Over this Holy Week I am going to
spend some time on the three trees that encompass three central facets in the
history of the faith: The tree of knowledge, the tree of the cross, and the
tree of life. Tomorrow I’m going to focus on the tree of the cross, as Good
Friday begs; and on Easter I’m going to talk on the tree of life alongside the
resurrection promise; so today, though it’s not so much in the scripture
reading, I am going to talk on the tree of knowledge.
In Genesis 2 it says, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till
it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You
may freely eat of every tree of 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
die’” (Genesis 2:15-17).
Adam and Eve had one rule—just do
not eat from this tree!—but as all of us who are parents know if the kids only
have one rule you can be assured that that rule will absolutely, certainly, most
definitely be broken. So a serpent comes along and tells Adam and Eve, “If you
eat from this tree you will not die, that’s just God playing tricks on you. No,
the reason God does not want you to eat from this tree is because if you eat
from the tree you will be like God, knowing everything”
(Genesis 3:4-5 paraphrased).
Well, that’s tempting. So, they eat the fruit, they learn some new
things—for example, they understand they are naked—and suddenly they are thrust
out into the world to fend for themselves. In short, they get exactly what they
wanted: They get to experience things as they truly are East of Eden. Worst of
all, they are promised death—something they couldn’t have really even
understood before then. You mean, now there will be this transition? Now, our
lives down here will… end? What does that even mean?
The moment that transition—from life
to death—came into the picture a million other questions popped up—Is there something after life? What will it
take to fix this? Is the transition painful? Adam and Eve got what they
were looking for, but it didn’t satisfy. Their newfound freedom to do whatever
they pleased was met by a sour recognition that knowing things does not save
you.
We could argue that the tree of
knowledge was unnecessary. Why would God
even offer the temptation? Why even offer the possibility? Why make that
other tree—the cross—needed in the first place? Well, I suppose the likeliest
answer is because God created us to yearn for something; to want to be
something; to crave freedom. Now, there’s a huge side effect of that yearning:
We are turned in on ourselves. We want to become like God. The reason we cannot
taste the fruit is not because the fruit of that tree is bad; it’s because of
what we will do with that fruit. It’s because WE. ARE. NOT. GOD.
All the problems in the world are
created by those who would become like God without an awareness that they are
not. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil requires perfect humility to
taste the fruit, and we don’t have it. The first tree isn’t bad; it just brings
out our worst. It should also remind us that while we are not to be trusted
with power, there is one more powerful than us who can work good on our behalf.
Tomorrow we venerate the cross as a reminder of the gift we have been given of
Jesus Christ; the God became man to show us that there is a better way.
The first tree still isn’t bad. The
problem is with us. It’s a big problem, but that tree does not have the last
word.
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