It sounds like that from the very beginning of creation it was all a part of God’s plan for the woman to be subject to the man and her desire to be to him — at least according to what was written in the Bible. Also a part of the plan was for man to have to work all of his life and then at the end of life to die.
If man didn’t die and he just kept on multiplying, the Earth would have been overpopulated thousands of years ago. In fact, all of nature is involved in a natural cycle of birth, life and death. Wouldn’t it stand to reason then that man, being a part of nature, would follow the same path?
The Necessity of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: Man’s Conscience
If man didn’t have the knowledge of right or wrong, there would be no need for laws nor any absolutes established for what was right or wrong. It was obviously part of God’s plan from the very beginning: to establish right and wrong even though man had no knowledge of it, because he knew that man would “disobey”. Being a creation of God and being created in God’s image, the conscience of man needed to evolve.
God even put the so-called serpent in the garden to tempt the woman so that she would eat of the forbidden fruit. Why else would God have permitted the serpent to be there? That could only have been the reason — that could only have been the role of the serpent. If God hadn’t allowed the serpent there, the woman wouldn’t have been tempted. If the woman hadn’t been tempted, she wouldn’t have disobeyed and eaten of the forbidden fruit, and neither would the man.
God’s whole plan would have been defeated — man may have ended a up little more than all of the animals God created. But man, being somewhat of a god himself, needed to be much different. He was made in the image and likeness of God. The whole plan seems to have been from the very beginning that God planned to make rules for man to follow and He gave man the divine knowledge of good and evil and left it up to man to choose for himself whether he would to follow those rules or not.
God made the rules, knowing that Adam and Eve would break them, then let them break the very rules that God had laid down. By letting them disobey the rules and eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they truly became like God, knowing the difference between good and evil. Thus, man’s conscience was able to evolve.
“And the LORD God said, Behold, the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil” (Gen 3:22)
This is one of the main things that makes man different from all the rest of the creatures that God created: his conscience. Animals don’t have a conscience. God purposely gave man a conscience, and by putting the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden, having the serpent tempt the woman, and letting them eat of the tree — man’s conscience was able to begin growing. At least this is what the story seems to show us, logically.
Man Becomes Like One of the Gods
Yes, they did “disobey”, in a manner of speaking. But it was all a part of God’s plan so that they would become as one of the gods. That’s exactly what He said: “Behold, man has become as one of us to know good and evil.”
“Now man is complete in the image of we gods in that he knows the difference between good and evil — just like us, he is able to consciously choose between what God establishes as right or wrong.”
The animals cannot do this. In fact, when animals break the rules, we don’t consider them to have “committed sin” — they are just being animals following instincts that are innate in them. The whole plan from the beginning was to make man in God’s image, give him a conscience like God and make man one with God and even one OF the gods. This was even in Jesus’s prayer:
that they may be all one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. (Jn 17:21)
Ye are All Gods
This may sound like stretching it a little, but the Bible did say “I have said, ye are all gods; and all of you are children of the most High.” (Psa 82:6-8) When you look around at the whole creation here on Earth, it’s evident that we humans really are gods over everything here in the physical world. He also prayed that men might be one in God. (Jn 17:21) And the NT says: …that God may be all in all. (1 Cor 15:28)
Next: The Great Plan | The Great Plan Part 4