Consequences of Sin

[to-the-point]

If death and disease are the consequences of sin, how do you reconcile the strong probability that these consequences existed well before man existed? For example, the dinosaurs were wiped out millions of years before man and I’d venture to guess that animal diseases existed well before we arrived on the scene. Are we to believe that had we not fallen, we alone would escape disease, natural death and be protected from the natural phenomenon that present risk (such as asteroids hitting the earth, the movement of geological plates that result in earthquakes – again, movements put into motion well before we arrived on the scene)?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

“The sting of death is sin.” - 1 Corinthians 15

My understanding: If not for sin, there would have never been any pain in death. The passage from death to (eternal) life would have been painless – from a spiritual and emotional, if not perhaps a physical, point of view.

The question is: Is animal pain really pain? Does it have the sense of alienation that our pain has? Etc.

I don’t think the death of dinosaurs is mutually exclusive with God’s creation, pre-Fall. They died, but if the sting of death is sin, they didn’t “die” in the full human sense. Neither must we die in that sense – Jesus has freed us from that obligation, if we follow Him.

The answer I’ve generally heard here is that the first man and woman were made to live and “die” on earth, and then join God in Heaven. It’s just that death took on a whole different meaning after the Fall.

 

[FightingFat]

Sin is bad because it seperates you from God. The negative effects of sin are spiritual more than physical (although there are physical repercussions too I would say).

 

[Catilieth]

Some of the Fathers believed that when Satan fell, the effects of evil became manifest on earth(such as death and disease), and the Garden of Eden was kept free of these effects. Man, in the Garden, was shielded from the consequences that Satan’s sin had upon the earth. When man sinned, he too was subjected to these effects and therefore was cast out of the Garden into the world.

 

[Mt19_26]

Sin brings spiritual “death” but it could also bring upon physical suffering and/or death.

 

[Eileen_T]

to-the-point:

If death and disease are the consequences of sin, how do you reconcile the strong probability that these consequences existed well before man existed? For example, the dinosaurs were wiped out millions of years before man and I’d venture to guess that animal diseases existed well before we arrived on the scene. Are we to believe that had we not fallen, we alone would escape disease, natural death and be protected from the natural phenomenon that present risk (such as asteroids hitting the earth, the movement of geological plates that result in earthquakes – again, movements put into motion well before we arrived on the scene)?

And here I thought dinosaurs were wiped out in the Flood!