The Trees

Like many Physicists who are looking for the one answer that addresses all
physics properties, I too try to make sense of things. Where the Scientist tries to
quantify how everything works together, I try to understand the relationship
between man and God. This one particular document is of my own creation. I do
not pass it off as factual, though much of it is; it is from my wandering mind.
Nevertheless it makes sense to me.

God is in His Kingdom. There is a lot I’m not aware of or able to comprehend.
Starting with God, we sometimes call Him a Trinity. Usually we refer to God in
the masculine gender, as in Father or Son. This is how He represents Himself to
us. Before time or His Kingdom or anything else, God existed. There was only
One, so why have gender? We know God The Father, God The Son and God
The Holy Spirit. They are three totally different beings. The Father seems to be
the leader, and Jesus followed His commands. The Father is the one who has set
the standard of Righteousness that Jesus fulfilled, and Jesus redefines some of
God’s laws and says He is Lord over them. The Father is the one who was
satisfied with His Son’s sacrifice. The Old Testament said God created and in
the New Testament Jesus was credited for creation. God goes by many names in
the Old and New Testaments; He also has many different attributes. God is all
powerful, yet Jesus was given power. Jesus said if you had Seen Him, you
would see the Father. We may talk directly to the Father, but the Holy Spirit
intercedes for us because of Jesus. God let us know that He always was; logic
would seem to say that everything else had a point of creation. We were created,
and so was the Universe. How about God’s Kingdom? We know it wasn’t
finished 2,000 years ago, because Jesus said He was going to prepare it for us.
What does all this mean? We don’t have a clue what reality really is.
As Christians, we are just jazzed to be invited to the party.

I can almost, maybe slightly, well not really, imagine God in His Kingdom.
Being an Amenning God, that is having absolute faith and power, He says and it
is. As in when He spoke our Universe into existence. I would guess that He had
spoken His Kingdom into being, but it was still under construction when Jesus
was here. Just a side note, time is something we live in. God of course was
before time, there is no 186,282.4 mps speed limit for Him. He is still not ruled
by time. So God is in His Kingdom, and what at this point wouldn’t be part of
it? And God says to Himselves, “…a wheel within a wheel with faces and wings
and sole of a calf's foot and hands…”, and it is. Anything that God says is.
And everything that is, is perfect. He creates many things; in fact everything
that is, He created. Nothing breaks or wears out. Everything functions as it is
suppose to. God is not surprised by any mishaps or anomalies. There are no
deviations or departures from the normal behavior of His creation. There are no
laws of Thermodynamics: 1. You can' t win. 2. You can' t break even. 3. You
can't quit the game. There are no Newtonian Physics or Quantum Mechanics.
God creates at His whim, and it costs Him nothing. He creates and He uses no
energy. God was all-powerful and He is still all-powerful; He did not exchange
power for matter. He is adding to His Kingdom. There is no set amount of
matter or energy that God can use. He dictates behavior and His creation
follows, as though it were the typical way of things. God does not compromise
nor hold back. His creations are complete and functioning. We can not
appreciate the vastness or the finest details of this Universe, yet God put them
there. His “craftsgodship” is flawless. So, God is in His Kingdom, yet how can
the creation contain the Creator? And even more bizarre, is how the Creator can
abide in me! And because God rules over all, what part of His Kingdom are we
in? How can the Whole reside wholly in a little part of the Whole? And where
did God dwell before He created anything?

God says to Themselves, “I want to hear music”. We of course know that this
normally would require vibrations, an intervening substance to travel through,
and some sort of “time”. Same thing when God speaks. God creates a cherub
covered in precious stones and gold with built-in tambourine and pipes. This
cherub was in Eden, the garden of God, and he was beautiful and full of
wisdom. And because of his beauty he corrupted his wisdom by trying to make
himself equal with God. God creates light and darkness and calls it good. He
then separates the waters above and below and further separates the water below
so there is dry ground. Now God creates plants, and then He creates the sun and
stars and the moon and calls it day four. God populates the water with living
creatures and great monsters and birds. Then God made the beasts of the earth,
bugs and mankind. He says it is good. God had created a garden in the east of
Eden. God puts them in the garden and then He creates woman. Our grand
understanding has nothing to do with the way God does things. First He makes
light and a few days later He makes the source. I do not know when Eden was
created or how long the cherub was there. God had told man not to eat of the
tree of knowledge, and this cherub knew that.
In engineering, catastrophic failures sometimes happen, not because they
weren’t planned for, but because small failures happened at the same time.
In nature, it can be the same. A fire, one square mile, in a remote area may not
even be noticed. A smaller fire in a densely populated region with poor fire
service and congested roads could kill thousands.

The garden catastrophe happened because God planned it that way. God, who
created time, would know what was to happen. If by chance He couldn’t, then
why not rewind time and set things right? God is the One who allowed Satan
to be on earth with His newly created man. God created this angel with so much
beauty and wisdom, that comparing himself to God did not appear, to him, to be
totally unrealistic. God puts man in the garden and tells him to subdue it. Yet He
puts in a tree that is not to be eaten. God walks with man at a preset time each
day, allowing the fallen one to know when God is not around. So here is man;
he has opportunity – God isn’t watching and the tree is easily accessible,
motivation – Satan is prodding them on, and desire – to be like God. And, as if
that wasn’t enough, they had a backup plan. God had put a tree in the garden
that had no function; the Tree of Life. Before sin, there was no death and thus
no reason to eat it. After sin, God wouldn’t allow its fruit to be eaten. In the
New Testament, Jesus says if we know Him we know the Father, He also said
He would send the Holy Spirit to teach us all things and to convict the world of
sin. The Tree of Knowledge was a ploy; it could not give us the knowledge that
would make us like God, and if we ate of it, we would die. Its role was to tempt
us. I imagine Adam and Eve reasoning with each other. I do not know if they
had seen Satan before he fell and I don’t know if God had warned them about
his evil ways. Satan gave them the sales pitch, and now they wanted it.
They knew God had said “Don’t”, but after listening to Satan they now thought
that God was holding out on them. And, I’m sure that Satan represented himself
as he saw himself; that is, equal to God. The fruit looked good. They probably
mulled this dilemma over and over, rationalizing and thinking and pondering
about it. They probably asked God about it, and He gave the same response as
before, “Don’t eat it”, and not explaining His reasoning to their satisfaction.
They knew what God said and they knew what they wanted. Adam figured out a
solution. This again, is how I imagine things went. Adam thinks - It wasn’t that
God minded man being like Him. The reason He didn’t want the fruit to be
eaten is because it would kill. So, Eve would eat first. What if God had been
mistaken about the death thing – like who had proven that it would cause death?
Besides, Satan said they would not die. If she showed signs of dying,
Adam would run to the Tree of Life, get some of it’s fruit and give it to her,
and she would live. Then, if the first two failed, he’d ask God to take her from
his side again. The solution was foolproof.

Eve eats and isn’t dead. Adam of course has to eat so he, too, can be divine.
So, the first act of these two enlightened godlike beings is to hide their
nakedness. When God speaks to them, they do the Keystone-Cop routine.
When God asked, “Who told you that you were naked”, was it a rhetorical
question? As far as I can tell, there were only two who knew; God and Satan.
They get caught with their pants down and feign innocence, blaming others.
Adam points his finger at God, blaming Him for giving “the woman” to him,
and Eve points to Satan. God listens as if He had no idea of what had transpired.
God assigns fault where it belongs, and then does the unthinkable. With billions
of people on earth today, could God not keep an eye on two? Why didn’t God
just erase this particular creation?

I don’t know when the rest of the angels fell, but this seems to be a good place
in time for it. I guess that Satan is telling the Angels about his victory over
God’s creation and how he will change the way God is doing things. What God
does is the opposite of what was expected. He puts into motion a plan that man
can some day be reunited with his Creator. God indicates that Satan will be
bruised in the head and God (Jesus) will be bruised in the heel. Satan probably
had counted on mankind to reproduce, and knew that the offspring would not be
righteous. God had created a self-perpetuating race of beings that was against
Him; perfect fodder for Satan’s new kingdom.

When God created mankind He made them in His image. Part of God’s image is
power. God gave them rule over the Earth, including Eden, where Satan was.
Part of God’s image He put in trees; the “Tree Of Knowledge Of Good And
Evil” and the “Tree Of Life”. Jesus said He was “…the Way and the Truth and
the Life…”. Jesus could deliver where the trees couldn’t. It is interesting that
God had already defined good and evil, but these “evils” didn’t apply to man till
he ate the fruit. So God knew before He created man which things man would
do that would displease Him. Angels chose having full understanding of God’s
likes and dislikes. They had no fuzzy knowledge of God; they were in His
Kingdom and on Earth. They knew. When Angels chose they were not
deceived. They weighed all the options and made an informed choice.
Man’s choice was due to a lack of faith that God meant what he said. His choice
was not based on information. He had two powers telling him how to choose.
Man chose poorly. Angelic sin is unforgivable while man’s sin can be forgiven.
Mankind is automatically born into sin. We have no choice about that, but we
do have the choice of coming out from under that sin.

Our redemption is by Jesus. God now willingly pays dearly to be able to redeem
what was once His; that is, us. Where all His other creations cost Him nothing,
man cost Him Jesus’ life. At first glance, it would seem that God would be
furious with us. We screwed up His perfect Kingdom. The truth is, I had no
control if I wanted to be born under sin or not. The setup seems to allow
everyone to choose what he or she wants. Angels can be with God or not be
with Him. Man can make the same choice, to be with God or not.
Man fell because of 1) his lack of faith – he didn’t believe God, 2) his lack of
love – he loved himself more than God and 3) he wouldn’t follow God’s
leading. Eating of the forbidden fruit is the culmination of that lack of faith and
love. Man is saved by faith, love and following God. Jesus took this same path.

Why would God go through such an elaborate scheme? First, God knows the
difference between created love, and a love where we eagerly follow. We are in
an environment where we can please God, or believe that this cosmos is all that
there is and no God exists. Second, God can now reap were He didn’t sow.
Sinful man is not a product of God’s making. It may be a byproduct, but God
did not create us as sinful. Jesus was tempted, and if He had failed, we would be
dead.

God set standards, and He Himself had to meet them, as do we. God can now
reap attributes that had not been available to Him before, like anger, jealousy,
being truly loved, pain, rejection, fear, death, sacrifice, loneliness and all types
of feelings that He had not created.

I think part of being made in His image is a desire to grow and experience new
and exciting things. There were certain things that God could not create
in which He wished to partake. A perfectly orderly existence where everything
is supplied would get boring even to us after a few trillion years. As I stated this
is a creation of my thoughts and thus not necessarily based on facts.