|
| The fall |
| Now, the serpent was more subtle than any
beast of the field that the Lord God had made. |
| The serpent is known for its poison. Poison is evil.
The serpent here seems to be poisoning the mind or the thought process
and not the body or the blood stream. The serpent that entices Eve
to eat the forbidden fruit is the tempter, the devil, the Satan whose
sole aim is to overcome goodness and propagate evil. Does devil really
exist or is it just a figment of our imagination, a myth? About devil,
Dr. Piet Muller of South Africa has this to say, “Yes, there
is devil. I see him every day when I look in the mirror.” In
other words, temptation is not external but from inside us. It arises
out of the free will. Temptation is nothing but the hesitation in
choosing when a choice is there, to pick this or that, good or evil. |
| And the serpent said to the woman, surely,
you shall not die (of eating the forbidden fruit), for God knows that
the day you eat that your eyes shall be opened and you shall be as
gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree
was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree
to be desired to make one wise, she took that fruit, and did eat,
and gave also to her husband with her; and he also did eat. |
| ‘How could she do this to us?’ we are often
tempted to ask. Well, we could say that she was trying to be human.
Like most of us today she was not content with what she had. Her attitude
was; ‘We have enough to eat, but why can’t we have that
too?’ This is not very different from our attitude; ‘I
have enough clothes, but I want that dress too.’ ‘For
our status we need more classy furniture.’ ‘Those cosmetics
or clothes shall make me look younger and prettier.’ And so
on and so forth. And what Adam did was not different from what most
husbands do today - give in and go along. The basic cause of evil,
then as well as now, is putting the ‘I, me, my - attitude’
at the center. “Why can’t I have it?” In sIn, the
‘I’ is at the center always. Greed, selfishness, possessiveness
all arise in this manner. One must however concede that there is a
positive side to this action of Eve and Adam. This could be called
ambition instead of greed - the ambition to know more, to gain wisdom
of knowing right and wrong, to gain knowledge, to promote science. |
| This first act of transgression, the original sin,
is some times referred to as ‘Felix culpa’ - the lucky
sin or the blessed sin. The reason is this. This is the act that set
in motion the process of salvation, the process in which the Son of
God became man so that we can become children of God. The original
sin could be called Felix culpa in another sense as well. By this
first exercise of the free will, by choosing to act against the dictate
of the conscience, Eve and Adam crossed the border from the animal
world into the human world, from an animal guided by instinct to one
guided by intelligence accompanied by free will. |
| Unto the woman he said, I will greatly
multiply your sorrow in procreation, in sorrow you shall bring forth
children; and your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule
over you. |
| There is a price to be paid for everything, for becoming
wise, for having a large brain. Evolutionary scientists speak of these
as trade-ins. The larger brain meant a larger head. At the time of
birth of a human baby the mother has to suffer labor pain because
of the large size of the head. According to these scientists, it is
very unlikely that we humans can go any higher in biological evolution,
very unlikely that we can have a still bigger head as the pelvic structure
of women cannot accept this. If the pelvis grows any larger they cannot
walk on two legs, they say. So, labor pain was one of the prices to
be paid for evolution. According to many experts one pregnancy and
child birth would give enough discomfort and pain to the woman that
she would, in normal sense, never allow herself to become pregnant
again. This could mean the extinction of our species. What prevents
this state of affairs from happening is ‘the desire’ mentioned
in this verse. Unlike the other animals that do mating only at the
ovulation of the female, the humans can do it any time also due to
this ‘desire’. |
| And to Adam He said, Because you have listened
to the voice of your wife, and has eaten the forbidden fruit, cursed
is the ground for you; in sorrow you shall eat of it all the days
of your life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to you;
and you shall eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of your face
shall you eat bread, till you return unto the ground; for out of it
you were taken: for you are dust, and unto dust shall you return. |
| Another trade-in for the bigger brain was a smaller
abdomen. May be we were to spend less time on feeding and more time
on intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic matters. We were to do with
much smaller quantities of concentrated or quality food instead of
spending most of the day trying to chew and digest all sorts of edible
materials. For this we had to start farming, keep sheep and fowl for
milk, egg and meat, cultivate the land, and grow crops, harvest, store
and cook - all new problems of Sapiens’ lifestyle, of civilization.
This could be the meaning of God’s words to Adam, “in
the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread.” |
| And the Lord God said, Behold, the man
is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now he might put
forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live
for ever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of
Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out
the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims,
and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the
tree of life. |
| At the start, before eating the forbidden fruit, the
tree of life was accessible to man. Expulsion from the garden, on
eating of the forbidden fruit meant mainly the withdrawal of grace,
the denial of the tree of life, the loss of eternal life. (‘On
the day you eat of that you shall die’) The tree of life
will become accessible again at Calvary when Christ’s mission
of salvation is accomplished. That is where death is overcome by resurrection
and we get access to the fruits of the tree of life. (‘I
am the resurrection and the life.’) This is the history
of salvation. |
|
