The Adam and Eve story makes no
sense, my friend said. Since they didn’t know good from evil when
they ate the fruit, they shouldn’t have been punished.
It’s not as
simple as that (I should have said). Adam’s
and Eve’s sin, and the reason for their expulsion, was disobedience. They didn’t know “good” and “evil” in the
moral sense, but they knew that they weren’t supposed to eat the fruit of that
tree. Before they ate the fruit, their
moral consciousness was that of a toddler, who understands very well what
happens when Mommy says, “Don’t!” and they do anyway. Adam and Eve knew blind obedience; they knew that
what they had done was forbidden. That
was enough to make them merit punishment.
As a result
of their disobedience, their punishment had to be expulsion. It could be
nothing else. Nothing had been forbidden
to Adam and Eve except the one thing that rendered it impossible for them to
remain in Paradise. When they were pre-moral, that is, when they
knew nothing but obedience, they needed the safety of Paradise
in addition to being entitled to live there.
But once they ate the fruit, their consciousness changed. They obtained a higher consciousness, the
consciousness of “right” and “wrong.” They became moral beings. A pre-moral being, such as a toddler, does
not have that higher consciousness. His
moral decisions must be made for him and that is why he must remain in a secure,
nurturing place—a “paradise.” He cannot
leave until he learns morality. Adam and
Eve grew up and had to leave home.
Even if the punishment might have
been something other than expulsion, would Adam and Eve even have wanted to
stay in Paradise once they acquired the
knowledge of good and evil? When an
individual is able to make moral decisions, does he want to stay where his
choices are limited? Would he be content
with another making decisions for him, even if that “other” is the Almighty? Is that not like totalitarian systems, which
decide all questions of right and wrong (and death to those who disagree)? Free individuals usually want to determine
right and wrong for themselves.
Another aspect of the story is that
once Adam and Eve became aware of good and evil, they acquired the capacity to
dissemble. They hid; they did not
forthrightly announce that they had disobeyed.
Moreover, when asked why they hid, they used a cover story of being
ashamed because they were naked. They didn’t
actually tell a lie; their new awareness included the idea that nudity was
improper. But the excuse they gave
revealed at once what they had done, since they had never before felt bad about
being naked. It seems that awareness of
right and wrong comes with an instinct to skew facts in our favor.
The story
of Adam and Eve is deceptively simple. If
I had known then how to respond to my friend, I would have said: The story
is like a “zipped” software file: study it closely and it unfolds, revealing profound
observations on individual growth and awareness. Thousands of years before psychology, there
were people who knew the human condition very well.
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