What did the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" mean to you growing up? It's part of that basic Sunday School story that all church kids are raised with. After God created Adam and Eve, he told them that they were free to eat from any fruit in the Garden of Eden except that which was from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Then of course in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve do precisely the one thing that God told them not to do, and the rest is history, well at least allegorically speaking.
The second chapter of Brian McLaren's book, "We Make the Road By Walking," deals with Genesis 2 and the introduction of this forbidden sapling. The title is "Being Human" and talks about the two creation stories presented in the first two chapters of Genesis, and the two different trees that are mentioned: one the aforementioned "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" and the "Tree of Life." We don't hear so much about that one, do we?
So I started off by thinking about what the "forbidden tree" meant to me as I was raised in church from a little boy to eventually someone who considered joining the clergy. When you're a kid in Sunday School, the tree itself doesn't really take top billing. The story is about how Adam and Eve did something that God had told them not to, plain and simple. Then look what happened because they disobeyed! Of course then you go home and wonder if, because Adam and Eve were the first man and woman,....maybe we're all related and marrying somebody you're related to is generally frowned upon, but anyway...I digress.
Eventually I got older, and I started to think more in depth about this. Okay, I admit, I didn't always WANT to think about this stuff, but I had to memorize parts of the Heidelberg Catechism, so thinking about something as relatively simple as the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" was a nice change of pace in high school Sunday School class.
So I guess my "adult idea" about the forbidden tree became something like this: "Adam and Eve bought the serpent's argument that eating the fruit of the tree would make them like God. Wanting to be like God is bad because there can be only one god (cue the Highlander reference). This desire and this "sin" not only separated them from God, but put them in open rebellion against God." This was, of course, all taken care of when Jesus died on the cross.
Sounds reasonable enough, right? I mean for someone who grew up in the "sin avoidance" world of Calvinism.
McLaren takes a certain bit of this idea and riffs on it. He challenges us to see BOTH trees in a slightly different light. The Tree of Life is just that. When we eat from it, we realize how wonderful the world around us is and how wonderful it is to be alive. When you eat from the tree of life, everything, every human being, every plant and animal, is good just like God created it. When we eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we are indeed wanting to be like God, to play God. We start judging aspects of the world around us. This escalates into this "us vs them" thinking. Our tribe, our faith is good. The other tribe, the other faith, is BAD. If they're bad, well then we can go to war with them, run them down, and dehumanize them.
Eating from the tree of life invites love, joy, compassion, and the fullness of life. Eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and evil invites judgement, resentment, and perhaps violence and death. Part of "Being Human," as McLaren puts it, is that we are faced with this choice everyday of our lives. Everyday we face the choice to be accepting and loving or judgmental and self-righteous. Is there really a question as to which Jesus would have us choose? Remember, people are judging and looking down on you the same way you look down on others.
I will readily admit that I struggle with this concept. I'm a very judgmental person. I've been told that in certain situations I come across as really haughty and impressed with myself, and as I look at my thoughts and behavior, I'm thinking that there's a lot of truth to that. The good thing is, as I've started to recognize these patterns of thought and these mannerisms, I've been able to make an attempt to think and behave differently. I certainly don't succeed every time, but I have confidence that the effort will make me a better person in the long run.
At the end of the chapter, McLaren asks us to consider our hand. A hand can be made into a fist for violence, or it can be offered as a gesture of peace and friendship. A hand can wield a gun or play a violin. A hand can steal from others or serve others. A hand can destroy or it can build.
Think about it. What tree will you eat from everyday? What will your hands do tomorrow? It's considering questions like these, whether you're religious or not, that can make us all better people and make the world a better place.
No comments:
Post a Comment