It has been one year since I began this little commentary on the book of Genesis. I can hardly believe it. My intention had been to just cover the Eden narrative which ends with Cain and Abel, as far as I’m concerned. I’m starting to see, however, just how far the implications of these first few chapters has over the rest of the scriptures. I’m tempted to continue until the end of the book. I’m also tempted to continue well into Exodus because there is much to see there about God and His character that in conversation with others they had never seen before either.
Well, I suppose I shan’t have to worry about it soon given that it has taken me the better part of a year to get halfway though the second chapter of Genesis. ;). For today, though, buckle up because I’m apparently celebrating this little anniversary with a post that might get me in trouble.
We begin today’s analysis in the fifteenth verse of the second chapter of Genesis were we see that God takes the man, fully formed, and places Him in the Garden of Eden. It is flourishing like nowhere else on Earth, presumably because God has planted it. I suspect that it is also due to it being watered like nowhere else on Earth. Four rivers provide an excellent natural irrigation rather than the mist that comes up from the ground.
After placing Adam in the Garden of Eden, God gives the man a command, the first command. “You may surely eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
It is important for us to remember this exact wording. Later the Serpent will grotesquely twist it as many will remember from Sunday school.
Here we see God’s provision. This is a command, remember. Eat from every tree in the garden. Enjoy the various fruits. God has provided for Adam sustenance and everything for his health. In fact, as we learn in the later part of the narrative, there is the Tree of Life which he is free to eat from which helps him to live forever. But. And it’s a big but. There is one tree that Adam must not partake from for when he eats from it he will surely die.
One of the things I was shocked to discover that I never considered was, “Die how?”
I have all my life assumed that the active agent in the death was the LORD God Himself. “If you disobey me, then it’s a one way trip to smitey town. Can you smell the ozone crackling?” But God doesn’t say that. He only says that Adam will die if he eats of it.
What if death was the natural consequence of a human eating of that tree? We know that if we engage in sin then the natural consequence is a harmful toxicity to our spiritual (and sometimes physical) selves and our relationships about us. This is a foregone conclusion that we ignore to our peril and the peril of everyone we come in contact with. What if the fruit was the agent of death entering into our lives, and the sin of disobedience to God merely that which separated us from Him and set us on a path of further sin?
This is merely a question which I have no answer for. Maybe it doesn’t matter since they are bundled so tightly together in the text. I’ve always mistaken the fruit as an unimportant object in and of itself. Huh. I wonder.
Because when they do eat of the fruit, God says ,amongst Himself, that man has become like Them knowing good and evil. God knows good and evil. Death isn’t part and parcel of His knowledge of good and evil. He doesn’t appear to have gotten His knowledge of Good and Evil from the tree. Which leads me to believe, at the moment of course, that death was in the fruit not the disobedience. The disobedience had its own horrible, terrible, creation shattering consequences.
Did the consequences of sin enter into us through the fruit or through the choice to eat the fruit?
Jesus tells us thousands of years later that what goes into a man is not what makes him “unclean”. We would have to say that it was choice to betray God’s command, and therefore we would have to say that the potential was always within us to disobey. Man must have had free will from the beginning. It wasn’t introduced by the fruit or by the Serpent’s suggestion.
Our corruption was in the decision to go our own way. We replaced the word of God with the word of men. It was within us to choose from the Divine breath of life in our nostrils.
Is there a difference between the knowledge of good and evil and the knowledge of obedience and disobedience? When we consider a child, all they know is the knowledge of obedience and disobedience. They know that with obedience they will be rewarded. With disobedience comes consequences. But the consequences that Adam and Eve knew were only theoretical to them. They didn’t know them as an experienced fact. And what evil was there on planet Earth to know about anyway?
The good they already knew, ostensibly; God and health and plenty and the beautiful Garden.
Was it the “experience” of good and evil? Evil being the absence of God, torn between two realities, always being forced by our knowledge to choose. That may be it. Because where do we trip up the most? Who is embracing evil and only evil? Who is embracing the Good/God and only God? Jesus accuses men of trying to have it both ways, serving two masters. How much of that is our existence and has always been humanity’s existence? We want the Good but we also want the Evil. We want His blessings but our way.
There are those who would say that God made a mistake by placing the tree in the Garden to begin with. That, somehow, He shouldn’t have even given us the opportunity to choose to sin; that the temptation and resultant effects are all His fault. But…given that beings blessed with choice (yes, I believe the choice is a blessing) would eventually choose what is wrong even if it is just to see what happens because they were bored…how perfectly loving is it to provide only one avenue in order to make that choice? The way things happened wasn’t God’s “plan B”.
As we see later in the text Eve looks at the tree and sees that it is “good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes”. In Genesis 2:9 we find that this descriptor is verbatim how God made all the trees in the Garden to begin with. Until the serpent told Eve that this particular tree had special properties, there was no need or desire for Adam and Eve to reach out and take the fruit. They were perfectly satisfied with all the other trees in the garden. The only difference is that Eve sees it as good for “gaining wisdom” with the words of the Serpent.
How is this a perfectly loving option? Because the other option was far more horrible than we can imagine.
Consider the first being that sinned. Lucifer. His sin was the only disobedience he could manage or desire. For him there was no, “Don’t eat from the tree.” There was only a desire to overthrow God from His throne and rule over all. When we look at the sin of our disobedience it may be considered as an overthrow of God in our hearts, but Satan chose the overthrow of the King of the Universe from His actual throne. And the only way that was going to happen was to somehow kill God or overpower Him. He wanted to murder God.
We wanted to gain wisdom. Adam and Eve had the absolute pleasure of knowing God, walking with Him, speaking to Him as a friend. We quite naturally, to my way of thinking, wanted to be like God, but that is a far cry from wanting to murder God and take His stuff.
Consider the consequences. Satan and the Fallen Angels are consigned to Hell in the End Times with no possibility of parole. It is their fate, their just punishment for their sin. We humans? Made in the image of God, made with an eternal spirit…we get to choose where we will spend eternity. There is hope for us. There is a way of salvation. We are not forever cut off from God without a possibility of redemption. One mistake does not define our destination.
It may just be that the story of God’s deep love and redemption for humanity begins even earlier than we imagine.
(I hope that you have enjoyed a look into how my mind works over the past year. It has been an interesting ride for both of us, I’m sure. I hope I have sparked thoughts and discussions. I hope that I have in some way caused you to open your Bible to see if these things are so. I encourage you, as always, to engage with me through comments. Maybe I’m off base. Like I’ve always said, I’m no authority. I’m just a guy with a brain and a Bible. If you like what I’ve written please like, subscribe, and share with a friend. I look forward to working through Genesis with you in the coming year.)
Finding Narnia 
Leave a comment