What are you free from? Are you free from any authority figures around you? Not likely. Can you do ANYTHING you want (within your ability, of course)? Sure. But expect some of those things to bring responses or consequences.
For the purpose of this discussion the question is, Does God make us do what he wants, or does he give us the authority to really choose — even if it means to reject him — FOREVER?
I think that God would have us answer our own question by looking within our own world. Our children are born to us. We want them to grow to be responsible adults. We want them to love us from within themselves, not from anything we’ve made them do, or from any form of bribery or coercion. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen. In spite of all of our best efforts, our children, like us, will often make bad choices in life, resulting in unlovely behavior. But we would still desire for them to reach full perfection in character and spirit.
What we fail to consider, however, is that our child is God’s child, and God isn’t done with him yet. Even with our own imperfections, we don’t just want our children to do right, we want them to WANT to do right — of their own free will. Doesn’t it make sense to say that that’s what God wants of his children also? So how does he do it?
I believe that children are born with perfect spirits. What happens after birth is a whole ‘nuther story. I’m more and more convinced that what they are exposed to throughout life develops their character. (I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some womb exposure, too.)
The fact of the matter is that God made us to be like himself. That’s our core being. Without the negative influences, that’s who we will be. The testing given through those influences is the basis of free will. We can choose wrong, but who we really are inside will never be completely satisfied with those choices.
Why he created this scenario is truly a mystery. It’s like asking why Mr. and Mrs. God decided to just have one son. And just where is Mrs. God, by the way?
God is love. He created us in love. We are love. When all else is burned away, love remains. That’s who we really are. The real us would NEVER reject our creator. He made us. Then he makes us to see who we really are and who we will be as his holy children.
December 9th, 2008 at 5:42 am
I want to take back my comment concerning the possibility of remaining perfect if we were raised by perfect people. In rethinking through the story of Adam in Eve who were created perfectly, I don’t see how a person can grow up perfect , in a world where Satan roams this earth.
December 8th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Good point. And don’t forget about that villainous Satan character introduced into the drama. Why orchestrate failure? On the other hand, if you remove the testing devices, we’re left with the question of why we’re sinful. How did it start? I still lean toward the negative influences theory, but which one started it? Don’t have a clue.
December 8th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
It makes no sense to me why God would create two perfect people, place them in a perfect world — “The garden of Eden” and then tell them they could eat of all the trees except one –the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It sounds like entrapment, so unlike the character of God.
December 8th, 2008 at 5:27 am
I don’t know why God would put the forbidden tree in the garden, except to test free will. Even then, he knew what the outcome would be. It appears that something is going on at another level. Perhaps a lesson for the heavenly host? The book of Job makes reference to such.
December 7th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
There was a perfect anvironment–the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were in a perfect world, Yet, they still sinned. So, it seems their sin originated from their own free will. This makes more sense than sin being passed down through the genes or blood. I like what Steve had to say:
Paul’s statement in Romans 5:19 that “through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners” refers to the fact that Adam (and Eve) continued a pattern of disobedience that was observed and emulated by all.
It seems more practical.
November 30th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
I think because we are emotionally based, it’s easy to assume that we are prone to sin. But just how original is sin? I think that Paul’s statement in Romans 5:19 that “through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners” refers to the fact that Adam (and Eve) continued a pattern of disobedience that was observed and emulated by all.
November 29th, 2008 at 4:56 am
In order to be in a perfectly controlled environment a baby would have to be raised by robots from fertalization on, we can’t dismiss what the baby hears from the womb. Of course we hope that will never happen at least in our life time. I think the conflict in this issue is in our view of God. If we believe that God is pure love and wants us to be perfect why would he start us off at a dissadvantige by creating us with a sin nature?
November 26th, 2008 at 10:26 am
While I agree that God made us to be like himself, I completely disagree that we are fundamentally good before we are corrupted by negative influences. I think if you were able to experiment with people to the point that you started with babies and kept them in a carefully controlled environment throughout their lives with only positive influences you would still find at least occasional greed, selfishness, lust, etc. Obviously environment plays a huge part in how we develop our character, but I think that includes positive influences that teach us that we can even go against our own wishes and choose to do something simply because it is right.