Begin or End each week with a Meaningful Inspiration.

DIFFERENT FRUIT,
SAME TREE

by Tim Knappenberger


  Stop to consider this: Had Adam and Eve made the right choice, they could have eaten from the Tree of Life and lived forever. Instant immortality. It was theirs for the taking. Instead, they chose the one thing God told them would harm them; the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Oh how far we've progressed in choosing today…NOT!

Too often in our Bible School classes we breeze by the description of this tree, falsely assuming it was the "Bad Tree." But look again:

  • Good for food
  • Pleasing to the eye
  • Desirable for gaining wisdom

Again, remember its name: The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The tree wasn't evil. It gave knowledge and who among us will criticize knowing the difference between good and evil? Eve and Adam's sin was doing exactly what many of us do. We look at the facts (at least as far as we're capable of discerning them), make judgments from those facts, and then make our choices regardless of what God says. Paradise's pair attempted a shortcut to God by bypassing obedience. Seeking relationship with God through any means other than obedience gets us lost.

Earlier in life, a friend of mine pursued his "shortcut" through drugs, alcohol, and sex. He ate from the "evil side" of the tree. "Yep," most Believers would reply, "Commit those kinds of sins buddy and you're surely 'biting off more than you can chew'." However, someone else I know chose a different "shortcut": She played by the rules, did her homework, attended church, and read her Bible. In other words, she sought God by eating from the "good side" of the tree. "If I just learn and study enough, I'll figure all of this out and eventually find God." Both searchers looked at the facts (fruit), passed their own judgments, and made their choices. Few would condemn my one friend while most would chide the other mercilessly. But regardless, my point is simple: Both were eating from the same tree and both faced the same eventual results - Death!

Sounds harsh I agree, but God's lesson to Adam, Eve and all the rest of us remains the same: "Do as I say. Period! Don't go on what you see or on what makes sense to you. Trust Me. Father knows best, really!" To coin a Clinton Campaign saying, "It's obedience, stupid". In today's enlightened and educated world, the most obedient Believer may come off looking like a real dunce. Obedience is, at one and the same time, the simplest of concepts to understand and the hardest to exercise. Choosing to dutifully wait on the Lord appears to many in the secular world as real life versions of the two pathetic figures in Beckett's Waiting on Godot.

The risks of pursuing wanton, sinful pleasure are obvious to the least discerning believer. But equally so, knowledge, reason, and discipline, though being orderly ways to live life, if employed to find God, will fail. You see, instead of accepting God on His terms, you're politely pointing to another path that makes infinite more sense to you. You may have a wealth of facts, logic, and reason at your disposal, but regardless you're still eating from the same tree.

There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. (Prov. 16:25)

And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." . . . When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; . . . (Gen. 2:16-17; 3:6-7)
The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The tree wasn't evil. It gave knowledge and who among us will criticize knowing the difference between good and evil?

Send a note to Tim Knappenberger at: knapp@raex.com

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