Is God fair?  I ask this question based on the incidents that surround the creation of Adam and Eve and their subsequent punishment for their sins.  Many have looked at this story hundreds of times but probably haven’t considered the perspective I’d like to present today.  Let’s examine these accounts.

As we are taught, God is the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful creator of everything.  He had knowledge of life and existence even beyond our human comprehension, knowing all that has happened, all that is happening, and all that will happen.  So keep this in mind as we go over the story.

God creates Adam in Genesis 2:7:

Genesis 2:7

“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

He realizes that man would be lonely (did he not know this before he created him?) so he creates him a wife from his rib.

Genesis 2:18

“And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.”

Prior to creating the woman, God tells the man that he can eat from every tree in the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Genesis 2:16-17

“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.”

So he creates Eve and places them in this enclosure called a garden.  Along comes this slick-talking snake who beguiles Eve into eating from the tree.  She, in turn, convinces Adam to eat from it as well.

So let’s analyze this story.  Man is a newly created being who has limited knowledge.  How do you know that?  Because according to the story man does not know what good and evil is!  Disobeying God is evil but Adam can’t properly understand the concept of disobeying as evil without full knowledge of what good and evil is.  You have to look at it in terms of what Adam knew.

Adam was like a toddler in terms of understanding good and evil and more importantly the consequences thereof.  If you tell a two or three-year-old not to do something, you don’t expect them to fully overstand the consequences of not touching something hot, for instance.  Often times they have to learn the hard way what hot is.  When they do disobey, you give them an appropriate disciplinary action to teach them that they should obey you or there are consequences.

Back to God, he punishes the intellectual toddler for disobeying when he had very little knowledge of what he was doing wrong!  Is this fair?  He punishes  Adam unto his death for this act.  He kicks him out of the garden and forces him to work for the rest of his life!  Is this fair?  So now EVERY MAN thereafter has to work to provide for themselves instead of being provided for by God.  Is that fair?

Not only does he punish Adam, but he punishes Eve causing her to have painful childbirth.  Is this fair?  Consider that Eve wasn’t even created when the commandment was given DON’T eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  We can only assume that Adam told her.  But she to didn’t really understand that disobeying God was evil!  Is that fair?

To add more insult to injury, Adam and Eve were tricked, beguiled, swindled, suckered, bamboozled by the most subtle beast of the field, the serpent.

Genesis 3:1

“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”

To put it in layman’s terms I’ll use a phrase used in the streets.  God didn’t put Adam and Eve up on game!  The serpent was more advanced in knowledge.  He had the ability to articulate things to a degree that it sounded like disobeying God was the thing to do.  I can’t say the right thing because, again, Adam and Eve had little knowledge of good and evil.

But let’s analyze the toddler scenario again.  If you know that the toddler’s older cousin, let’s say 12 years old, influences him or her to do something against your wishes, you understand that the toddler isn’t acting on its own accord.  So you punish the older cousin more severely because they know better.  You reiterate your point to the toddler but your direction of discipline is more so towards the older cousin.  Would it be fair to punish this toddler for the rest of its life and punish all of its descendants?  Of course not.

So I ask again, is God fair?  The religious mind creates excuses for God but looking at this with plain, common sense you see it doesn’t make sense.  You see the flaw in the character of this so-called God.  You see that what you have been taught to worship isn’t as loving and caring as you thought.  You see that God ain’t fair!