Bible Articles, page 3

The story of the Garden of Eden is a source of endless fascination for me-especially the part about the two trees. Plainly, they are important, but what do they mean? Consider the story.

It seems the Lord God planted a garden, eastward in Eden, and there He placed the man whom He had formed. He made to grow out of the ground every tree that was good for food and pleasant to the eyes. There were two trees that were special–the "tree of life" and the "tree of knowledge of good and evil." Everyone knows the story. Adam could eat of any tree of the garden–including the tree of life–but he was not permitted to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The result of eating of the one tree would be eternal life. The result of eating of the other tree would be death (Genesis 2:16 ff).

Endless morals are drawn from this passage. Most preachers find them good for at least one sermon a year. Along with the morals, there is a nice set of puzzles, and being one who can never resist a good puzzle, I keep coming back to the tale of two trees.

The first puzzle in the story is why God put the bad tree there in the first place. Had He not put it there, Eve could not have been tempted by it, nor could the serpent have made an issue of it. This one small change in landscape planning, and all human history might have been different. Why, then, was it there?

Maybe it was just a matter of landscaping–the tree was only there to look at. Not every plant that is beautiful is fit to eat, and some are downright poisonous. The Genesis account tells us plainly that trees were planted that were good to eat and pleasant to the eyes. Of course, God warned them that they would die if they ate of the tree. If they ate of the tree after being warned, their blood was on their own head.

I suppose it is a satisfactory explanation as far as it goes, but it just doesn't go far enough. After all, God is God. It would have been no trick for Him to have provided for the esthetics of the garden without putting dangerous plants in it. One presumes that most of the dangerous plants we know were not in the garden; Adam was only warned about one tree. Then there is the indisputable fact that the tree was not poisonous in the usual sense. Adam and Eve ate of the tree and didn't even get sick. No, there has to be something else. God exposed Adam and Eve to an unnecessary risk. Surely He had a reason for it.

Perhaps the tree was put there for a test. Maybe God is trying to answer some questions: Would Adam and Eve do as they were told? Could they be trusted to carry out instructions? To think this out, we must do some simple theology.

The idea that the tree was put there for a test is based on what I call the "arbitrary God" theory. This theory holds that things and acts are not necessarily evil of themselves, but are wrong solely because God says they are wrong. When you break a law, nothing bad happens to you directly and solely because of transgression. God must see to it that you are punished. If He does not punish you, you get off free. This makes God arbitrary because He could just as easily have made the act harmless. God could have declared adultery to be no sin, and we could have slept around without consequences.

Those who believe this are like the teenage girl who says to her mother, "Aw Mom, you never want me to have any fun." The sole objective of the parent is to obstruct all the fun the teenager wants to have. Never mind that having sex with the football team will result in a wide variety of negative consequences. The operative question of the arbitrary God theory runs along these lines: "If I commit this sin, this way, for these reasons, under these circumstances, will God punish me for it?" Under this theory, when we ask God why we shouldn't do something, His answer is, "Because I said so."

But what if it is the other way around? What if the reason God says not to do something is because the act is intrinsically wrong or harmful? In that case, it would require divine intervention to prevent the punishment, not to cause it. In the Genesis account, the immediate results of eating of the tree took place without any action on God's part. This is why God is portrayed as not knowing what happened.

Here we come to the second great puzzle in the tale of two trees. Doesn't God know everything? How could He possibly arrive in the garden totally ignorant of the sin of Adam and Eve? The only answer that makes sense is that He had chosen not to know. By doing so, He made it clear that the arbitrary God theory is false. Sin is sin because it hurts, and God does not have to be there to make it hurt.

This simple fact foreshadows the need for redemption from sin–for a savior. Sin itself is destructive. God takes action in sending His only begotten Son into the world to save the world from the consequences of sin. God did not sacrifice His Son to save the world from God's own punishment. This changes everything you might have believed about the law. The law of God is given to tell man where the pitfalls are, where the hurt lies. How could the law be arbitrarily abolished if it were not arbitrary in the first place? The law is rooted in the nature is what it is, man needs the law of God.

This may clear up one aspect of the puzzle, but it still leaves us with an uncomfortable question–why did God put something so dangerous within such easy reach of His children? If there is one thing that is clear in this story, it is that God deliberately placed Adam and Eve at risk. Presumably, He had a purpose. It seems unlikely that He would have put them at risk without expecting something worthwhile in return.

Not only were they at risk, but it was a high degree of risk. Could God have imagined that they would not, sooner or later, partake of the tree? And if He was interested in a test, why not test them with something that didn't have such disastrous results right off?

Perhaps the underlying truth is as simple as a choice. Without a full range of choices to be made between good and evil, do we really have a choice at all? If the garden had only trees that were harmless, and Adam and Eve could eat of any of them, what then? Where would be the character? In the end, character is about the choices we make.

Yet simply putting the choice there–the risk–without some significant value is problematic. There is, of course, the matter of gaining strength through resisting temptation. This is the one reasonable benefit from placing the tree there and having man not eat of it.

In the end, Eve ate of the fruit and gave it to her husband and he ate as well. At first, it may have seemed that the serpent was right. They ate of the tree and did not die. They did not even get sick. Had God misled them?

There was, from the beginning, no prohibition against eating the fruit of the tree of life. The result of eating of that tree would have been eternal life (Genesis 3:22). In eating of the wrong tree first, Adam and Eve were barred from the tree of life, and so died. No, in the end the serpent was wrong.

Yet the challenge of the serpent deserves attention. There is no "Hello, how are you?" There is no small talk. Without preamble he inquires, "Yes, and has God said you shall not eat of every tree in the garden?" It is almost as though he were surprised to see the tree there.

Innocently, the woman defended God's instructions: "Of course we can eat of every tree in the garden. There is only one tree of which we are not to eat–the tree in the midst of the garden." Notice, she did not name it–she identified it as the one in the middle. The tree was placed squarely in the center of the garden. It had centrality of place.

Perhaps we should not place too much weight on the central position of this tree–the tree of life is also in the midst of the garden. And yet one wonders at this central location. There are two and only two trees standing side by side in the middle of the garden–the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The centricity of both hints at a relationship between them and a position of importance for both of them.

Perhaps the forbidden tree was there for man at another time–later, when he was ready for it. The serpent said, "Ye shall be as gods." Maybe that was the point. Perhaps man was destined to be like God after all, but not from the start.

It is, after all, within the plan of God for man to become like God. Late in life, the apostle John said this: "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is" (I John 3:2). The serpent said that the tree would cause to happen what God intended to happen anyway.

There is nothing in the account to identify the tree as evil except that it causes death. And yet it is plain that the way it caused death was by the denial of access to the source of life. Perhaps the fruit of this tree was only to be eaten when one had qualified for it. Perhaps this tree was the one that truly made a man "as God."

It almost seems blasphemous to say it, but in his astonishment at the presence of the tree, the devil may have spoken the truth as he knew it. Suppose he knew what the tree was and what it was for. It would not kill outright. It would convey a godlike quality to man. What he said was not an outright lie. After all the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field. Is it a lie to tell only a part of the truth? The tree would not kill, but taking the fruit of the tree against the commandment of God would cut man off from life. He would then die.

The serpent knew that. He wasn't cursed by God for a mistake in judgment. He was cursed for tempting man to doubt God, to assume that God was trying to keep something good from him. It is the oldest and most persistent ploy for keeping man from God. Satan tells us that God is not fair. He is arbitrary. He wants to keep us from having fun, from enjoying life. His law is not really necessary. God could have as easily given other laws. And if He doesn't know what we have done, what's the harm?

The presence of this tree in the garden must have really galled the serpent. That man could eventually become like God was a hateful idea to him. He had wanted that for himself. From the beginning, he had tried to make himself a god, and it led to his ruin. Isaiah records all this and tells us the original name of the serpent:

"How are thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit" (Isaiah 14:12-15).

That for which he had striven and lost was placed right here within the easy reach of man. It is small wonder that the serpent should be astonished at the presence of the tree in the garden. It had never been for him. That the tree was here for man may have been his first inkling that the destiny of man was finally to be like God.

The serpent may not have thought of himself as a liar. He recognized that tree; he knew what it was and what it was for. He wondered if the arbitrary God he knew had forbidden it to man as He had forbidden it to the serpent.

When the woman replied to the serpent that God had forbidden them to eat of the tree saying that they would surely die, the serpent blurted out, "Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:4, 5).

The serpent surely tempted the woman to eat of the tree, but it took no great effort. He did not even urge her to eat of it. But then without a willing participant, temptation never works very well.

Why then was the tree there? One thing is certain. God intended that man finally become "like God." But He intended it to happen His way, in His time. When weak, fallible men start acting like gods, no end of mischief is possible.

In the end there can only be one reason why that tree was placed where it was. God placed the tree there as a message. The presence of the tree revealed that to be "like God" was within the reach of man.

So the "Tale of Two Trees" is no mere tale after all. Here, in the very beginning of God's interaction with man, are some of the most fundamental things man would ever need to know.