Hi, I love the way you approached this. Please allow me to unpack a thought here 😅 When you talked about God judging us, following a declaration of His creation as good, something clicked. It's a thought I've explored for a while but it's been tricky for me to explain sometime, but your approach shed a new light on it. When God was engaged with creating the world, He knew what was good, and what was bad/evil, and he actively chose to fashion the world in a way that was good, morally and functionally. He, by virtue of His nature, had that foresight into what it meant for a world to be evil and dysfunctional (Hebrew word "rah"), and he left it out. When Adam and Eve were created, they were privy to only the good, and they were given the freedom to explore the fruits of all the good things God had created. It was God's perfect world, and they were put in it to partake. However, they were also given the freedom to choose to explore "a different world", and this freedom was imbued in the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a fruit which would "make them like God, knowing good and evil". Adam and Eve unfortunately opted for the other world, and in doing so, they got plunged into a world where they gradually became acquainted with the evil that they wanted to know; they were accompanied by God, and shown what it means to have evil "declared/created/propagated", and amidst it all, God always advised and helped them choose what was good. In this world, they bore their first children, all of whom we descended from, and these children inevitably got imbued with the nature to sin, to fail, to live in dysfunction by doing both the good and evil that this "new world" haboured. Inherently, these children were deviations from all the good things God created in His good world. Fast-forward to the time of judgement... In order to become a part of God's good world, to live in that perfect functional utopia that we tend to crave for, we would have to be inspected and declared a good fit, like God did when He first created everything. So while there is in fact a side of judgement that addresses our wrong doings, I would argue (as the Bible presents it) that the core of it is in having us be a good fit for God's world. It's why Jesus' sacrifice washes away our wrong doings, and the transformation we get when our bodies are resurrected makes us fit for God's world. So, I think that the judgement is more focused on what has been made (and consented to remaining) good and fit in that very moment (by virtue of our choice to embrace or reject Jesus' fix), and not primarily on what was done in the past world (even though they still get addressed and judged).
I appreciate this comment! I'll also add on to that thought: Good is a qualitative descriptor that is only meaningful within a context. For example, when Eve saw the fruit, she saw that "it was good for food". The fruit was "good" in the context of "food". And thus, God's declaration of "good" must mean that it is "useful" in some capacity. If we are God's images, our purpose is to reflect God, including His holiness. And because of sin, we've destroyed that holy image of God that we were supposed to be. John starts his gospel by saying that "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God..." This "In the beginning" brings to mind Genesis 1, when God created and declared everything "good". And so it seems like John is making a theological point that just as in Genesis 1, God created something "good" from that which was "formless and void", Jesus takes a sinful mankind, functionless and useless because of sin, and restores mankind to be "good". And in a twist of irony, Jesus, the perfect and good image of God became physically destroyed, so that we, destroyed images of God through sin, can be restored to be "good" once again, functional as images of God, sinlessly reflecting God's glory. One more thing I find super interesting: When God declared everything to be "very good" at the end of creation, that included the man, the woman, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Therefore, it seems the only logical conclusion is that the potential for the man and the woman to choose to eat from the tree, must have been good as well. And I think this is the case because if there is a choice to choose good, inherently in that choice is also the choice to choose not to do good. But God must have deemed that this free will, even though it leads to the possibility of choosing evil, was good.
@00CollegeChristian I like how you highlight contexts here, all parts of creation had a use/function, and God's declaration of goodness over them were in line with said function. The sun for example was good for light (and heat, and photosynthesis), the ozone layer was put to regulate that heat and keep it within its functional range. God declared these things good for those purposes, but He didn't declare the sun good to live on; to attempt to live on the sun and curse God for burning up on the way there would be folly. Similarly, the tree was good, it served as a conduit for freedom, a specific kind of freedom. The tree's absence would not have taken away Adam's entire freedom, because as far as options go, he had a variety of trees/plant that he could eat from (and this extends to other non-food related choices). But the tree's presence served a unique function of freedom, and knowledge. On the part of freedom, I would say it served the function of autonomy. Weird and imperfect example: self driving cars. A company could theoretically make one without a flaw in its programming (i.e. no internal flaws, no power failure, good motion capture and braking systems, etc. but it would still be subject to external things beyond its control like extremely sudden and fast objects, or sudden disasters), and the company would have no need to include an autonomous drive mode, because every decision made by the human to avoid an accident would have been made by the advanced programme too (the reality of this is more complex, but for the sake of the example, let's assume it's actually a perfect programme). On one hand, adding the autonomous driving mode would seem redundant (I'm not accounting for cases where one would like to drive for leisure), but it would be inconsiderate for the company to block off that access, especially for people who are new to that type of product. And even for the engineers who have worked on the product, tested and trusted it, the absolute lack of freedom to override the system would make them feel uneasy. They would rather have the override button and not need to use it, than not have it at all. Now for God (company/car) and the tree (button), it's even on a different level considering His perfect nature, and the impossibility for Him to be/do wrong. But like the button in the car, the presence of that tree extends a sense of autonomy and respect for the driver's freewilled nature. On the part of knowledge I would speculate that it could have been intended for wisdom and food, as Eve observed, but the context in which it was to be eaten would have been exclusive to God's specific instruction for a time and situation. An example I could use is a controlled experiment. For learning purposes, a professor could give a vial of acid to his students, while guiding their hands and having them covered in the right gear, to show them the effects of acid on certain materials. He could easily dilute the acid at any moment to keep it from corroding other material beyond what the experiment intends, and the student would come out of that experience with a good insight on what it would be like to have acid spread recklessly. They would see that acid, though destructive and capable of evil, can be harnessed to achieve something functional (whether it's a corrosive function of its own, or the function the professor assigned to it in that moment as a conduit of learning). So, yeah (didn't realise my comment would be this long again 😅), like you said, everything, that God created and declared good was indeed good, with the tree included.
Hi, I love the way you approached this.
Please allow me to unpack a thought here 😅
When you talked about God judging us, following a declaration of His creation as good, something clicked. It's a thought I've explored for a while but it's been tricky for me to explain sometime, but your approach shed a new light on it.
When God was engaged with creating the world, He knew what was good, and what was bad/evil, and he actively chose to fashion the world in a way that was good, morally and functionally. He, by virtue of His nature, had that foresight into what it meant for a world to be evil and dysfunctional (Hebrew word "rah"), and he left it out. When Adam and Eve were created, they were privy to only the good, and they were given the freedom to explore the fruits of all the good things God had created. It was God's perfect world, and they were put in it to partake. However, they were also given the freedom to choose to explore "a different world", and this freedom was imbued in the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a fruit which would "make them like God, knowing good and evil".
Adam and Eve unfortunately opted for the other world, and in doing so, they got plunged into a world where they gradually became acquainted with the evil that they wanted to know; they were accompanied by God, and shown what it means to have evil "declared/created/propagated", and amidst it all, God always advised and helped them choose what was good.
In this world, they bore their first children, all of whom we descended from, and these children inevitably got imbued with the nature to sin, to fail, to live in dysfunction by doing both the good and evil that this "new world" haboured. Inherently, these children were deviations from all the good things God created in His good world.
Fast-forward to the time of judgement... In order to become a part of God's good world, to live in that perfect functional utopia that we tend to crave for, we would have to be inspected and declared a good fit, like God did when He first created everything. So while there is in fact a side of judgement that addresses our wrong doings, I would argue (as the Bible presents it) that the core of it is in having us be a good fit for God's world. It's why Jesus' sacrifice washes away our wrong doings, and the transformation we get when our bodies are resurrected makes us fit for God's world.
So, I think that the judgement is more focused on what has been made (and consented to remaining) good and fit in that very moment (by virtue of our choice to embrace or reject Jesus' fix), and not primarily on what was done in the past world (even though they still get addressed and judged).
I appreciate this comment! I'll also add on to that thought: Good is a qualitative descriptor that is only meaningful within a context. For example, when Eve saw the fruit, she saw that "it was good for food". The fruit was "good" in the context of "food". And thus, God's declaration of "good" must mean that it is "useful" in some capacity. If we are God's images, our purpose is to reflect God, including His holiness. And because of sin, we've destroyed that holy image of God that we were supposed to be. John starts his gospel by saying that "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God..." This "In the beginning" brings to mind Genesis 1, when God created and declared everything "good". And so it seems like John is making a theological point that just as in Genesis 1, God created something "good" from that which was "formless and void", Jesus takes a sinful mankind, functionless and useless because of sin, and restores mankind to be "good". And in a twist of irony, Jesus, the perfect and good image of God became physically destroyed, so that we, destroyed images of God through sin, can be restored to be "good" once again, functional as images of God, sinlessly reflecting God's glory.
One more thing I find super interesting: When God declared everything to be "very good" at the end of creation, that included the man, the woman, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Therefore, it seems the only logical conclusion is that the potential for the man and the woman to choose to eat from the tree, must have been good as well. And I think this is the case because if there is a choice to choose good, inherently in that choice is also the choice to choose not to do good. But God must have deemed that this free will, even though it leads to the possibility of choosing evil, was good.
@00CollegeChristian
I like how you highlight contexts here, all parts of creation had a use/function, and God's declaration of goodness over them were in line with said function. The sun for example was good for light (and heat, and photosynthesis), the ozone layer was put to regulate that heat and keep it within its functional range. God declared these things good for those purposes, but He didn't declare the sun good to live on; to attempt to live on the sun and curse God for burning up on the way there would be folly.
Similarly, the tree was good, it served as a conduit for freedom, a specific kind of freedom. The tree's absence would not have taken away Adam's entire freedom, because as far as options go, he had a variety of trees/plant that he could eat from (and this extends to other non-food related choices). But the tree's presence served a unique function of freedom, and knowledge.
On the part of freedom, I would say it served the function of autonomy. Weird and imperfect example: self driving cars. A company could theoretically make one without a flaw in its programming (i.e. no internal flaws, no power failure, good motion capture and braking systems, etc. but it would still be subject to external things beyond its control like extremely sudden and fast objects, or sudden disasters), and the company would have no need to include an autonomous drive mode, because every decision made by the human to avoid an accident would have been made by the advanced programme too (the reality of this is more complex, but for the sake of the example, let's assume it's actually a perfect programme). On one hand, adding the autonomous driving mode would seem redundant (I'm not accounting for cases where one would like to drive for leisure), but it would be inconsiderate for the company to block off that access, especially for people who are new to that type of product. And even for the engineers who have worked on the product, tested and trusted it, the absolute lack of freedom to override the system would make them feel uneasy. They would rather have the override button and not need to use it, than not have it at all. Now for God (company/car) and the tree (button), it's even on a different level considering His perfect nature, and the impossibility for Him to be/do wrong. But like the button in the car, the presence of that tree extends a sense of autonomy and respect for the driver's freewilled nature.
On the part of knowledge I would speculate that it could have been intended for wisdom and food, as Eve observed, but the context in which it was to be eaten would have been exclusive to God's specific instruction for a time and situation. An example I could use is a controlled experiment. For learning purposes, a professor could give a vial of acid to his students, while guiding their hands and having them covered in the right gear, to show them the effects of acid on certain materials. He could easily dilute the acid at any moment to keep it from corroding other material beyond what the experiment intends, and the student would come out of that experience with a good insight on what it would be like to have acid spread recklessly. They would see that acid, though destructive and capable of evil, can be harnessed to achieve something functional (whether it's a corrosive function of its own, or the function the professor assigned to it in that moment as a conduit of learning).
So, yeah (didn't realise my comment would be this long again 😅), like you said, everything, that God created and declared good was indeed good, with the tree included.