Pinch Me Adam, Can This Be True? Posted in: God On Our Side, The Self Divine
In Abrahamic religions, forbidden fruit is a name given to the fruit growing in the Garden of Eden that God commands mankind not to eat. In the Biblical story of Genesis, Adam and Eve disobey God and commit the original sin, eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and are exiled from Eden:
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
No disrespect to believers, but honestly I’m not a fan of this story. For me this whole idea defames God as requiring / demanding compliance from the individual souls under fear of banishment. And even if it fits to some extent with the notion of the difference / otherness of the soul (albeit establishing God as being of a wrathful character) it is seriously problematic for the Dharmic tradition’s simultaneous oneness of the soul with God, i.e. the divinity of the soul and the fundamentals of free will.
Surely God is not so cheap and shallow as to be interested in love/compliance from those who have no real choice? Even a reasonably discerning human being is not attracted by in such relationships. Surely God did not create/manifest us for such a purpose?