The Knowledge of Good and Evil

Bobby’s small group goes for donuts every Thursday evening, to a small, local shop, next to a gas station, where they make fresh donuts every day. We go right around the time all the treats are being pulled from the fryers, being laid out in the case; and, for the last few weeks Levi has been fasting sweets for Lent. He’s okay with it, though, so long as he can get something sugarless from the gas station convenience store. The rest of us pick out old-fashioned, raised, cream-filled, or glazed snacks to munch while we talk about God.

This week we’re looking at Genesis—sort of. Actually, Bobby’s reading aloud from Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bible! by Jonathan Goldstein, who, therein, retells the story of Adam and Eve as though Adam were a dolt and Eve were a jaded know-it-all. The theme is the same—that of the Fall of Mankind—but it’s pretty funny, too. I note Sarah Vowell’s blurb on the front, “Who knew monotheism could be such fun?” and must concede that, indeed, I did not.

Although not always the point, the Bible is, in fact, funny. If you’ve read Susan E. Isaacs’s Angry Conversations with God, you know that God has a unique sense of humor, with a hill of forsaken foreskins being the punch-line only about a quarter of the time. Goldstein’s Bible! tends to rely a bit heavier on the potty humor. Still, you can’t read “Adam & Eve” without missing the fact that both man and woman are banished from Eden after eating the forbidden fruit.

We discuss the forbidden fruit around a table set with fried and frosted bits of cake on wax paper, and I wonder what Levi feels about temptation. I think that’s one of the beautiful and terrible things about Lent: bearing the cross of a contrived temptation when already we bear so many, all because of this one act committed by the first two people ever to walk the earth.

“What do you think would have happened if only Eve ate the fruit?” someone asks.

“What would it be like to enter the world as a fully grown adult, and that’s the only way you’ve experienced anything?”

We wonder if Adam and Eve had bellybuttons. We wonder about the serpent’s motives, and about the repercussions of Adam and Eve’s actions.

And I think we forget what the tree, the fruit, actually is. So often the story goes that Adam and Eve were duped into eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, and God was afraid mankind might be like him, so he banished us from the Garden. But, really, I think we’re mistaken.

Consider the fact that the fruit is actually from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and it becomes more apparent that God was caring for us, was telling us to let him discern the difference between good and evil for us. He’d rather we trust him than have the task of always deciding, always choosing, always weighing right from wrong.

Not that I think Adam (or Eve for that matter) was ignorant—I imagine the two were quite brilliant; and, God, being omniscient as he is, essentially tells Adam and Eve, Listen to me and I will keep you within everything Good. If you eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you must decide for yourself what is Good and what is Evil. He didn’t want them to eat the fruit so that none of us would have to bother with the task of deciding—always—what is good and best and healthy.

Mankind, however, suspected we might be up for the task; and, henceforth, we’ve had to make the call: good or evil, right or wrong, for better or worse.

So, really, God’s commandment has never changed—listen to me—the Eden incident just necessitated his having to spell it all out for us. The implicit promise of goodness and perfection and satisfaction has undergone revision, though. The will of others carries weight. Even if we keep as close to the Word as we can, humanity—all of us—are fragile and at the mercy of tragedy, pain, and upset because we are in community with each other. One who is broken is not broken in solitude. And so I’m unsure if we would be any better off had Eve only been the one to eat. It’s hard to say how it all would have gone down, but Adam, I think, was bound to have been affected adversely by his partner’s decision.

God was not being cruel when he forbade eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: he was being merciful. He was saying he would rather we live and choose and love without the burden to decide what is right and what is wrong; but, now that we must, we must decide well, with our communities’ best interest in mind. And I think that’s why I appreciate Lent, why I appreciate those who abstain and fast and practice ways of discernment. Because we cannot relinquish this knowledge—this knowledge of good, this knowledge of evil—we cannot exchange it, we cannot hide from the responsibility. No, we must strive, and strive to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.