If death in this world did not happen till the forbidden fruit was eaten, could Adam in his everyday walking around the Garden of Eden had walked on an ant and killed it? Also did none of the newly carnivorous animals eat another animial till Adam sinned?
What if Adam picked a flower to give to Eve before he sinned, would the flower die? I think there are interesting questions.
The death that genesis talks about is a spiritual death, a seperation from god. If a body is in a glorified state, it does not need food to survive. God does not need breakfast or lunch or dinner to continue being. As i understand it food was for enjoyment not survival. The lion did not have to kill to survive. It wouldnt have to kill for enjoyment either. So it didnt kill. The life force of god kept all animals alive. Adam would not have stepped on an ant because he would have stopped before stepping on it. There was no accidental deaths nor intentional deaths.
But that changed. Now the lion has to kill to survive, everything in the circle of life has to eat that below it in the food chain to survive. Now instead of finding their life in god, the creatures and plants on this earth survive by eating and taking nourishment from itself. The creatures and plants survive by feeding of each other, instead of 'eating' from god. And so the earth, which would have remained young for ever, now grows old and worn out. The earth is now subject to decay. Not only do individual plants and animals decay when they die, but the earth does as well. The earth started to grow old when adam and eve sinned and since then the earth has been in decline. It is dying, though it looks very much alive. It is beautiful true, spectacularly beautiful, but nothing like it was before. Eventually when a planet has died it looks something like mars.
We humans are in bodies, called 'bodies of death'. We can try as hard as we like, it gets old. And so does the earth. At some point, we put our bodies into the ground, like a worn out garment we put this body down, and take up a new garment (re-incarnation). But there will come a day when we will put on enternal garments, clothes (bodies) that are not eaten by moths or wear out or decay. In the same way, this earth is on a journey back to the garden. To once again put on a garment that cannot decay and the new earth, will stay young forever.
