Actions have consequences. We
all know that. If you’re hanging a picture and you hit your thumb with the
hammer instead of hitting the nail, it hurts. That’s not news to anybody. But
sometimes, our actions have consequences that we can’t possibly foresee. If you’re
hanging a picture, and you hit your thumb with your hammer, you might fall off
the ladder when you throw your hands up and yell “Ouch!” When you fall off that
ladder, you might break your leg. Then you will need to take a trip to the
Emergency Room and spend the better part of 6 or 8 hours waiting for treatment.
All because you wanted to hang a picture. Who could have foreseen that?
The story of the forbidden
fruit is the same kind of story. When the man and the woman in the Garden ate
the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil, they thought that they knew what the
consequences would be. The serpent told them that they would become like gods, because
they would know the difference between good and evil. And that’s exactly what
happened. When they ate that fruit, the text tells us that “their eyes were
opened.” They realized that some things were good while others were evil. They
gained the ability to make value judgments. They could now act on the decision
“This is a good thing,” or “This is a bad thing.”
But what they didn’t realize is that all of their
judgments were limited. They may have been like
God, but they didn’t know everything that God knows. We never do, do we? And
since they didn’t know everything, “good” and “bad” became distorted. They didn’t
know what all the consequences of their actions would be, so they focused on
the consequences for themselves. “Good”
turned into what is “good for me,”
and “bad” turned into what is “bad for
me.” Those two little words make all the difference. So it didn’t take long
for them to get “good” and “bad” mixed up. Their very first action was to hide
from God when he came to the Garden that evening. They knew that they had
disobeyed a direct order not to eat that fruit. They knew that God would be
angry with them. And they knew that the consequences probably wouldn’t be
pleasant. So they hid, thinking that hiding would be good for them. They didn’t know enough to realize that it’s never a good
idea to hide from God, regardless of who you are! To make matters worse, when God
found them, they didn’t own up to what they had done. Oh, they told the truth –
but they told it in a way that pushed the responsibility for their actions off
on somebody else. “The woman – the one that you put here with me – she gave me
that fruit,” said the man. And the woman, in turn, said, “It’s not my fault. It
was that serpent. He lied to me!” Oh, yes – politicians didn’t invent “passing
the buck.” It goes all the way back to the Garden!
God’s response is filled with
grief. “What is this that you have done?” Can’t you hear the sorrow, the anger,
and the frustration in God’s voice? “What
is this that you have done?” The question hangs in the air like fog,
surrounding all our actions to this day. God knew what the consequences of
their actions would be. The peaceful world of the Garden was going to
disappear. With our limited perspective, one person’s good often clashes with
the good of another. The results are disastrous: jealousy, resentment, hate,
violence, and war.
So God laid it on the line
for those first two humans, and spelled out what some of the consequences would
be. People would have to work hard for their food. The soil would grow weeds
and thorns more quickly than it would produce crops. Sometimes, it wouldn’t
produce crops at all. And our conflict with the soil would continue until we
finally die and are buried in it. The relationship between men and women would
be permanently warped. The ideal relationship of mutual love and nurture that
God intended would disappear, replaced by one of dominance and submission. And
this pattern of conflict would spread like ripples on a pond until it filled
the whole earth. Domination, conflict, suffering, and death – those are the
consequences that we deal with every day because human beings wanted to be
“like gods.” It’s not a happy picture.
But it could have been worse.
It would have been lots worse if God had followed through with the original consequences
that he had promised. On the very first day in the Garden, God told the human, “In
the day that you eat of the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil, you will die.”
That was going to be the consequence. And so, God would have been well within
his rights if he had ended the lives of the man and the woman right then and
there. He could have put a tall, strong fence around the Tree of Good and Evil;
and then he could have created two other humans, since the first ones were such
miserable failures. But God didn’t do that. No, despite all their disobedience,
fuzzy thinking, and poor choices, God never left those two human beings. God stood
by his creation regardless of their behavior.
Now, we know the end of this
story. We know that Adam and Eve are going to be thrown out of the Garden so
that they don’t eat the fruit of the Tree of Life and become immortal. But we
also know that when they are thrown out of the Garden and into exile, God goes
with them. And God is still with us today. We may be foolish, selfish,
short-sighted and self-centered, but we are never alone. God stays with us to
the very end. Can you hear a whisper from the future, coming from the Gospel of
John? “God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son… not to
condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” (John
3:16-17)
Maybe God’s presence with us
is another unintended consequence of that incident in the Garden. After all, when
human beings lived in the Garden, they didn’t need God’s presence with them all
the time. Life was easy and joyful there; and their relationships with each
other and with the animals were carefree. They knew that God was around. They
even saw God now and then – in the evening, when God walked through the Garden
enjoying that part of his creation. Things are very different
now. Now, we don’t see God as often as they did. Some people never seem to be
able to see God at all. And we need God every minute of every day. Living outside
the Garden, we never know when we will crash into an obstacle that somebody has
put in our way, or stumble on a misunderstanding that we thought we had cleared
up, or even fall headlong into a pit of despair. Now, we need God to support us
– to hold us up when we are falling – to encourage us when we want to quit.
And that’s just what God
does, throughout our whole lives. When we’re just little tykes, God tells us
the only thing that we can understand – that he loves us. When we get old
enough to think that we know it all, God is there to comfort us when we find
out how little we really do know. When we are rejected by a friend, a lover, or
an employer, God is there to reassure us that he will never reject us, and to
offer us a new beginning. And when we see the end of our lives approaching, God
is there to take us by the hand and lead us back into the Garden that we left
so long ago.
Yes, the consequences of
eating that forbidden fruit are overwhelming. Our human ability to focus on
ourselves and to mix up good and evil is overwhelming; but so is the steadfast
love that God shows us through all of it. In the end, maybe that’s the most
unforeseen consequence of all – that despite our sin, God loves us, and cares
for us, and promises us eternal life back in the Garden. And thanks be God that
it is so!
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