DESCRIPTION
Jack discusses the big picture of our choices here on this Earth where God set our lives. He demonstrates that basically, we have two choices, and can pretend more.

When faced with a reality in which your spirit was created by God and will have to give an account for what you’ve done when your life is over, these are your choices, as it appears to me:

1. Embrace the situation and sincerely do your best to please God, learning as you go.
   
   
2. Reject the reality, and live however you want, either:
   
   1. Forthrightly denouncing the reality in full (as an atheist might),
      
      
   2. Being sloppy about some of the details of what God wants, and pretending that sloppiness is OK, or
      
      
   3. Deliberately twisting some of the details into something you like better, and pretending you’re devoted to God as you do it. (Think about it: #2 is also an example of this #3.)
      
   
   

Or in other words, you can live your life either:

1. Really listening to God, or
   
   
2. Not really listening to God.
   

Or in other words, still, you can live your life either:

1. Trying to please God, or
   
   
2. Trying to please yourself.
   

And if you’re into the choices I’ve highlighted above in orange, your choices seem to be either:

1. To go it alone, or
   
   
2. To enlist the help of any of a great many organizations and opportunists who are ready and willing to help you feel good about doing less than your best to please God.
   

And if you join an organization, there will be some issues with that they practice and teach. And when these become apparent (assuming they won’t correct themselves), your choices will be either:

1. To stand up for what’s right, or
   
   
2. To stay in the organization, either:
   
   1. Making your own judgment that staying is more important than pleasing God, or
      
      
   2. Twisting the matter in your head, and pretending that God thinks it’s more important for you to stay in the organization than to set the matter right.
      
   
   

I had a preacher tell me quite adamantly once that “Being unified (with the church) is more important than being right.”

I had another tell me that if I couldn’t be quiet about the church issues I had been wanting to discuss, I would have to leave the church.

I had another chide me (in a closing prayer) about asking questions that were “merely interesting, and not of core importance”.

I had another chide me (for not belonging to a church) because we all “need accountability”. Ironically, the reason I wouldn’t join his church is that I thought they were not being accountable to God on several points of scripture. It seems he was deeming accountability to church as more important than accountability to the teachings of the scriptures.

If you care about (really) pleasing God, and you belong to a church, it is inescapable that issues will arise in which the church is wrong in belief or practice. And if you are right about the issue, and don’t cower about it, it’s going to put the church in the position of either repenting, or deciding to please itself and to displease God.

There are no other choices.

And this puts you in the position of having to choose which is your master, the church, or God.

No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.Jesus. Matthew 6:24. NIV

These are your two choices, according to Jesus:

1. Hate the one and love the other, or
   
   
2. Be devoted to the one and despise the other.
   

And if you don’t like either of these choices, you can pretend that pretending to do both is a viable option. This, of course, will offend God, who will eventually tell you so face-to-face, even though you already knew better, because you’ve read this and many other passages of scripture.

I have certainly seem some churches who trade on the idea that they’re more serious than most about getting things right. But I have not yet found one that isn’t quite at home adopting certain beliefs and practices that seem quite notably inconsistent with the scriptures in various ways. Nor have I seen one that leaves its members free to dissent on those particular points of practice and belief.

In the ones I have seen, the institution sets itself between God and the member, who is supposed to be pleasing God, primarily by being a member, it would seem—for seldom does anything arise that seems to trump the supposed importance of membership. And they’ll find you a Bible verse for that, even if they can’t be troubled to find you a verse for something else.

And you will have to decide—have to choose—whether to believe all this pleases God or not.

As for me, I think it angers him considerable, and that we have more than enough information in the Bible by which to know better. And all this pretending people do is an abuse of the faculty of imagination that God gave us.

Our choices are these:

1. to follow God,
   
   
2. to follow Satan, or
   
   
3. to pretend we are following God when we are not, which is just another form of #2—following the thinking of Satan.
   

Regarding this pretending, let’s look at what Satan did when he wanted to draw Adam and Eve away. They had been told not to eat that certain fruit. And when Satan encourages Eve to do it anyway, does he say,

“I know you’re not supposed to eat it, but what I’m suggesting is that you should do is to completely reject God and everything he says, and swear off believing in God forever.”?

Is that what he says?

No. He says this:

“You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

He doesn’t suggest that she totally reject God. Nor does he suggest that she completely devote herself to pleasing God to the best of her ability. Rather, he seems to model this option of searching for another way—of finding a way that might not sound perfect, but surely doesn’t sound too bad, either. He seems to be suggesting that some good will come from it—that this is, indeed, a good and desirable choice, and that God will get what he wants from it, by which I mean that they will end up knowing good and evil.

And perhaps surprisingly, I do think that not only did God fully expect them to sin that day, and that it was his plan to let it happen, but that the letting it happen was the very plan for the day. I think that through this episode, God was demonstrating that man was not created ready to live with God, and that even in this fairly simple order of you can eat all this, but don’t eat that, man was not yet mature enough to grasp the importance of that.

And Adam and Eve would indeed learn it before they died, I believe. And that’s the point of all our lives—to learn to follow God well while we are here—in the small things and the big things.

And Satan seems to suggest or imply to Eve that they can disregard God in this one little thing, and achieve something of even greater importance as a result. Well, ironically, they did learn quite a lesson about good and evil that day—or, I should say, they began to learn it. No, God did not want them ever to sin, but he had not created them incapable of it. Rather, they had the faculty of choice—by design, mind you—and this was the day when they would first get their hands dirty, learning that disobedience to God has consequences.

And for the record, it was also the end of that first period of their lives, in which God had let them see at least some of the glory of what it would be like to live in his presence in some way—however it was that things worked there in the Garden. They had seen it for themselves, and lived it for a while, however long that was.

And while we’re on that question, let me mention briefly that the Bible-66 doesn’t speak to the question of how long they were there before they sinned, though a few of the Ancient Near Eastern extrabiblical books do mention it. They do disagree, however, so make of it what you will.

The Book of Jubilees and The Life of Adam and Eve (Latin—Vitae Adae Evae) have Adam and Eve in the Garden for 7 years before they sinned. Meanwhile, The First Book of Adam and Eve say they did not keep the command for a day. And The Book of the Secrets of Enoch (2 Enoch) says they were five and a half hours in the Garden. I’ve documented these four sources in a post on my blog at https://jackpelham.com/2023/05/21/how-long-were-adam-and-eve-in-the-garden/.

But let’s get back on track here. The nature of the temptation Satan rolled out that day was this:

He did not tell them to go all out to obey and please God. Nor did he tell them to go all out to disobey and displease God. Rather, he suggested an alternative that involved some disobedience regarding a simple command that was on the record, and seemed to suggest that some good would come of it—some good that would please God, even—something that would turn out OK in the end.

Well, it did turn out OK in the distanct end, but not before it cost the life of Jesus to make it right. So there’s that.

And I’m not sure I grasp all of this well in my head just yet. There may in fact be some manner of paradox in all this: That defying the simple command not to eat that fruit was the first instance of sin that had been inevitable all along, and that would become the first big focal moment in the long story of the sin of humankind. That is, it had to start somewhere, and this was the day.

So they had a command not to do it, but God knew that even though they did not yet have a mature and responsible spiritual view of things, they would indeed fool around and find out.

And yes, Satan had indeed lied in the part where he said they would not surely die. So he did in fact deceive Eve with that lie, in hopes of getting her to eat. And he was condemned for it—even if God did have a plan to make things right again with Adam and Eve and with all the rest of us who would sin on our own watch.

But let us not miss the fact that Satan seems to have presented the first occurrence of the “it’s for a good cause” temptation. That is, if you eat this, “your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil”. Do you see the “good cause” in that?

Well, that may have been good after all. It seems it was supposed to happen, even though it happened predicated upon their first sin. And thus began the greater part of the saga of mankind—that he had before him from the very beginning the choice between following what God says, and following anything else.

And it appears to me that this was the first instance of mankind abusing his faculty of imagination that God gave him—imagining a way forward through this cognitive dissonance of “don’t eat” and “go ahead, it’s OK”. Neither Adam nor Eve said, “Wait! Stop the presses! I’ve got two conflicting thoughts running in my head at once—both that I shouldn’t eat, and that eating would actually bring about a good result—so I had better stop right now and get this decided before I do anything else!”

They didn’t do that. Rather, they seem to give in to what their immediate company was saying and doing. It had started with Satan’s suggestions, but then Eve got the idea in her own head, and became something of an accomplice in the willingness to commit the crime. And Adam, seeing Eve eat, was also enticed and became a member of the conspiracy, too.

And not once, so far as we are told, did it occur to them that they were conspiring together against God. We ourselves are very good at the so-called “justifying” of such things. We know enough that we might have told ourselves, “Well, it is quite a small command, and of little importance as there is so very much fruit here.” But we have little evidence as to whether Adam and Eve would have yet known how to do what we call “rationalizing”—although this may be exactly what we’re being shown when the account tells us:

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

I’m not sure we can be certain whether this is the author running down the list of all the relevant factors that were in play, or whether this was a list that Eve was using to “justify” the disobedience in her own mind. I could see it either way.

Certainly, in our case, it can quite go like this:

Hmmm. While it’s true that I know I shouldn’t eat donuts, they are such tasty food, and look so beautiful, and it’s always fun to eat them with others—especially if there’s milk, or coffee, at least—but more than that, I’ll be really serving my friends to give them donuts, too.

• Tasty
  
  
• Beautiful
  
  
• Good for fellowship
  
  
• Better with milk or coffee
  
  
• I’ll be providing a valuable service
  

And suddenly, eating the donuts doesn’t just sound like something that’s not a huge infraction of what is right and proper, but something that is right and proper in at least five ways.

And we even have two words for this sort of mental work we do, getting from Point A (don’t eat that) to Point B (eating that could actually be good). Those words are “justify” or “justification” and “rationalize” or “rationalization”. But they are neither just nor rational. They’re not proper thinking and they’re not based in reality. They are abuses of the imagination. And even so, very few humans ever seem to notice that these two words are improperly used most of the time. So we continue to use them, thinking ourselves OK in doing so. We’re not thinking that we’re in utter rebellion, and we ignore the question of whether we are in utter obedience. Rather, we try to satisfy ourselves that this is good enough—whatever it is we are wanting to do. So we come up with reasons by which to convince ourselves and those around us. And away we go.

And God expects us to learn what’s wrong with this. Through the teachings of scripture and through the hard lessons of cause-and-effect, he expects us to learn our lessons, and to cut it out.

But do we?

We have two choices:

1. Cut it out and live eternally with God.
   
   
2. Don’t cut it out, and don’t live eternally with God. Or,
   
   
3. Pretend that there’s a way to don’t cut it out, and still live eternally with God.
   

Note that the first choice has two good things. The second choice has two bad things. And the third choice pretends that a bad thing can result in a good thing.

And what’s wrong with this? Well, God presents no such option in scripture. That’s what’s wrong with it. God’s people are always called to repent of their sins. Always. And the following idea is flatly rejected in scripture:

Why not say—as some slanderously claim that we say—“Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is just!

We don’t know how deep Adam and Eve’s convictions were about the prospect of disobeying God that day. It would appear that they weren’t deep at all, for we’re not shown any great wrestling over the question of what to do. Rather, it seems they went along rather easily with the temptation.

Had Satan not presented a lying “justification” or “rationalization”, it would be interesting to see how that would have played out. But we only have the story we have. So we’ll not know.

I do think it’s quite a substantial point, however, that to this day, this is the very model of cheating-justication and cheating-rationalization that we tend to do. We don’t want it to just be a stark decision to do what we know we ought not do. No, we seem to find it satisfying to have reasons for it.

And even our own cognitive scientists observe this trait strongly in play today. Dan Ariely, in his most enlightening and useful book, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, points out that people seem all the more likely to lie, cheat, or steal when they can site supports for it, such as “well, it’s for a good cause” or “well, it’s for the children”, or even, “well, the guy had it coming, because he had done me wrong.”

But again, I see this as an abuse of our faculties of imagination and of reason. And I think it makes us deserving of the same rebuke Jesus gave some Pharisees when they were abusing their own minds one time:

Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.”