The Fall

I like in this chapter how the concept or evil came up. I have wondered about this on and off for three years now and I’ve come to understand that I’m not able to understand an answer to this question at least in whole. Nevertheless, here is what I’ve come up with so far. Originally I believed in young earth creation so my belief in evil was relatively  easy. First the demonic type of evil came from a choice not to follow God,  resulting in Satan and his followers being forced from God. The second source of evil was human sinful nature which came from also another choice to eat the forbidden fruit. However, this is also hard to understand, why would God who created the curious nature in humans ,also put a forbidden tree in the same garden as them. This seems like placing chocolate on the dinner table and telling children not to eat it while I walk in the other room. It doesn’t make sense unless since God knew we would sin and now that Jesus has overcome sin we are now able to be closer than before to him. However, Adam and Eve would walk with God in the garden and that seems much closer than any experience I’ve had with God so I’m not really sure. From an old earth prospective, this story is even harder to deal with because it is poetic. So does this mean that pre-human groups were walking with God then we fell into sin. I’m also unsure about this because there is reason to believe that they killed murdered and raped just like are other primate relatives. So is the paradise of Eden a metaphor for what is to come instead of what has already happened? I’m not sure but I definitely believe that death existed since animals were created because many species need death in order to survive. Simple examples of this are fungi and carnivores. Fungi feed off dead material so in a world without death their role as decomposers isn’t needed. Also carnivores need to kill in order to eat and their whole body structure and digestive system is made to handle flesh. So in a world without death this also seems unlikely.  So I believe that death is a part of Gods plan and isn’t evil. My final issue that I’ve struggled with is the concept of a soul especially if we arose from animals. The best explanation that I’ve heard of so far was that our soul developed after we were set apart from the animals this seem plausible but its hard to understand at this point. I hope some people reading this will response with their own thoughts particularly on the concept of soul.