Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
The woman said to the
serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say,
‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and
you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
“You will not certainly
die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from
it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and
evil.” (Genesis 3:1-5)
The Bible makes it clear
that Eve was deceived. In Under Cover, John Bever points out that the
first thing the serpent does is to change the focus from all that she could
freely do to the one thing she was told not to do. He went on to suggest that
God was withholding godhood or equality with God from her, when the truth is
that equality with God simply isn’t possible. One must be less than God to be a separate being from God. It’s not nastiness on God’s part. To be
equal with God, one would have to be God. That rather negates the whole purpose
for creating the universe and people in the first place.
These are tactics to
which we tend to fall victim today. We focus on what we don’t have or are told
we’re not to take instead of being satisfied with or enjoying what we have been
given, and we focus on what we aren’t allowed to be (like God) instead of paying
attention to all the blessings and honors we have been given.
In fact, that’s the reason
I have Tuesday Ta Das, Thankful Thursdays, and Saturday Satisfaction, because it
forces me to look for what I don’t naturally see.
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