The Tree

How are we to respond to the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden eating forbidden fruit having been tempted by a serpent? That the mess we are in is the result of a single choice that a couple of our ancestors made a long time ago and therefore not really our fault? Pointing the finger at someone else is exactly what Adam and Eve themselves did.

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them … [but] the line separating good and evil passes … right through every human heart – and through all human hearts.”
(The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 (1973) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

I too am made of the stuff of the earth (the origin of the name Adam) yet alive (the origin of the name Eve) and I am called to work the place my Creator has placed me in and to take of it. Every day, many times a day, I walk past “that tree” and must choose whether or not to eat from it. I must decide which side of the line separating good and evil my next step will fall. Sometimes I hear my Creator’s voice; sometimes my companions’; and sometimes the seductive sound of some serpentine suggestion which slithers through my synapses. Most times, I don’t even notice the tree and simply go the way that I’ve trodden most often before.