Blame and choices pt 1

This is another 2-part post. I've been trying to make it succinct but ...

With kids in mind, the other day I was wondering if believing "God can do anything" opens us up to blaming Him for everything (or blaming Him for not doing anything). One way that I can make peace with this tangle isn't so much holding a doctrine of original sin so much as my belief that God gave Man a free will. God may be the all-powerful, knowing, seeing designer and creator of the universe but we answer to God for our choices. Still, these ideas seem to be at odds (like a lot of things in scripture) unless you go back to the idea of different tent ropes pulling in opposite directions from a single standard to keep the tent up. Or the possibility of God-spoken opposites all being true because with God all things are possible, we just don't think the way He does.

Ponder with me a little. God put Adam and Eve in the garden. He grew a relationship with them and set boundaries. He said "Do this. Don't do that." He also gave them the freedom to choose. Overly simplistic, but stay with me. We assume Adam and Eve blew it. (The alternative would be that God blew it or He planned it that way. I have a hard time thinking that we're God's pawns - a separate discussion.)

Let's assume that God gave Man free choice, knowing full well that Man screwing up was a definate possibility. Why didn't God intervene? Why didn't He DO something? The consequences were eternal. I like to assume that it's because God gave them free-choice and He honored it, despite the ramifications. Do you blame Adam and Eve for messing up? Do you blame God for not intervening? Do you say, oh well, God will work it all out for good? What if all of these are true: They messed up, God didn't intervene, but He'll work all things together for good. He has a far-reaching purpose that we can screw up in the short run because we're people, not in the long run because He's God- except when the consequences are eternal.

Here are some of the ramifications: Adam didn't get to walk in the cool of the day with God in the garden, an uncooperative garden, pain, one son murdered by his brother, one son ostracized, one son growing up without his brothers. In fact, the very first sons that God gave the world were lost. Maybe "son" here is significant? Adam and Eve were probably grief-stricken, heart-broken, guilt-ridden. Maybe Adam and Eve cared less about the bigger, grander scale. Maybe they were just coping.

[Assuming all of these are Biblically sound assumptions.] Faith says that in the meantime God was busy working all this around for the greater good of all involved - not just for Adam and Eve but for generations. A powerful, present, knowing, just, but compassionate God who gives us boundaries but let's us make choices. Keep reading . . .