Beginning

[Beginning in a slightly different place: with us. We start out in our lives and after not too much time problems become obvious. Some things are wrong.... somewhere we start to question: is it me? is it you? is it the natural world? is it the system? and it escalates from there. Something is faulty, and worse, it looks like a fatal flaw. Yeah, death and decay, everywhere; we block, we hold the line, but for some of us we start to understand: nothing we do is enough, nothing is really working in a lasting way. We're stuck. And at this point we begin making a decision.

We make a decision about what tack we will take and where we will look for answers. For those who look to the God account as related by the traditional Jewish and Christian communities here is the explanation (of how we got here):


(concept 1) There is a God who created everything, and it was quite different from what we now see. It was good. This God kept an ongoing interest and relationship with His entire creation.

(concept 2) There was a part of creation that was in a spiritual dimension. This was evidenced by beings called angels. There was, already present, forces of good and evil (represented by the fact that one could know both good and evil, if one chose).

At this point, a number of facets begin to arise, some inferred here and elaborated elsewhere. The first problem is that when everything was created good, where did the evil come from? Free Moral Agency makes its debut.

God says some things about Himself: He compares himself to light. And what is darkness, but the absence of light? Evil is simply what you have when God is removed . Free moral agency is the real ability of a creature of God to refuse Him access and interaction. God shows His ability to take this kind of risk. But why?

The New Testament has the explanation that God was willing to suffer with a great deal to have something very worthwhile, and valuable in His estimation- but back to the free moral agents. These are of two types: the temporal and the eternal. The temporal is man -he was booted out of the garden that he might not have what would eternally solidify him in a state apart from God; the eternal is the devil, otherwise known as an angel of the highest order (one who covers) who as an eternal being remains in the state of evil and rebellion that was once chosen. We are not told alot about that,but we are told more about us and that is where we turn our attention.

The problem of evil and how it affects man, and what God decided to do about it(and when) is where we get into the beginning of the question of why a Christ that had to die and how does that make a difference to us?

There is a Christian idea called predestination and a lot of philosophy has come out of that idea, but the account simply says that God knew ahead of time how man would choose to eat of knowledge of good and evil, and that a decision was made within the inner counsel of the Godhead that a remedy would be in readiness (that is why it is expressed that the lamb of God was sacrificed from the foundation). Now a timeout:

Many balk at the idea of the trinity, but they have absolutely no problem seeing humans at least in two or more parts. The account looked at here says man has three parts: body, soul, and spirit, in an image (representation) of God. It says God has a plurality in one. Elohim (plural) says "Oh, Israel, The LORD is One".

Second thing is that the choice of the knowledge of good and evil was one which excluded God because it was in disobedience to His *one* expressed command, and was presented as a way to become God, oneself (seeming to not need Him anymore).

Some of the problems here: Original man, Adam, did not become god of this world...he managed to trade his elevated position of being in dominion to the Temptor. Guess who? He died in that part which funneled the life giving sap of God into his life, the spirit. After a spiritual separation from God all the rest (body and soul) could not sustain itself. The rule of sin and death begins.

This is where we came in. Death and decay of ourselves and what we love, and even of our experience of the capacity to love. And nothing lasting that we can do about it.
That takes us to the next two concepts: the order of Justice and Mercy as it is in the Person of God. What demands those make and what this has to do with us. OR Why Christ came and what is the importance of Jesus? To be continued.....

DISCLAIMER: This is my understanding within my faith. I offer it for consideration by way of an answer.

With that ...we can go on to the continuation Next