Can We Really Blame Them?

Consider for a moment the story of Adam and Eve. Adam, created out of nothing, was given life and was free to roam the garden at his own leisure. Certainly, since everything was new to him, he would have been curious about his surroundings. He may have even experimented. For instance, if he was lucky enough to catch a butterfly, he might have torn it apart to see how it worked. Of course he would have quickly realized that putting a butterfly back together was a lot more difficult than tearing it apart. Who knows how many times he tried?! But Adam wouldn’t have known any better. You see, life was new to him. He couldn’t have understood it, nor could he have given it any value because he knew nothing about its workings. Of course one has to wonder what he thought when the butterfly miraculously kept wandering about without its head and wings-you know, because there was no death in the world…at least not yet. To him it may have even been comical! His concept of right and wrong, good and evil would have been absent in his thinking- for how could he know what was good and what was bad without being told? Even if he was told, who's to say the teller didn't have it wrong? Everything he did was then not an action of good, bad, moral or immoral…they were just actions without any preconceived notions.

Then you have Eve. Eve would have been just as curious and just as ignorant as her male predecessor, I think. She was made to serve Adam, but what did that mean to her? She had never seen anyone serve another. Perhaps she could have been ‘programmed’ like a robot to know what servitude was (by God). But Christians always cringe when they think about God making anyone like a robot. I guess we will never know for sure, but I think we can say that she also had no idea about what good and evil was, what moral or immoral was, or what life and death was.

So what do we make of the apple? The temptation? The “original sin”? Can we blame Adam or Eve for their curiosity? Even as God threatened them to “not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die”, they couldn’t have possibly comprehended what ‘death’ truly was, could they? I mean, the word itself, in any language, would have been confusing and at the same time intriguing. They might have thought death was a form of pleasure; another thing to explore and experience. I imagine at this time, before the apple was eaten, they had seen everything worth seeing in the garden. A new adventure would have been welcomed and would have spurred them both on to discover what ‘death’ was. Logically, I don’t blame them.

So Eve comes across a talking snake, a new and fascinating creature, as she had only seen the ones that walked around (yes they had legs at this time) and licked the air and said nothing at all. The walking (and talking) snake told Eve that if she ate the fruit, they would know good and evil. And they would not die. Eve knew not what a lie was, or a temptation, or a consequence. She ate of the fruit because everything she did was an action, neither good nor bad. Once the fruit was consumed, Adam and Eve saw for themselves the difference between right and wrong. I can see Adam now…the euphoric smile on his face, slowly turning to straight faced stunned disbelief as knowledge settled into his virgin brain: “Wow Eve. That was not a good idea. I wish I knew we were doing something ‘bad’ before we ate the damned apple!”

So, can we really blame Eve or Adam for eating the forbidden fruit? I think not. What did God expect to happen when he put two curious creatures, who knew nothing of right and wrong-good and evil, into a beautiful garden that had at its center a tree bearing forbidden fruit? Oh come on…you know you would have done it too.