You thought when people painted the "someday you're going to have to choose, for real, between the World and God, you won't be able to walk the line between both" picture that they were talking about martyrdom.
Some extreme. "Trample this picture of Jesus." "Say you don't believe!" "Convert to a different religion!"
You didn't realize that it wouldn't look like that. You didn't realize that when the line gets drawn in the sand, and Jesus is on one side, the other side would look like crying people wailing out, "why can't you just accept me for who I am? Why aren't I enough for you?"
You didn't realize that the choice would be between Jesus the Truth...or a majority of people in the culture making movies, making t-shirt slogans, changing their names, gently telling you that maybe this word in the Bible doesn't mean what you think it means, maybe love just means love, maybe you can have Jesus and whatever sexuality you want.
"Did God really say...?"
You thought it would be something overt. But the bad guys never said, "hey, choose the dark side over the light." They always said, "hey, maybe you don't even know what Jesus said."
The choice is: "It is the Lord. Let Him do what seems good to Him." OR "Did God really say...?"
That's the choice. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is our "choose this day who you will serve." As for me, I'm serving the Lord, and He's holding on to me. He never changes, and yes He did really say.
Hold fast to the truth. It doesn't change. People and cultures do.
Absolutely agree, especially since I reread Genesis just now and oh wow look first sin, and specifically first lie, in the Bible is someone trying to tell you that what God says isn’t really true or not really what he meant.
“Now the serpent was more cunning than any animal of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God really said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?””
Genesis 3:1 NASB2020
Read the verse more carefully.
Has God really said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?””
Because, of course, God never said that. He said they could eat from any tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The sin here is not Eve or the Serpent questioning God's commandments, but the Serpent misrepresenting God's commandments and Eve blindly going along.
On a semi-tangent, I grew up in a young-earth creationist environment, and one of the things that made me leave it was realising that there were many things they treated as self-evident from Genesis 1-11 that simply aren't there in the text or are contradicted by it. For example, saying that the world at the end of Genesis 1 was perfect, when the command to fill the earth and subdued it, paralleling the initial statement that the earth was formless and void, implying that creation was incomplete. Or regarding (ultimately thanks to St. Augustine) Adam and Eve as perfect beings, when I and the Orthodox tradition would argue that the narrative actually portrays them as childlike - they are easily fooled, have no knowledge of good and evil and have no shame about nudity.
It is true that God did not say that, which is why this is a particularly tricksy lie from the serpent. God said;
"The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may freely eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Genesis 2:16-17 NASB2020
God said to only not eat from one tree, and the serpent knows this, the lie is him pretending he doesn't know this to trick Eve.
A common manipulation tactic is to ask someone a leading question their likely to agree with as a way to get their foot in the door. Then they will convince them of something they are unlikely to agree with.
Eve knows God didn't say that, and corrects the serpent;
The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’”
Genesis 3: 2-3 NASB2020
The serpent then jumps off from Eve correcting him with a far more blatant lie;
The serpent said to the woman, “You certainly will not die! For God knows that on the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil.”
Genesis 3: 4-6 NASB2020
Adam and Eve will absolutely die if they eat the fruit, the way their 'eyes will be opened' as the serpent describes it only brings them shame and suffering, and they are already like God, made in his image and given stewardship of the world.
Hope that cleared up my reasoning on believing this is the first lie of the Bible!
Note that Eve didn’t actually quote the truth either; compare
“The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may freely eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die.””
Genesis 2:16-17 NASB2020
And
“The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’ ””
Genesis 3:2-3 NASB2020
The addendum “touch it” led commentators like Rabbi Yitzchak ben Shlomo (Rashi) to say:
NEITHER SHALL YE TOUCH IT — She added to God’s command (which did not forbid touching the tree, but only eating of its fruit) therefore she was led to diminish from it. It is to this that the text refers (Proverbs 30:6): “Add thou not unto His words” (Genesis Rabbah 19:3).
Yeah I haven't been able to figure out why Eve added that.
Maybe she didn't and it was a translation error.
Maybe she wanted to get extra brownie points by not only following God's command to not eat from it, but to not even tempt herself by not touching it.
Maybe God later added to not touch it and we just didn't see that.
Maybe she was trying to sound smarter to the serpent by adding to it.
I'm not really interested in trying to parse Eve's motives, since it's not relevant to my point. No matter what her motive was she knew that they shouldn't eat from it or they will die, and the serpent was trying to trick and tempt her.
