Issachar Gazette: Common Sense in an Age of Vain Ideology
Abre mis ojos
1. God is sovereign
2. Out of His sovereignty, He creates a Moral Order out of His power to give. This flows from love, as love cannot be coerced, it can be offered and in response, it can be accepted or rejected. The power to choose could entail acceptance or rejection. Out of His sovereignty, God gives human freedom.
3. This principle of informed choice and the presumption of liberty (General Rule of Freedom; Exception: limit) is embodied in 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.
This presents us a choice between two menus
(i) Unlimited choice of good options - Life
(ii) Singular evil choice - limited menu of only Death
4. True Freedom operates within proper boundaries, without which, chaos and licentiousness ensue. Food without gluttony, drink without drunkenness, sex within marriage: one man, one woman, one lifetime. Boundaries are protective, pre-requisite to freedom. We obey traffic lights as this gives us the freedom to drive safely, in good order.
5. "You are free to eat" (Gen 2:16) - Hebrew idiom: Akol tokel (in feasting you will continually feast)
6. Forbidden fruit: singular prohibition - to violate this, is to challenge the goodness of God (slander) and to usurp the power to define right and wrong ourselves. Eating the forbidden fruit was an attempt to redefine good and evil against God, an act of rebellion against God's creation order.
a) The Nature of Evil: Deception or Imposition
b) The Nature of Good: Freedom of Choice and Informed Choice: awareness of consequences
7. "you will surely die" - Moth Tamuth (in dying you will continually die)