The Choice in the Garden

It's easy to focus on the dilemma and ask why God would place Adam and Eve in such a situation.

Multiply and replenish the Earth. 

But they can't do that in their perfect state in the Garden. Not only that, but have dominion over the earth -- dominion in the sense of the responsibility to take care of it and the plants and animals in it wisely.

Do not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 

But if they are going to multiply and replenish the Earth, and especially if they are going to take responsibility for it, they need that knowledge. How can they behave responsibly if they do not know good and evil?

It's just as easy to look at situations where we face a choice and think we should be able to take both paths, and ask why God would make us choose.

As a computer programmer, I have designed many programs and functions that parse a problem until the computer gets to a point where it can not proceed further without backing up. Similarly, we do our best working through problems in our lives and often find ourselves blocked from proceeding further without backing up.

Sometimes we get to a solution that seems perfect, and we get used to that solution. And then something new gets thrown at us and we discover that we have to leave that perfect solution behind, back up and out, and try a new, different path.

This isn't to say the solution was not perfect in the context in which we found the solution. We just have a new context to deal with, in which the previous perfect solution isn't enough any more. 

Sometimes, giving that perfect solution up feels like, well, dying.

This is where Adam and Eve were. They were in the perfect Garden, immortal, no sin. Innocent. Lacking knowledge. And God warned them that gaining the knowledge they needed to proceed would require them to subject themselves to death.

What God didn't explain until later, what our children (and we, ourselves) find so hard to understand without experiencing it, is that there is a point we really can't progress any further than -- if we refuse to give up really some things, including some things that were once really important things, so important that it feels like dying to give them up.

We ourselves. In a sense, we are Adam and Eve. Even though I believe the Garden story is literal enough, even though perhaps not completely recorded in the Bible, I also believe that the reason it is recorded in the Bible is that it is a metaphor for us.

Giving up is not the end of everything.

Now, we can't do it without help. This is true. But the plan was already in place when the Earth was created, that Jesus would come in due time and do what was necessary so that we could live again and move forward. 

Because Jesus suffered for us in the Garden of Gethsemane and gave up His life on the cross for us, we can live again. And when we get stuck in our efforts to learn and progress, we can back up and start over again.

Of course, it helps if, when we start over again, we keep listening to God.

And that is the reason for the two commandments in the Garden of Eden, and in our own Gardens of Eden.

By the way, what is this listening to God thing?

We all have the seed of the Word of God in our hearts. We call it conscience. And I'll stop here, because I always say a few words too many.