Did God create Adam and Eve to sin?

If you read the previous post, this was one of the questions that arose in my mind and which we tried to discuss at the story group on Friday night.  It’s sort of part of that question of where evil comes from.  I’ve been chewing it over and over, and here are some thoughts that I’ve been having (which doesn’t make these thoughts true).

A simple answer would be ‘no’.  I don’t think God would’ve created Adam and Eve to sin, nor do I think God created ‘defected’ human beings.  At the same time, however, neither do I believe that he created morally perfect beings.  I remember a talk that Paddy Benn gave at an EU Public Meeting this year where he tried to flesh out that when Genesis uses the word ‘good’, when God says his creation is ‘good’, it’s not referring to moral goodness but to functionality – it works just right.  We know this because that which is not good (Genesis 2:18) is simply not yet fully functional, rather than morally corrupt.  I think this has implications for how we understand sin, particularly if God somehow was responsible for it.  The use of the word ‘good’ to mean functionality implies that God neither sufficiently nor necessarily created human beings to sin, but they certainly have the ability to do so because freewill is part of our humanity.  That whole sentence is controversial but I’m thinking if God creates humans to be perfectly (and I use this term loosely) well-functioning, then the ability to sin is actually irrelevant to functionality.  In other words, God did not intentionally create morally-flawed creatures because the Bible doesn’t indicate that his ‘good’ creation of human beings concerned morality.  I think this potentially has implications for moral philosophers who debate the notion of freewill.  The dichotomy between determinism and freewill might not be so ‘dichotomous’ after all?  We believe in a God who does determine the course of history but he made humans to be free agents because they were not morally constrained?

The Bible is one, big…story.

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged anything…so I better get started!  On Friday night I went to a very interesting sort of Bible study group.  A story group!  It was a fantastic night – a story was told (of God’s creation of the world, including us humans; of the first humans’ decision to do what was against God’s instruction to them, and the consequences of those actions) and a discussion ensued.  This story is God’s true story, as he tells it himself, in the book of Genesis.  What a great way to do bible study – story telling!  But this got me thinking…(and maybe also because I’ve been forced to think about it in preparation for a talk I was giving at our church Sunday youth group about teaching the Bible to children).

Story telling is close to God’s heart.  Some people would say that the Bible is a set of instructions for ‘holy living’.  Others might say that it is a book of statements about the world.  Still, others might say its a book of ideas for intellectual stimulation about God.  But really, it’s not any of these things.  The Bible is in fact a story – a story that spans over a very long period of history.  It’s a story told by God about God and about his unfolding plans that take fulfillment in human history.  And what are the plans I speak of?  Well, they are this: God’s efforts to reverse the effects of sin and restore a new creation where man (by this I mean humans) can once again enter rest in God’s presence and enjoy Him.

There are many stories in the Bible, each about God’s dealings with people in a way that slowly unveils as well as models what that relationship looks like.  And like a thread that ties all the pages of a book together, Jesus is the fulfillment of all the promises and happenings initiated by God.

I think this has some important implications for how we teach the Bible, as Dan Kiat helpfully reminded me when we were talking about how to tell Bible stories.  If the Bible is used only as a starting-off point for our own thoughts, then the Bible’s authority is bypassed; if a passage is not being used to teach what the Bible is actually teaching, then we stand only as our own authority.  Only the things that Scripture intends to teach carry the authority of the text.  That means we can only attach authority to a lesson that the text is intentionally teaching.  This implies that whenever we read and study the Bible for ourselves, or whenever we teach it to others, we got to ask ‘what did God originally intend to say when this passage was first written?’ and that means our application shouldn’t ask ‘what does this mean for me today?’ but rather ‘what are the present-day implications of what the biblical author meant?’.  To answer these questions appropriately, we as Bible story tellers (teachers) must be sure that we don’t add to the text.

Another implication I think is something we often forget (definitely including me!): biblical application cannot be limited to ‘action points’ for the coming week but we need to think about ‘belief points’.  Much of our modern-day bible teaching shows we we value the notion that application must involve action.  We all know that something must be put in practice to be learned and remembered, so it seems only logical that if some teaching is to be relevant and practical, it must be able to be put into practice in the short term.  But this approach is perhaps too short-sighted, for we know that worthwhile pursuits often require a long-term perspective.  For example, years of study is necessary to prepare for being a good accountant.  If someone wants to be an accountant, he/she knows that a week of studying ‘the trade’ won’t suffice; he/she must be willing to invest long years of practice.  People do not train for a marathon in one day and then run it at the end of the week.  It’s the same I guess with godly living – when we imply that it can be accomplished in the short term for it to be practical we somewhat diminish its chances of success.  Haha, maybe a controversial point?  I’d love to hear your thoughts!  Email me (anna.zhang.is@gmail.com) or feel free to comment on this blog entry!

Much the Bible is involved in giving us belief points.  As we learn stories, our belief should be affected.  If our belief is affected, our behaviour should change.  If our belief has not been affected, then any change in our behaviour is probably superficial or temporary.  We learn what to believe not just so that we can act on it this week but so that we have it firmly in our minds to draw on at need.  We learn what we should belief so that right beliefs become part of us.  That’s what Paul meant when he says in Romans 12:2 ‘Be transformed by the renewing of your minds.’

I write these things as someone who definitely hasn’t succeeded at doing these things!  I think in my own Bible reading and in teaching the Bible to others I fall short of these things.  But I hope and pray that I will not speak on my own authority but on the authority that is in Scripture.