To obey God, or to disobey?

Here we read of God telling the man that he is perfectly free to eat from every tree of the garden, but this freedom is then qualified by one exception. Although we may ask what is the meaning of this exception, and what is its purpose, no answer is given – either to the man in the story, or to us. The man is simply told not to eat the fruit of this tree, and the command not to eat is accompanied by a warning of the momentous consequences of eating from the tree – if he eats from it, he will be doomed to die.

In the story, the tree has quite exceptional properties – its fruit opens up to those who eat it knowledge of good and evil. This knowledge is sometimes thought of as the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, and so is reckoned to be moral knowledge. But the phrase 'good and evil' is best taken to be a Hebrew idiom that is used to convey the idea of everything. This 'knowledge of good and evil', therefore, is the sum of all knowledge. And the first man is being warned of his limitations. There is knowledge that is above and beyond him; it is only God who knows everything; it is only God who is permitted to know everything.

On the face of it, the command not to eat of the fruit of this one tree may seem reasonable, and commentators who want to emphasise the culpability of the first man and woman might remark that there were so many other trees in the garden that it was perfectly reasonable for God to prohibit access to this one tree. On the other hand, we may think that the prohibition was totally unreasonable. Why should this dangerous tree whose very existence stands as a permanent invitation to transgress the divine command be set before the primal pair who, in the story at any rate, are thrown into the midst of the garden as fully grown innocents?

The command not to eat the fruit of the tree has another and more important function; it opens up the possibility of relationship. The first man and woman are put in a position where they are able to respond to God and his commands. The command puts the human pair on a different footing to every other creature. In receiving the command, the first man receives the opportunity to put himself into relationship with the one who issues the command. One way or another, a relationship is formed, either of obedience or of disobedience; and that is so even if we think the command places an impossible burden on a creature possessing primal innocence, or, as the story would have it, a creature yet without knowledge of good and evil!

If we reflect on the story in relation to our own situation before God, we might put it this way. The relationship we have with God may be either positive or negative; we may obey or disobey, we may become God's obedient children or his disobedient children. The author of this story is saying that we are given freedom, freedom to choose, freedom to obey, freedom to be in relationship with God... and that is part of what it means to be human.

At Luke 18.18-25 we read of a man described as a 'ruler' who asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life.  Jesus responded by telling him that he knew the commandments and ought to keep them. But the man was able to say that he had always done so. Jesus accepted that he was telling the truth, and added, 'Nevertheless, there is one thing you lack. Go and sell everything you have and give to the poor...'

The point of this story, it seems to me, is that this man is able to keep all the commandments, but remains totally untouched by relationship. Obedience to the law of Moses is a discipline bred into him, he fulfils the commandments, but because he does so, because he is conditioned to fulfil the commandments in much the same way as might Pavlov's dog might respond to a particular stimulus, he is still without virtue. What Jesus says to him is designed to bring him into relationship; he opens up to him the opportunity to relate to God who had given the law, and to his fellow men and women as well, rather than to the law alone.

When we read stories like this one, there is always the danger that, like the Pharisee of Jesus' parable going into the Synagogue to pray, we end up thanking God that we are not like the man of the story. The sad thing is, very often, the more we try to distance ourselves from this man the more like him we become. We are the pious, the Church going, those who keep – or try to keep – the commandments of Jesus... but – and this is what Jesus is saying to the man, and to us as well – none of these things is a sufficient end in itself. It is not the piety, it is not the going to Church, and it is not the keeping of the commandments, whether of Moses or of Jesus, that is crucial, but our relationship with God; no matter how important these other things may be, our relationship with God is the most important thing. Our relationship with God who is the object of our piety, who is the head of the Church, and who addresses us in the commandments, that is what is important; these other things, the piety, the church-going, the morality and the like only come into play so far as we know God and love God and relate to God in our daily living.

These passages from Genesis 3 and St Luke 18 therefore point in much the same direction. Life finds its meaning in and through relationship, and not simply in and through our human relationships, but our relationship with God as well. God has given us freedom... freedom to be for him or against him... to be moral or immoral... to love and serve our fellow men and women or to despise them, and the whole range of attitudes in between as well.  He has given us freedom, but he is not indifferent to the choice we make. Where we are for him, where we live well, where we – in the words of Jesus – love God with all our being, and our neighbour as much as we love ourselves – we enter into a relationship with him that is truly worthwhile.

In our relationship with God, in our responsible exercise of human freedom, in living as disciples of Jesus Christ, we find our peace and we fulfil our human destiny. We begin to discover what our humanity really means. Let us all respond willingly to the love of God, and learn to live our lives in union with him. That is the most worthwhile way to live, and a way of life in which we can all experience true fulfilment.