Knowing Good and Evil

Perhaps you’ve been disheartened in recent years at our growing inability to discourse in a civil way regarding important topics about which we disagree.  What happens is typical: Conversation starts when an opinion is shared; then the opposing side responds to the extreme pole of the original; the originator "clarifies;" but the tension has already risen so high that the conversation either splits or lapses into name-calling.

I’ve been guilty (and I think many others have been too) of speaking to a person’s motives as I perceive them, instead of staying on point with the topic in question. Don’t minimize that we all do this, and it is especially common in our day where we can interact with virtually the whole world without leaving our bedroom.  It seems that we are all so clearheaded on where everyone else is coming from, giving ourselves (and our "tribe") the benefit of the doubt.  A younger liberal assumes an older conservative with whom they’re speaking has a certain worldview that is easily the same as the other older conservative they've spoken to in the past (and vice-versa).  We thus broad-brush very easily, and never doubt ourselves.

One reason we do this is because often generalizations are true.  But something happens when we rely on this: we automatically dismiss the person opposing us because we think we already know what they’re going to say, instead of listening and trying to learn something (which happily doesn’t require that we abandon our view; it only forces us to think critically about it).

The Tree

As a church pastor and reader of Christian literature for many years, I’ve learned that people (myself included) are prone to confusion over the nature of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis 2-3.   All kinds of theories have been advanced about what the tree is, and I’m sure that if you’ve spent any time studying the Bible you’ve formulated an opinion about it.  Most have rejected the view that it is an evil tree which God placed there as a temptation in the midst of the Garden of Eden.  They’re right to reject this view, because the evidence points to the tree itself being good, along with all of the creation (ch. 1, 3:7).  Further, God isn’t the one himself who tempts (James 1:13), though he’ll allow temptations to befall us that we’d grow in Him (Matthew 18:7).  In any event He does create the tree, places it in the garden, and it is clearly off-limits to the couple placed there (Gen. 2:17).

You might know the story: God creates man to live in this special garden, and there are many trees in the garden, but two special ones which are placed right in the middle: the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  God tells the man he can eat of any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when he eats of it he will die.   Through the wiles of this mysterious talking serpent*, the woman who is made from man’s rib is tempted to distrust God’s warning, to which she caves, and the man with her.  Then their “eyes are opened,” and they are suddenly ashamed at their nakedness, which before, as though they were at a California beach, wasn’t a problem.

It is not my intention to go into the myriad of details here – just to make a few points.  In any event, it is clear that eating from this tree has radically altered man who is made in God’s image, and the creation which has been prepared specifically for him.

What was the tree? 

Many things can be surmised from the text of Genesis itself regarding what this tree is.  Here’s what we know:

1. To eat from the tree will bring death (Whereas, to eat from the tree of life will bring life) 2:9, 17.

2. The serpent, who very clearly is out for the peoples’ destruction, wantsthem to eat of the tree 3:1-5.

3. When the people eat of it, their eyes were opened, and this opening brings about a profound shame 3:7.

4. At the end of the Biblical timeline (world history), the tree is not in heavenly Jerusalem; but the other tree – the tree of life – is (Rev. 22:2).

5. “Knowledge” in the Old Testament Hebrew more often than not connotes intimacy (as in 4:1, when it says Adam knew his wife, and she bore a son); so there will come an intimacy with the knowledge of good and evil.

As I mentioned before, it isn’t that the tree itself was evil.  God made all things good.  But this appears to be a test for the people made in his image: Would they obey their Creator and trust his truth and love for them, or question him and take their lives in their own hands?  

Sinclair Ferguson has said that this is exactly what Satan attacks when he speaks by the serpent: getting them to believe they can’t trust God’s goodness or his commitment to their happiness.**   A thought from Graeme Goldsworthy might help fill the idea out even better: “The perfect relationship bw Creator and creature, between ruler and ruled, cannot exist if the creature seeks to usurp the role of Creator rejecting his rule”,^ and that is what Satan is after: usurping this relationship.  Thus Goldsworthy says elsewhere,  “Dissatisfied with their humanness, the couple reached for godhood.  In lusting after a throne that was not theirs they lost the privileges they already had.”^^  The two trees are in essence two ways which God sets before them, so they should choose life (and doubtless this is in Moses’ thought when he says these exact words to Israel in Deut. 30:19).  But the people in the garden choose their own way (Is. 53:6), and the creation is ruined for a time (Rom. 8:18ff).  

This promised "knowledge" will be the death of truth and relationships 

God calls one tree the tree of life, and the other the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Since 3:22 makes plain that to eat from the former will lead to eternal life (and Jesus says the same thing in Revelation 2:7), it follows that to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil will lead to the knowledge of good and evil.  This actually sounds good to our ears.  But bear in mind, the serpent wants the woman and her husband to long for this, instead of leaving this knowledge to God.  The clear implication is that with this knowledge will come death.  And this point is further seen in the shame that they feel after eating.  It hasn’t turned out well for them! 

The death promised and then experienced here is both a physical death (later experienced), and a spiritual death that day.  Thus Jesus says that if a person embraces Him as the Savior of the world, they “pass from death to life” (John 5:24), and Paul tells the Christians in Ephesus that before they were raised with Jesus, they were “dead in trespasses” (Eph. 2:1).

And Jesus says that to know the truth will set free.  So this knowledge of good and evil is apparently not a knowledge of truth or any kind of freedom.  But it is an intimate acquaintance with the reality of both good and evil, and it isn't good.  We may say that at this point the struggle between goodness and evil has come into them, and this is why they feel shame at their nakedness: They know they were made this way, but now it doesn’t feel right and they’re confused.

And with this loss has come a loss of relationships.  So Adam blames Eve, Cain kills Abel, and the Bible is a mess of relationships, starting in Genesis (and seriously, read Genesis - it is a mess which makes Jerry Springer look like a Nick Jr show).  So in the NT, the world is characterized as those who are “hated by others and hating one another” (Titus 3:3).

This loss of relationships is caused by none other than man’s taking the reigns as his own thinking being, apart from God, and thus becoming a mess of inconsistency and contradiction.  But he only realizes this about others, and not about himself.  Thus Adam is held accountable (3:9, Rom. 5:12-21), but he blames the woman (3:12).  Later in the Bible, David rages at a story told him of a sheep-owner who had his lamb ripped out from his arms and killed, only to be told by the prophet that he himself is the man in the story (2 Sam. 12).  The point is this: Because man is ashamed in his own sin, he’ll do whatever he can to cover up his own shame.  So he sees others sins easily, but he cant see his own very well at all.

John Macarthur has rightly said that, in taking of the tree and having their eyes “opened,” it can be said of Adam and Eve that, “The innocence before had been replaced by guilt and shame (vv. 8-10), and from then on they had to rely on their conscience to distinguish bw good and their newly acquired capacity to see and know evil.”*   What has happened?  Man now is his own thinking being, and being fallen from his original state of perfection, he is full of inconsistency and sin, yet he gives himself the benefit of the doubt, and holds others to the standard that he himself should keep, and can't.  One might say that in receiving the knowledge of good and evil, we received the tension of good and evil.

Since we can't think truly, we can't dialogue truly

To get back to where we started, this is why it is so difficult to discuss tense topics today.  We are not ourselves able to consistently and faithfully engage with what is good and evil.  But we think we are.  And we easily see other’s inconsistencies, while not owning our own.  So when we’re arguing with another person online or in person, we attribute motive to people who are standing up for what they believe in, without questioning our own; the reality is that we need God to lead us into the proper motive, because Biblically, there is no one “side” that has proper motives, but rather “the intentions of man’s (read, everyone’s) heart is only evil continually,” (Gen. 6:5).  It is not only that all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory, but all have bought into lies, have thus been filled with shame, and are doing all they can to cover it up.

The fact that we are sinners is obvious.  The fact that the world is a mess is obvious.  Every religion in the world agrees that we are not where we should be (and the differences come in giving an answer regarding how to get where we need to be).  But I suggest that the most subtle part of our fall in Adam which stems from eating of the tree is that we now have a clear knowledge that both good and evil exist, and while we are each and everyone of us confident in our abilities to discern, we are profoundly confused and ashamed, though unwilling to admit it.  What we need is repentance and grace, and then transformation of mind so that we not only can discern between what is right and wrong, but can ourselves love what is right, hear what is good in others’ contributions, and see a conversation forward.  This is very difficult, but it is certainly God’s will for the church to walk in the truth, and be patient with one another as we pursue truth together.  But we can't unless we get honest about our biases and blindspots, and that only comes with bringing ourselves to the real Jesus.

John Calvin comments well on the tree of knowledge.  I’ll close with this quote: 

“We now understand what is meant by abstaining from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; namely, that Adam might not, in attempting one thing or another, rely upon his own prudence; but that, cleaving to God alone, he might become wise only by his obedience. "Knowledge" is therefore taken disparagingly, in a bad sense, for that wretched experience which man, when he departed from the only fountain of perfect wisdom, began to acquire for himself. And this is the origin of free-will, that Adam wished to be independent, and dared to try what he was able to do.”**

Friend, we need deep transformation of heart and mind, to discern truly between what is good and evil. And this is what Jesus offers us, if we'll come for him to change our hearts and minds.  Paul says in Ephesians 4:23-24 that the one who is following Jesus is to be "renewed in the spirit of their minds, putting on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness."  This is because God is making a new creation through Jesus who, unlike the couple in Eden and the nation in the desert, withstood the temptation.  Therefore His people are those who delight not in their (in)ability to figure things out, but in God’s perfect knowledge and righteous leading.  “He who trusts in his own mind is a fool” (Proverbs 28:26).  But he who lacks wisdom and asks God will receive it (James 1:5).  It may sound too simple.  But it is in fact the profound simplicity that proves it is true.

So let’s seek the real Jesus - the one the Scripture says is ruling and reigning now - together.  In doing so we'll regain both our sanity and our unity.  And it'll be infinitely better than a "sanity" or a "unity" which we can make, because it'll be based on His truth and perfection.  And there is no evil with Him, but only good. 

*if you take a Biblical theological approach, the serpent is clearly identified with Satan, as Revelation 12 says; also it is only one of two animals in Scripture who speak, the implication being that the God who made the animals to not speak can animate them and allow them to speak if he wants to.
**Ferguson, "The Whole Christ," see pp47ff
^Goldsworthy, "Gospel and Kingdom," p 60
^^Goldsworthy, "According to Plan," p 106
*Macarthur, "One perfect life," p 19, emph. mine
 **Calvin’s Commentary on Genesis, p 118, emph. mine