Katherine

They defend that practice by claiming that God set the tree of the knowledge of good and evil "in the midst" of the garden. Basically, that God was tempting Adam and Eve, and that He put the temptation right in front of them, where they would see it and pass by it everyday.

First off, that's making a huge assumption and drawing something from Scripture that's not clearly specified. We don't know what parts of the garden Adam and Eve frequented, and "in the midst" can just mean "among."

God placed the tree somewhere in the garden with all of the other trees. There's no indication that He singled it out somehow and drew their attention to it.

Edited to clarify: The commandment not to eat of it *did* draw attention to it, of course, but we are not given any indication that the tree was positioned in a prominent place or continually set before Adam and Eve in such a way as to tempt them, as Michael Pearl claims.

God also was not seeking to "train" Adam and Eve, as the Pearls claim, else He would have "zapped" them when they touched the tree, and then given them more chances to do wrong and be punished for it. When they violated the boundary He had set, He simply removed them from the garden.

And M. Pearl does address the issue of not provoking our kids to anger... It's really one of the better parts of his book, IMO, and I find my nodding in agreement with the things he says in that chapter/section. Unfortunately, his misunderstandings about the rod are so profound, and the arrogance of what he teaches (in regard to being able to control the hearts/attitudes/feelings of children) so intense that he doesn't see how "Biblical" hitting (spanking, switching) could be included in that provocation.

Basically, since he *starts* with the belief that spanking is Biblical, that automatically excludes spanking from being included in the notion of "provoking." He HAS to define provoke in a way that doesn't contradict his belief in the doctrine of spanking. And that's true of so many other pastors, teachers, and Christians.