Outrage in Eden

I stole and extrapolated everything I’ll say from Dr. John Piper at Passion 2017. Just go listen to his stuff and don’t come back to this post.

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“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 of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.”

Genesis 3:6

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The commonplace conclusion about what happened in the Garden of Eden is that Humanity got hungry and God overreacted.

Since God spazzed out about a dinner date between the first couple, we gotta send Jesus to earth and give women birth pains and there gotta be war, famine, disease, murder, hatred and all sorts of other things because Adam and Eve wanted gourmet apple sauce and God is super petty about cuisine, as the law of Moses would later show.

It is simply misguided, parental outrage: the sort of anger that a father gives a straight-A student for not cleaning her room. Like, chill. It’s food. Why wreak on a world that took 6 days (or trillion years) to create over a nibble?

But there is an outrage in the heart of God that is beyond the bite marks in Eden’s apple. And the outrage is not only found in God but also in the fundamental nature of logic and the most rudimentary forms of hedonism.

I present to you the situation that was presented to Adam and Eve.

The scenario is this: the concept of the trinity has imploded your mind, you are cuddling with a Tiger, your neck resting on the belly of a bear, tickling its fur as you watch your wife dancing in a wide open field picking lilies and roses. Each time she says your name, or anything else, she sings her words like a scene from the Sound of Music.

If you’re Adam, you have married the woman of your dreams (quite literally).

And now God has come out of His office to lounge in the garden. You give Him a fist bump and ask Him how His Day is going. He smiles and nods: “It was good.”

You and God fall into a deep philosophical conversation about work, life before earth, and watch behind the scenes footage for the Project Earth movie HeavenWood is about to release…

What room in this scenario do you have to fret about a restricted apple tree?

Imagine that a famous person has invited you to their house on the condition that you do not touch anything. Would that be unfair? What if they let you touch some things and not others? Would you tolerate your children running their hands all over the trophy cases and photo albums?

The plaques and memorabilia are valuable not because they are wooden or plastic, or because you have commanded yourself and your children not to touch them, but because they belong to an important person.

But walk through the house again and see the significance of the experience is the honor of being in the presence of an individual you respect. Without that personal interaction, the home becomes a dry museum.

If the God of Genesis 1 and 2 is not real, the sin of Genesis 3 doesn’t matter.

If the God of Creation didn’t create anything at all, He has no reason to flail his arms at sin.

If there is nothing special about Him, there is no reason to take His reaction seriously.

But if God really did exist from eternity past, full of love and grace that He wanted to share with the world, if He fashions each man, woman, boy and girl limb by limb and lifts up the sun each morning, providing our daily bread, if God is who He says He is, then He is exceedingly better than anything you could ever snort, sip, shoot, treasure, covet, or desire: and it is pure evil to find pleasure in things that are less desirable without knowing about Moses and his Ten Commandments.

What made the Garden of Eden pleasurable was not the variety of plant life or peace and harmony. It was the presence of God: those other items were a byproduct of God’s glory.

To be satisfied with less desirable things is to find friendship with a murderer and hostility toward a surgeon, to find pleasure in a prostitute and boredom in a selfless wife.

No one needs to tell us what it is evil if the question is quality: that it is evil to prefer the lower quality to the higher. You just know Jordans beat Sketchers and five-star restaurants beat gas station potato chips.

Adam and Eve committed a great evil because they did not treasure God above all things.

If you’re a Christian, this is why you may feel so upset in your stomach when you sin, for to sin is to undermine all Christian logic and pursuit of pleasure.

When you pay taxes, you must think there is a better Governor than this governor. When you pay rent, you must be thinking there is a better Landlord that this landlord. When you take a day off, you must be thinking there is a Rest above all other rests.

Surely, there must be something better: there must be a Pleasure above all other pleasures.

There is. We just insist on apples.

When God sends Adam and Eve from the garden, it is not like a Parent refusing to let the children drive the sports car and making them drive a beaten-up vehicle instead.

It is more like placing a lock on the junk food pantry so that the kids can focus on the gourmet, luxury, five-star meal in front of them.

“Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst again.”

It’s an utter outrage that Adam and Eve overstepped the Bread of Life for an apple.

It is abominable to walk into the House of the Lord demanding apple juice when God has offered never ending wine.

 

 

Photo Credit: The Son of Man, 1964 – Rene Magritte