It’s a Continuum. Leo Emmanuel Lochard
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“But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.”
Did Satan use force or violence against Adam and Eve; or did he use “convincing words” that persuaded them “from the heart,” to disobey, rather than obey God’s commands?
But, contrarily, Satan had not remained “as an angel” during this devious act of deception. He took “physical form” in order to “access the hearts” of Adam and Eve. It was therefore a “spiritual deception” rather than a forceful act of compulsory submission.
Satan had become a Serpent in Eden. But Christ Jesus became a Man. (Philippians 2:5–8).
Christ embodied “the image and likeness of God” as well as “the heart of God.” His thoughts and actions, both, reflected the intrinsic character of His heavenly Father, our heavenly Father, Almighty God. (Mark 6:34; 10:18; Colossians 1:15–20). Thus, though Christ became a Man, He was also “God in the flesh!” Hence, why He rose from the dead as prophesied! (John 1:1–14). Only by taking the form of a Man, a Human Being, like us, could Jesus freely entreat us to follow Him from heartfelt conviction by faith. (Philippians 2:9–11).
From the start then, God had showed compassion for our Humanity, and love for God in us in the form of His own image and likeness, by approaching us with the same image He possessed, that of the Father, rather than “the image of the beast.” (John 14: 6–7; Revelation 13:15–18).
What do those things mean ultimately: Freedom of thought, freedom to experience a complex repertoire of emotions; and self-awareness, moral conscience, or our self-conscious acknowledgement of our “free will?”
Here, we are encountering the Soul of Human Beings: Whereas animals “adapt to their environment,” Human Beings spiritually frame their living existence, in ways that are independent of environmental conditions, or of Species-specific, “genetically wired” forms of behavioral actions.
We can “transform the environment” to accommodate our desires, for the fulfillment of our needs. Beneficent transformation of our environment also hinges upon our converted hearts and transformed minds unto God’s ways of righteousness rather than from our clinging to “the image of the beast,” thus resulting in destruction, chaos, violence, and death. (Romans 12:1–2; 1 Corinthians 2:16).
For example, we can choose when we go to sleep or when we eat; we invent and design machines that can change the temperature of our dwellings, in response to seasonal variations. In Summer, we utilize “air conditioning;” and in the Winter, heat from an equipment designed for “temperature control,” a manufactured furnace.
God did not “take the lives” of our “Eden ancestors” when they sinned. Nor did they die immediately; but they did inherit mortality. Eventually, intrinsic to our biological genetic design, is the termination of our lives, otherwise called “death.”
Human Beings were free from the beginning, first from sin, and thus, from guilt or condemnation. Hence God’s plan to restore His relationship with us through Christ Jesus whose blood cleanses us from all sin, and therefore, erases our guilt and blots out our condemnation. (Romans 8:1–11).
But that had changed when our “Garden ancestors,” Adam and Eve, disobeyed God’s commandment. Innocence, once lost, could not be “regained;” but only tempered with self-control which we obtain from hearing and doing God’s Word through principles of righteous faith given to us by Christ under the New Covenant of love and peace, Mercy and grace. (2 Timothy 1:7).
Even when casting them out of the Garden, God did not abolish, nor extinguish their freewill. God had gifted them with liberty, since from the time of Creation, but, which they chose to exercise against God’s instructions, due to the devil’s deceitful lies that contradicted the edicts, laid down by God regarding the deadly consequences of deliberate disobedience.
We are certain then, that, Human liberty did not randomly emerge, or accidentally sprout, from “environmental adaptations,” sums of which, have not abated unto dissolution, nor disappeared, nor ceased.
Given that, even after presumably “billions of years of evolution,” we still get bacterial and viral infections; we must drink water when thirsty, lest we dehydrate, or become eventually desiccated. We’ve not “evolved” into “another Species” for which we would then become “biological missing links,” as professed by Evolutionists. Apes are still here with us on the Earth; nor have they “evolved” into any intelligent forms of life above the lower animals.
Nor did Human Liberty anarchically proceed from experiences arising without cause, or from randomly occurring phenomena. A chaotic explosion like the so-called “big bang” would disperse Matter and Energy and not coalesce into any form of objects that we call “Stars” and “Planets.” From Genesis, and the Prophets, we definitely learn from God’s Word, that God did not create us “a chaos,” but a well-organized order of structured phenomena proceeding in accordance with intrinsic laws that govern their operations. (Isaiah 45:18–21).
Cause-and-effect is a scientific principle applied in all fields of knowledge, regardless of so-called “random fluctuations” within “the quantum realm.” Such “fluctuations,” are also due to physical cause-and-effect mechanisms yet to be discovered, e.g., the orbital trajectory or path of a “nearly mass-less,” Electron, still possessing “significant mass” for revolving around the atomic nucleus as affected by nano-Gravity-Forces and nano-Electromagnetic-Forces.
Every “law of Physics” is effectual or applies within a specific range of coverage. Newton’s Law of Gravitation could not be continuously extended in application to explain “the perihelion Shift of Planet Mercury;” it took Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, which picked-up “where Newton had left off” to explain such a significant orbital Shift.
Thus, even “laws” have limits in their application or range of effective coverage. It is not by accident that the Star in our Solar System can “accommodate” only a specific number of Planets, given the limits controlled by its size, mass, electromagnetic and gravity force exertions.
Because of our having gained “knowledge of good and evil,” Human liberty must also be characterized by certain “boundaries” or “limits,” which are set by what we call “rules, laws, regulations, or statutes.”
Such “regulations” or “laws” guide, instruct, inform, or direct our choices when we must decide the types of actions or kinds of behaviors we can freely engage in.
However, such actions, deeds, works, or behaviors allow us to engage within “a range of freedom” that must conform to those regulated prescriptions or proscriptions, “as applicable by law.”
“Laws” must safeguard our liberty while simultaneously determining “the range of behaviors” we can freely and deliberately engage in; that is, according to their prescribed boundaries and limits that encompass their “ranges of freedom.”
We have the God-given inalienable “right to own property;” but there are regulated ways that frame our ability to acquire property, justly, peacefully, rightly, and lawfully; that is, without injury or harm to other Human Beings.
“Thou shalt not steal” is the foundation upon which lawful ownership of property is erected. Property can be a free gift to a person, as granted by the owner of that specific property. Property can also be lawfully earned through labor or work for which wages are paid. Property can be inherited from other Human Beings with whom we have certain specific relations, as willed by the owners, or as prescribed by legal determination in a court of law. “Property” can also be lawfully, justly, and peacefully acquired through purchases or sales, or auctions, etc. . .., according to price or cost agreements between sellers and buyers, sums of which, we broadly or generally refer to, as “the Economy.” There is always “a right way” to acquire or obtain property, without injury or harm to anyone. Hence why established “laws” must allow equal access to all Human