Excerpted from 2023 Lenten Guide: A Season of Renewal, a Lenten Guide for Lectionary Year A from the North Carolina Council of Churches.
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’ ” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
I suppose you can call the Garden of Eden story “original” sin, in the sense that this story tries to account for the origin and pervasiveness of sin in our lives. But in our more common definition of the word, this sin is hardly “original” at all. It’s common to every one of us: the temptation to be God.
This is a story that has puzzled me for a long time: why would God not want the humans to have the knowledge of good and evil? How would they know what to do; the right choices to make? Why would God not want for God’s first children to have that knowledge?
I think there are two pieces to the answer to that question. One is theological and the other is experiential. So let’s start with the theological. When God created the world, God kept affirming that all was “good.” Nowhere do we hear God reflect and say, “that’s bad,” or even, “oops, that didn’t turn out so well.” Even the serpent is described as “crafty,” or “subtle,” but never as “evil.” So, since evil had no place in the original creation, there was no need for the humans to know about it. Everything they knew, or learned from the creation, would be good. That’s the theological part of the answer.
The other piece has to do with how we use the knowledge once we get it. Given that humans do now have the knowledge of good and evil, however imperfectly, the problem is what we do with that knowledge. If we used it only on ourselves, to make our own decisions and set our own priorities, that would be no problem. In fact, it would be wonderful. The problem is, that’s not what we do. At least, that’s not all that we do.
We use our imperfect knowledge of good and evil to judge other people. And because our knowledge is imperfect, we usually end up judging ourselves good, and others who aren’t like us, as evil. We sit in judgment on our fellow human beings. And that responsibility belongs only to God. We appropriate it, but it is not ours. None of us is alone in this; we all do it. Our sin is not very original; we learn it from each other; we repeat it, again and again, generation after generation. We don’t just want to try to be like God; we want to be God.
The lectionary readings for the first Sunday in Lent hold the Eden story alongside Jesus’ temptation in the desert. During his temptation in the desert, even though he is God, at that time and place Jesus chose to be fully human. He did not do divine stunts or miracles, but hung in against temptation, when he could have given in.
Which is what we have to do. Whether you believe the Eden story literally or symbolically doesn’t really much matter. Because it is true that we all do have at least a beginner’s knowledge of good and evil. The question is, what will we do with it? Will we use it to judge others and to crush them, playing God? Or will we use it to become the most fully human humans that we can be? Now that would be original. Amen.
