4.3 The Absence of Divine Mercy
God’s hiddenness in Eden gets even more mystifying when we consider the severity of His punishment in the wake of the disobedience of Adam and Eve. It was nothing short of a global catastrophe for all of humanity. The severity of the punishment cannot be overstated, for it entailed immense pain and suffering—not only for Adam and Eve, but also for their posterity—people who had yet to commit any sin.
This naturally raises a moral issue, and it is not difficult to imagine Adam and Eve asking themselves in anguish: “Why punish our children and their descendants? Why must they suffer for what we did? We are the ones who disobeyed; we are the perpetrators, not them! We are willing to accept whatever punishment—even a slow, excruciating death. But why punish those who had no part in our actions? The punishment simply does not seem to fit the crime.”
This imagined reaction is not far-fetched. Any loving and conscientious parent would instinctively recoil at the thought of their innocent children suffering for their own moral failures. And since God is depicted throughout Scripture as our loving Father (for example, Psalm 103:13; 1 John 3:1), and undoubtedly, our ultimate model for parenthood, how then could He unleash punishment on the descendants of Adam and Eve—those who had not yet sinned—and still be considered the exemplar Parent for all of humanity?
Ironically, even God Himself tacitly affirmed that He is above such injustice when, many years later, Abraham appealed to His role as the supreme judge of all the earth who would not punish “the innocent with the guilty” (Genesis 18:25 GNT).
So, why then would God punish the descendants of Adam and Eve—people who had yet to be born and commit any sin? This question is not insignificant, as it undermines our belief in God’s justice and the consistency of His character.
But even if the punishment had been limited to Adam and Eve only, it remains a valid question as to whether God should have extended mercy and refrained from punishing them. Admittedly, this line of inquiry may strike many Christians as inappropriate, and some might question whether it is even worthwhile to entertain such a question. After all, isn’t it clear that sin is an offense against a holy God and necessarily demands a severe punitive response? Isn’t it true that misconduct requires correction in order to reform the wrongdoer? And isn’t it also true that good parents understand the importance of not condoning the bad behavior of their children when they disobey, and therefore, it is inevitable that God must punish Adam and Eve for their disobedience?
All of this is indeed true. Yet it is equally true that good parents do not punish their children for every infraction. Various considerations—such as context, intent, and the child’s level of maturity—must be taken into account. Parents must weigh these factors carefully before administering discipline. In fact, wise parents sometimes choose mercy and allow their children off the hook as they see fit to do so, just as clemency and pardon are sometimes granted, under exceptional circumstances, to convicts by human judges and leaders of nations.
In light of this, it is not unreasonable to ask whether God should have shown mercy to Adam and Eve in their singular moment of failure in Eden. After all, unlike contemporary Christians, they had no prior warning about the existence of Satan or his malicious intent. They were caught off-guard and flat-footed, so to speak. And furthermore, it was their first offense. Doesn’t that qualify as an exceptional circumstance that should have warranted divine leniency?
Moreover, as noted earlier, Scripture affirms in Hebrews 5:14 that spiritual discernment is cultivated through experience. In other words, it is through life experience and training that one is empowered to discern truth from falsehood. But Adam and Eve, unlike contemporary Christians equipped with Scriptural knowledge about who Satan really is, were naïve “infants.” In this sense, Adam and Eve were innocent, evidently without the maturity and training needed to discern the duplicity of the devil. Isn’t this another exceptional factor that God should have taken into consideration before meting out such a severe punishment? Why was God so seemingly merciless toward Adam and Eve when they sinned?
I should point out that the enigma presented here is not based on human sentiments or subjective expectations of how God should have responded to the disobedience of Adam and Eve. Rather, it is predicated objectively on the apparent disparity between the way God responded to the disobedience of Adam and Eve, and the way He is known throughout Scripture to respond to the disobedience of humans in later generations.
Repeatedly in Scripture, we can see that God would mercifully issue warnings first, calling sinners to repentance and offering them mercy in place of punishment. He is manifestly committed to communicating His desire for sinners to repent and to benefit from His mercy, and thereby, to forestall the punishment that was meant for them.
Accordingly, whenever God’s people sinned in the Old Testament, He would not punish them immediately. Instead, He would task His prophets with the mission to warn them first. “Indeed, the Sovereign Lord never does anything until he reveals His plans to His servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). And through the mouth of His prophets, God would reveal at length the severity of the punishment He planned to inflict upon His adulterous people. He would outline the details of their devastation if they refused to repent: their nation would be invaded by enemies; they would be exiled into captivity; they would suffer alarming cruelty at the hands of the invading forces. To say that God’s intended punishment for His rebellious people can be brutal is an understatement. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that God, who is depicted throughout Scripture as patient and merciful, had an overarching commitment to warn them first, and to give them a chance to repent in the hope that they would not have to suffer the agony of being disciplined by Him.
Incredibly, even the notoriously depraved King Ahab was a recipient of divine forewarning. And in a rare moment of spiritual sanity, he repented and succeeded in averting God’s punishment that was intended for him (1 Kings 21:17–29). Likewise, the pagans in the ancient city of Nineveh were also beneficiaries of God’s forewarning to motivate them to repent and to forestall the divine punishment that was meant for them (Jonah 3:10). Yet ironically, when it came to Adam and Eve, such divine forewarning was strangely missing when they sinned. They were whacked immediately, if you will.
Indeed, it is worth noting that God’s offer of forgiveness to sinners who are contrite and penitent was already available long before the advent of Christ and the atoning sacrifice on the cross of Calvary (for example, Leviticus 16:30, Numbers 14:19–21, Psalm 103:8–12, Proverbs 28:13, 2 Chronicles 7:14, Isaiah 43:25, Jeremiah 31:34 and 33:8). But once again, it is curious that God did not offer such blessed news of forgiveness to Adam and Eve to encourage their repentance. What could have been on His mind that caused Him to treat with such disparity between the first pair of humans and the people of later generations? Did He not have the desire for Adam and Eve to repent so that the disciplinary actions that caused untold suffering globally could be averted?
God, whom we extol for His long-suffering and mercy, offered Adam and Eve no forewarning and no second chance. His stern response on that day flies in the face of the merciful God depicted everywhere else throughout the Scriptures. And as it turned out, He wasted no time in meting out the severest of punishments for Adam and Eve and their posterity.
Incidentally, I should mention that the animal skin He supplied as covering for the naked and despondent couple (Genesis 3:21), often hailed by well-meaning preachers as an act of divine grace, was in reality an irrelevant gesture at best, given the punishment of biblical proportions (pun intended) that was so swiftly implemented.
The perfect world God had created would never be the same again. It would be plagued with all kinds of suffering and evil imaginable. And because the meaning of life is most desperately sought after in times of suffering—as Roy Baumeister noted[2]—the reason for God’s hiddenness in Eden which contributed so significantly to human suffering should not be brushed aside.
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At this point, we may be inclined to say that God’s wisdom and actions can sometimes transcend our ability to understand, and therefore we, as finite humans, should reverently submit to His sovereignty for not revealing to us His ways. Thus, Isaiah 55:8–9 says, “‘My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,’ says the Lord. ‘And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts’” (NLT). In a similar vein, Romans 11:33–34 declares, “Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand His decisions and His ways! For who can know the Lord’s thoughts? Who knows enough to give Him advice?” (NLT). And so, we shrug off the things we do not understand about God with the standard cliché, “God moves in mysterious ways.”
No doubt, we can agree that God’s ways can sometimes be beyond our ability to comprehend, and reverent submission to His sovereignty is certainly appropriate. Fair enough. However, we mustn’t capitulate prematurely. Rather, we should take our cue from Proverbs 25:2, “It is God’s privilege to conceal things and the king’s privilege to discover them” (NLT). Therefore, if it seems God has exercised His divine prerogative to conceal certain matters from us, such as His rationale for His hiddenness in Eden, then perhaps He could be deliberately presenting us with an invitation to discover what He has hidden and concealed. And when we do that, we are not necessarily being irreverent or unfilial toward Him, but rather, we are exercising the divinely given privilege of kingship.
With this in mind, may I suggest that more must be said to resolve this enigmatic beginning of human history, especially if we want to proclaim the biblical narrative coherently as the ultimate and compelling answer to the meaning of life in this broken world?
I propose for the reader’s consideration that God’s hiddenness related to the fall of Adam and Eve was nothing short of intentional; His non-intervention during their temptation by Satan was deliberate; His delayed appearance on the scene only after Adam and Eve had yielded to Satan’s temptation may seem tardy and negligent on the surface, but was divinely calculated well in advance. But why? This is the question we must ask.
Let’s turn now to another biblical narrative for some clues to this divine enigma—a narrative in which God was similarly hidden—the Book of Job in the Old Testament.
[1] For example, in Isaiah 30:15, God warned His people to repent or they would be defeated by enemy forces: “Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved” (NLT). Likewise, in Jeremiah 7:3, “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says: “‘Even now, if you quit your evil ways, I will let you stay in your own land” (NLT). And also in Jeremiah 18:7–8, “If I announce that a certain nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down, and destroyed, but then that nation renounces its evil ways, I will not destroy it as I had planned” (NLT).
[2] See footnote 6.