Deep Response #1

From the previous post...

Most often, we think it's because God needed some arbitrary command in order to give man "free will" - there had to be a rule to break, so we could choose to not break it, or we could choose to disobey. In that line of thought, this is mostly an arbitrary rule. It could've been "don't eat blue paint", or "don't step on a crack, you'll break your mother's back". From scripture, I think we can discover that God doesn't work in arbitrary rules and characteristics, though. So there's got to be a reason, something behind the warning to not eat of this particular tree. Most literally, the warning to not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil means that the fruit of that tree is itself bad, harmful, fatal to us as human beings.

So the next question follows: "What's wrong with the Knowledge of Good and Evil?" - why would that be a bad thing? It's not a bad thing, unless it's something attained outside the relationship we have with God. Why do I need to know right and wrong if I'm in right standing with the Father? There are things we'd call wrong that are completely right in His eyes; and there are things we'd say are super-Christian tasks, but done outside of the empowering grace of God they're totally disobedient. There's the problem - we think we know best, and because we've eaten of the Tree, we don't need to listen to God's take on reality. We tend to judge others from our store of The Knowledge, and we judge ourselves as "not so bad" in our perspectives of Good and Evil.