Knowing Good

Some things we are told for our own good.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’ - Genesis 2:15-17

We know the story.

God tells Adam that the fruit of the tree is a killer and later the serpent tells him that is a lie. Fake news.

You won't die in the literal sense.  But wait.  What does Adam know about death anyway?  Nothing has died.

So, what was God trying to tell him, to tell us?  Is it that the knowledge of what is good and what is evil is dangerous?  How can knowing good be bad?

A clue may be in what happens once they eat the fruit.  They start blaming each other.  It was the woman, he says.  She made me do it.

One could argue that in order to know good, one needs to know bad, if not evil.  They are introduced to evil when the serpent tells them that God lied.

And they believe him.

They do not yet know good and evil exist.  They only know what they see and hear, and up until now, they have heard only God.

So, the serpent must have eaten the fruit first, right? 

We believe this knowledge comes with a penalty, the penalty of an end to this life.  If we had only kept away from the tree, we would live forever.

I don't know about that.  Chances are, someone was going to give the fruit a try.  If not Adam and Eve, then one of their kids, or their kids.

It's not possible to keep a young child from exploring.

It surely makes sense to me that this knowledge of good and evil is a bad thing.  Look at how often we condemn each other and judge each other, as if we hold the secret to what is good and we know who is bad.

We cannot imagine not knowing good from evil.  It is what we teach our kids and hope they learn.  How can we live in the world without recognizing the difference?

That is the death sentence, having a world where both are possible, where both exist together.

If only we had stayed ignorant.

But we didn't.  And now we are all experts, and we are all right.

Hmm.

I don't think so.

More to come...