My real question is why on Earth would God make that stupid tree in the first place?

I mean, why even have something that's forbidden?

It's not like it appeared out of nowhere.

Tree - "Hello, I'm the evil tree that sprouted without permission."

Adam and Eve: "What's evil? That looks yummy."
God - "No! Don't eat that!"

That obviously didn't happen. God purposefully made a tree (I mean, we can go non-literal and say that God created something else that led them to temptation, but the thinking is simpler if we stick to the probably metaphorical story of the garden, which is probably why we have the metaphor in the first place, actually).

God purposefully made a tree with purposefully forbidden fruit. In a way, He created the temptation, when He could have just not created anything tempting. He knew what would happen, so He could have just said, "I won't create that tree."

But I think the point is that the possibility to sin had to exist.

Because if we didn't have the ability to choose anything other than love of God, if there literally was no other option, than free will wouldn't really exist.

God - "You are free. You can eat from whatever tree you want."

Adam and Eve - "Dude, there's only one tree in all of existence."

God - "You can freely choose to eat from that tree."

Adam and Eve - "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Giving us the ability to choose sin, giving us something which we were not supposed to choose, gave us the ability to choose between God and sin. It gave us the ability to choose to love God. He truly gave us freedom, and we could have chosen Him. We really could have.

But we didn't. We chose the stupid tree. Really, that whole story makes me wonder if we weren't somewhat flawed beings before the fall, because seriously, two perfect humans looked at a stupid piece of fruit and were like, "Yup, this is worth giving up paradise. It looks delicious."

Anyway, we chose the tree and the fruit. And God wasn't surprised, although Genesis makes Him look kinda surprised. (And Adam and Eve aren't really the brightest people at the moment either - seriously, you think you can hide from Him?!) He knew we would choose the fruit. And He made it anyway. Because even though He knew we would throw His gift of love and life and freedom back in His face, He still loved us and gave us our freedom anyway.

Also, on a slightly related topic, what's really mind-blowing to me is that there was never a specific moment in time when God made His will. I mean, He's existed always. And it's not like He'd been spending eternity just chillaxing and not thinking about humans and then suddenly He was like, "I'm bored. I'll make a universe, and some people. People would be fun." And He didn't sit there for a while thinking through everything we would do and coming up with the perfect response.

His will has always existed. He has always known everything that would ever happen. Always. His will never began, just as He never began.

So His will is not some series of rationalizations and logical equations that He thought up one day.

His will has to be one with Him.

I really don't understand this, because it's much easier to imagine God thinking through every event and coming up with a response than to think of Him as a being who by His very nature has always had a perfect plan and the perfect response to every problem.

I'm praying for you!

:)