Here, have an apple.

9/11/2010 ~ Here, have an apple.

Most people around the world probably know the story of Adam and Eve and “The Fall.” God’s first people, the man and woman he created “in his own image,” start out in Paradise. The Garden of Eden, where God placed them, offers everything they will ever need. And God told them they could have anything in the entire garden, except for the fruit of one tree, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If they eat from that tree, they will die.

But as you recall, this warning did not stop Adam and Eve. The serpent came and tempted Eve, who later tempted Adam, to eat the forbidden fruit. And immediately they saw their sin and hid themselves from God. You know how the story ends. God cursed them to have to work hard for their entire lives, bear pain-filled childbirth, and banished them from the Garden of Eden.

So, what does this mean to us? The obvious answer is that the story is about obedience. We must follow God’s rules, doing what He tells us to do. But at Bible study last Monday I learned something new, in regards to the tree with the forbidden fruit. (You may have heard that Eve ate from an apple tree, but no translation of the Bible calls it that.)  What I learned new is that there is more to it than that.

Eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil means that we think that we, not God, get to decide what is right and what is wrong. When we take of this forbidden fruit, we rationalize away God’s laws, conforming them to our own liking. God gives us commandments but instead of following them, we interpret them as suggestions. I am joining Adam and Eve in this same sin when I understand what a commandment from God says, but then say it doesn’t apply to my circumstances. WOW! I had never thought of that before.

Here is the bottom line: We don’t get to decide what is right or wrong. Only God gets to decide that. Period. No rationalization, no excuses. Right is right and wrong is wrong, per God. If He said something is wrong, it is wrong. I need to stop justifying it. It is that simple— and that hard, too. That was the sin related to the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That was the original sin, it was Adam and Eve’s sin, and is my sin, too.

So now you know. And it had nothing to do with an apple. As the old saying goes, the sin wasn’t in the apple in the tree. It was in the pair on the ground!