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This morning I preached on “The First Temptation,” the forbidden fruit in the garden. It’s
an interesting story, but I think we need to wonder why God put that tree in the garden and
told the man not to eat of it. I mean, was God setting us up? And there is no indication how
long it took for that first couple to decide to try out that fruit. How long did it take the
serpent to convince the woman to eat it? Maybe the nature of the temptation, and its
consequences, are more important than the plot of this story. Maybe it was impossible for
that tree NOT to be in the garden. God was stuck with “the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil.” It could not be kept out of the garden. So God tried to protect the humans. He
told them to leave it alone. He tried to scare them into leaving it alone by threatening them
with death. Now, my interpretation of this, and the way I preached it, is that what dies is
innocence. To know good and evil is to lose our innocence. And, in the case of the first
couple, they suddenly became self-aware. “They knew that they were naked.” But when I
ask the question, “was God setting us up?” I’m wondering if God wanted us to continue in
the garden forever without touching that silly tree in the middle of it? And if God put us in
the garden to begin with, why did God throw us out for breaking one little rule? Here’s
another sticky thought. In the first chapter of Genesis, according to the twenty-sixth verse,
God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.” Now, if that is
the case, to what extent was that first couple “like” God? To what extent are we in the
“image” of God? If God knew how that first couple would think, didn’t God know what
would happen? I remember a time many years ago when a foreign film showed up in
Kansas City, and a small group rushed to shut down its screening because of its sexual
content. An injunction was filed. Then, a counter-suit was filed, and the injunction was
lifted. The censoring of the film raised such a commotion that when the injunction was
lifted, huge crowds descended upon the theatre to see what the fuss was all about. I would
call that simple human curiosity. Of course, we can say that these people were succumbing
to temptation, but what is the nature of that temptation? If a small child is given one rule,
and it is “Don’t,” that small child will “Do” just to figure out why the rule was made in the
first place. My point to all of this is that the nature of a temptation is more significant than
temptation itself. I find it difficult to blame the first woman for being disobedient if she had
absolutely no idea why she was supposed to be obedient in the first place. And God did not
tell her. God simply said, in so many words, “don’t or you will die.” posted by
John Harrison at 9:49 PM
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