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Saturday, August 30, 2008

Gen. 2:6-9, God Ignored Adams Admonishment Option

Breaking the law is risky behavior.
In my view, to go around breaking the law of society or of a God, is unnecessarily risky behavior. Those that do break the law have some other frame of reference. For example, they don't put as a high a value on the risk as I do, or they may be mentally handicapped in some way, and the former may follow from the latter. I know that if I broke the law I would worry about being caught, then perform some inconvenient tasks such as lying or hiding to resolve it, then, if I got caught I would pay some fine or spend some time in Jail. For the most egregious acts, the punishment can last a lifetime. For example, the punishment for murder can get a person put in Jail for the rest of their life, and on the other hand, for stealing a piece of fruit and eating it, you may get a fine if anyone cares enough to pursue litigation.


Teaching and changing behavior.
The reason people get fined and go to jail is to pressure them to change their behavior and to condition them to follow rules. It is a form of education. Education is important to facilitate sound judgment and conformance to societal standards. From the time children are born to the time they finish their formal schooling, they undergo conditioning. They learn such things as the rules of Grammar, Math, Science, Physics, Music, Art and the lessons of History. To advance to the next level they must satisfactorily demonstrate their grasp of the information, and their proficiency is monitored periodically along the way to ensure they are progressing toward the goal of advancing. Education and changing behavior is a sound principle, but it is not limited to people. It works on animals as well.

My dogs want to put their noses on the table.
I am an expert on the behavior of my dogs, but not to the degree that God must have been an expert in Adams behavior. When I have dinner, my dogs stay out of the kitchen, where the table is, because they like to put their nose on the table (they're big dogs). I can tell them a hundred times not to put their nose on the table but after awhile, they do it anyway. So I make them stay out of the kitchen and I do not feed them from the table.
When I want to spend time with my dogs, we laze about the house, tug on a stuffed toy and they get a little petting. We all love each other (I guess they love me) and I pet them, praise them, give them instruction in the form of a stern "no", or a "sit" or a "go lay down" and they understand me and comply. When they don't, I admonish them.
I do it in a nurturing way because I don't want them to become afraid of me or they will want to avoid me. I admonish them just enough so they respect me and follow my instruction. I know that because of their nature (how they are composed), they act a certain way and we work with it. In doing so we have a happy, healthy nurturing life together. I didn't make my dogs, but I know how they act, and I accommodate their behavior, adjust and compromise with them.
How much disobedience do I tolerate? I tolerate quite a bit. What type of transgressions would get them kicked out of the house? Biting the kids.

Decision/Event Tree for teaching my dogs not to put their nose on the table.
In the diagram below I would like to draw your attention to the box labeled “Teaching phase”.

If my dogs are not in the kitchen, they decide to sleep or chew toys and have no option to disobey. They don't worry that their free will is impeded, they understand that they just have a limited number of options because an infinite number of options would just confuse them.
If my dogs are in the kitchen with me they get a warning. They will either be with me or without me, but I'll focus on when they are with me because its analogous to Adam and Eve living in the Garden with God walking around. If they put their nose on the table I have three options but one of them is not obvious. The two obvious options are to ignore the behavior or to admonish them. Ignoring the nose on the table, in my view, is out of the question. So I opt for the admonishment option. This way I can reprove them and they will stop until they are overcome by their nature and I reprove them again or they learn that to stay in the kitchen with me, they have to keep their nose off the table.
The other option that is not so obvious is the option to abandon them to the street and never have any animals in the house again until one of them kills themselves to show me they can obey. I don't choose that option for a variety of reasons. The overriding one is that I'd never have thought of it without the story of Adam and Eve in the bible and another reason is that it is freaking stupid. In my view the admonishment and instruction is by far the best option to sustain a healthy loving relationship between myself and my dogs and this is the event labeled in the diagram as the “Teaching Phase”.

Decision/Event Tree for Adam in the Garden
We all know the story. Boy meets girl, girl gets motivated when she sees that snake, and carries her fruit over to her boyfriend to share it with him. Adam follows the script, disobeys God and God kicks them out of the garden until he and the holy spirit can come back four thousand or so years later as a perfect human that obeys himself to follow the course of events of his plan that ultimately end up with his human part dying as the perfect sacrifice and he and his holy spirit bail out just before the end. The happy ending is that the human part gets resurrected and disappears amid rumors that the body was stolen, or that he was taken down before he died. It usually takes longer than a few hours to die impaled on a cross. That is why the Romans used it. In fact Josephus talks about a couple of his friends that survived a crucifixion.

Once again I'd like to draw your attention to the area labeled “Teaching Phase”. You may have noticed that the Event Tree is the same as the Dogs Event Tree. The algorithm is exactly the same. The analogy is the same. The difference is that God did not choose the admonishment option. He chose to break off the relationship rather than nurture it.
How much and what type of transgressions should God tolerate and work with? I think that most people get along well enough and follow the rules to sustain a society. Are the transgression of these people, or should I say, are your transgressions serious enough to not warrant nurturing admonishment? Think about all the things you've done today. How many of them would you be embarrassed about? How many of them are even worthy of being “exalted” to a “TRANSGRESSION” [thunder and lightning in the background]

Being in a relationship means to nurture.

Parents don't kick their kids out of the house the first time they disobey, most of the time they put up with a lot of transgressions.
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