All is Good (Genesis 2:16 - 3:6)

 

Image by Sixteen Miles Out (unsplash.com)

It is a tree much like all the others: straight trunk, glossy leaves, pink-kissed blossoms followed by fruit that looks good to eat. Had he really been told that its name was Tree-of-the-knowledge-of-good-and-evil, and that if he ate of its fruit he would die that same day? And did the prohibition apply to her?

And what did that mean, to die? And what was "evil”?

Good, she knew. Elohim had made the world and everything in it. Elohim had made it, looked at it, and found it to be good. “Evil” too must be good, then. And so must death.

But they were to live in ignorance, never knowing exactly what these words meant, how good evil was, and what it felt like to die.

One bite would solve at least one mystery. It made sense that tasting the fruit would bring with it new knowledge. And it would quickly become apparent whether she felt different after. She could then decide whether or not to share that knowledge. Knowledge was good, surely! Elohim had made it, too, and the thirst for knowledge, just as Elohim had made evil and death, and the tree and its fruit.

- Before ... I did not know that I was naked.

- Yes. It was just the way it was ... we were.

- Do you think ... is this new feeling ... this shame ... evil?

- And is having this feeling the same as death?

- Hm ...

- What more do we know?

- That we are naked. That being and thinking about being are no longer one and the same. There is an emptiness, a lack, a missing.

- Yes. We felt beautiful and complete, and now ... we are two halves, but not of each other; each a half wedded to death.

- It is good, Love.