God and man

The original korean text: http://blog.naver.com/stevision/50025322935

 

(donga.com's netizen forum, Sep. 25, 2004)

 

 

Of course God can do all he want to do to men. But God made human beings in his image and treats them as personal beings. The reason for treating human beings as personal subjects is that he will to call them to account of their deeds.

 

Why was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden? (The fruit is said to give the man the knowledge of good and evil.) Someone blames the God who set the tree there, saying, “Adam wouldn't have sinned and died, but would live eternally in the Garden, had it not been for the fruit there!” Is this blame fair?

 

We will not commit the sin of complaining to God when we understand the meaning of the fruit of Eden well. The fruit of Eden is one which gives a man the wisdom to discern good and evil. The devil told Eve that, having eaten the fruit, she would be like God with her eyes opened. So she ate the fruits and gave the rest to Adam her husband. This story is in the Genesis. This story in Genesis explains how a man becomes a sinner before God. The clue is that the fruit gives the man the wisdom to determine what is the good and what is the evil! Therefore to eat the fruit is to define for oneself what is good and what is evil. If a man lives not according to the standards of good and evil which the perfect God set, but sets his own criteria of good and evil and lives according to them although he is not omnipotent, he is the very man that is a sinner before God and is to be banished from the garden of God.

 

 

The God defined it as good that a woman must remain a virgin until she gets married. But a woman deficient of something thinks physical pleasure is the good, lives in squalor, becomes a sinner before God, is robbed of all pleasure of heaven, then lives miserably. God says homosexuality is definitely a sin, but a perverse man thinks homosex to be a matter of personal taste, and does homosex. This cursed man is the evildoer who is a sinner and man of hell. The story of the fruit of Eden teaches us that we can live a life of heaven when we set the good and evil in the standards of God's law.

 

Then why the God created so imperfect a man that he came to eat the forbidden fruit? But this question comes from misunderstanding. Which is more perfect, a robot or a human being of normal character? Man is more perfect when he wills himself to do what God places among the good deeds and to reject the evil deeds. God made more perfect human beings. He, who complains about the forbidden fruit to the God, is a man short of a good will to live by evading the evil and choosing the good, and short of character as well. Considering these, we come to realize that to live as a good man is not easy indeed. But how beautiful it is to live a good life! How nice it is! God blesses those who live such life. He delights in them and gives them the everlasting life(, that is the fruit of life of Eden).