The Serpent

Psalm 1 instructs us, "... to meditate on His word day and night."  

From Genesis, Chapter 3:

The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her.

Many Christians speculate real genuine love is a choice.  We can choose to love or we choose not to love.  We also choose who we love.  Real genuine love cannot exist without a choice... or so I have heard.  Christians speculate, repeatedly, that God doesn't want us to be robots, which is why He has given us the free will to accept or reject Him.  It's popular in the Christian community.  

So I ask, where did the assumption start that Christians would love God less, or not at all, if Satan wasn't roaming to and fro?  I ask, who said if God was our only choice that we wouldn't or couldn't choose to love Him, genuinely love Him?  If God was the only option, the question I ask is why wouldn't I love Him?  Why wouldn't I obey Him?  Why wouldn't I want to please Him, worship Him, and honor Him?  

I haven't been able to reconcile that God, my God, designed a world filled with evil and sin because His first choice, Eden, didn't work out as He hoped.  The popular reason or explanation for this world and its evil goes something like this... 

He, meaning God, really wanted to provide a better place but it just didn't work out... you know, that fellow Lucifer sinned because he wanted to be a tough guy.

Am I to believe God tried to create something good but wasn't aware of the evil and sin that would play a critical role in His creation?  Am I to believe God didn't know Lucifer, His first perfect creation, would sin?  Am I to believe Lucifer's disobedience was not planned for?  Am I to believe God didn't foresee that Lucifer would rally a third of the angels to oppose God?  Am I to believe God is winging it, making it up as He goes, or pencil whipping His way through the day?    

Most Christians would say yes, that God wanted us to stay in the garden.  But, Lucifer wanted to be God and thus we find ourselves waiting for Christ to return.  Therefore, I am now presented with a God that CANNOT or WILL NOT intervene on our behalf.  It's a God sized dilemma that leaves a God who... 

1. Lacks the love and compassion to intervene (will not do anything).
2. Lacks the power and ability to intervene (cannot do anything, wants to but can't).

Is the knowledge of good and evil is a prerequisite to be formed into the image of God?  Is that knowledge necessary for us to choose to love God, to choose to follow and obey Him, to choose to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior? 

I am, however, most intrigued by what happens to the serpent if Eve passes the test?  If she doesn't eat the fruit and flicks the ole serpent on its nose and says, "Get goin', kid!"  Where does he go?  Does he crawl away never to be heard from again?  Does the serpent change his ways and confess, "Man, I know.  I was pretty crazy back in the day.  What was I thinking?"  If Eve doesn't eat of the fruit, then might Adam eat it?  Or might one of their children eat of the fruit? 

Or, is another option available?  Just maybe God intended the world to be a mess.  Not for all eternity, just for now, temporarily, and for His purpose. 

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts. 

Isaiah 55: 8-9

1. Would a God who lacks the compassion and love to intervene be worthy of our love and worship?  
2. Just because some do not see Him intervene in a certain manner and by a certain time, does that indicate He doesn't intervene at all?  
3. Would a God who lacks the power and authority to control His creation be worthy of our love and worship? 
4. Can LOVE exist if there is nothing to oppose it?

It’s Carl Jung who said, "There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course.  Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness."

Have a good and godly day.