Was death a punishment?

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In the story of adam and eve,after adam had disobeyed god,god then said that nothing will come easily anymore,including childbirth,and also he said"one day you will die"
When i read this,i thought that death was a sort of punishment,and so when he said this,would they die and that would be that,or would god let them into heaven?
It just seemed that when god said,“and one day you will die”,i thouught that if they hadnt disobeyed god,death wouldnt be in the equation,and seemed like it was to make them suffer!
Anyone have any ideas to reassure me?
 
**From the Catechism:

1008 **Death is a consequence of sin. The Church’s Magisterium, as authentic interpreter of the affirmations of Scripture and Tradition, teaches that death entered the world on account of man’s sin. Even though man’s nature is mortal God had destined him not to die. Death was therefore contrary to the plans of God the Creator and entered the world as a consequence of sin. “Bodily death, from which man would have been immune had he not sinned” is thus “the last enemy” of man left to be conquered.
 
So if death was a sin,why does god punish the good and make them die,and why create heaven if we have all sinned?
 
The meaning of Christian death

[1010](javascript:openWindow(‘cr/1010.htm’)😉 Because of Christ, Christian death has a positive meaning: "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."576 "The saying is sure: if we have died with him, we will also live with him.577 What is essentially new about Christian death is this: through Baptism, the Christian has already “died with Christ” sacramentally, in order to live a new life; and if we die in Christ’s grace, physical death completes this “dying with Christ” and so completes our incorporation into him in his redeeming act:

It is better for me to die in (eis) Christ Jesus than to reign over the ends of the earth. Him it is I seek - who died for us. Him it is I desire - who rose for us. I am on the point of giving birth. . . . Let me receive pure light; when I shall have arrived there, then shall I be a man.578
[1011](javascript:openWindow(‘cr/1011.htm’)😉 In death, God calls man to himself. Therefore the Christian can experience a desire for death like St. Paul’s: "My desire is to depart and be with Christ. "579 He can transform his own death into an act of obedience and love towards the Father, after the example of Christ:580

My earthly desire has been crucified; . . . there is living water in me, water that murmurs and says within me: Come to the Father.581 I want to see God and, in order to see him, I must die.582

I am not dying; I am entering life.583
Code: 
**1012** The Christian vision of death receives privileged expression in the liturgy of the Church:584
Lord, for your faithful people life is changed, not ended. When the body of our earthly dwelling lies in death we gain an everlasting dwelling place in heaven.585
1013 Death is the end of man’s earthly pilgrimage, of the time of grace and mercy which God offers him so as to work out his earthly life in keeping with the divine plan, and to decide his ultimate destiny. When “the single course of our earthly life” is completed,586 we shall not return to other earthly lives: "It is appointed for men to die once."587 There is no “reincarnation” after death.

[1014](javascript:openWindow(‘cr/1014.htm’)😉 The Church encourages us to prepare ourselves for the hour of our death. In the ancient litany of the saints, for instance, she has us pray: “From a sudden and unforeseen death, deliver us, O Lord”;588 to ask the Mother of God to intercede for us “at the hour of our death” in the Hail Mary; and to entrust ourselves to St. Joseph, the patron of a happy death.

Every action of yours, every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out. Death would have no great terrors for you if you had a quiet conscience. . . . Then why not keep clear of sin instead of running away from death? If you aren’t fit to face death today, it’s very unlikely you will be tomorrow. . . .589 Praised are you, my Lord, for our sister bodily Death,
from whom no living man can escape.
Woe on those who will die in mortal sin!
Blessed are they who will be found
in your most holy will,
for the second death will not harm them.590
 
Bufalo does a nice job of finding references. I’m going to take a shot at explaining my understanding of it.

We humans are body and soul united. There is death of the body and death of the soul. Rather than say death is a “punishment” for sin, I think the word “consequence” is more appropriate.

Death of the body is a consequence of original sin. When Adam and Eve sinned, they introduced death into the world. But in a weird way, bodily death saved us from something far worse: being eternally separated from God. After the Fall, God sends them out of the garden so they will not eat the fruit from the tree of Life and live forever in a state of sin (Genesis 3:22-24)

Jesus came into the world, and through His death and resurrection, gives us a chance at eternal life. In a beautiful literary analogy, the Fruit of Mary’s womb is hung on a tree–thus restoring what Adam and Eve did when they took fruit off the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Death of the soul is far worse than physical death of the body, because death of the soul eternally separates us from God. The consequence of sin is still death, and that is why the type of sin that kills the soul is called “mortal” sin–because it is deadly to our souls. Jesus can save us from death of our soul. He offers us baptism and confession to remove the effect of sin on our souls. He offers a mulititude of other graces through sacraments, prayer, reading the Bible, etc. to stengthen us.

Jesus saves us from both forms of death. He promises that those who die with Him shall also rise with Him. We say every Sunday in the Creed that we believe in the Ressurection of the body and life in the world to come. Jesus did destroy physical death, and we await the fulfillment of that on the last day. We must “die” to ourselves so that we can fully live with Him in eternity.
 
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godsent:
In the story of adam and eve,after adam had disobeyed god,god then said that nothing will come easily anymore,including childbirth,and also he said"one day you will die"
When i read this,i thought that death was a sort of punishment,and so when he said this,would they die and that would be that,or would god let them into heaven?
It just seemed that when god said,“and one day you will die”,i thouught that if they hadnt disobeyed god,death wouldnt be in the equation,and seemed like it was to make them suffer!
Anyone have any ideas to reassure me?
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Viewing Adam and Eve as an historical incident is a mistake. It is better to view it as a “thin-sliced hypothetical”: The story of the Original Sin is a picture of what we would do, in the case of every single moral decision, were it not the case that Christ subsequently died to purchase the grace of salvation which goes forward and backward in time so that it has always been available to us. I.e., it is that heart bent on evil which is the inheritance of each of us which made the salvation process necessary.
 
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BibleReader:
Viewing Adam and Eve as an historical incident is a mistake. It is better to view it as a “thin-sliced hypothetical”: The story of the Original Sin is a picture of what we would do, in the case of every single moral decision, were it not the case that Christ subsequently died to purchase the grace of salvation which goes forward and backward in time so that it has always been available to us. I.e., it is that heart bent on evil which is the inheritance of each of us which made the salvation process necessary.
Click to expand...
I believe that it was an historical event. Also, that if Adam and Eve did not sin by obtaining the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, that we would be born immortal, that we would always be holy, and nature would be subservient to us, whereas we are now subservient to it. Also I speculate what that “knowledge” was. I think it was the idea of “free will”. Adam and Eve asked for it, and they and we got it. Now, the irony is that we have to struggle very hard to get back to the way we were–always in God’s will !!
 
The story of Adam and Eve, (whether factual in how the actual events took place or not), is the story of our creation and fall and hope for redemption. God looked at what He had made and said it was good. God did not make our hearts bent on evil. God did not originally intend sin or death to be part of our world, but He gave us free will and allowed us to choose. Mankind choose to sin, and thus introduced the consequence of sin, which is death.

The Church does not prevent us from reading the story as historical fact, nor does it require us to view it as historically accurate. Genesis tells Truth. God made creation good but we prefered to taste evil.

Our merciful God seeks to restore His creation, so Jesus entered into the world to conquer death and restore us to life. Thus we proclaim: Dying You destroyed our death, rising You restored our life, Lord Jesus, come in glory!
 
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