The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

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 2:16-17

The first mention of the word "evil" in Scripture is recorded in Chapter 2 of Genesis.  God is talking to Adam, the man He has created, as they stroll through the magnificent Garden of Eden.  God indicates the entire garden with a sweep of His hand, and tells Adam that he can eat of any tree (or bush, or vine, or plant) of the garden - all has been made ready for him for food.  All, that is, except one.  In the very midst (center?) of the garden is a tree whose fruit is not for Adam's consumption.  We are not told what the fruit was - most certainly not an apple (others have suggested an orange).  God then sets down some very clear facts.  The tree of the knowledge of good and evil?  No, you are not to eat of that one.  Every other tree in the garden?  Help yourself! 

Please note that the tree itself is not "evil."  Neither is the fruit.  There was, quite possibly, nothing spectacular about either the tree or its fruit except for one thing:  it was forbidden.  Rather, the tree is labeled as the place of the knowledge of good and evil.  In the existence of the Garden of Eden, Adam had a daily lesson in what constituted "good."  He was surrounded by God's creation that the Creator himself had labeled as "good" and man himself was characterized as "very good."  So the tree in the center of the garden was involved in the possibility of discovering what is evil.  At this point, Adam has no idea what "evil" is.  What is clear, to Adam and to us, is that the tree was a place of choice:  to choose to honor his Creator and do what God asked, or to choose to go his own way.  Skip Moen, in his Hebrew Word Study blog, observes, "Adam's choice is between God's design for delight or his decision to make his own garden."  Will I obey God, or will I choose to be my own master?  Ultimately, Adam decided against God.  His choice thrust him out of the Garden into a world of his own making minus all the delightful provisions of the Creator's goodness.  Separation from the daily presence of God opened Adam's world to continued rebellion against the One who made him.  Continued rebellion produced greater and greater sin - the knowledge of evil.

God's commentary in Exodus 3:22 is laden with sorrow:  The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.   

What is Evil? Part 2

My prayer is not that you take them out of the world 

but that you protect them from the evil.

John 17:15

The statement that set my mind to thinking about what constitutes "evil" was this: "God created evil," and reiterated, "God created both evil and good."  Since God having anything at all to do with the origins of evil (much less creating it) is a concept I can barely wrap my mind around, much less accept, I have been engaged in researching various sources to try and understand exactly what "evil" is, and why in the world anyone would think that God "created" it.  I discovered a fellow blogger in the vastness of the Internet who had this to say on the subject:  "In order to understand what constitutes evil one must first understand good. All things were created by God as "good". Goodness is an integral aspect of man because of this fact."

The first book of the Bible - Genesis - records the creation of all things from God's perspective.  Beginning with a formless void (Gen. 1:2), God progressed through creation in a series of six days.  The first day heralded the creation of light and the subsequent separation of light from darkness. At the end of Day 1, God viewed what He had done - the perfection of His handiwork, and said that it was "good."  Sky was separated from land and water (good); the dry land was decorated with grass, trees, fruit, and every seed (good); the heavenly bodies were flung across the sky (good); fish and fowl filled the empty waters (good); animals, reptiles, and insects filled the planet (good); and finally man was brought forth as the crowning act of creation.  When God surveyed the surrounding perfection at the end of the sixth day, He proclaimed it as very good.

There is one more day in the Creation story - Day Seven - where we might reasonably be expecting to read about the origination of evil, if God indeed did create "good and evil."  However, God did not use Day 7 to create "evil" however - He used it to rest after His creation labors.    At this point, I think it is apropos to point out that in the first six days, God did not create good (a noun, a "thing"); rather, He proclaimed that all things He had created were good (an adjective, a description).

In the entire rest of the Biblical narrative, there is not one mention of the creation process of "evil."  There is, however, the mention of a tree in the midst of the garden (Genesis 2:16-17) - the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. 

 

Thanksgiving 2012

From my family to yours...

Wishing you a weekend of thanks

and a blessed beginning

to the holiday season.

Thanksgiving 2012

singeronthesand