On the Impatience of Eve

A Catholic friend, whom I could characterize as a Bergoglian, that is, a follower of Pope Francis, asserts that the original sin was impatience and a failure to appreciate the full depth of God’s love. Had Eve only waited, God would have given her and Adam the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. She simply jumped the gun.

I asked at the time if he could give any scriptural support for this claim that God would have given them the fruit later. He demurred.

It makes no sense to me. If God intended all along to give them this fruit, what was the point of first withholding it? Was he training them for obedience, as you would a dog? Does God love us like a pet? Isn’t that rather insulting? It is certainly manipulative.

And what about the pronouncement by Bergoglio himself that God does not, and would never, lead us into temptation, would never tempt us? Surely prohibiting this one tree, for no particular reason but to teach obedience, would be exactly that?

Not an entirely good and loving God, then. Eve would have reason to be suspicious.

Why then did God reserve the fruit of the tree? It cannot have been so arbitrary. It must not have been only to tempt. It must somehow have been necessary.

And it was. God cannot give us free choice, cannot give us free will, without allowing wrong choices to exist. If we cannot make a wrong choice, we cannot make choices. We would indeed be no more than pets or AI bots. Not full persons.

Therefore, in the Garden, there had to be one wrong choice available. It was inevitable, and it is inevitable in the case of each of us, that we will sooner or later make a wrong choice. Eve in this was each of us. Given the ability to think of ourselves as gods in our freedom, it was inevitable, and it is inevitable to each of us, that we sooner or later turn away from God and elevate our ego instead.

It was all inevitable and in the plan.

“O Happy Fault that merited such and so great a Redeemer!”