"You start to die the minute you are born, it's only a matter of time"
That is words of wisdom from great grandma moody. And it's true. Ever since Adam and eve received the judgement of the curse for disobedience, life is the process of death. We are all on limited borrowed time. None of us knows when we will die, but we know for certain that we will. Coming to terms with this reality is the best way to live.
Why is this? Surprisingly.... Many point only to disobedience. In fact this is one of the complaints of atheists.... "How could a loving God and father give such a harsh punishment for a single act of disobedience? " they ask. It leads them down a path of rejecting such a notion. But the reality is, it wasn't just an act of disobedience, it was so much more than that.... And it was what we do so often today.
The" apple" in the story represents the desire to be like God, without him. To usurp his position of creator and owner of the world, and of our own life. Think about the implications of "the knowledge of good and evil". Knowing good and evil serves only one purpose, choose for yourself. To be the master of your own destiny. To life your own life. To judge whether something... Everything... Is good or evil. To play God. That is the "original sin". It represents a lack of trust, lack of respect, desire to be in control, to decide for ourselves, to run things our way, to do what we want with our life.
Go back to the analogy I use of us being God's computer program. We are a runaway program, a piece of software that has "gone off in the weeds" by leaving it's designed purpose and is off unproductive doing its own thing. Consuming resources with no benefit to the purpose it was built for. Infinite loops, memory leaks, etc. That's us. Amazingly.... God didn't stop the program, instead he ONLY said " ok, here is what you asked for".
You see, God granted us our wish. We wanted to be our own boss, run things, decide for ourselves, and he granted that wish. It must of broken his heart to let Adam and eve, and each of us, go from his garden. We demanded to be on our own, and he let us. Death is not a punishment.... No... Death is what we asked for. Adam knew he would die, and he wanted to ge on his own anyway. He thought he could cheat death. His pride made him believe that he could be like God and live forever without God.
Oh Adam.... We got your wish. But it's all of our wishes. We each have rejected God and desired to eat that same apple. We are all individually guilty. We all are the prodigal son, demanding inheritance to go off and live our life our way. In other words, we each have demanded death for ourselves.
It wasn't a punishment, it was a consequence. "please don't do that... If you do, you will leave me and die. I will miss you horribly, I love you. Stay in the garden, I will give you everything, just don't leave." but... We left.
We should perceive death as what we asked for. In essence, Adam took the chance that he could figure out how to beat death on his own. He failed. Everyone has failed. They are all dead (except perhaps for the anomaly of Enoch, another story) we, will fail. Our bodies will die. Period.
The lesson here.... There are so many. Death is real and unknown. Death is not as much a punishment as the result of. "the wages of sin are death". God didn't decided to kill us, no.... He pleaded with us not to choose to try to beat death on our own. He wanted us to live forever with him. So much so he gave us a second chance. Through Jesus we can live. He died in our place, paid our debt, beat death for us, and we can live.
Death. It is only a matter of time.
