Stephen
Terry, Director
The Fall
Commentary
for the April 9, 2022, Sabbath School Lesson
(This
week's commentary is taken from chapter 6 of my book "Creation: Myth or Majesty")
"But each person is tempted when they are dragged away by
their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives
birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death." James
1:14-15, NIV
The story of mankind's
fall into sin is another aspect of Creation. If nothing else, it certainly
marks the creation of drama. The protagonist, Eve, is confronted by the
antagonist, the serpent, and chooses to cast her lot with this nemesis. Then if
that is not enough, she entices, Adam, her paramour to join this gang of
anarchists. Is the piece of fruit significant? It is not. It may only be a
stage prop for the playwright to hang the story on. While so many have focused
so much attention on the fruit, seeing an intrinsic evil in that single piece
of produce, any prop would have performed equally well for progressing the
story to its conclusion.
Was this play predestined
to produce the outcome it did? The writer of Genesis, chapter one, identifies
God as the source of light, interjecting it into the darkness of the earth.
This is parallel to the revelation of the illuminating nature of Jesus found in
the Gospel of John, chapter one. However, the denouement of the Bible, has the
righteous living in a perfect world where there is no darkness, only the light
of God. It further states that the Sun and Moon are not needed as a result.[i] If perfection is defined as
no darkness, sun, or moon, then that could mean that the world as created was
less than perfect. We should not look behind us to Creation for a utopian
blueprint, but instead we should be looking forward to that day of promise. Creation
itself was as much about an Edenic choosing as the tree in
the midst of the garden ever was. For it was in the very first week that
the author sets the stage for the ultimate choice between darkness and light.
The choice metaphorically may not be between eating or not eating a piece of
fruit, but between light and darkness.[ii] That choice was not created
in the Garden of Eden but from the very first day of Creation. Perhaps Creation
was never meant to be a scientific exposition on origins but was instead
intended to be more of a legal brief outlining the criminal behavior of the
defendants, mankind.
The case could be made
that from the very beginning, every effort was made to provide opportunity for
choice between light and darkness, and mankind chose
darkness. Good and evil were present from that beginning, the Tree of Knowledge
in the garden notwithstanding. Light is good and darkness is evil the Bible
tells us.[iii] So God himself, who made
darkness a part of the creation, may have purposely introduced evil into the
world. This is also supported by the verses in Revelation, chapter twelve, that
tell us that the Devil, who is identified as the founder of evil,[iv] was "cast out into the
earth."[v] Who cast him out? God did, of
course. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, whether metaphorical or
literal, did not bring evil to mankind. It was already
there.
Some, who opt for a
literal tree and an innocent and pure creation, have suggested that evil was
only allowed in the vicinity of the tree and the rest of the world remained
pure. If that is the case, it must have been an excessively big tree indeed.
For not only was the serpent, the Devil, cast into the earth, but one third of
the angels with him. If we take numbers for angels from the Bible and multiply
them out, one third of the angels could easily amount to well over fifty
million of them.[vi]
Mankind was surrounded by choice. He could choose the light and trust God, or
he could choose the darkness and all that came with it. The fact that the Bible
tells us that God placed mankind in the Garden of Eden
where the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was, even if it is taken
metaphorically, indicates that God had no intention of allowing man to escape
this choice without committing to either darkness or light. Light would not be
allowed to be a default position. A choice must be made.
That this was a tree
of knowledge might imply that this was a choice made without knowledge.[vii] If so, it was no doubt a
surprise to Adam and Eve that so many dire things happened after they chose
darkness. First and foremost, once the choice was
made, the Garden of Eden with its choice paradigm was no longer necessary, it
was taken away.[viii]
The lovely garden that God had planted was to be replaced with one man must
scrabble from the earth.[ix] Humanity came face to face
with consequences and responsibility. Eve was to bear children, in pain per the
Bible.[x] However, there is no
indication from the Bible that she ever gave birth otherwise. One might think
that childbirth itself was the curse in the absence of any prior experience.
But would God have commanded them to "multiply"[xi] if they did not have the
ability to do so? The biblical account gets a bit murky on this issue, as the
command to "multiply" was given on the sixth day of creation, yet there is no
possibility for man to comply until he has a woman. The chapter one account
says God created both male and female, on the sixth day. Yet, per the chapter
two account, Eve does not appear to have been created until after man was put
in Eden and had named all the animals. Furthermore, Eve's creation is a special
event, unique from Adam's. One almost gets the feeling of "Oops! We messed up!
We told Adam to multiply but we forgot to make it possible."
In any event,
oversight or not, procreation would not have been physically attainable without
both genders. Therefore, if procreation were not
possible until after mankind chose his moral
direction, then Eve's creation could have been an anticipation of the choice. Our
Mormon friends assert, mankind's fall would have been expected, even required.[xii] This may be derived from a literal
understanding of the events and their sequence in Genesis, albeit from a
non-traditional perspective. We can only speculate that procreation was
possible before the encounter with the serpent based on the command to
"multiply" being ante-Edenic. These conflicting perspectives argue for a metaphorical
rather than a literal approach to the Creation Saga.
To refer to my
previous comment on this choice making in the paradigm of the morality play,
the "knowledge of good and evil" may simply be referring to a relativistic
morality based on an implicit trust in human knowledge as a foundation of
understanding to determine the appropriate moral direction in every
circumstance. This contrasts to choosing an absolute morality founded in an
unquestioning trust in knowledge outside of our understanding, divine
knowledge, as a basis for moral direction. This latter would be a "faith based"
morality that places the onus for untoward results of that morality on God
rather than ourselves.
There are downsides to
either understanding. Relativistic morality, which relies on our understanding,
cannot remove guilt because, although we must make a moral choice, we almost
never have all the facts we need. Therefore, we will make poorly informed
decisions that will produce negative outcomes, and we will bear the burden of
the guilt that results. Guilt can be mentally destructive, so we try to "have
our cake and eat it, too." By turning from God and following our own path, we
chose to accept responsibility for the negative results of our choices. But
instead of doing so, we tend to cast the guilt upon God rather than recognizing
our own responsibility. Since God had the power to prevent it, he is guilty,
not us. I call this the theodicy paradox, an attempt to have personal freedom
without guilt or consequences.
On the other hand,
absolutists who seek to absolve themselves of all free choice have the danger
of becoming cavalier about the results of their actions, believing they are
only doing God's will and following divine orders. The dangerous presumption is
that they can always understand God's will and have God under obligation to
reveal His will in every circumstance. This type of reasoning has given us the
Crusades and the Inquisition. Both were considered by most to be moral
failings.
God expects us to
choose a middle ground combining faith and reason. While it is true that He
expects us to live by faith,[xiii] God also tells us to
"reason."[xiv]
We are to reason according to the ability He has given us, while trusting to
His guidance where doubts exist. The experience of Christopher Columbus is
instructive.
Columbus relied on
reason when he set forth with his three ships for the East Indies. Believing
the world to be round, he felt he could reach the far east by sailing west. But
his calculations were wrong. The journey was taking much longer than he
expected. But he continued to sail on in faith. Eventually, that faith was
rewarded but not as he expected. Instead of reaching the East Indies, he
discovered the islands of the Caribbean. Despite not having the facts he needed
about the true size of the earth and what lay across the Atlantic Ocean, he
sailed on in faith and found that the doors opened to a whole new understanding
of the world.
Like Columbus, we can
begin our journey into morality based on the facts we can cobble together,
knowing that they are most probably flawed due to an incomplete perspective.
Then we can set sail across that sea of moral ambiguity with our sails filled
with an unremitting faith in the understanding that God will see us to a
morality that is right where it should be whether we knew it or not. New worlds
of understanding may await us.