The problem in the garden was not curiosity, or even theorizing, it was not the seeking after truth, it was doubting God’s goodness and rightful authority. It was forgetting that he is truth.

We all carry within us a longing for the garden, for a life of both freedom and connection. In Eden, there were no physical, emotional, or spiritual barriers between God and humans, men and women. There was no coercion or cruelty. Adam and Eve were one flesh, naked and unashamed, operating in horizontal partnership and vertical submission to a loving Creator who supplied all their needs.

In our world of brokenness, scarcity, death, and decay, it is hard to imagine desiring anything more than such a utopia, and we constantly seek to rediscover it. Our most magnetic political figures and predators-masquerading-as-shepherds promise us a return to such a state if we will only submit our judgment of right and wrong to the correct authorities—them. This very dynamic, in essence, is a repetition of the first temptation: to reject childlike dependence on a good creator and to follow a creature claiming to possess godlike knowledge.

A Fence in the Garden

While he provided them a life of immense freedom, God did not give the first humans free reign over their environment. He supplied them with all their needs while also setting boundaries on their behaviors. They could eat freely of almost any tree in the garden, including the tree of life, but they were not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:16, 17).

Abiding by limits requires us both to believe that an authority figure has our best interest at heart and to be willing to obey even when we don’t understand his reasoning. These are the societal foundations the serpent attacked. “God is keeping something from you,” he whispered. “He doesn’t want you to compete with him.” In the serpent’s version, God wasn’t protecting Adam and Eve from experiencing suffering and death, he was limiting them from becoming like him in both knowledge and power. He was being a tyrant.

In part, this was true, God was keeping them from knowledge that he possessed, but not because it would make humans like God; quite the opposite. The knowledge of good and evil would create distance from the divine. It would make godliness more difficult. For finite creatures, even the awareness of evil is like a black cloud slowly enveloping all we once saw only as good. It robs us of the bliss of ignorance. One of the tragedies of aging is to encounter more and more of the depravity found in our realm and to come to terms with the fact that there is no earthly remedy for evil. If kept at arm’s length, it can still paralyze us with fear. If indulged, it will darken all it reaches. God limiting humanity’s knowledge of evil didn’t keep humans from godhood, it kept them from the experience of suffering. Any good parent knows the longing for a child to listen to instruction and avoid dangerous decisions, not so the parent can retain power, but so the child can be spared from reaping the heartbreaking consequences of opening the door to darkness. But to the naïve and the short-sighted—which includes all of us at times—these limits can appear unfair, petty, or needlessly restrictive.

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