Yes, right. As stated earlier. Adam and Eve had freedom of everything except to eat from the tree of life or knowlegde of good and evil. They chose to put away reason to become like God and this is why they were banished from the garden… not wiped out tho.
Yes, they “wanted to become like God” because it is part of the human appetite to want power and wisdom, right? God puts in us the desire to grow and survive. I think you already said something like that.
Yes, we have natural and healthy appetites that when in communion with God work for the greater good out of Love.
But in this case it can be seen that their appetites dominated their conscience. While their conscience said “God said not to do this” their appetites said “do this” and the want compromised their consciences, the pressure of want “disordered” their reason. The disorder comes from the want itself. The want itself is good, but our desires effect our clear thinking.
Yes, I have the stain of Sin from the fall.
This is our conscience, of knowing right from wrong… I had this even before finding God.
Do you see this “stain” as a negative aspect of our nature, or do you see it as that we are all born lacking awareness of our own conscience, lacking awareness about what is merciful and what is not?
Exactly, we are all born with a conscience, but development of the conscience is a life-long endeavor. Eve and Adam wanted to know right from wrong, but “the gods” forbade it. So the reader may ask, “why would God punish a person for wanting to know good and evil when such knowing will guide their behavior?”
The objective was NOT to give them ability to transcend their wants and make a wise decision. The desires are still there to contend with, and through grace, not their own ability, but with willing cooperation, to remain in the state of grace. The will of God was to constitute them in a state of original justice and allow them to choose charity or malice. If they were perfect then there would be no free will choice between charity and malice, for with the knowledge of the Beatific Vision one will not choose mortal sin.
All that was necessary to fall was to willfully choose (with reflection) to not obey the known command of God.
If God was giving them a “preternatural” state, why would He not give them at least the information needed to make a wise choice? For example, if the couple knew that their risky behavior not only might injure themselves, but their children too, then the outcome would have been much different.
They chose in a very predictable way, actually. Their appetite for knowledge dominated their ability to reason, which makes sense, because if they actually had enough knowledge, they would know that eating the fruit had even worse consequences than what they had been told.
In Genesis, God behaves just as our natural conscience behaves, feeling negative (blaming) Adam and Eve for their choice, and then punishing them.
God’s image is the same througout the Bible.
Genesis 1 was actually written later than Genesis 3, according to historians. Genesis 1 softens the blaming attitude of God depicted in Geneses 3. Genesis 1 asserts that all He created was good. Blaming has an inherent negativity.
It is the workings of the conscience, that impels us to condemn the human capacities that “cause” sin. In this case, you are expressing a resentment toward human capacity, specifically the capacity for desire itself compromising our reasoning and truth, saying such capacity for compromise (which is subconcious) comes from the devil. Your conscience has been formed to feel negative about this capacity for blindness. Is this an accurate statement?
Without God our consciences are weak and only allow us to live at most in a civil way. As later in the Bible shows us that living with commandments that cast a negative outlook… this allows the devil to tempt us to Sin, the human mind, soul or conscience will always try and find a loophole in one of the commandments and utlimately that is a slippery slope to denying the commandment altogether. Do you see hating someone is the same as killing them?
this is an example of temptation to kill.
Absolutely not, but the hate causes an empathy block, which enables the hater to perceive the murder as inconsequential in terms of human dignity. When a person hates, they have no sense of value of the person they hate, they may even see the “goodness” of destroying the person they hate, for the promotion of justice.
Let me put it this way: Do you see, as I do, that the it is really a good thing when the conscience is formed to feel negative about this capacity for blindness, telling us that the capacity for blindness comes from the devil? Indeed, the capacity for blindness was a crucial part of the crowd’s call to crucify Jesus. Many hated him, which was a blindness.
That’s not what Jesus teaches us.
The conscience is a gift from God and in comunion with him is complete, If we are decieved by the devil to turn away from God then darkness comes and blindness.
Jesus recognized that the crowd was blind. The blindness is an empathy block, it is part of the blindness. Are you reading something in the catechism or the Gospel that says differently?
Yes, your conscience is formed in such a natural, good way such that you are seeing that the deception comes from a bad place, from the devil. Is this an accurate observation of your conscience?
Murder21“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder,a