Cancer is Not a Result of “The Fall”

Transcript: Debunking a Doctrine: The Fall and Suffering

You know, whenever you ask Christians why there’s so much suffering in the world, why there are babies with cancer, why the sun gives you cancer, why cancer, basically—why are there hurricanes and tsunamis that kill like 200,000 people every single year? Why are there bugs that lay eggs in children’s eyes and eat their way out? Why are there germs that cause the common cold? If God’s perfect, why is the world so imperfect? And the answer always comes back, “Well, it’s all a result of the fall.” But I’m not convinced that the Bible says that. Let’s debunk a doctrine.

Hey folks, welcome to Joel Reads Bible. I’m Joel and I read the Bible so that you don’t have to, typically. But today we are going to read the Bible, but we’re not going to read a full chapter. We’re going to speak about a specific doctrine that I was taught when I was a Christian and that I hear Christians say all the time. This is foundational. This is a core doctrine. And surprise, surprise, I don’t think it’s in the Bible. But we’re going to go over the passages. Hey, listen: if I miss some sort of a passage, I’m very, very curious where there is support for this in the book. And stay tuned to the end of the video because I’m going to be sharing sort of like a bonus problem that I found that does relate to this but isn’t really like right on the nose.

The Problem

So here’s the problem. We have a tri-omni perfect God—you know, all-good, all-knowing, all-loving—yet a world that’s full of horrific and gratuitous suffering, egregious suffering. And some of it’s natural. Some of it is just the way that this world works. And some of it is us inflicting it on each other. But that doesn’t seem to make sense if there is a perfect creator at the helm or an all-powerful God type of thing. But we’re going to mainly focus on the natural things.

So what do Christians say? What’s the theological answer to this part of the problem of suffering? And the answer is “The Fall.”

The Fall

When Eve ate the fruit and then Adam ate the fruit, sin entered the world. And because of that, everything went haywire. Everything started to decay and there was disease and animals started destroying each other and the weather got really, really bad. All the bad stuff happened because they ate a piece of fruit, you know, in this totally not fairy-talish book for adults.

The Verses

So, why do Christians think that? Where are they getting this idea? It’s really two passages as far as I can tell. And if I miss another passage, please leave it in the comments. I’m really curious, but these are the two that I’ve heard from Christians. It’s usually just the one and then once in a while the really smart ones will bring up the second one. But let’s get into the first passage: Genesis 3, because that’s where the fall happens.

Genesis 3

We can go down to Verse 14. So, they eat the fruit and then God gives out a bunch of curses. And this is where we are going to find the curse that is going to tell us that forevermore we’re going to have tsunamis and cancers and Harlequin babies and all sorts of just horrific things that you would think no good God would want happening on the planet. But for some reason here we are. So I’ll read the passage real quick.

Verse 14 The Lord said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures. Upon your belly you shall go, dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

Verse 15 I will put enmity between you and the woman and your offspring and hers. He will strike your head and you will strike his heel.”

So there’s nothing in there about diseases or any sort of like bad weather. All we get is that like, “Hey, do you see snakes slithering around? That’s what happened. That’s why they do that because of this.” If that’s true—I mean, they are still slithering around so that curse was to all serpents and is still happening today—so that works.

Verse 16 To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbirth exceedingly great. In pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.”

So, we still see pains in childbirth, but that doesn’t account for probably stillborn babies. It doesn’t account for Harlequin babies—I don’t know if you’ve seen that; don’t Google it. It doesn’t account for babies who have cancer and die shortly after just being in pain the whole time. It doesn’t account for any of that kind of thing. It doesn’t account for any sort of pain and suffering that is natural that happens to anyone else. It only accounts for pain in childbirth. So that can’t be where they’re getting it.

Verse 17 And to the man, he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘you shall not eat it,’ cursed is the ground because of you. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

Verse 18 Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field.

Verse 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

So that’s where they extrapolate it from. The first two curses, we don’t care. But this next one, we have to completely renegotiate what the text is saying and make it mean all diseases ever, all the time, forever. But obviously, that’s not what’s being said here. Obviously, it’s saying because you ate of the tree, you now have to toil for your food—which people do. That still happens. We have to work to eat. You know, you have to work hard and pull weeds and sweat in order to actually grow produce to make your bread. That’s like pretty straightforward. Like you just have to read the words and know what the words are saying and you would come to that conclusion.

Anyone that goes like, “That there, see? Harlequin babies. Did you read in there that that was the leukemia? He mentioned leukemia there.” Like, that’s impossible. That’s ridiculous to extrapolate that from that. This is not telling us that we are going to have tsunamis. It’s just ridiculous. There’s no hurricane mentioned, you know? This is only: the ground will no longer just give you bountiful food perfectly without you having to do any sort of work—which by the way, Adam did have to work previously. He was put in the garden to work it.

So let me work it… um, I didn’t know—I don’t know if he reversed it or what happened. But the apologetic is going to be that from the ground you were taken and you will return to dust, dust to dust. And they’re saying that the curse in that moment is death, right? But that’s not really what the curse of that moment is. The curse of that moment is you have to work really hard until you die because you were taken out of the ground—dust to dust, right?

But only later do we get a clear picture of what that death looks like and how it’s going to play out, right?

Verse 22 Then the Lord said, “See, the humans have become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and now they might reach out their hands and also take from the tree of life and eat it forever.”

Verse 23 Therefore the Lord sent them forth from the garden to till the ground from which they were taken.

Verse 24 He drove out the humans and at the east of the garden he placed a cherubim and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.

So we know why they’re going to die. It’s not because they have all sorts of diseases. And that would be the apologetic, right? If they were given death, the way that they get to death is cancer, and maybe just being born sick and then dying sick when you’re like 3 months old or something like that. That’s what’s happening here. But that’s not what it says. What it says is you’re going to toil the field—that’s the one curse—and then you don’t get to eat from the tree of life. That’s why you’re going to die, presumably of old age, right? The diseases and inclement weather don’t come into it at all. That’s an extrapolation. That’s a completely added doctrine to this to excuse the problem of suffering. It’s not there.

So, the other passage that I’ve been told is what tells us this is happening comes from Romans 8, which is weird that the only other mention is way in Romans 8. And we’ve got to just like snapshot something in the middle of the chapter.

Romans 8

Verse 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope

Verse 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

So somehow this verse needs to mean that because Adam and Eve chose to eat fruit, it was so destructive that sin entered the world and made everything topsy-turvy. But “the creation was subjected to frustration not by its own choice.” So are Adam and Eve creation? They are creation, right? They’re part of the creation. So them and you and I, we are subjected to frustration not by our own choice, not by the choice of the creation. We are the creation, but by the will of the one who subjected it.

So whose will subjected it? And this is another hint: “in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.” So whoever is the will of the one who subjected it is also the one that’s hoping that the creation will be liberated. Okay? So they’re the same guy. The creation didn’t subject itself to frustration. We didn’t do it. Who did it was the one that’s hoping that the creation will be liberated from its bondage to decay. And that’s the one who subjected it. And I can only imagine that that’s God because it’s God’s will that it was subjected. So God subjected us to frustration in hopes that we would be liberated from the bondage to decay.

So, I think Paul is saying that like, God caused all this and he’s doing it so that it can play out in a way that’s going to eventually be okay. It’s not very good. It’s not a good plan and it’s certainly not what any Christian really wants to preach right now except for maybe hardcore Calvinists, right?

The Alternative

So we don’t have a biblical grounding for this foundational doctrine of “the fall causes the problem of suffering.” The fall equals suffering—that doesn’t happen here. That’s not in the text, right? What is just as theologically likely based on these passages and what we see is that God created a world of suffering. You know, that’s why in certain translations it says that the woman’s suffering will increase in childbirth. So, she was already suffering; it’s just going to be worse for her now. And also, Adam had to work the garden and now he has to work it more.

It could have been that there was always going to be suffering, that there was always going to be tsunamis, that there was always going to be earthquakes and cancer and Harlequin babies and all those things. This was the world that God created from the start and he saw that it was good because he’s demented and then also has subjected us to it and the creation to it in hopes that it will fix itself like some sort of sick game. That’s so typically the God of the Bible. It’s ridiculous and it doesn’t make a lot of sense if you want your God to be all-good and all-loving and all-just, but theologically speaking, it’s just as grounded biblically as this other one that Christians believe. The one that you believe as a Christian is more comfortable for sure, but there’s no good reason to believe it when it comes to the text.

The Importance

So, why is this important? It’s important because if it’s not in the text, then you’re just making it up. And that’s why videos like mine and anyone else that talks about the Bible—and even apologists and counter-apologists and whomever—are so dangerous to Christianity, because anyone can speak any idea into the world and if it grows in popularity it could become part of the cult. Like it happens all the time.

I’m going to bring this up in later videos as well where through my deconstruction I’ve noticed there’s ideas that I had from pastors or other teachers that do exist when I Google it—other people have been taught it too. One of those ideas that I’ve already spoken about is like “Noah preached and invited people to come on the ark and they all made fun of him and said no.” That’s just not in the Bible, right? That’s just something that’s made up and becomes part of certain Christians’ belief systems and lives, and anything can be added to that. That’s why you have 45,000 denominations. It’s all made up as you go along. And we’re seeing that with this very, very foundational doctrine, right? This is how we deal with the problem of suffering.

The Truth

But what it shows is that the original story—right, Genesis chapter 3, the curses, the fall, and all that stuff—was not written to carry the theological weight you’re making it carry. It just isn’t there for you. It’s a very simple story, probably about a group of people getting more into agriculture or something like that. It’s a very rudimentary story. They saw snakes and they were like, “Oh, let’s add that in there. The snake. We don’t like those snakes.” You know, snakes are often a symbol of like, “bad.” We don’t like them; we’re scared of them. A lot of cultures use that. So, this is a very simple thing that’s being told, kind of like a fairy tale or a myth or a legend or any of those types of things. I don’t mean those in necessarily derogatory ways; it’s only going to be derogatory to those of you who think that this is absolute truth and actually did happen. But it’s not meant to carry that theological weight.

What it really feels like is, “Huh, we have all this suffering. We have this problem that’s going to go on here. How are we going to fix that? Oh, this could be it. Oh, this must be the thing. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s say it’s this. This will work. Yeah. We’ll just say it’s because sin entered the world and that caused all the problems.” Like, it’s so obvious that that’s how it worked. That’s what’s going on here, isn’t it? Doesn’t that take you out of it at all? Like, doesn’t that make you go like, “Oh, geez. They’re just making it up.”

The Solution

So there is a simple solution, and I think I’m probably going to say this after every one of these videos, which I plan to do more than just this one. How does “there isn’t a God” fit? Like, if there is no God, how does that fit into this problem of suffering? The answer is “perfectly.”

If there’s no God, then the suffering makes sense. You know, a cold and unfeeling universe and cause and effect and natural processes and all that stuff—that snaps into focus. Yeah, that’s how that would work. That’s how that would look. We don’t need it to be perfect. We don’t need it to be good. There’s nobody watching over us. There’s nobody who made a world a certain way and knew how it was going to pan out and then still let it happen. And the consequence of that, it turns out, is bone cancer. You know what I mean? It just doesn’t make sense.

The Extra

Now, here’s a little bonus counter-apologetic for you that is really, really fun and something I’ve noticed and I’ve been speaking about a lot in my live streams lately. But if we go back to Genesis 3 and we see all of these curses, we have God cursing the ground. And God cursing the ground apparently is a world full of suffering, right? This is, again, the foundational doctrine. The whole entire world suffers. Children are born just to die in pain because God cursed the ground. This is a lifelong, everybody-curse. Everybody gets it. Nobody escapes death. It’s like for everyone across all time, right?

We also have snakes that crawl on their belly all the time. We see them everywhere. I’ve seen tons of snakes. They all crawl on their belly. None of them have arms; none of them have legs. We also have the curse to the woman that she’ll have an increase or exceeding pains in childbirth, right? Which is true. We see that all the time. Women that give birth are in a lot of pain. We’ve kind of beat that with epidurals a little bit. You know, there are painkillers for the most part. That still is a thing, and we’re just masking that the pain is still happening. And there’s a variety of different pain.

There is one clause in this whole thing of curses that says: “Yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.” Is that true? Is that one of the brutal curses that applies to every single person across all time? Remember: cursing the ground means cancer, tsunamis, hurricanes, and all sorts of horrific death, stillborns, all that stuff. And we still see the snakes, and we still have the pains in childbirth. Yet, some women don’t desire a husband at all. There are lesbian women, right? Also, there are some women who marry someone who desire them and then eventually don’t desire them at a certain time. There’s probably some women that marry men because the men are financially stable; they don’t really have a desire for them. There are so many different kinds of relationships where men are not ruling over the women—where the women are kind of ruling over the man in the relationship, or the man and the woman have an equal partnership and they all take on different roles and they make decisions together.

So this one part of the curse seems to just not be true. It also seems like certain people—oftentimes religious people—want to fight to keep this curse true when it’s part of the curses. Like, why would you want that? Why wouldn’t you go with the progress of, like, not continuing to have the curse? So, while you’re using this passage to excuse all of the horrific suffering in the world, keep in mind that you also have to figure out why some of the curses just are not applicable today. And that’s a big problem. That just shows that God is not good at cursing. Maybe he’s a little bit impotent instead of omnipotent.

Closing Thoughts

Anyway, there’s a little bit of doctrine debunked. Next time a Christian says that the problem of suffering is because of the fall, it is not in their book. It’s just something that they make up in order to maintain their cult. In order to say, “Hey, this makes sense. We’ve got a system for that.” See? But it’s not in their one foundational text that tells them all this stuff about their cult. You know what I mean? It’s just added, extrapolated, made-up nonsense in order to excuse the reality that they live in and still believe in the fairy tale that they prefer.

But that’s it from me. Hey, look, if you like this video and you’re not subscribed, please do that now. Like the video and why don’t you leave me a comment telling me how wrong I got this and send me 50 verses that say suffering was brought into the world because of the fall. When God said that “the ground thing,” he actually meant the “cancer thing.” You know, it’s not in the Bible. If it was, that would be way too ridiculous. You know, at that point, you’d already be like, “Somebody’s fixing this. Someone’s doing apologetics in ancient Israel.”

But anyway, we’ll see you next time, probably for Deuteronomy number one. So check that out. We’ll see you then. Bye.