Pearl's "plant your tree in the midst of the garden"

[TuneMyHeart]

I read the first chapter of TTUAC today and I'm really hoping he's taking this verse out of context:

When God wanted to "train" his first two children not to touch, He did not place the forbidden object out of their reach. Instead, He placed the "tree of knowledge of good and evil" in the "midst of the garden (Gen. 3:3)."

I wish I hadn't read this.

[JessicaTX]

Well, it didn't work out too well did it? If you take that view it seems like you'd have the view that God set us up to fail. I don't think that was the point of the tree in the garden.

[BriansLovie]

I so despise how he thinks that we must put temptation in front of our children to train them. It seriously makes me ill.

[TuneMyHeart]

why did he put the tree in the garden? I definitely don't think He sets us up to fail, and I would never do that to my children.

[Chris3jam]

That's my question, as well. *Why* put the tree in the middle of the Garden? Why not put it were they couldn't get at it?

[tigerlily]

[Buela]

So, with this reasoning, are we supposed to hire a hooker to try to seduce our teenage sons, just to see if they can withstand the temptation? Seriously?

[MamaGoose]

If obedience were our only option it wouldn't be obedience. He wanted us to choose to love him and obey him.

If I made a robot that I programmed to wake me up every morning with a warm cup of coffee and tell me how much it loves me, how wonderful I am and how beautiful I look today, it doesn't matter - it's a robot. It was programmed to do that and it's doing that because that's all it can do - it isn't genuine. It doesn't really love me because it's not choosing to love me, it doesn't have any other options.

God gave Adam and Eve only one thing that they couldn't do. If he hadn't given them the opportunity to potentially disobey, it wouldn't matter how much they obeyed - it wouldn't have been genuine.

I love the people I love because I have made a decision to love them. If I didn't have a choice, it wouldn't be real love.

THAT BEING SAID: The Pearls are taking this whole thing way out of context. That's extreme and not fitting with the inconceivable love God has for his children. He doesn't want us to fail - He wants us to really love Him.

[DoulaClara]

Oh, for glue-sticks-sake. (Pearls, not you!)

Well, for starters, Adam and Eve weren't children! They were adults. The choice they made was pivotal for mankind. They had the power of choice because they were adults, not children.

When they made the choice to go ahead and try the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, God didn't cause the Tree to keel over and crash onto them. He didn't strike them with lightening, and he didn't puppeteer a bear on over into their area to instantly eat them. They couldn't handle the Tree, so out they go. They still had lives, filled with normal human stuff- joy, sorrow, sickness, pain, satisfaction, pleasure, grief...

I'm sure someone who is more theological-minded can help out a bit more with the allegorical reference to how free will came about, and the concept behind existence, period. I mean, if I really wanted to quibble with that line of Pearlogic, I'd wonder why God didn't just attach us all to one giant joystick and operate us like a big game? If He is all-knowing-all-powerful-omniscient, and knows all of the intricacies of how many hairs are on our head, our moment of death, and all the in between, why bother at all with the whole Choice/Free Will thing?

[TuneMyHeart]

I've been seriously disturbed since reading this today. I can't make sense of how he's even applying Scripture.

[tiffany]

This is probably not going to be a popular opinion here, so I'm prepared for Please hear me out on this and don't hit me just yet. I don't think God put the tree there to temp us, but I do think there are things that are within our reach that he does not remove from our grasp that he teaches us to stay away from. For example, in the NT he says that gentiles are to abstain from blood. Blood is still in people, in animals, in our food, etc. He didn't do away with blood, just because we are not to mess with it. He just gives us the instruction to stay away from it. In the Torah, the command is given to abstain from unclean meat, but those animals are not wiped off the globe, we just have to stay away from them in our diet (if we are TO). He tells us not to look at another with lust, but He doesn't blind us. He tells us not to be sexually immoral, but He doesn't render us unable to do so - not by removing our physical abilities, our emotional abilities, or by removing the opposite sex from our interactions. All those things are still within our grasp, we are just instructed and taught not to go there.

I don't think it's healthy to remove any obstacle from out child's grasp and let them run 'willy nilly' - it's just not what God does with us. However, I don't agree with the idea that He put it there to tempt us either. There is a difference between doing something to tempt someone and teaching them not to get involved with something that is plainly there and that we have to learn to work around. Like dressing modestly. We are to be modest in our dress so as not to tempt other men, but we don't have to cut our breasts off so they don't show, ya know? There is balance. We have to be careful about working with the opposite sex. We need to keep things professional and not be one-on-one with a person of the opposite sex if we can help it, certainly not setting ourselves up for temptation, but women don't go work in environments where only other women work and vice versa. We just learn to navigate around it within godly limits. I think that's the hard part of parenting - finding the boundaries and teaching them to our children, so they will learn to apply boundaries to their own lives.

I have a friend who doesn't want to teach her children boundaries at all and there have been very uncomfortable situations with her children on many occasions. There has to be balance.

Self-control - that's part of the fruit of the spirit, and it has to be developed.

[DoulaClara]

Are you reading it just to have a better handle on why you disagree with it? Maybe now isn't the best time in your life to be taking that on. I truly think (and I think others have mentioned it before) that some serious demonic power is going on through his books and his website. I think it causes a major faith disturbance in people who try to take him on. Some seriously bad stuff- I really do believe that Michael and Debi Pearl are tools for some bad power. He plays with Scripture like play dough- he crams and pounds it until it fits. I'm dying to know how, if this is how he reads that part of Genesis, he reads the segments of the Bible that say that if a woman is married to a man, and he dies before they have a son together, then she is to marry his brother?

[TuneMyHeart]

the link came through my e-mail today in an AP yahoo group, and I just happened to read it. It's one of those things that was so off to me that I just kept reading to see what other crazy things he would say. But it's bothering me so much and I really wish I could unread it.

[illinoismommy]

without any fancy decoding I say this

1. They were adults.

2. Adults do face temptation that isn't out of reach

But when you are a child, you think like a child and act like a child.... etc. They're just kids and we should give them "temptation" as their maturity dictates.

Also even if we try to move things our toddlers and children will face temptation. We don't need to put 50 "trees" in our living room to prove our point.

[abh5e8]

it is interesting to me that he refers to adam and eve as God's children (which they ARE) but this is different from the definition of children as a person of few years in age, KWIM. i agree that as adults we live in a world full of temtaton...and by God's grace he has given us self control to protect us from (some) of these sins. but, for our infants and toddlers i do believe that removing some (or even many) of the temptations from their immediate environment is best. are there still some there...of course. they can throw the toys or hit their sibling...among many many other things.

also interesting God placed only 1 tree...like the op said, not 50

---------- Post added at 10:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:16 PM ----------

janet love the new avi!! didn't "recognize" you at first