The acid test of choice

The obvious place for Satan to try to pull man away from God’s Love and to get man to turn his back on God was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Genesis 3 tells us of that fateful day, when Satan, in form of a snake, asks Eve: “Did God really say you can’t eat from any tree in the garden?” This was not a random creature speaking to Eve for the first time – this was the start of just another conversation.

Satan sows doubt into Eve’s mind. What if God really doesn't have their best interest at heart? Can God really be trusted? 

He twists God’s words, making it sound like God is withholding something from them out of selfishness or spite. “Of course you won’t die! It is just that God knows that when you eat of it you will understand good and evil, and so you will be like God!” Is God really telling the truth? Is his motivation really only Love? Is he really who he says he is?

Satan appeals to what can be seen and touched. Whereas Love requires a degree trust, very little trust is needed when responding to things you can see or touch. Love is unseen. Although you can sometimes feel it and although you can sometimes see the effects of it, there comes a point where you have to choose to trust that it is there and choose to trust in the character of the one who gives it. God’s ways are the ways of faith. Eve saw the fruit was good to eat and with the words of the Father of Lies, the Deceiver, the one out to steal, kill and destroy, ringing in her ears she ate of it and gave some to Adam who was with her who also ate of it.

Temptation, the choice we are faced with that draws into question our relationship with God, is part of the human experience. Temptations are the points at which we too are faced with the choice to take God at his word and to trust his character, or to turn our backs on him because deep inside we doubt his character and motivation. Temptation always requires a response ... and the choice of our response is entirely ours. It boils down to this: do we really trust that God is who he says he is, or do we prefer to take matters into our own hands? Do we really trust that God is Love or do we question his motives?

The acid test of choice is to choose, not according to what we see or according to what it looks like, but according to the trust we have in the character of the One who spoke the truth about something in the first place. The Bible talks a lot about faith - walking by faith, and not by sight, trusting in God’s character. Choosing to trust in God, choosing to trust that God’s character is Love, choosing to believe that God is who he says he is and acting accordingly is obedience and submission to Him - that is in essence what faith is. Obedience and submission to God is always a matter of a response of love.

If Satan’s primary objective, even today, is to get in the way between us and God and to prevent us from living in the light of God’s Love, then he will continue to sow doubt, he will continue to call God’s character into question, he will continue to twist God’s word, appealing to what can be seen as opposed to what needs to be trusted.  Who do we choose to listen to?

Throwing a Spanner in the works

Enter Satan, or Lucifer.

Lucifer was one of God’s created angels. He was close to God and himself was in relationship with God. The Bible talks a little bit about angels and describes their role as being God’s servants, who obey his word and do as he asks of them. Their role is to minister to man as he grows within God’s love.

Lucifer was more like God in terms of attributes and character than any of the other angels. Yet there came a point when he became consumed by jealousy, sparked by God’s relationship with man. He could not bear that man had found such favour with God, and that God would have in mind to partner with man! Extraordinary, that God would love man so much! Would this mean that he, Lucifer, would become less valued in God’s eyes? Would God end up loving man more?

And so he chose to become opposed to God. It is not that he wanted the affection of man for himself although undoubtedly he thrives on man’s attention. It is more that he can’t bear God lavishing his love on man and man responding to this love. His opposition to God is deeply rooted in jealousy.[1]

And so his intention, starting in Eden and continuing all through human history, is to entice man away from God. If he can persuade man to choose to reject God’s overtures of Love, if he can sow doubt in man about the character of God, if he can get man to cut God out of his life, then God’s intention for man would be severely hampered. Might there even be a chance that it would not be able to come to pass?

So Lucifer sets out to deceive man, to pull him away from the perfect love relationship man had with God. Not only that! If he could get man to act according to what he sees, rather than what he believes, if he could get man to walk by sight, rather than by faith, then man would end up trusting him more than God. 

If man trusts him, Satan, more than God, essentially man would be inviting him, Satan, to take God’s place in man’s life. Man would in effect be dethroning God and enthroning him, Satan. Once he had man’s trust, he would continue to make sure man did not turn back to God. Like a legally elected dictator (of which there are plenty of examples in human history to illustrate this idea), he would seize the authority willingly given to him by man and from this newly acquired position of authority he would seek to control and dominate man. He would continue to deceive man, persuading man that the relationship with God is over and that God is no longer interested in man, blinding to God’s unconditional and eternal Love. He would control man by fear, because fear is the opposite of Love.

And so, the Father of Lies, he sets out to steal, kill and destroy. 

He is still out to steal, kill and destroy today. He hasn't changed his strategy much. 

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[1] Other prevalent view(s) describe Satan becoming jealous not of man in relation to God, but of God himself, wanting to be like God in power and desiring man’s worship. Ultimately, whichever view you take is immaterial in relation to how it inspires Satan to act. 

Genuine consequences

If a God of Love has to give genuine choice and that choice has to have different outcomes for it to have been genuine, then surely He would point out the genuine consequence of both choices, so that those faced with the choices are clear about what they are choosing.

This is indeed what God does. He warns man in no uncertain terms of the drastic consequences of eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil - it would bring about death.

Death seems a very harsh punishment for a relatively small act! Perhaps that is the point - it wasn’t a punishment. It was (and still is) the genuine effect, the genuine consequence of turning away from relationship with God. The genuine effect of eating contaminated food is a stomach ache. The genuine effect of putting your hand in a fire is a burnt hand. The stomach ache, the burnt hand are not punishments. They are what happens when you eat bad food or stick your hand in the fire! Similarly then, the genuine effect of eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was death.

The properties of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil were such that when one ate of it one would understand not only good but also evil. As man would feel the absence of God (having turned his back on him by taking the fruit in the first place) man would understand evil.

Einstein once argued that darkness can only be defined as the absence of light, and cold can only be defined as the absence of heat. In a similar way, evil can only be defined as the absence of good. God did not create evil, nor is evil somehow God’s nemesis. But where the presence of God is absent, there is evil, just as where the presence of light is absent, there is darkness, or where the presence of heat is absent, there is cold. The natural consequence of the absence of God, the absence of a Love that is the source of life, is death. Death cannot co-exist with life, just like darkness cannot co-exist with light or cold cannot co-exist with heat. The problem with death, of course, it that it is ultimate and irreversible.

The choice is clear, the choice is genuine, the consequences are real: don’t eat from that tree. Stay away from it and you will live. Eat of it and you will die. Trust me. I know!

Love and choices

How does man grow into the position of being God’s bride? How does love mature? What is at the heart of discipleship?

It seems to me that the crux of it all is choice. Love requires choice. Genuine love requires genuine choice. The partners in a genuine love relationship need to have the genuine ability to choose whether to be in that relationship or not, and to choose how to conduct that relationship.

Maturity comes by consistently choosing to love and to live according to Love. A big part of discipleship is about learning to choose to live according to the essence of who God is, to live according to Love.

For choice to be genuine however, there have to be different outcomes. If the outcomes of the choices made are the same, there was no real choice. If there is no real choice, there is no real love!

Because God created man for a genuine relationship, God has to give man genuine choice.

At the dawn of time in Eden, God established two trees in centre of garden (Gen 2:9b): the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God said (Gen 2:16): “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but don’t eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, because if you eat from it, you will die”. It wasn’t much to ask, but by establishing the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil he was giving man the choice whether to act out of love or not.

Putting the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden was not about putting a deliberate temptation into Adam and Eve’s way, a temptation which they had no way of resisting. It was not even about testing Adam and Eve’s love, though it certainly did that. That was not what it was about. There had to be somewhere where man had a genuine choice with regards to relationship with God – and this tree was that somewhere.

It was not a case of: ‘prove to me you love me’.  It was not a case of ‘do it my way, or else!’ It was a case of: ‘Because I am Love, because that means I will not force you to be in relationship with me, I have to give you the choice to opt out’.

If they chose to leave the fruit well alone, they would in effect not only be saying that out of love they would submit to his request. In Love there is always a degree of mutual submission! They would also be saying that they believed God’s warning with regards to what would happen if they ate of it and they would in this way affirm that they believed his character.

If they chose to take the fruit and eat it, they would in effect be saying that they didn’t believe God, believed that he was short-changing them in some way and did not really have their best interest at heart. Choosing to eat of the fruit basically amounted to opting out of relationship with God and going solo.  

That choice was entirely and genuinely theirs to make. It is a choice they had to make day by day. It is still a choice we have to make today, day by day.

Growing into love

In any relationship there is a sense of progression.

At the beginning the love relationship between God and man was a little bit like a parent / child relationship. God connected with man, and was an inseparable part of his existence. God gave him the task of looking after the garden. Adam and Eve enjoyed God’s presence, God’s protection and safety. Psalm 91 describes it as ‘living under the shadow of His wing’. Living within His perfect love, living in un-marred and delicious relationship with God, touched with the breath of God, living within the parameters of God’s design for human life.

But there is also sense in which God does not cocoon man. He is there at the cool of the day, to talk with man. But he also allows man the freedom to develop and grow and work things out for himself. God’s intention was for man to mature into His love, to allow man to learn to express his love for God as he deepens in his love for God, and to grow into a place where man is ready to really partner with God and enter into that circle of Love.

Relationship is the context in which love is experienced, and so God sets relationship at the heart of human experience. At the dawn of time God already reveals what sort of relationship He intends with man through the relationship he set up between Adam and Eve. God creates Eve, “a helper suitable for him (man)”. The relationship is to an extent unequal in attributes. He creates Adam (man) first, makes him stronger, gives him unique knowledge. Similarly, he gives Eve (woman) attributes that Adam does not have. But He calls them equally, empowers them equally and defines their relationship as co-helpers on this extraordinary project. “God blessed them and said to them: ‘Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28) Not Adam with the power and his little wife giving a helping hand – but equally gifted, equally called, mutually adapting and submitting in the light of the bigger picture. (This is also what a healthy marriage is all about!)

God’s intention for his own relationship with mankind is reflected in this. The parent / child relationship is not God’s full and final plan for man. If the Father / child relationship with God is a recurring theme in Scripture, the picture of lover and beloved or bride and groom is even more so. God wants man to mature in such a way that he becomes part of God’s circle of love, part of who he is. Not to be God in his attributes and his God-ness. Yet to be partner to God, having grown into a maturity that enables this to be so. Eventually man will become his “bride”!

This is not something that happens automatically or effortlessly. Jesus later on would talk a lot about the cost of discipleship. Discipleship is all about becoming like the 'master'.  Essentially it is the growing into a maturity in terms of relationship with God, growing into the place where even as humans in all our weakness we can partner with God in his purposes. Discipleship is a process just as relationship is a process. Nor is it something we ever get to the end of. Growing into maturity is not easy and is very much dependent on  our response to God.

Meaningful life

God creates the earth and all that is in it, setting up the principles and physical laws that govern creation. As the pinnacle of all created things on this earth, God creates man.

And “God breathes into man the breath of life … and man became a living being”. (Gen 2:7).

Of course all the other created things are also alive, in the sense that they are not physically dead. They grow and breathe and sense and eat and sleep and so on. But it is only into man that God breathes His breath of life. It is only man who is the recipient of God’s life, 'life to the full' as Jesus describes it, or as it is also sometimes referred to, eternal life. It is only man who has the invitation to become part of God’s circle of Love, to ‘partake of his divine nature’ (cf 2 Peter 1:4). It is only man who is created with the ability to receive love, to give love and to be defined by love. And he is created with the ability to choose (more of that in a couple of posts’ time!).

Being able to receive God’s love and living within the fullness of that love is what it means to live life to the full. Only by living saturated by God’s love does our life take on the meaning we crave for our lives, a meaning that cannot be fulfilled by any other source.

So man lived in perfect relationship with God.

He had God’s presence. God walked with him in the cool of the day. God was there. God was a significant part of his life.

Man had God’s provision. God allowed him to eat from the trees in the garden and to work the garden to produce food. “I give you every seed-bearing plant … they will be yours for food” (Gen 1:29).

Man also had a God-given purpose. God gave man a job to do: “Go, bear fruit, increase in number, bring into order what has been created.” (Gen 1:28).

And man had God’s power. Not in the sense that man was as powerful as God, but in the sense that God put man in charge of the created world. “Rule over the fish and the birds and over every living creature that moves on the ground”, “Fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28). God gave man dominion over the rest of creation and as such he gave man authority and power over the natural order that God had created. The rest of the natural created order is God’s gift to man, to look after and steward. This is important to understand.

Being able to enjoy God’s continual presence, living under the shadow of his wing if you like, depending on God for provision and to meet our needs, having significance and a purpose in life, and partnering with God in what he is doing on earth define the parameters of a relationship with God, a relationship motivated and driven by mutual Love. Only within these parameters can we experience meaningful life, life to the full.

Weighing it all up

In the beginning then, God, in his Three-ness, broods: “Let us create something!” The word ‘brooding’ implies a triune conversation. John, at the start of his book, says “In the beginning was the word”. “Word”, or “logos” as it was in the original, means word or conversation.

So in the beginning was the conversation ... (please allow me some artistic licence):

“Let us make something on whom we can lavish our love!”

“Let us make something who will be able to pass our love on!”

“If we make such a being, to what extent do we want it to become full of our love and therefore part of who we are?”

“How is it possible for us to create something and not include it fully into our circle of love?”

“What would such a creature need to be like in order to be able to enter our circle of love?”

“What would that mean for us though? What would it cost us in our relationship to allow a created being into our circle of love?”

“Is that not extremely risky? What if they did not want to be part of our love? What would that mean for us? Indeed what would that mean for them?”

“We can never force anyone to receive our love nor to respond to our love. They would always have to have the choice of whether to be part of it or not.”

“What would we do if they really did choose not to be part of our love?”

“That would become the ultimate test of our love! We would have to allow them their choice!”

“At what point do we stop lavishing our love on them if they did choose to reject our love? How far would we go in our longing for them to be part of who we are?”

“If we created them, how could we not do anything and everything in our power to make sure they have every opportunity to become included into our circle of love?”

“If it came to it, I would be prepared to leave the security of this circle and go to them.”

“Do we want to risk that? Is it worth it? Are they worth it?” 

God brooded over the idea and counted the cost. Jesus himself comments: ‘Which of you about to start a big project, would not first count the cost to see if he is able to complete the project?’ (Luke 14:28ff) And “for the joy set before him” (Hebrews 12) he agreed it was worth it! You are worth it!

“And so God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Gen 1:27)