FYI: I'm writing this post months following my original analysis of the verses which it's linked to (prompted by questions arising from reading about Cain's curse in Genesis 4:11-12).
Curses: How Fair?
Before addressing the specifics of the curse that God places upon Adam & Eve - which have been subsequently passed onto us - a more basic question I needed answered was the fairness of a hereditary curse in the first place. I can easily grasp the logic of punishing Adam for his sins, but how is it fair to disadvantage me (via a meddled-with-hand-me-down body and mind which has been perverted over the ages) for that?
So I decided to play a little make believe: imagine we had the benefit of being born with un-cursed flawless minds and bodies as God intended. We're now all equally free from internal flaws. But wait, those born in say, war-torn Africa, are still at a disadvantage from external influences. Fair enough, we'll transport our equally perfect bodies to equally perfect environments. We now have what is effectively Eden - and isn't that what we've been getting at all along? Let's continue and say that for every man, an identical but separate Eden is created, so alongside Adam on Earth A, God creates Mike on Earth B. On Earth A, well, we know how that turns out, but on Earth B, Mike's wife manages to resist Satan's temptations, warns Mike, and as a result they live happily ever after. An outside observer could still argue that Mike had it easier than Adam by virtue of his wife making the better decision and thus not "weighing the odds against his own free choice". Very well, we'll remove the last potentially "unfair" variable available: other people.
Success! At last, a universe in which we, oh wait, I mean you, can live and make your own decisions, removed from the dangers of other "unpredictable" people who might tilt the scales against you; it's the truly fair universe you've always wanted: sterile, surgically-controlled, and completely alone.
Admittedly, none of this haphazard reasoning got me any closer to an answer of my original question, but more importantly helped me bridge the gap between the seemingly contradictory ideas of a hereditary curse and God's absolute fairness.
C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity: Morality and Psychoanalysis(back to Genesis 4)
The bad […] material is not a sin but a disease. […] And by the way, that is very important. Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices. […] When a man who has been perverted from his youth and taught that cruelty is the right thing, does some tiny little kindness, or refrains from some cruelty […] he may, in God's eyes, be doing more than you and I would do if we gave up life itself for a friend.
[…] It is as well to put this the other way round. Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and a good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends. Can we be quite certain how we should have behaved if we had been saddled with the psychological outfit, and then with the bad upbringing, and then with the power, say, of Himmler? That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. Most of the man's psychological makeup is probably due to his body: when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or the worst out of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to a good digestion, will fall off some of us : all sorts of nasty things which were due to complexes or bad health will fall off others. We shall then, for the first time, see every one as he really was. There will be surprises.
C.S. Lewis - The Problem of Pain (p. 65)
It would, no doubt, have been possible for God to remove by miracle the results of the first sin committed by a human being; but this would not have been much good unless He was prepared to remove the results of the second sin, and of the third, and so on forever. If the miracles ceased, then sooner or later we might have reached our present lamentable situation: if they did not, then a world, thus continually underpropped by Divine interference, would have been a world in which nothing important ever depended on human choice, and in which choice itself would soon cease
Partiality, in the sense that objectors commonly use the word, is impossible in the sphere of grace. It can exist only in the sphere of justice, where the persons concerned have certain claims and rights. -Loraine Boettner
If by “fair” we insist on meaning that God be absolutely equitable in how He relates to, or gifts, every individual, then we end up with what may amount to an impossible criteria for even an omnipotent God. No two individuals - not even clones - could ever be given the exact same gifts and circumstances in life.
-Is God Biased?
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