Good God 3

When Adam and Eve sinned and ate from the forbidden tree everything changed. They went from living in a paradise to living in a world of chaos. They went from perfectly formed fruits and vegetables to thorns and thistles. They went from bodies being fed by the tree of life, never aging, never dying to bodies that began to grow old, have hurts and pain and sickness, finally to die because they were worn out. Look at these passages from Genesis3:

To the woman he said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."

To Adam he said,
"Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you,
'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."

Pain is introduced, whether it was there prior to their sin is merely speculation. There is no hint that it was, but surely it was going to be there from then on. Other things changed as well. The relationship between husband and wife would be different; the woman was now subject to her husband and he was to rule (oh, we hate that word and thought, don’t we?) over her. It doesn’t mean she was going to allow him to, but it does mean that that was now the natural order of thing.

Adam was to be the provider and it wasn’t going to be easy. In Eden things just kept on producing and the work was light, but now… Thorns and thistles were going to fight the farmer and the good plants. Sweat would be the norm and the end of it all was to be dust. “For out of it (dust) you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Life changed for man and what once was easy was now a chore. Physical death would now be a part of every man’s life and the hurt and heartache was to be common.

Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—" therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the Garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. English Standard Version

Good and evil were now part of man, but he was not equipped to handle it. Only God was able to live above sin, so that sin could not control him. Man was weakened by his flesh and unable to live without sin. And as man sinned it became easier and easier and more a part of his psyche so that the distance between what God wanted for him and where he actually was became greater with each passing day. Man became more and more evil and corrupted. God could not allow wickedness to be eternal, so He took away access to the tree of life. Man was driven from the garden and began from that moment to suffer aging and death. Still the question remains, “WHY?” The why of corruption is easy. We can understand why He couldn’t allow sin to grow and grow until it became the only thing we ever did, so He limited us and our time here. But what about the pain and suffering? That’s the difficult part.

The simplest answer is that pain, suffering and death are things that God uses to chastise us, so that we might learn how bad sin really is and turn away from it, so that we might return to the God who loves us. One might say, “But you cannot show a verse that says Haiti’s people suffered an earthquake because of their sin,” and they would be correct. On the other hand, one needs only to examine Genesis three to see that these tragic things are what God put here in order to get our attention and turn us back to Him. If there had been no sin there would have been no reason for pain, suffering and death.