Death is Mercy

When Adam and Eve sinned, God cursed everything. He just went nuts. He cursed Adam. He cursed Eve. He cursed the ground. He cursed childbirth. He cursed snakes. He made us enemies with snakes. Who likes snakes? Weirdos, that's who. He created conflict between men and women.

The Lord God said to the serpent,“Because you have done this,Cursed are you more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you will go, and dust you will eat all the days of your life;And I will put enmity. Between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.”

To the woman He said,“I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you will bring forth children; yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’;
Cursed is the ground because of you;In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.“Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Why curse everything? Every God-damned thing. He cursed all of it. Why?

FOR VENGEANCE.

Possibly. I mean, that's his right.

FOR PUNISHMENT.

Adam deserved it.

For mercy.

When Adam sinned, he became a slave to sin (John 8.34). God planned to set us free from sin eventually, with Christ, but Christ wasn't scheduled to come along for millennia still. What could God do to create a situation that would ensure a kind of merciful world before then? Answer: The Curse.

The Curse forces us to work. It forces us to abandon our selfish, lazy nature and work for food, for relationships, for survival, for happiness. Without work, we are stupid, ignorant, lazy, self-centered and proud. We see this historically as every society reaches a generally prosperous state. The Curse pushes us toward godliness, whether we believe in God or not. To overcome the Curse, we must work and work hard. We must suffer. Suffering forces us to go beyond our measly selves and look to others for strength, to be humble, to be kind, and to ask for kindness. The Curse causes us to look to our Creator. It forces us to work and to work together, man and woman, every race, every person, to build a functioning society, to build families, to govern, to protect. We can only do this by his grace and by trusting in him. We need this Curse because we need God.

Death forces us to trust in God. Death forces us to focus our energies, to have goals, to manage our time, to teach our children right and wrong so that they will continue to build a well-functioning society. We need death and we need work because life without cost, difficulty, or pain makes us evil, selfish, lazy people.