As a devout Evangelical Christian for almost fifty years, I never doubted or questioned the Bible. How could I? The Bible was God’s Word — inspired, inerrant, and infallible. To question the Bible was to question God himself. Certainly, I came across passages of Scripture that didn’t make sense to me or seemed to contradict other passages of Scripture, but I never doubted the teachings of the Bible. I believed God would make these verses clear to me in time, and if he didn’t, I would still trust him, believing, by faith, that all things would be made known, if not on Earth, in Heaven.
As an Evangelical-preacher-turned-atheist, I am free to read and question the Bible at will. No more faithing-it or trusting that God would make all things known to me. As a result, the Bible reads very differently for me than it did when I was a hellfire-and-brimstone, old-fashioned, sin-hating, Holy Ghost-filled Baptist preacher.
In Genesis 2, we find God giving a command to Adam and Eve:
And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Genesis 3 adds:
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked;
….
And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
God planted a tree in the Garden of Eden whose fruit would give a person the knowledge of good and evil if he ate the proverbial apple. Strangely, Eve knew that eating the fruit would make her wise. How did she know this? There was another tree in the garden, the Tree of Life. Eating from this tree would give the eater eternal life.
God told Mr. and Mrs. Adam that the day they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would die. This did not stop the first humans from plucking a shiny red apple from the tree. Both Adam and Eve ate the fruit. Did they immediately die? No, they lived for hundreds of years afterward. God lied to them when he said, “For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
Further, who was the LORD talking to when he said, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.” While we cannot be certain who the LORD was speaking to, it is likely some sort of heavenly beings or gods. The LORD feared Adam and Eve would become eternal gods if they gained access to the Tree of Life, so he placed Cherubims and a flaming sword at the entrance of the Garden of Eden, forever barring humans access to the Tree of Life.
If God is sovereign and knows the end from the beginning, he knew beforehand everything Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (who is never called the Devil or Satan) would do. Why create the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Why tempt Adam and Eve when you knew they would fail? According to Evangelicals, everything bad, sinful, and evil flows from the moment Adam and Eve ate the apple. Wouldn’t it have been better to put the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the equivalent of Fort Knox, safe and secure from human access? Instead, God put fresh-baked cookies on the kitchen counter, thinking they would be safe from children seeing and eating them. As any grandparent knows, cookies are kryptonite for children (and adults too). Want to keep your grandkids out of the cookies? Put them away where they can’t find them. Why didn’t God do the same for Adam and Eve and the whole human race?
These are the sorts of issues you must wrestle with if you are a Bible literalist. If, on the other hand, you think Genesis 1-3 is a fictional story, poetry, or metaphors, the aforementioned story makes perfect sense as the author attempts to explain why the world is the way it is. It is literalists who are forced to come up with all sorts of insane interpretations to justify their reading of the text.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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This story, if taken literally, leaves questions.
Why would Adam and Eve understand what “die” means if they live in a perfect world where nothing dies?
If nothing dies, how could they eat? Picking and eating a fruit requires that fruit’s death.
Is deliberately tempting someone a sin? I thought tempting others was considered wrong, yet here god is tempting his creatures by putting a tree in the garden with instructions to leave it alone. If the Christian god is sinless, then tempting someone is NOT a sin?
I heard evangelical preachers try to counter the promise that Adam and Eve would die on the day that they ate the fruit. They said the disobedience allowed the process of death to enter the world. Also, “a day is as 1,000 years and 1,000 years is as a day” which is why the oldest human was supposedly 969 years old – he had to die within god’s “day”.
Not a problem. God may be wrathful but God is apparently also mischievous. He set the first couple up to fail. Well thanks a lot, lord. We were just trying to learn stuff and you slapped us down for it.
Yeah, these questions about that time in history always bothered me. I accepted as fact that this happened, though not with an apple, though. It had to be something else that was better. And, it was obvious to me that it was a baited situation. Calling it a set up is accurate. I also noticed that loaded questions would be asked of people,too.
I’ve always hated this story. Set up humans to fail, then punish them and all their descendants forever? Who could love a god like that?
If the God of Genesis were a law enforcement officer, his actions would be considered entrapment.
I am studying those difficult Bible verses.
No one is perfect in this world including God. I am thinking that God was experimenting to see how humans react.
But thanks for your writing. It helped me to understand that God didnot kill them or make them die inmediately as God said.
Now, I am more curious on why a Pastor became Athiest than why God kept that tree of fruit of knowledge. It is more difficult or impossible to believe that there is no Creator God.
Do you think “hell” is one of God’s imperfections re: creation Beethovan?
If you study the Evilness of human beings, you will thank God for punishing them in hell.
E.g. Putin killed so many Ukranian men and his army raped so many Ukranian mothers before eyes of children. If you expect God to send these evil persons to heaven, then you are evil.
ISIS men raped 12yr girls after praying to their Allah Idol and sexually abused many young girls for many months. A good God should send these to hell. If you expect God to send these heaven, then you are Evil.
Donot support many evil people in world and oppose God’s justice system of punishing these evil people in hell. Support God and be happy that God punishes Evil persons in this world and also in hell.
🤔🤔
So… um.. how does that answer the question Zoe asked?
I think maybe he is saying that “hell” is one of God’s created imperfections.
It may be Sage, that Beethoven is baiting me, or “experimenting” like God to see how I react. 🙂
We can clearly see how Beethoven reacted.
I’d class as evil those who refuse to allow women dominion over their own bodies by denying them the right to obtain an abortion.
It looks like root cause you became an Athiest is due to False teachings and not the Bible teachings itself.
You have mentioned
“According to Evangelicals, everything bad, sinful, and evil flows from the moment Adam and Eve ate the apple.”
This false teaching is based on False teaching called “Original sin” created by RC Idolator, Augustine and many False teacher Pastors follow lies and false teachings of RC Idolators called as (False) Theology.
Let us do case study. If a man drink Alcohol for many years and dies of it, how does it relate to Adam & Eve? It will be evil to attribute the Alcohol addict’s sins to Adam & Eve.
In Ezekiel 18, God said that a person who sins will die. But he will not die for his parents sins.
“The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.” – Ezekiel 18:20
Donot follow many False teacher Pastors who teach lies and False teachings. But follow correct teachings from Bible.
Leave False teacher Pastors, False churches. But donot leave God and His Bible.
In the world, only few walk in narrow way even inside Christianity. Many walk in broader way which leads to destruction even in Christianity as per Matthew 7:13,14.
Praise God! Thanks to you I’ve seen the light.
Sigh
Must be hard to carry all those right beliefs around.
“Donot follow many False teacher Pastors who teach lies and False teachings. But follow correct teachings from Bible.”
How do we determine who is a false teacher? Maybe you are a false teacher.
“Leave False teacher Pastors, False churches. But donot leave God and His Bible.”
How do we know who is a false teacher and which churches are false?
“In the world, only few walk in narrow way even inside Christianity. Many walk in broader way which leads to destruction even in Christianity as per Matthew 7:13,14.”
And you are one of those walking in the narrow way, right? Sigh
https://brucegerencser.net/2022/03/why-i-use-the-word-sigh/
Be aware that I can rebut every claim you’ve made in your comments. Be also aware that every sect thinks it is right; that their interpretation of the Bible is right, and all others are damnable heresies. I’ve concluded that every Christian sect is right, and until believers agree on “one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism,” why should unbelievers give a shit about your peculiar interpretations of the Bible?
Many of the readers of this blog are former devout Christians; people who loved God and obeyed the Bible. Some of us are former preachers, missionaries, youth workers, evangelists, or worship leaders; many of us have theological educations. We are not ignorant about what you are peddling.
Do you realize the Catholics created all of the foundation your Christian faith is built on and created your holy book? If you throw out everything that is Catholic then you don’t have much left.
I think actually it goes back before Adam and Eve, Beethoven. After all, God was/is suppose to be perfect (though I noted your thinking otherwise). So God put it all in motion. Perhaps that was part of God’s imperfection?