MichaelJ on Nostr: A few responses: 1. Why do you say God "half-assed" a companion for Adam in Eve? How ...

A few responses:

1. Why do you say God "half-assed" a companion for Adam in Eve? How is another being with whom Adam can create new life in love an afterthought? We look for companions like ourselves. In the Garden, Adam had no companions like to himself, so God creates for him another human being like himself, but also free and distinct. Eve could give Adam what no animal could give: the love of an equal.

2. Genesis makes it clear that man is created in God's image. What is God? God freely creates the world and populates it with creatures. So if man is created in God's image, then man must also be free to create and govern. Man participates in creation most fundamentally by creating children (new life) and bringing it forth into the world; and, unlike the animals, man can freely choose whether or not to mate and bring forth offspring. Likewise, Adam is put in the garden to cultivate it, with a command to "fill the earth and subdue it," so man is given authority to govern the created world. Thus, we have man, like an echo of God in miniature, able to freely create and govern.

3. Going back to point 1, we look for beings like ourselves to love. God created us as beings like Himself (as like as a creature can be to its Creator), and invites us to loving relationship with Him. That's why Adam's sin was so devastating: Adam was given authority over all the earth so that he could be a friend to God, and he rejected that friendship by breaking the trust God had given him. Yes, Lucifer was plotting against man from the beginning, but Adam was free to reject Lucifer's temptation and maintain his relationship with God just as much as he was free to listen to Lucifer and break that divine friendship. Ever since, Lucifer only has power over the earth because Adam, to whom the earth was given, abdicated that authority.

4. God doesn't just sit back "sipping margaritas on the shores of Heaven," nor does He stay aloof from us as if we are too soiled and broken to be worth His notice. That's the whole Good News of the Gospel. God literally becomes one of us in Jesus, subjecting Himself to the chaotic, broken creation left in the wake of Adam's abdication, and lets us mock, beat, and kill Him. God is clearly not hands-off, nor does Jesus sit back waiting for us to "kiss the contrived ring." He's right here in the muck suffering with us.

So yeah, life is pretty miserable, but God joins us in the misery and still tries to restore that friendship that Adam lost.

Perhaps your past experience with Christianity overemphasized God as Judge, but there's a lot more to it, that's the whole point of the Gospel.