The LORD God gave him this command: “You may eat from any tree in the garden. But you must not eat from the tree that gives knowledge about good and evil. If you eat fruit from that tree, on that day you will certainly die!” (Genesis 2:16-17)
It’s a familiar passage of scripture and yet …
I was having a conversation with a friend recently. We were looking at how often we can take the scriptures for granted. The stories in them become familiar to such a degree that we don’t really go back to them with fresh eyes. There’s a problem with that because it gives the impression that we’re able to retain and share these familiar stories without any need for insight on them. It’s as though it was our story, rather than His story. When we make it literally our story and no longer His story then it’s left to subtle changes and nuances fitting my background, my traditions, my preferences, etc.
Reading something with fresh eyes is like coming to the story again as though you’ve never read it before. Yeah, it sounds hard, because they’re so familiar, but then you can do yourself a favour and relax. Either determine to read it afresh or have it read in a different way in a different version by a different voice. Switch off that know-it-all part of the brain that wants to give the answers already as if you know.
What’s also helpful is reading these things again and asking God to reveal it. When I was a child, it was great asking my Mum or Dad to help me with something. Later on it would be a mentor or a teacher that I would ask for help with something. Asking for that help would put me in the condition of someone who didn’t know looking to someone who did know to give me a new perspective on something. In the same way, when we’re reading these scriptures, we can ask God to help us understand them.
Up to now, you will have every right to ask: What on earth does all of this have to do with the scripture quoted at the top?
There is this thing about the human condition that when they’re told not to do something, they are prone to go ahead and do it. This seems to be a given of human nature. So we are lead to believe.
I was reading the command of the Lord to the man in that quote. Yes, the nub of the quote is the warning to stay away from the fruit of a particular tree or the consequences would be fatal. That bit is well remembered. I wonder, however, if we appreciate the first part of that command?
There is a culture that I’m fairly familiar with that is keen to remind you what you cannot do. What you’re not allowed to do. What you are forbidden to do. There is not so much of a culture that encourages you of the wide variety of things that you can do. The instruction to humanity was to enjoy a garden full of fruit. Any tree in that garden with fruit they were free to eat of it. Any tree in that garden was equipped to satisfy them both in terms of taste and nutrition. There was sufficient in the garden without ever needing to go to that tree.
The story obviously unfolds that later on humanity rejected that instruction, disobeyed and suffered the consequences. In Christ, however, there is a remedy for the curse. Does that not suggest an invitation to return to a life of enjoying everything God has made to satisfy? Isn’t there something in that which would help us as we renew our minds to see such vast richness in Christ that we can spend the rest of our lives being fruitful in the things we discover about Him and live for Him?
Isn’t there something about life in Christ that liberates us to now go about enjoying the instruction that says – you may eat?
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
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