Forbidden Fruit

And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die" (Genesis 2:16-17).

When God created humanity, He didn't just make us with a pre-determined, robotic desire to live in fellowship with Him. To love is to choose to be with, and in order to provide a legitimate choice, there had to be an alternative to God's will... otherwise there really ain't no such thing as free will. I don't know about the state of the universe prior to human history... nevertheless, I wonder where the "serpent" in the garden who tempted Eve came from. God is good, His creation is good, and yet... without this mysterious third party offering a viable alternative to God, Adam and Eve had no real potential to choose to love Him only and obey His commandments.

Though for a time they enjoyed fellowship in the garden with their Lord and Friend, Adam and Eve ultimately chose poorly, giving in to the serpent's temptation. And they paid a dear price... banishment from the only home they ever knew... separation from God... the seeds of death. But God made a choice too - that is, one of grace. This special creation, made in His image, was too valuable to simply obliterate from existence. God's intimate relationship with humanity did change of course, but God saw to it that one day everything would be fully restored. The Bible is full of stories of the ups and downs of this restoration process - many of them good and redemptive - and many of them troubling and confusing. Why? 'Cause we're a messy, sinful bunch!

But even the most violent and troubling stories have a purpose. The church at which I serve is currently going through the book of Judges on Wednesday nights. Wow, talk about dysfunctional, violent, aggressive behavior! (The people in the stories, not the church!) But the thing is, even when we discuss a really warped story like the rise and fall of Abimelech (the son of Gideon who murdered his 70 brothers to become king) - most everyone seems to walk away from the discussion with plenty of food for thought about their own relationship with God and/or one another. The Bible doesn't try to dress up the ugly stories to make them more palatable for our tender senses. Still, as we participate in and experience them together in the community of faith, we are - if we choose to listen - able to discern the sometimes obvious, sometimes very subtle presence of God in our midst. Obviously, we're not called to go out and apply Abimelech's self-serving methods to our own lives. Through his story however, the Spirit of God may decide to talk to us about our own forms of rebellion against Him... that is, our own tasty, but deadly forms of forbidden fruit.

I guess that's why I don't want to slice and dice the Bible so I'm only reading the "good" or more interesting stories that are more familiar and easier to digest. I want to read large portions of the Word (heck, maybe even ALL of it!), interpret it together within my faith tradition, allow God to reveal Himself to us in the process... and choose to obey what we hear God telling us in terms of living as His children - holy and dearly loved. When I look at it that way, somehow the forbidden fruit doesn't seem so tempting.