Adam and Eve: Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil = Judgement?

Question

Regarding the following passage:

And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Genesis 2:16-17

The tree is that of knowledge of good and evil - a specific type of knowledge. As an aside, knowledge requires experience at least via education (2nd hand) - working knowledge, aka actionable/useful/pragmatic understanding.

Obviously this means, or equates to, the tree of judgement. A determination that something is good or is evil is a judgement.

So, then, the message seems to be that making judgement calls regarding what is good or evil was never meant for man.

Is this line of thinking sound, or have I misinterpreted the passage? Is it judgements that poison our experience. Or, am I off base?

Answer 1

It is worldly defiled judgments that poison experience rather than holy judgments of grace. Genesis 2:16-17 does not refer to the knowledge of 'good' that is 'holy' or 'undefiled' but ideas of 'good' that give rise to concurrent 'evil'.

For example, Cain believed his offering to the Lord was 'good' and when the Lord rejected Cain's offering & accepted Abel's offering, Cain got angry & jealous and murdered his brother. Cain only did this evil deed due to his ideas about what was 'good' & not having his idea of 'good' fulfilled. Cain did not get the 'good' that he craved therefore became 'evil' or angry, also viewing is brother as 'evil'.

Here, James 4:1-2 states:

What causes conflicts and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from the passions at war within you? You crave what you do not have. You kill and covet, but are unable to obtain it. You quarrel and fight.

Or in John 8, a woman caught in adultery resulted in the crowd wanting to stone her to death due to their knowledge of good & evil where as Jesus, although knowing adultery is not good & is evil, was not moved to anger in respect to his knowledge but to mercy. He said: "Go & sin no more".

Therefore, Genesis 2:16-17 continues with the consequences of this knowledge of 'good-evil', namely, the things that husbands & wives fight about with their conflicting, greedy & selfish ideas about what is 'good' & what is 'evil', such as the wife believing a bigger house is 'good' while the husband believes a smaller house is 'good' & a bigger house is 'evil' (because it increases his work & debt obligations).

To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.” And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Following what Jesus taught will approach the Tree of Life & move away from the Tree of Knowledge:

37 “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. Luke 6

Paul gives many teachings about upholding the Law (of good & evil) however emphasizes salvation comes from Grace and not from the Law (alone) since obsession with the Law leads to all kinds of inner self-judgment & neurosis, let alone outward anger & hostility.

Romans 6:14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

In short, the kind of 'good-evil' knowledge in Genesis 2:16-17 is judgments that lead to spiritual 'death'.

Answer 2

Your thinking is sound, however to determine that 'making judgement calls regarding what is good and evil was never meant for man' would cause one to question why this particular tree was in the garden of Eden to begin with. So making these judgements would instead be a privilege or an authority to be earned in time. A long time, it appears in hindsight.

The first judgement Adam and Eve made, therefore, is that nakedness is wrong. Going from your aside, that knowledge requires experience via education or pragmatic understanding, there has been no such knowledge acquired here.

In hindsight, was this particular judgement informed, educated or otherwise accurate? Is it based on any useful or pragmatic understanding? We know that clothing offers the benefit of protection (from weather, from injury, even from lustful attention), but does that make nakedness itself wrong? No. Just because something is beneficial or 'good', does not make the opposite wrong. When God speaks, He doesn't ask 'how did you know that?' Instead he asks 'who told you that you were naked?', as if to say 'where did you get a silly idea like that?'

So this judgement alone demonstrates how far Adam and Eve were from earning the authority they acquired - they lacked the experience, awareness and understanding to wield it accurately. This is understandable - by all accounts they were literally born yesterday. This is like handing the U.S. Presidency to a two year old. Giving them access then to the tree of life would be like giving that two year old an unlimited term of office.

Jumping ahead to Genesis 4, and Cain feels despair and anger because God apparently looked with favour on his brother's offering, but not on his own. When God speaks to him, again He gives no indication that Cain's offering was rejected, nor does He confirm that Abel's offering was either favoured or preferred. So along with Cain, we have made that judgement ourselves based on what we have read. Just because I pat one of my children on the back for their soccer game, does not mean that I have rejected my other child's performance.

While we appear to have gained some knowledge and experience over thousands of years to date, we are still a long way off the ability to make judgement calls without the potential for error, bias or naïveté. Yet we still make them, and in doing so, we bring pain, anger, shame and despair to our experience and to others.