GENESIS 2:9 - Forgotten Tree of Life, Pride

Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Forgotten Tree of Life

Wow. I can't believe that despite having grown up in the church and knowing all the basic Bible stories front-to-back - or so I thought - I had totally forgotten that the tree of life even existed! I suppose this isn't much of a surprise considering how the entire fall deals mostly with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Or so it seems...

Significant?: The tree of life really only gets two mentions, both of which are tangential to the "story" of Eden and the fall, but of course the Bible is so much more than a narrative and from that perspective it becomes clear how important the tree is even from these two sparse mentions: 1) It's the only other thing given special mention in this verse alongside the soon-to-be-infamous "sin" tree, which must mean something. 2) Later on in Genesis 3:24 when God bars Adam & Eve from Eden, it doesn't say he's doing it to protect the nice plants, furry animals, or flowing rivers within, but specifically "...to guard the way to the tree of life."

Guard the tree of life? There's no mention of them ever having any interest in it in the first place. Ah, and therein lies the rub... (following quotes are all from this brilliant must-read article from Christian Faith)

If he had eaten of the Tree of Life, he would never have been interested in the forbidden tree. But having NEGLECTED the tree of life, it was really only a matter of time before he would fall to the temptation of eating the forbidden fruit.

A lot of times we get into trouble because we focus on the forbidden thing. We fight with temptation, and lose, because we focus on the temptation. God wants us to get our eyes off the temptation, and even off the moral rules of what would be right and wrong, so we can get our eyes onto what He is wanting us to focus on. We inevitably move towards our most dominant thought.

Sin in some form will always look attractive to us unless we get a new focus.

Reading this was like a splash of cold water. In forgetting about the tree of life I had put myself in the same precarious position that Adam & Eve placed themselves in. All this time I should have been focusing on God's goodness and attempting to emulate Jesus' love. Instead I've been doing what I thought was a righteous thing by constantly pondering questions of morality and how to fix my problems, without realizing that this ironically can only lead me away from my goal and towards the worst of sins:

Pride

Satan loves to get us to look to ourselves. A sure mark of a satanic religion is one that tells you to look inside yourself for the answer. There are many variations on this theme. One is the eastern meditation type thing, where you are told to get in touch with your own godhood. There is another variation, far more subtle, and far more likely to appeal to Christians. That is, to measure yourself up against certain moral or spiritual principles, and consider how well or badly you are doing, and resolving to improve. Multitudes of sincere people are doing this, and fail to realise that in this way they will never become what God wants them to be.

Looking at self is a fruit of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Just knowing good and evil doesn't give you the power to do what is right, however. When Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden tree, they began to be self-conscious. They started looking at themselves. They knew they were naked. Until then, they weren't even aware of that. In fact, they were clothed with a kind of spiritual glory before they fell, and they lived in the presence of Almighty God without shame. After eating of the forbidden Tree, they lost that glory and began to be selfish and desire to escape from the presence of Almighty God.

If you look at yourself, judging yourself by your knowledge of good and evil, you will either end up congratulating yourself for your good performance (self-righteousness) or becoming depressed because of the guilt of failing to live up to those standards. Neither of these results is what God wants. God made us for Him, and He is not satisfied when we prefer to ignore Him and become wrapped up in our own righteousness or lack thereof. He wants us to enjoy Him, to trust Him, and that only happens when we dare to take our eyes off ourself, trust the power of His cross, and begin to get our eyes on Him.

It just goes to show you how conventional wisdom doesn't count for much when it comes to spiritual matters. In attempting to tackle my problems head-on I was only weakening my chances and allowing for pride to make its way in. "The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride - just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense." (Mere Christianity)

Who would have thought that in trying to simply investigate what the forgotten tree of life was all about that I would realize something so fundamentally significant that needs fixing in my life and I'm sure most people's lives. More important than focusing on how to fix sin - be it anger, immorality, pride etc. is to pursue the only one who can help us thoroughly defeat them, and that is Jesus Christ.

(back to Genesis 2)