The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Part 3)

The Way Back (To Paradise)

Have you ever been lost? Well and truly frighteningly disoriented, confused, panicked, convinced that "the end was close at hand"?  

I have briefly experienced that awful sensation 3 times in my life, once in an abandoned 19th century gold mine, once in a tangled mountainous forest, and once upon a storm tossed ocean, in what seemed at the time, a very small schooner. I doubt that there is a deeper feeling of despair and terror.

At the very dawn of human history our earliest ancestors were living  in paradise. The world looked vastly different from the way it does today. Life was illuminated with the Glory of the Creator. Adam and Eve were clothed in righteousness, unaware of their naked state; the world around them was filled with abundance and goodness, completely devoid of shame and fear. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they felt no shame. Genesis 2:25 ASV

The potential of life eternal in paradise lay before them.... but they "blew it" and since then every one of us has been born lost! We each have to try and find our own way back to Paradise, countless millions have tried, most have failed!

The moment that Adam and Eve bit into the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil they felt exposed, ashamed. From a God imbued sense of awareness and power they fell into depths of confusion, helplessness, panic and fear. They were LOST. Just how long they were in paradise is not specified in the Bible, and the narrative reads as if their fall was fairly soon after their creation. This is likely because God told Adam and Eve to multiply, and as both Adam and Eve were perfect, it would have not taken Eve long to conceive. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve sinned (in part due to Satan’s actions) and were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. According to Scripture, this happened prior to conceiving their first child, Cain (Genesis 4:1).

From that time forward Adam and Eve began to live reactively; they had to adapt to survive, and that has been the lot of humankind ever since. Their reactive state was marked by regret, guilt, the desire to hide, and to blame someone else. To make matters worse, they were expelled from paradise, and had to struggle to survive.  Read Genesis 3:8-15 

At Creation, Adam and Eve were in an unbelievably blessed physical and spiritual state. But it was all due to the kindness, the largesse if you will, of Creator God. They themselves were just the beneficiaries – they contributed, essentially, nothing of their own.

None of us can, of course, journey back to that time and see the effects that losing "the keys to the kingdom" had on Adam and Eve. It's simply beyond our comprehension to understand all that they lost; they are the only humans to have walked, talked and fellowshipped with God on a regular face-to-face basis. 

There are Pseudepigrapha books that contain details of Adam and Eve's time after their sojourn in paradise, (The First and Second Book of Adam).they are not part of the cannon of Holy Writ but do give an interesting insight into what the writers have imagined Adam and Eve lived like "after Eden"

Although Adan (and presumably Eve) lived for almost a thousand years, they never made it back to Paradise. The memory of their time in paradise must have been bitter gall indeed as they struggled with the daily demands of life east of the Garden of Eden. 

So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden the Cherubim, and the flame of a sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. Genesis 3:24 ASV 

The word "drove" in Hebrew is garash pronounced gaw-rash, and means to expel or forcibly remove. This meaning clearly implies an unwillingness to leave Eden (who can blame them). This is the word also used for divorce, or the breaking of a covenant. As John Gill says in his commentary on Genesis: "there was a conjugal relation between God and man, the covenant between them had the nature of a matrimonial contract; which covenant man broke, though he was an husband to him, by committing idolatry, that is, spiritual adultery, not giving credit to him, but believing the devil before him; wherefore he wrote him a bill of divorce, and sent him away; drove him from his presence and communion with him, from his house and habitation, from his seat of pleasure, and garden of delight, and from all the comfortable enjoyments of life; an emblem of that separation and distance which sin makes between God and his creature, and of that loss which is sustained thereby."

One of most important things that we usually miss in our reading of the Eden story is the incredible truth that the Garden of Eden was Earth's very first Temple, Adam was the priest, with whom God walked and talked on a regular, if not daily basis. I will expand this concept, which is probably a new idea to many readers, in part 4 of this series. 

This side of eternity no human will be able to enter into the pre-fall relationship that Adam and Eve had with Creator God, none of us will experience that unconditional freedom, trust, unity and completely unselfish connection of body, mind and spirit that our primal parents had with God.    

However, through the redemptive work of Christ in our lives, we may begin to experience the healing of those disjointed passions that keep us from the great trust, love, and personal communion that God wants us to experience in our relationship with Him and with fellow humans.

The more the Holy Spirit transforms our selfish and lustful hearts with the total self-giving love of Jesus Christ, the more relationships between human kind and God will begin to recover something of humanity's time in Eden.

There is a promise in Revelation 2:7 that is for all believers.... a promise that guarantees that we can/will make it back to Paradise. To him that overcomes will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise  of God.