Now, the question lies in God’s knowing. What were the consequences of eating from the Tree of the
knowledge of good and evil? It meant man would be privy to knowledge that would
either curse or bless his and her existence above or below all other creations
of God, in heaven or on earth. Blessing or curse, one thing was for sure: Man’s
acquisition of this knowledge probably set him and her above all of God’s
creations. For it is only in man that God, the Ultimate Scientist and Artist,
created his first being that wasn’t of purely and solely ‘moral material’
(angels, and whatever other creations exist in the heavens) nor purely and
solely instinctual material (animals, plants, nature in general). Man and woman
were first created as part of the
group of the latter, but it seems God had loftier plans for Man. What if I were
to make man the point of synthesis? What if I were to make man the merger of
the separate divides? What if I were to make man the image of God? Mind you, just an image.
Thus the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was
created, and the possibilities for fallibility, which Man was by the nature God had created him and her
with, put in place. You see, Man had
to be forbidden from the Tree, because the process to attaining the knowledge
of Good and Evil would not be complete without this quality of forbiddingness.
In other words, it was a necessary
condition that man and woman were ordered not to eat from the Tree, for his and her defiance of that rule
would spark the fires of eternal remorse, the needed fuel to commence and
sustain man in his and her struggle for understanding Good and Evil, for
understanding this ultimate truth of
existence, made man alive and meaningful. Also, man’s choice to want to know what was hidden from him and her was
that step God needed. Why was this eternal remorse needed? Because remorse is
what drives the human mind to further seek and understand the truth, the
knowledge of good and evil. Man’s Fall was a necessary condition. Man needed to
fall, fall short of accessing God, to be able to make sense of the truth. It is
in the fires of anguish that the sword is forged.
The powerful metaphor of a garden of Paradise
accurately captures the state of freedom and innocence man’s mind was enveloped
in at the beginning of his and her creation. The battle man henceforth suffered
for wanting to know, for wanting to
understand beyond the blanket of nature he had been created in, was man’s
inevitable burden. Man would not be man without this battle/ blessing/ curse.
Man would be a being without purpose for it is this battle to know and
understand good and evil that validates his and her existence. The fruit is a
heavy symbolism of man’s decision to want
to know, thus, the point at which God draws away from the earth, draws away
from man who is a sliver, a mere image, of Herself. With God in the picture,
that battle to understand the distinction of good and evil, to live the merger
between natural instincts and morality, would be unachievable. It is a struggle
man must go through alone; his and her success would be the first, making man
the greatest of Her creations.
Man is definitely no longer in the paradise of Eden,
but we still circle the gleaming fruits on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good
And Evil daily, still ruminate about the different flavours of its bittersweet
taste on our tongues, still seek to draw the lines between the lines and find
that elusive balance. This is our battle, our struggle, our curse, our
blessing, made more urgent by our
anguished illusions of an eternally burning pit of fire where we shall burn
ceaselessly, denied the pleasure of death. This hell is not an illusion. Nor is
it a reserve for our unknown future, the punishment for failure to complete
this herculean task God has given us. It is our present.
