Follow up question: So, god intended Adam and Eve to sin?

Question

in my question here http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ansqp1d988S_QI5k0NL.ty_d7BR.?qid=20070831124100AA9zHoG
many people said that "god never intended people to be perfect. So, god intended for people to be sinful from the beginning? That would explain the tree in the garden.
This is a new twist on christianity. I always thought Christians believe that Adam and Eve "fell from Grace" when they succumbed to temptation.
Now I understand some of you believe that god never intended them to be perfect? Interesting. So, they were just following god's intentions?

Answer 1

its time you move to the next level,by now you should know that Adam and Eve werent actual people,Eve means "mother of all the living" it is not an actual word, thats where people get confused,you dont actually believe that a serpent talks do you? its was all put together for the people of those times,they understood what was beign told in these stories,we take everything literally and thats where we mess up.check out this book by George M.Lamsa called "Gospel Light"

Answer 2

Every soul is eternally part and parcel of God, but because of some sinful activity, the living entity comes into this material world. In the Bible it is said that due to disobedience to God, Adam and Eve lost paradise and had to come into the material world. The soul belongs to the paradise in heaven—the planets of Krishna—but somehow or other he falls within this material world and takes on a material body.

Adam and Eve dwelt in paradise, still they were not satisfied because their desire for happiness was focused on the secondary delights of Eden, not the primary delights of love of God. Because they were not satisfied, they could be seduced by the caprice of trying to take the place of God. Since God is all knowing, He satisfied the desires of Adam and Eve. They had a desire(temptation) other than serving God and therefore God gave them the facility, but His intention was not to induce them to sin, due to the free will and the desire of enjoy, Adam and Eve succumbed.

Answer 3

No, He did not intend for us to sin. But, He did know that we would.

The thing is, even though He knew we would stumble and fall, He also knew the final outcome, and that it would be worth the struggles.

We are still in the midst of the struggles, so we are not yet aware of the final outcome. We have hints through the Scriptures, but we are not quite there yet.

If you knew that you would have a baby, and that baby would be injured in an accident with lasting handicaps, but survive and become a great scientist with wonderful contributions to the world, would you go ahead and have the baby? or would you deny the world those scientific advances to keep him or her from suffering the hardships of life with handicaps?

Answer 4

They WERE perfect in the beginning. The whole world was perfect. However, God gave them Free Will, which they abused and made the wrong choice, and thus fell into imperfection. Whether God wanted them to be perfect or not had nothing to do with it. They had free choice. At that point it was out of God's hands. However, He began a plan to redeem people from their dumb behavior.

Answer 5

I am a Christian and I don't believe God intended Adam and Eve to sin.

Answer 6

I take the book of Genesis in its spiritual meaning rather than its literal interpretation that many literalist religionists take it. You can see the Baha'i interpretation of such a story from the link below.

Abdu'l-Baha said this: " If we take this story in its apparent meaning, according to the interpretation of the masses, it is indeed extraordinary. The intelligence cannot accept it, affirm it, or imagine it; for such arrangements, such details, such speeches and reproaches are far from being those of an intelligent man, how much less of the Divinity—that Divinity Who has organized this infinite universe in the most perfect form, and its innumerable inhabitants with absolute system, strength and perfection.

We must reflect a little: if the literal meaning of this story were attributed to a wise man, certainly all would logically deny that this arrangement, this invention, could have emanated from an intelligent being. Therefore, this story of Adam and Eve who ate from the tree, and their expulsion from Paradise, must be thought of simply as a symbol. It contains divine mysteries and universal meanings, and it is capable of marvelous explanations. Only those who are initiated into mysteries, and those who are near the Court of the All-Powerful, are aware of these secrets. Hence these verses of the Bible have numerous meanings."

More on His interpretation is in the link below. To answer your question with my insufficiency, since the tree of good and evil is the human world (and the garden of Eden is the world of God, of spiritual perfections and bliss) and the snake was the gateway of attachment to material transience, perfection is something in which effort is required.

Being born in this world, we do not have a choice of earthly materialisations, but we certainly have agency on whether we remain pure and are part of this spiritual state of Edenic bliss, or feel the sorrows of material attachments of which the serpent brought us. God created us perfect as babies, yet if we choose the apple of disobedience of God and follow the serpent of material attachment, then we are in bondage and exhiled from this state into a shallow and spiritually dead reality.

This tradition of material attachment is the 'sin of Adam' that has been passed down from generations to generations. Thus, although God definitely created all of us perfect, our agency and free will exercised towards selfishness and attachment brings ourselves into the bondage of material pleasures and natural will.

I hope that helps!

Answer 7

God intented us to glorify him in everything that we do.