Gosh, @Susan_Linkletter, still seems to be a lot of items here that are not Universal to all of Earthâs Christian communities.
You are correct George Brooks when you state that what I take from the creation story is not universal to all christian communities. Its not something that I was taught but rather what I get from the creation story.
In the early days of creation, God was not an invisible God, He walked with Adam and Eve. It is only after the fall of man that God separates Himself from man by no longer walking with Adam and Eve in the garden. Seeking God was not a priority for Adam and Eve, instead they chose to seek knowledge and the satisfaction of their physical bodies.
It makes for nice imagery, but Iâm not sure it is a crucial point. We could just as easily say "Godâs will has power!
Yes we could say Gods will has power just as easily as we can say His spoken word has power. All spoken words have power. Donât they?
I donât see how (Science) has anything to do with our quest for Resurrection.
For some, science gets in the way of spirituality because there are some people that will not believe in the concept of God since it cannot be proven that God exists.There is no search for resurrection if you rule out the existence of a God that is capable of resurrection.
5] Life on Earth is exactly what God expected. It took him millions of years to get it that way.
Life on earth as it is now is not what God wanted for us at all. What we learn from the creation story is that it was His plan for us to live in paradise in perfect harmony with Him. What we have now is what we get when we choose to reject God and to rely upon our own physical knowledge - which can be used for good or evil. I believe that Gods heart is broken over what life on earth has become and how far we have drifted from the perfection that He had intended. I believe that each one of us symbolically stands before the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and that we have to choose from which tree we want each day. Many choose to eat from the tree of knowledge and turn their back on a spiritual life because they cannot consolidate their knowledge of science with a literal understanding of the Bible.
Is there any way we could be less insulting to teachers and scientists?
Its not an insult to science or teachers, its just an observation that people often turn their back on a life of faith if they choose to believe evolutionary theory, and its a shame people feel that they have to make that choice because science and creation can go hand in hand if you donât take the theory of creation literally. Evolution nicely fills in the details left out of the creation story.
This seems pretty clearly refuted in Genesis. If we were created to live forever in our physical form,we would not have needed the Tree of Life to obtain immortality. I think we were created to achieve immortality in a spiritual body.
In the creation story our physical bodies were initially created to live forever - the physical and spiritual were one. It was not until after the fall of man (when Adam and Eve chose the tree of knowledge over the tree of life) that man would have to die as a result (and the physical and spiritual were separated). So I believe what God had intended for us, is what we find in the creation story before the fall, when He walked with us in the garden and we had physical bodies that did not have to die and had full access to spiritual knowledge (God Himself). The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge are symbolic of the choices we must make as humans. Because the physical body is now subject to death (life is limited to about 80 years) we must choose to receive eternal life by actively choosing to seek spiritual knowledge and discernment from God - essentially what Adam and Eve had when they had access to the Tree of Life.
Men and women were equal before the fall.
It wasnât until after the fall of man that men gained superiority over women (and physical death). this does not mean we have to live that way, I believe the ideal is equality, what we had before the fall, and that is what those of us who choose to pursue spirituality should strive for. We should be striving to restore our fallen earth to what God had originally intended.