I just had a thought this morning: What if Job and not Adam had been the common natural father of humanity? In the Book of Job, Job loses everything but faith in God’s will. His wife even tempts him at one point to curse God, but he instead retreats to prayer to apologize to God for her and others who would have him do wrong in defiance of God. Imagine a conversation with Eve, holding that forbidden fruit in her hand. He surely would have dropped to his knees and prayed for God to forgive this “foolish woman,” as he calls his own wife in his story.

Of course, this can also be used to prove that the knowledge of good and evil (read: reason and not faith alone) is necessary in order to respect God’s will, or further, that the knowledge of good and evil (read: reason and not faith alone) is necessary to truly love God.

If God only allows exactly enough suffering as He considers necessary for the greater good, then the gratuitous violence shown in the Book of Job answers the question, “Why is there so much evil in the world?” with a resounding, “Because we need it.”

Job can only come closer to knowing (and thereby loving) God by having so much evil committed upon him. He can only suffer unto this evil once he knows that it exists and that it is not good. Hence, we must recognize evil in order to know the good (i.e. love.)

And this is why Adam partook in the forbidden fruit: without knowing the difference between good and evil, he only had in him a want to love God; so it was that only through the constant temptation of evil that he could love God. If evil is the gauge by which we measure good, it is only through suffering can we truly understand love.

I think this is a reasonable theological explanation for why so many Christians come into faith at the lowest points in their lives.