Living East of Eden
Adam and Eve as exiles and refugees in chapter 3 of Genesis always touches me. They have eaten the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and they are banned from Eden. It always bothers me when people say they threw paradise away for a piece of fruit. They were tempted by far more than that. And it always bothers me when critics of the Biblical God accuse Him of not wanting the humans to have knowledge. That’s not at all the issue. God loves knowledge. It’s the knowledge of good and evil. This knowledge is what we always dread our children learning. We want them to stay “innocent” and secure and happy. When they learn the truth about good and evil, the world darkens, temptations loom, and moral choices become complex.
And what knowledge of good and evil did Adam and Eve gain?
Shame was the first thing they knew. What a shame, literally, to feel bad for being naked.
They knew they no longer deserved to be in the presence of God and hid from Him.
They knew the evil of Satan and their gullibility to him.
They knew for the first time their inability to trust each other.
They knew what guilt felt like and what blame was.
They knew what it felt like to betray God and no longer trust Him.
They knew fear and vulnerability for the first time.
This poignancy, of having lost Eden, the paradisiacal existence God had wanted them to have, is what touches me. Everybody suffers when they lose something they’ve always had, something they took for granted and didn’t know life without. Even if the subsequent life is not bad, it will be suffering because of what was lost. What was it like, to suddenly face thorns; hard, painful toil; painful birth alone; deteriorated relationships; food that wasn’t just free and available; death? What was the rest of their life like, looking back at what they had before?
I hope they experienced redemptive times, that life was worth living anyway. But I can’t help thinking that God’s banishment was not a curse. Look at Genesis 3:22-24: “Then the Lord God said, ‘Look the human beings have become like us, knowing both good and evil. What if they reach out, take fruit from the tree of life, and eat it? Then they will live forever!’ So the Lord God banished them from the Garden of Eden, and . . . the Lord God stationed mighty cherubim to the east of the Garden of Eden. And he placed a flaming sword that flashed back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.”
Wasn’t this a mercy, that they could no longer eat from the Tree of Life? Who wants to live on earth forever, wrestling with this knowledge of good and evil we now have, when we know the real paradise awaits us? God has a better plan, and there’s no need to look back at Eden.
