed to be dependent on it.

So why make that distinction? Why allow man to die over this arbitrary tree? The answer is "free will". God wants man to be devoted to his Creator; to love Him, follow Him, worship Him, have fellowship with Him, etc. But what does it really mean to say, "I want you to love me and do as I tell you, but I won't give you any choice in the matter, okay?" Is it meaningful for me to say that I know my daughter loves me because she's never tried to run away from home, when she's too small to reach the knob on the front door? Now, that doesn't mean that to be loving I have to leave the front door open and see if she walks out it and goes away, but for God being in this special position, He needs to create something that is an option for rebellion.

Free will to be able to choose or reject God is important to God apparently, and as a symbol of this choice, it is simultaneously more than a symbol, thence its name. While the tree indeed has no magical properties, the act of eating from the tree has a profound spiritual aspect to it. Why would a person need to eat from a "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" excepting that they wanted to know good and evil? Is that so wrong? Maybe, after all, what was there to know? As far as I know, conservative theologians are pretty much agreed that before chapter three, eating the fruit itself was the only evil that there was, and man already had been told by God that it was evil, and essentially that everything else was good. There was nothing else to know!

Eating the fruit of the tree embodied a profound statement; the statement of, "God, I know you say that you know best, and you claim to have told me everything I need to know, but I want to find out for myself." To eat from the tree would be to say that God was not trustworthy, and that's a serious accusation, especially at this point in history. Atheists and agnostics have raised time and again very thought-provoking points about the character of the Biblical God such as why He would allow suffering if He is supposedly good. That argument wouldn't hold water in the garden, as there was no suffering, no death, no Bible to write an SAB about, nothing but a man, a woman and some trees.

So was God lying when He said that man would die "in the day that thou eatest thereof"? I'm going to save that one for chapter three.