God's a Softy in the Garden of Eden

Apple tree at the Weston Priory, August 2014

January 15, 2015
Day 260

Every year when I travel to Ludlow, Vermont, I make a brief trip to the Weston Priory one town over.  It's a short drive from where I stay, maybe 15 or 20 minutes at most, and because the priory is at the top of a mountain rise, it's always so beautifully quiet up there.

I like to walk around the grounds in meditation, stop in to pray a bit in their chapel, and just completely bask in the serenity of the area.

Fallen apples from the tree at the Weston Priory, August 2014

This past August, I noticed the apple tree beside their large pond, and I took some photos of it.  There was a lesson here, I believed, but I wasn't sure yet what it was.  I noted not just the apples on the tree, but the fallen ones as well, and that's when my mind began to wander...and wonder.

(In the Garden of Eden story, the fruit of the tree is never described as being apples, but the idea seems to have stuck, so let's go with it.)

The tree in the center of the Garden of Eden was actually two trees: "in the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Genesis 2:9).  God commanded Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, saying that when he eats it, he will surely die (Genesis 2:17).  As we know though, he did eat it, just after Eve, and neither of them died...not even "surely"! 

They were punished though, right?  Eve and all women afterward were condemned to ridiculous amounts of pain when giving birth, and Adam and all men after him would have to struggle to find food and support their families.  Soon afterward, God banished them both from the Garden altogether, even going so far as to station a cherubim and a flaming sword to keep them from going back in to taste the fruit of the Tree of Life.

I want to write so much about all this right now, but for your sake and mine, let's just look at one tiny piece of this story: God promised they would die...and they didn't.  For all his flaming swords and cherubim, all his threats and tantrums, the God of Genesis showed his soft side from the very start.

As God, he already knew childbirth would be painful.  Eve didn't.  He already knew men would have to toil and sweat over the land to find their food and feed their families.  Adam didn't.  It's as if a mother punished her 5-year-old by saying, "That's it!  From now on, you shall go to school and learn!  You will begin to age and your body will grow larger!"  How would a child be any the wiser? 

That's right, the God we see pictured at the very start of Genesis is a softy.  He's all bark and no bite.  He's deeply angered by the dangers the serpent posed to his children, and though he yells at and even threatens them, he doesn't kill them, as he said he would.  Instead, he moves them to a safer place, and he keeps on watching over and protecting them elsewhere.

Apple trees are gorgeous, and their attractive fruit is right there staring us in the face.  But a simple glance down at the ground, as Adam and Eve knew, will show you how quickly fruit can spoil once it's fallen.  God just wanted what was best for his kids.  He even tried to warn them.