We get so hung up on the fruit and the tree and the serpent being the devil and a bunch of stuff that we learned in Sunday School that simply isn’t in the Bible.
I wonder sometimes why the apple got the short straw on being the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Was this because the apple was known to the youth and it was easy to talk about the fruit being an apple. Even today on the Christian radio station I listen to I heard a song that talked about the apple being the fruit Eve and Adam ate. The Bible does not say what the fruit was, it was simply on the tree in the middle of the Garden…
And how many trees were there? Yes this is a ridiculous question. No one knows how many trees there were in the Garden of Eden. However I really mean how many special trees were there in the Garden of Eden? And as I type this I think I emphatically know the answer, but I am wrong. We do not know how many special trees there are either. It is not stated in the Bible how many special trees there are but there is something there that many of us overlook or forget or were never taught.
Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:22-24 ESV)
Now that man is like us we have to get them out of the garden so they don’t eat from the tree of life and live forever! After eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil the Genesis story tells us that man and woman were just like God except God lives for ever and man does not. So if they would have eaten from the tree of life, they would have been exactly like God. So there are at least 2 trees that are special in the Garden of Eden, and the tree of life is now guarded by flaming spinning sword bearing Cherubim. (Cherubim are scary enough from the description of the in the Bible, I’m not sure why they need the flaming spinning swords!)
So what is true? Is the apple the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as we have been taught? Is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil the only special tree in the Bible as we have been taught?
I guess the question for the day shouldn’t be 2 trees or not 2 trees, but why do we cling to what we have been taught when it does not jive with the Biblical witness? Why do we claim to know the truth of God when we do not even really know what His word says?
Dear daddy God, please help us to give up our knowledge and to live and stay in the realness of you, and to be led in your path and go out doing your mission. Guide us in your mercy and love to show forth your grace. Amen
aSacredRebel 