The story of Adam and Eve is one of the most interesting in Scripture. It is one of the “stories of universal import” that occupy the first 11 chapters of Genesis. They are called that because they are about the whole of humanity. The common theme in most of these stories which include Cane and Abel, Noah, and the Tower of Babel is sin and its consequences.

You know the story of how Even is tempted to eat of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil by a serpent. The question that has long bugged me is not why the serpent was n the Garden of Eden, but why the tree was there in the first place. Wouldn’t the life of Adam and Eve have been a lot better if the tree wasn’t where they could get at it? It would seem so, but let me ask a question. What would life be like if nothing you did made any difference? Maybe it would be easier, but would life matter at all? The presence of the tree represented a limit to Adam and Eve. There would be consequences of violating that limit, and so there were. They discovered shame and ended up with a much more difficult life. 

Having a choice  was necessary for them to be fully human. There always has to be the potential of getting it wrong if we are to learn and develop.

Chew on that for awhile. I’ll come back to this topic again.

Read Genesis 3:1-7  and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne