In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth, then came light, the waters, the land, the plants and the trees, then day and night, the creatures of the earth, and finally God made man. God rested on the seventh day and he called it holy. The bible tells us about the garden God planted in the East and he called it Eden, and there he put the man that he had formed. A river flowed from the garden forming into four more rivers. The Lord commanded the man to work and take care of the garden he had given him. There was only one rule God gave to the man: do not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If he ate it, he would surely die. The Lord God saw that it was not good for the man to be alone, so he took a rib from the man and gave him a helper, and the man said "this is now the bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, and she shall be called woman." They were both naked and felt no shame.
I have often wondered why God chose to give people free will, as he gave it to the first man and the first woman. He would surely have to know that they would betray his trust; did he anticipate this, was he expecting this? The Bible tells us of a serpent in the garden, and how the serpent was cunning, some versions of the Bible call the serpent crafty. I have heard it said that the serpent was a deceiver, and as I read closely I found this to be true but not as people imagine deception. One day the woman came upon the serpent and engaged him in conversation. The woman was well aware of the rule God had given them, and the serpent knew this rule as well. The most profound thing I discovered while reading Genesis was that the serpent did not lie to the woman but told the truth. He told it in a way that the woman liked hearing it, so that her eyes would be opened and she would know good and evil, like God. He told her that surely she would not die. She saw the food as pleasing to the eye and good food and she took it and ate it, she gave some to her husband and he ate it. Their eyes were opened and they saw that they were naked, covered themselves, and hid from the Lord. God punished them and the serpent for their original sin, the premier of sins, the reason we are all descendants of sinners.
The most intriguing thing I got out of this story was the two types of temptation that there are. The first is the woman, she had to be wooed into temptation. She knew better, knew that she should not do it, thought about it, and did it anyway. How many of us are tempted daily and every now and then fall into the traps of temptation, even though we know better. We live on the premise that our God is a forgiving God so it is all right to sin, just this once. The other type is blindly falling into temptation. It is easiest to fall into this trap. The woman gave the man the food and he ate it. What is easiest about this trap is that we never accept responsibility for this sin, we quickly blame it on something or someone else, that way, we are not liable for the action. The man said to God " the woman you put here with me- she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." The man never accepted his role in defying God. How many of us blindly go into sin, and instead of feeling guilty about our transgressions, we find someone else to blame?
The man and the woman did not die, but were given a life where they would eventually die, but only after the woman suffers through childbirth and has desire only for her husband, who is to rule over her. The man would have to painfully toil the earth to receive his food all the days of his life, only by the sweat of his brow will he eat his food, until he returns as dust to the ground from where he came.
The lesson that I learned here is to know when I have it good, to know that the Lord is providing for me and my family. I know that temptation will always be around every corner like the serpent in the garden, but as a Christian, I know better. I know that the enemy is always out there, and that sometimes he does not lie to deceive me. Sometimes he tells the truth, and tells it in a way that I want to hear it. The enemies greatest weapon is catering to our egos and our vanity. God knows all our sins of yesterday, and there is nothing we can do to change those sins. The greatest thing that God gave us is that we can choose whether or not we will sin tomorrow. Will you fall to temptation, or stand for God?
