Esheaun Stroakuss wrote:Why was Eve eating from the Tree of Knowledge a bad thing? My reading of it is that obtaining knowledge is somehow a sin, though that is my interpretation. I always thought Satan wasn't being particularly nefarious.
Maybe it could help, to have a bit of context about what happened
before eden, and before the creation of the world, to understand better the value of the events happening during genesis, in eden. (in christian lore, obviously)
I'm not sure how accurate is my understanding of it (anyone else feel free to correct), but here:
Before God created the world, he was experimenting with creating spirits, which is when the angels were created.
Angels being spirits, are eternal, but were also created to have free will, which is to be able to decide one own route(=next actions) indipendently from the will of God. Free will is the requisite for having an independent will. And God created his angels to be independent.
One of the angels created by God sort of broke, and had his free will get stuck on a faulty option. That defective angel was Satan, and the faulty option he got stuck on was believing he could be greater than the God who created him. Which belief is something pretty stupid on the cosmological sense, it goes against the rules of existence, which God manages, it's like saying a car can produce fuel for itself, or saying that by walking backward gravity gets reversed too. But aside the nonsense, the belief of Satan was an attack on the authority of God.
Satan managed to corrupt some other angels with his faulty belief, and tried to start a revolt, before he and the other corrupted angels were kicked out. (here may come the observation of, why didn't God erase them? instead of just kicking them out? only God knows)
After Satan was kicked out, God shared his divine plan with those angels who resisted satan and didn't get corrupted, so that the angels loyal to God would not be left out.
Then comes God creating the material world.
This time God wanted to create again some indipendent beings, humans, but (this is my take) after the odd outcome with satan, God wanted to move more carefully, so he progressed in steps.
Steps: create a being, give it free will, give it eternal life (but this piece can be removed in case of trouble), let them gain experience to control their free will without losing control of it, finally give them knowledge once they are ready for it.
Humans were created, they had free will, they had access to the tree of life. Then God ordered them to don't eat from the tree of good and evil.
Then comes satan again, infiltrating inside eden, and tempting Eve to eat from the tree of good and evil before it was time (before God allowed them), Eve disobeyed the order from God and ate from the tree of good and evil. Then propagated her sin to Adam, making him disobey God too.
What followed, was God removing access to eternal life from humans, telling Adam he would have to live by working, and Eve would have to bear children, this is just the description of how life goes without eternal life. Why God removed eternal life from humans? My take is damage control, otherwise the original sin would have been enhanced by having an eternal life, like Satan is eternally faulty.
Like with the first rebellion of satan, the issue with Eve isn't either the tree of knowledge or the belief of being greater than God, the issue is not obeying the orders from God. The issue is misusing free will, to make stupid decisions which are either nonsensical or self-damaging.
Why did God just give an order about not eating from the tree of knowledge instead of making the tree not accessible? Or why did God allow satan to infiltrate eden? (assuming God allowed it, instead of satan just slipping in without getting noticed)
Because the choice of Eve wasn't predetermined, she had free will (Adam also had free will), God doesn't know what beings with free will are going to do, it's by God's own design, it was always possible Eve would have rejected the temptation/corruption of satan, maybe God was even wishing for that outcome, it would have been pretty amazing for a new creation to reject the corruption from an older creation, but it didn't go like that.