|
In fact it doesn't seem like a punishment to me, but perhaps we don't mean quite the same thing when we use the word. I understand that we use the word punishment in several ways. Sometimes we refer to anything that is hard or painful or damaging as punishment. However, in this context, I hesitate over the word because the implication would seem to have to do with God's actions and motives. Why did there need to be a tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden? I don't know. Perhaps if the two original humans had declined to eat the fruit, as commanded, there would have been a later time when after proper preparation they would have eaten in some rite of passage. Who knows? I can speculate and imagine, I can hypothesize about what might have been different if the fruit had not been eaten when it was and the way it was, but I don't know. I accept that it happened as described in Genesis. And based on the whole biblical picture, I accept that God knew what he was doing and that the design was the best it could be, and in no way capricious or ill-willed. The design was consistent with the character, intelligence and power of God. The outcome in the garden is described by Paul as "condemnation" (Romans 5:18). Death and condemnation are bad outcomes, beyond any doubt. Perhaps in our English thesaurus we could pretty well hook condemnation and punishment together, but there still is a connotation associated with the word punishment that I find questionable here. Suppose a parent instructs a child not to touch the stove, because it is hot and will hurt them. The child then touches the stove at some point, and the observant parent spanks the child. Then the child has been punished. But what if instead the child touched the stove and got burned? We could clearly agree the spanking was punishment. Would we say that the burn was punishment? My overall view of the consequences in the garden is that they got burned, not that they got spanked.
|
