Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to the Genesis 3 narrative, and finding myself in it.

Do you recall what the forbidden fruit is? The Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil... eat of it and you will surely die. Or will you? So tempts the slippery serpent.

For all my years, I've seen this a little more than the first act of disobedience. Sort of like God putting something there just to make us see what we cannot have. And eating of it allowed our first parents to see what they were missing -- clothes. Aha, nakedness must be evil, and it was the fruit of of the tree that opened that up to them. Perhaps this reading is consistent with your understanding. The great thing is that most expositions of this passage focus less on the actual sin and more on the solution, Genesis 3:15.

I've started wondering, though, what the actual knowledge of good and evil looks like. Was there something magic in this fruit that opened Adam and Eve's eyes? Perhaps the forbidden fruit was filled with vitamin K, helping their vision? Indeed, I've come to realize that the knowledge of good and evil arose from the realization that one thought they were better than the other. Eve was the first one to bite, and Adam realized that he had something on her. But he saw that she actually didn't die, so he ate too. Now, they were both ashamed because they started comparing themselves to each other. And they realized that their bodies weren't perfect either. In their shame, they started covering themselves up and hiding from God.

When we draw lines and decide that we are better than our fellow travelers, we gorge on the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We decide that we know something about goodness that they don't know and hold it over them. We then hide our own deficiencies out of shame. And the fall affects us all.

Jesus came to save us from our shame and guilt. As the first to live without shame, he showed us the way. It's backwards to the fallen world: you lead by serving, you win by dying, you triumph by rising again on the other side of the death that brings final shame to all. May we feast on the fruit of the tree of life and not be ashamed.