DIFFERENT FRUIT,
SAME TREE
by Tim
Knappenberger
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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)
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