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God has a message for human beings. In the beginning, the message was only one sentence. It was very simple. God told Adam (the first man on earth) not to eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Had Adam and Eve listened to this instruction, God would never have needed to write the rest of the Bible.

It appears that Adam and Eve were innocent. In this sense they were like children. The knowledge of good and evil was the one thing that God with held from them when He created them.

This raises a few questions. Why did they need to sin and experience evil in order to get this knowledge? The devil said that if they did this, they would become like God, knowing good and evil. God himself agreed with this, and gave that as a reason for driving them from the garden and the tree of life. What is there about this knowledge that makes us a threat to God?

So should we be trying to regain this innocence? And how can we do it? It seems that the knowledge of good and evil is what separates us from God. In essence, sin is the knowledge (or experience) of good and evil.

lesterb wrote:

God has a message for human beings. In the beginning, the message was only one sentence. It was very simple. God told Adam (the first man on earth) not to eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Had Adam and Eve listened to this instruction, God would never have needed to write the rest of the Bible.

It appears that Adam and Eve were innocent. In this sense they were like children. The knowledge of good and evil was the one thing that God with held from them when He created them.

This raises a few questions. Why did they need to sin and experience evil in order to get this knowledge? The devil said that if they did this, they would become like God, knowing good and evil. God himself agreed with this, and gave that as a reason for driving them from the garden and the tree of life. What is there about this knowledge that makes us a threat to God?

So should we be trying to regain this innocence? And how can we do it? It seems that the knowledge of good and evil is what separates us from God. In essence, sin is the knowledge (or experience) of good and evil.

They/we had to be able to make a choice. Without that knowledge, they had a relationship with God by default, which was a good thing. Then Satan came along and all of a sudden they had to make a choice, they chose wrong, but they possibly did not know why the choice was wrong because they didn't know the difference between good and evil. But they quickly found out. Ever since then, anybody who wants to have a relationship with God has to make a choice. And we have the right tools to make the right choice, but sometimes we choose not to use them.