When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, the Bible tells us that He banished them from the garden of Eden. We also know from the Bible that the order of things got all upset. God cursed the serpent, Eve and Adam. Eve's curse - “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
Wonder why men and women always have problems? There's your answer.
Adam's curse - “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food..."
This is the interesting part. God actually cursed this whole earth! Even thorns are direct results of God's curse! Did you also notice what kind of food Adam was supposed to eat? Plants!
Before Adam sinned, God said to him, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.”
The original diet for man was only seed-bearing plants and trees with fruits! Nothing else. For all the animals and every living creature, food was green plants! So basically, the original design never included meat for food. (There you go, vegetarians!)
Did you notice a change in diet after Adam sinned? From seed-bearing plants and fruit-bearing trees to plants of the field! Seed-bearing plants and fruit-bearing trees would not have required Adam to cultivate the land but plants of the field required hard labour because God said to Adam that he would have to eat those plants of the field by the "sweat of" his brow.
I've been blessed to have escaped the need for toiling in the field under the sun for food and sustenance, although I have experienced how hard it is. For those who earn their livelihood through agriculture, they are fully aware of this curse of God. And you should see their joy when they have done their job.
The only thing God did for Adam and Eve after He cursed them was to
make clothes for them. The Bible doesn't even mention any crash course on agriculture! God made garments for Adam and Eve and He sent them out of the Garden of Eden to start feeding themselves through hard work. There were no short cuts. Plain hard work.
Did you ever wonder why individuals, families, societies and nations often get derailed in their path to self sufficiency? Well, in my opinion, it is because we have abandoned the notion that it is only through hard work that we succeed in life.
Sadly, through our temporary entity we call government we have fooled ourselves into thinking that our livelihood, sustenance and prosperity come not "by the sweat" of our brow but through the hand of the always-erring government, thus breeding dependency and not fostering the idea of self-sufficiency and self-determination.
A thinker of great significance Judge Andrew Napolitano said:
"Dependency breeds a sense of complacency and entitlement and fosters a government that -- in order to stay in power -- will further that dependency. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton agreed on little publicly, but they did agree that when the public treasury becomes a public trough and the voters recognize that, they will send to the government only those who promise them a bigger piece of the government pie."
We need to get back to the original idea i.e., hard work if we are to truly beat the economic burden that's saddling us. But the question is: are we willing to take that approach and let go of the government's freebies that only further our dependency on the government whose main interest is to continue making us so dependent on it that it will do anything to remain in power?
