A Daily Genesis

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The ban on the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, was tempered by a carte blanche to eat fruits from all the rest of the trees; including the tree of life. So it's not like God pigeonholed Adam and forced him to eat from the wrong tree in order to survive. Earlier, in Gen 1:29, God gave Adam permission to eat all manner of plant life. So he had lots of options. An abundance of other nutrition was available. Therefore, if Adam ate from the wrong tree, he had no excuse for it. And that is what really made eating from that tree so serious-- it was willful, and done in full understanding of both the ban and the consequence.

Compare Num 15:27-31 where willful sin is described as a category of sin for which there is neither atonement nor forgiveness under the terms and conditions of the covenant that Yhvh's people agreed upon with God as per Deut 29:9-15.

But why on earth would God plant a deadly tree in an otherwise perfect environment? Was that really necessary? What real purpose does a tree serve that has the potential to kill? Why even create such a tree in the first place? Was that tree a bad tree? No, it was not a bad tree. When God finished creating, He looked over His work on the 6th day and pronounced it all not just good, but "very" good.

The tree of the knowledge of good and bad wasn't a bad tree per se; any more than toad stools, poison ivy, lightening, rattlesnakes, scorpions, avalanches, gravity, tornadoes, typhoons, hurricanes, cactus needles, tsunamis, earthquakes, electricity, fire, lava, lead, cadmium, and arsenic and hemlock are bad in and of themselves. Those things are hazardous, yes, but they all fit into the natural scheme of things. When people willfully cross over boundaries, ignoring the dangers, and start messing around, then they get hurt and it's really no one's fault but their own. For example:

San Francisco was once destroyed by an earthquake related to the San Andreas fault; but where did they rebuild San Francisco? Right back in the same place.

Los Angeles is at risk of the same San Andreas, and are even now as I write this preparing for a major quake. Are there plans to evacuate Los Angeles and relocate the city? No. They plan to ride out whatever the San Andreas and/or any of the other faults throw at them and city planners and disaster control specialists have already calculated the body count because the Andreas is overdue for a massive slip and so is the Puente Hills Blind Thrust System. City officials know big quakes are coming but nobody is getting out of the way.

All around the island of Japan are ancient monoliths, some as much as 600 years old, with the inscription "Do not build your homes below this point". The monoliths testify to past tsunamis. People back then set up those monoliths to warn future generations; but do future generations listen? No; they don't. 25,000 Japanese are listed as dead and/or missing from the tsunami of 2011 because they settled in communities below those ancient water marks.

The below-sea-level city of New Orleans was flooded by hurricane Katrina in 2005. Did city planners wise up and relocate the city to higher ground? No; they rebuilt right back in the same place.

On the eastern edge of the Democratic Republic of the Congo rumbles two-mile-high Mt. Nyirangongo; one of the most active volcanoes in the world. The city of Goma, consisting of something like one million people, will be pelted with falling rocks and lava splatter, and buried by molten rock and pyroclastic flows of superheated dust just as sudden as the city of Pompeii if that mountain should ever decide to get serious about its business. Past eruptions bear this out.

And as if the volcano itself isn't threat enough, 2,590 hectare Lake Kivu nearby conceals an enormous underwater concentration of carbon dioxide and methane which could be released by a major eruption, spreading a lethal cloud across Goma that would spare no one.

Are Gomites concerned? No. Thousands of homes-- shacks constructed of hand-hewn eucalyptus boards and sheet metal roofs --have been built right on top of the solidified lava of past eruptions. In other words; the Gomites are knowingly living at ground zero; right in Mt. Nyirangongo's known kill zone.

The Cumberland River inflicted major flood damage throughout the city of Nashville in 2010. Pete Fisher, manager of the Grand Ole Opry needed a canoe to get across the parking lot and enter the theater. He reported that had someone been sitting in the front row seats, they would have seven feet of water over their heads. Did the owners move the Opry to higher ground? Nope, the Opry is still right there on the banks of the Cumberland targeted for the next flood event.

City planners have known for years that Manhattan is so few feet above mean sea level that any sizable tsunami at all would flood both the city and its subway system; but have the Sand Hogs stopped boring tunnels or have construction workers stopped erecting buildings? No, they keep right on boring and erecting; and in 2012 hurricane Sandy pushed a surge of sea water inland and crippled the city's public transportation and much of its electrical power.

Adam was given fair warning what would happen if he ate from the tree. It was just as fair a warning as parents give their kids not to poke paper clips into wall sockets or lean over too close with their face when they pet a strange dog. Consequences for spurning a parent's instructions in those cases can be very terrible.

"A prudent person foresees the danger ahead and takes precautions; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences." (Prv 22:3)

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Updated 11-28-2015 at 09:31 AM by WebersHome

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