[quote]BackInAction wrote:
Why did God create the serpent in the first place (especially with the capabilities it had)?
Here’s an analogy: Say I have a kid and he turns 13 years old. At the house, we are all sitting around when I show him a playboy. I tell him “you cannot look at this or touch this, it is mine and mine alone”. I leave the room, but send in my brother in law who I know likes to tell my kids to do things they shouldn’t. He tells him “it’s okay to read, why would he have put it there in the first place”. When I come back and find out my kid has read it, I blame him INSTEAD of playing my brother in law. I kick my son out of my house.
See why the Adam and Eve story doesn’t make much sense? I know my 13 year old boy would die to see the playboy. So what do I do? I send in the brother in law to just make sure he fails. God did the same thing with the creation of the snake.
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That analogy does not fit with what happened in the Garden of Eden.
First of all a Playboy magazine to a 13 year old kid going through puberty is and enticement because it is restricting a natural desire to be attracted to pretty women. That would be unfair. God did not prohibit them from performing any natural desires or functions. Again, when they got hungry all they had to do was eat from any other tree until they were satisfied. The forbidden tree was not the only tree available to eat from so the restriction was not the only source of food like the one Playboy being the only source to satisfy a 13 year old’s desire.
Two, as you stated in your analogy you know that the 13 year old is dying to see the playboy. In other words he already knows about Playboys and already has a desire to look at them. Adam and Eve did not know anything about the tree. God did not explain the tree’s significance. The tree had food on it and they could have gotten that food from any other tree. That’s why that was such a fair test because it was not overly restrictive in any way. Adam and Eve weren’t dying to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree like the kid in your analogy is dying to see the Playboy.
Third, the Bible doesn’t state that God told them the restriction and then sent Satan in the garden to intentionally test them. No, Satan did this completely on his own. God may have known that Satan was going to do that and if he did he wisely let the situation play out so that the issues about God’s sovereignty and whether humans can rule themselves could be raised and then God could completely and throughly address them.
Forth, the snake was just a mouth piece or puppet Satan used to tempt Eve. The spirit being that became Satan the Devil who was created long before Adam and Eve is the one to blame.
This is a more fitting analogy (not a perfect analogy).
Say if one owned a winery and had many acres of land to run his winery business. An in-law is going through hard times so the owner invites him to live on his land and work for him. The owner gives him his own living quarters and supports him financially with anything he needs. Since this is the owners business and his property he naturally want the in-law to obey and listen to what he has to say but the owner is not 100 percent certain he will. To see if he will listen to the owner decides to test his loyalty right away. The owner have a magic bottle of wine that will enable the person who drinks it the ability to start and run a successful wine business. So the owner takes his in-law down into the wine cellar where there are thousands of bottles of wine. The owners magic bottle is sitting on the table. The owner doesn’t tell him the significance of the bottle so that when he looks at it looks just like the other thousands of bottles on the shelves. The owner then tells him that when he gets thirsty he can take any bottle of wine he wants except the bottle on the table. He also tells the in-law the penalty for drinking wine from the bottle on the table is being kicked out. At this point this is a very fair test because the owner is not being overly restrictive because there are thousands of other bottles he can drink from when he gets thirsty, he doesn’t know the significance of wine and not drinking wine from the bottle on the table is the only restriction.
Later, one of your sons comes in and says to the in-law. “Is it really so that you can’t drink any wine at all?” The in-law then says “no I can drink from any bottle except for the bottle on the table because if I do I will get kicked out.” The son then says “that’s a lie he will not kick you out. The owner knows that if you drink from that bottle you will have the ability to run the business better than he can.” At that moment the in-law then begins to desire that wine so that he can take over the business and run it better than the owner. He desires that wine because he can’t get the same affect from any other wine except for the wine on the table. The in-law then gives into temptation and drinks the wine. When the owner approaches him and ask him why he drank the wine, instead of saying sorry and asking for forgiveness he say “Your son who you introduced me to said I should drink the wine so I drank it.” At that moment you would call your guards in and kick both the in-law and the son off your property.
This is similiar to what happened in the Garden of Eden.
