The Tree of Knowledge: A set up??

15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” (Gen 2.15-17 NRSV)

OK, God, you create a perfect Garden of Eden and then you put the naughty tree in the middle and tell the guy not to eat of it or you will die. Then you create a woman to keep the dude company. A nice Golden Retriever would have been nice and we could have avoided all the problem. Adam must have told Eve about the tree because it was she that entered into conversation with the serpent. The Hebrew word translated into serpent is "smooth." It might have been a lizard with smooth skin because later God took its legs and made it crawl on the earth.

However, when you read chapter 3 you see that good old Adam was standing right there and did he intervene between Eve and the serpent, nooooooo. When the fruit is offered to him he just chomped away. When God came around asking questions he blamed everything on Eve. "This woman you gave me made me eat..."

But I digress. The question that comes up is why did God make a perfect life for Adam and Eve and give them a life that would never end and then put temptation right smack in the middle of the garden? Anyone would, after a few hundred years of life around the forbidden fruit just take a bite to break the boredom of perfection. And maybe that is the answer to the dilemma. Wouldn't life be boring without evil and temptation to combat?

The reality is that this is a story, a way for the ancients to explain why a perfect God created a perfect garden and yet there is evil in the world. It explains that people not God are the cause of sin. I would offer that God created all that exists in perfect balance. Good and evil and all the rest. God does not interfere in our choices but is able to work within pain and suffering for good when we are surrendered to God. A great example can be found at http://www.bandssullivan.blogspot.com/