Eve vs. Caine
By vanny
@vandana7 (98826)
India
August 20, 2016 3:49pm CST
In one of my recent posts, we had interesting interaction on this one.
While thinking it over, I felt oh god, if god is indeed our father, he is unreasonable!
After all, when we tell our kids not to touch something that is likely to hurt them (electrical switches for one), we do tell them what is likely to happen as a result (at least I do).
But god did not tell Adam and Eve what would happen to them if they chose to disobey him.
Very strict father indeed...
So does he forgive at all if he could be so harsh for apparently a childish trespass on part of Eve.
On the other hand, there is Caine. He knows what he is doing. By eating apple Eve was not killing anybody. But Caine knew he would kill Abel and Abel would be no more!
One is a sin the outcome of which is not known and had it been known, it would not have been attempted.
The other is a sin the outcome of which is known and yet it has been attempted.
To me the second one seems more devilish than the first.
Your take...
8 people like this
6 responses
@Drosophila (16573)
• Ireland
20 Aug 16
This is a good theology question, my understanding is that it's not a comparison of apple for Apple.. Sin for sin, which one is greater and thus the punishment should be harsher. On the surface sure deceit/theft is less of an issue than murder.
However, let's consider it from a symbolic point of view what Adam/Eve did, God had given them a choice, obey me or do not obey me.
The tree is not apple it's the tree of sovereignty, the right to rule mankind's destiny. God has told Adam, if you eat the fruit you will perish, so warning was issued. What he told Adam was, man cannot live away from God, who is the life force or man will die.
Man was given the choice to either believe God and let God govern man's life or disobey God and go their own way. Eve chose the latter. So the ultimate outcome was we went our own way and perished. (Forgiveness came later in form of Jesus).
Now, its important that man was given the choice. I think I'd prefer a God who gave me the choice to listen to him or suffer the consequences than one who just forced me to believe.
Trouble with mankind is that we want to self-rule, we want to be away from God, so the story of Adam/Eve is played out again and again. Hence, we suffer the consequences.
Now in the light of this, would you still consider what Eve did was trivial and thus shouldn't incur any consequences?
Back to Caine, he is the first man slayer. He represented the violence that will always exist as long as man live away from God. In the story Caine is cursed to remain on earth, in essence, violence will always be amongst man if we live away from God
The symbolic elements of the story is also in their names, Adam in Hebrew meant Mankind, and Eve in Hebrew meant Life.
Hope this helps
5 people like this
@vandana7 (98826)
• India
21 Aug 16
Would you have liked to be obedient forever? Would you have still liked to believe that the world is square in shape and not round? If that mistrust towards what is told to us by previous generation or for that matter even present generation, is not there, will we progress anywhere at all? We find out for ourselves. Children find out many things for themselves. What is recorded in my brain is different from what is recorded in your brain, even if we both watch the same movie at the same time at the same distance on tv, placed at same distance from our eyes. :) When we are created like that, god needed to understand us and forgive us. To that extent, to me Eve's sin is trivial indeed.
3 people like this
@cacay1 (83223)
• Cagayan De Oro, Philippines
21 Aug 16
@Drosophila , Very much appreciated discussion.
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@BelleStarr (61047)
• United States
26 Aug 16
Unfortunately, the second one is pretty much a direct result of the first one since if there hadn't been the original sin, sin would not exist. But I don't think Eve is the issue, Adam should have had a backbone!! lol
1 person likes this
@jstory07 (134457)
• Roseburg, Oregon
25 Aug 16
Yes the second one seems a lot worse than the first one. Murder is always wrong.
@sallypup (57858)
• Centralia, Washington
20 Aug 16
Both acts involve generations. Eve's act altered generations of humans. Cain's act wiped out generations of humans that would never be born due to Abel not being around to father them. Was Eve destined to be the Evil One or did she have free will and would she have chosen to be a good person if she had known the entire story? The Old Testament Yahweh was not even tempered. He seemed pretty willful Himself. I don't know if this makes sense or not. My thoughts is all.
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