Re: Setting Children Up to Fail
Many good thoughts. Looks to me like everyone's got it right here, the biblical account has God informing Adam of the boundary and the danger to him should he cross it. It is the serpent who does the tempting. Presumably one would not want to follow in THAT particular example if it's avoidable. I'm scratching my head and would love to hear the response to this, because it seems so obvious to me!
In case it hasn't been mentioned yet, I'll toss this thought out: I don't think we're supposed to draw a discipline technique from the example of God putting a special tree in the Garden, any more than we should get a "cry it out" principle from God leaving Jesus on the cross. These events are unique, special, and radiant with God's inscrutable purposes. (Why didn't He intervene in the garden when His people were going to get themselves into horrible trouble? Why didn't He intervene when Jesus was on the cross? Is there a connection?)
For your average Christian parent, there's other material in the Bible to guide us in how we're to treat people who are weaker or have less understanding than we have about things that could be a danger to them.
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