Combining the Knowledge of Good and Evil

[Stumpmaster]

We know from Genesis 2:17 that Adam and Eve were forbidden by God to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I am currently working on a theme that explores the combination of good and evil in our world and am interested in the fact that the knowledge of evil was present in the garden of Eden before evil itself manifested in the world. Also I am working on thoughts about the way the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil appealed to Eve as described in Genesis 3:6, being "good for food, pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom." I am hoping other people will have some insights into how the combination of good and evil in ourselves and in the world plays out. Blessings to all.

 

[whirlwind]

I am[/B] hoping other people will have some insights into how the combination of good and evil in ourselves and in the world plays out. Blessings to all.

Good morning StumpMaster, (at least it's morning in my corner of His garden) I tag things "good and evil" such as television, the computer, government, money, education, medicine, religion....in other words....everything seems to have a good and evil aspect. It depends upon the spirit of the one using the fruit of the tree or the spirit of the tree producing the fruit. Ezekiel 31:9 I have made him fair by the multitude of his branches: so that all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied him.The branches of the "tree of knowledge of good and evil" are everywhere in this world. They poke into every little part of our lives and affect us. But we, as His trees in this garden of God, partake of the serpents fruits and envy his power, his money, his influence. It can be the focus of our lives. Until....the Tree of Life becomes our food, our salvation, our life. Our carnal nature and all it's cravings are crucified and then....we truly live. The head of the serpent is crushed and all his rotten fruit no longer looks appealing. Galatians 5:24 And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.

 

[gumby]

I think its a choice that we all have to weigh in our lives who we follow god or satan but i can tell you this much you dont want to work against god. Joshua 24:15 is very imformitive on the subject. God bless

 

[Helen]

1) The Tree was a Tree they were told NOT to eat from. Therefore the good fruit of the tree was forbidden just as much as the evil fruit. Both were- "the knowledge of."
2) Now, because of that, we are stuck with knowledge of what we think and judge as good. And our judgement is often wrong. It just appears to be good to the carnal mind, for a comfortable life.

The world tells us what is good..and we believe it!!
When something good happens in our life, we tend to believe that because in our value system it seemed good, it must be so.
But as Christians we have learned that some 'seemingly ' bad things happen in our life that turns out to be the best lesson that God taught us! "It was good."
So, as I look at it..I see a carnal good, and spiritual good....and they are not the same. One is from God, and one is from the Tree of the knowledge of....

 

[aspen]

I believe that humans are incapable of truly understanding good and evil - in fact, we were never designed for this superfluousness task - after all, if we never ate the fruit, evil would not have entered the world and we would never have the need to avoid it. In addition, our inane attempts to teach each other to rely on our own morality to determine right and wrong, while expecting positive and consistent results is sort of like expecting a monkey to write a novel if he is given access to a computer. The fact is, our justice system causes more evil than good - ironically, without even addressing the issue of justice. Indeed, our incapacity to know the future excludes us from determining right from wrong - we need hindsight in order to see how our choices affect the world and others. So when Adam and Eve ate of the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, it didn't act as a 'magic' tree that gave them a new super power - instead, it was a fool's choice. The very act of eating the fruit that God reserved for some other purpose (rather than feeding Adam and Eve), defined them as disobedient and cursed them by replacing their ability to choose between different good things with the limited ability to pick between lesser good things. Jesus asked the Pharisees (tongue in cheek) why they called him Good (equating him with God) when only God is Good - correctly pointing out that only the Alpha and Omega who defines Good is capable of knowing the Good and providing us with the correct lenses for viewing it.

I think God has been trying to get this point across from the time He kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden. It appears to me that He presented His 10 commandments to us not only to provide a standard for us to live by, but to prove a larger point, we are incapable of choosing to follow it and we are judgmental towards each other when we fail. Instead of providing freedom for us, the law ended up condemning us because, despite Adam and Eve's initial assertions, we are not able to choose the Good.

Christ liberated us through the highest expression of love - forgiveness, despite the failure of Adam and Eve to ask for it. The best part is the Good News of Christ is not instruction on how to effectively determine right and wrong, instead it is the revelation that we were actually created to love, rather than judge and that He is going to use our lives to remind our hearts how to do just that. Birds chirp, dogs bark and we love. Love cuts across good and evil - if we choose to submit to Christ's work in our hearts, we will automatically find our niche in Creation. Finally, finding our rightful purpose allows us to rely on God for our morality and our hearts to graduate from the school of love.

 

[bbyrd009]

as described in Genesis 3:6, being "good for food

that is kinda weird huh; i mean for all she knew it was poisonous or something, even bitter or whatever. How might she have "seen" that it was good for food?

 

[KBCid]

We know from Genesis 2:17 that Adam and Eve were forbidden by God to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I am currently working on a theme that explores the combination of good and evil in our world and am interested in the fact that the knowledge of evil was present in the garden of Eden before evil itself manifested in the world.

The knowledge of evil was present in the garden but it was not contained within the tree. satan who had already freely chosen to disobeyed God was the only evil present in the garden.
When God made man in their image, man was given the freedom of choice aka free will just as God has and the ability to learn. The test of the tree was the test of mans free will to choose to believe or to disbelieve what God told them. The tree itself had no intrinsic ability to give anything of any value.

Also I am working on thoughts about the way the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil appealed to Eve as described in Genesis 3:6, being "good for food, pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom." I am hoping other people will have some insights into how the combination of good and evil in ourselves and in the world plays out. Blessings to all.

The tree had fruit like any other and as such had the same appeal to the senses for edibility. The desirability for gaining wisdom was not within the fruit. It was gotten from the discussion with satan. satan implied to Eve that having knowledge of what good and evil are would make man equal with God but the truth was that it would only make man equal with satan since God cannot disobey God. The only way that man could have learned about evil the way God did would have been for them to have children who disobeyed them.

To really understand what good and evil are you must first understand that there would be none unless there was more than one being in existence. God stated that "it is not good for man to be alone" and by this statement the Father tells us that it was not good for any being to be alone including himself since good and love have no meaning without others. God created beings in his image so that he would not be alone but, in forming beings with his same capacity of free will it opened the possibility for the created beings to make choices in opposition to him thus there is the need for testing of the free will choice.

 

[Helen]

that is kinda weird huh; i mean for all she knew it was poisonous or something, even bitter or whatever. How might she have "seen" that it was good for food?

Isn't that what deception is all about? =. Perceiving something as 'good' when it actually is poison for us.

The thing that most of us forget is that they were told not to eat of the tree of ( of the knowledge of GOOD and evil. We still insist on judging things ( both spiritual and otherwise) by our carnal mind ...we call so many things ' good' when all the time God is interested in LIFE, not what appears to us as 'good'.

That's how I see it.