Most humans regard a call to obedience in a negative light - except for the person making the call, requiring obedience from a subordinate. We want others to obey us but are not so keen to blindly follow instructions given to us.
This trait which we often exhibit can sometimes be attributed to bad parenting. Unfair treatment by a caregiver can cause one to have difficulty in submitting to rules, especially those of a father figure. But is it not possible that our abhorrence of authority has a deeper cause?
Adam and Eve must have known that there were things they needed to learn. Of course they were discovering wonderful aspects of God’s creation for themselves and by themselves. After all, they were "copies" of God, made in his image. But they were not omniscient, knowing all things like their Creator. Surely there was much the Lord wanted to still teach them.
To be made in the image of God must mean, amongst others, that our first parents could think and talk. They also experienced feelings, like their Creator. Most importantly, they had a free will. If they did not have a free will, they would have been just like the animals who live by the instinct programmed into their DNA, not very different from machines. And because God is love, humans would have been very distorted "copies" of him if we did not have the capacity to love him from the deepest of our being. Machines and animals cannot give or receive such love.
Creation did not stop after Eve had emerged from Adam's rib. Babies are created in their mothers' wombs to this day. They are completely helpless when born and in need of care by an adult. Similarly, the first humans must obviously have been quite ignorant of much, including loving relationships, which are "better caught than taught". In other words, their Creator would have to model the proper behaviour.
Before showing them how to act toward one another, God tested whether they would respect the way in which he wanted them to engage with him. They failed the test spectacularly. They needed to be shocked into appreciating the implications of their disrespect. This was hopefully achieved when they observed an innocent animal being slaughtered and its skin used to clothe them.
Adam and Eve wanted to discover everything for themselves, especially the knowledge of good and evil. Don’t we all have a tendency to learn for ourselves rather than be taught what’s right and wrong? We hate being treated like machines which just operate according to fixed sets of rules. No-one likes to be told: "Don't think, just follow orders". We like to have a say in what we do and in how we discover and learn.
The early humans did not do very well in the relationships department. The Lord decided to wipe them all out, except for the eight on Noah's ark. After the flood our Creator made a covenant with Noah and us, his descendants. The most salient obligations under the Noahic covenant relate to the significance of blood as the essence of life. As a token of our respect to the Giver of life we are commanded not to eat blood. Regarding fellow humans, the blood avenger is allowed, maybe even responsible, to execute a murderer.
Later a description of the perfect human being was given to Moses in the form of the 10 commandments which can be summed up in the words: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength and love your neighbour as yourself."
To date only one person has been able to live up to the 10 commandments. He was under the severest scrutiny by the custodians of the Law of Moses but they could not make one of the trumped up charges against him stick. The Creator was actually joining his creation in a form not recognised by the majority of those who lived at that time.
But sincere seekers of truth acknowledged that his doctrine was in agreement with that of Moses and the prophets. His close followers were slow to see the significance of fellowship with the One who drove Adam and Eve from the garden. The night before his death he told them that whoever had seen him, had seen their Creator.
The way human nature reacts to God's demands can be inferred from history. People of integrity have been persecuted from the day of Abel to our day when many truthtellers censor themselves to avoid getting cancelled. The Israelites treated their prophets shamefully, the Athenians put Socrates to death, the Roman Catholic Church burnt John Huss at the stake.
There are thousands of examples of how we are inclined to put the lid on voices of conscience. When our Creator was born as a baby, the king of Judah felt threated enough to kill all the infants in Bethlehem in his attempt to eliminate competition for his throne. When the rightful king of the Jews became influential, those who set themselves up as rulers of the Jews connived with their Roman overlords to silence him.
Today one can say without fear of contradiction that Jesus of Nazareth is the most famous person of all time. Throughout the ages his followers have been relentless in spreading his fame. This is hardly surprising since we believe our Creator really wants us to be with him in an environment which will be superior to that of the garden of Eden. He is training us to connect with him and one another in the way that was modeled by him when he lived among us.
