The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” (Genesis 2:8-9 & 15-16)

When we start talking about trees in the Garden of Eden, I’ll admit that I get a little anxious. There is an aura of magic about them and magic is frowned upon in Scripture, isn’t it? First, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil very likely was not an apple tree. Neither was it (as one of my benighted profs in college said) sex. It doesn’t matter what kind of tree it was. The fruit wasn’t magical. The act of eating from the tree – not something within the fruit -was what brought separation from God, which is death. God could have told them not to pick up the Rock of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They already knew good. They came to know good and evil by their doing what they were told not to and by their looking to something other than God for something they thought they needed just like we do.

Please keep reading – this paragraph sets up what follows. It is rhetorical rather than reflecting my attitude, and probably touches on questions you have asked, or been asked. So, let’s talk about how dumb and mean God is. I mean, the whole problem would have been solved if God wouldn’t have put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden! We could still be in Eden if He hadn’t put the Tree of Life in the garden. (OK, He would have had to add to the garden to fit us all, but you get the idea.) This is the essence of one of the challenges given by atheists. How could a good, all-knowing, all-powerful God not come up with a way to make a world in which evil doesn’t exist? All it would have taken is to not put that tree in the garden and/or not issue that command. Problem solved! Isn’t it obvious? Simple?  Why create a problem that didn’t exist then punish us?

Let’s begin with an obvious problem. Unless God created more of Himself (which is a logical impossibility because creating involves what does not exist coming into existence) or unless He created something greater than Himself (which is also a logical impossibility) by necessity, anything He created must be less than Himself. It had to have limits that were short of “all.”  And unless one of the shortages involved making man dumber than dirt, eventually, man would notice that he lacked in comparison to God. Having this realization hit and be acted upon by ten out of a population of thousands would have been unfair to the thousands, so God created a teaching point. If you have all knowledge, you don’t need to eat from a tree of knowledge. If, specifically, you know (AKA experience) all that God knows (experiences) of good and evil, you don’t need to eat from a Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve and Adam were tempted because they recognized their lack.

          But if God effectively set Adam and Eve up to fall, how can He be considered loving? Technically, to make it impossible for them to do evil means that God could only love them because they did what He said. His love would be limited to the obedient because there is nothing disobedient.

At the very least, why didn’t He arrange things so their sin didn’t matter? The less important issue is that doing so would mean that their choices didn’t matter. They would effectively have no choice. He would impose Himself and His will on them by ignoring or “fixing” their evil. In this case, “fixing” would involve something like the world of Matrix, in which nothing we do actually happens. The people we hurt aren’t real so it doesn’t matter if we do evil. Absolute freedom with no consequences. In this case, God could also not applaud when we did something right because it’s not real either. This sort of a world would lead to despair or insanity. We no longer matter. Our choices don’t matter.  It’s not real, so there’s no reason to not see how evil we can be.

The thing is, God made a way to allow Himself to express His love to an awesome level. He made a way that there were consequences of our actions and one in which (for the most part) He respects our decisions and allows us to face the consequences.  What we do actually matters to us and to Him. And at the same time, He made a way so that – in another sense – our sin doesn’t matter because in demonstrating His love for us, He has provided a way for us not only to escape the consequences of our choices (and choose differently) but also a way for us to learn and grow more loving and to show ourselves to be like Him in our response to the evil of others. And the harm that we and others do?

The damage we and others cause can be limited to the lifespan of our victims and/or ourselves because God has provided a way for it to do so. God chose to take the consequences on Himself, to pay the price by dying for us. And this was all planned before the creation (Ephesians 1:4.)