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Thursday 26 July 2012

THE TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL


 Man were cursed from paradise for eating the fruit from the tree God had forbidden them to eat, a tree which God, in the birth of time, planned for them to eat and experience. For first of all, God would not be omniscient, neither omnipresent, if She did not know beforehand that Her first humans would be seduced by the fruit she had expressly forbidden them to eat. Secondly, she would not be omnipotent if she knew and could not do anything about it, like stop it. Thus God, being all omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, had to know.

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.