When I was a child, I thought the story of the Garden of Eden was kind of silly. A snake, two fruit trees, and a big father figure. It seemed arbitrary. I think today I’ve started to understand now how that story is incredibly profound and applicable today, thousands of years after it was written. I was reading on Slashdot about how it was a story meant to inhibit our natural scientific impulse, our desire to gain knowledge. After all, God told Adam and Eve that they could have their run of the garden, enjoy it, eat from all the trees – except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This tree, along with the tree of life, were situated right in the center of the garden. God tells them that if they eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they will surely die. Well, the crafty serpent comes along and contradicts God. “You will not die. God knows that the moment you eat from that tree, you’ll see what’s really going on. You’ll be just like God, knowing everything, ranging all the way from good to evil.” Eve thinks this is a good deal and she eats, and gives some to Adam, who also eats. Suddenly, they see that they are naked, so they make some lame fig leaf clothes. Then, they hear their loving creator coming, so they hide in the bushes from him (as if that’ll work).

So, of course, this Slashdot reader saw what he thought was a calculated attempt of independent thinking suppression by Religion. The moral of the story: don’t look for knowledge, just believe and the Pope/preacher/Bible will tell you what to do (or something along those lines). This was the level I probably read it at as a child, but it is a very shallow reading. An intentionally shallow reading, for it doesn’t even seek to understand the difference between “knowledge” and “knowledge of good and evil.”

It is important that the tree from which God forbid them to eat fruit was not the “tree of knowledge.” After all, throughout the Bible wisdom is regarded highly: “Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding.” (Proverbs 4:7). The shallow reading of the Eden story would contradict this. (“That’s ok,” dear Slashdot might say, “the Bible is full of contradictions. Run along, I have a bush to… er, a Steven Jay Gould article to read.”)

I realized this morning that this story is an archetype for sin – a fleshing out in literal terms abstract concepts. More importantly, it is the final reduction of evil in the world. Massaging the equations of suffering and evil and all that is bad in the world, deriving the source, this is the simplest expression of What’s Wrong, and we all agree that something is.

There is a spiritual reality that is more important and indeed, more real, than the mere physical reality we can see and touch. What makes up this meaningful story behind the arbitrary story? Redemption, prayer, hope, faith, the will, mystery, adventure, love… Concepts that are difficult to nail down to A causes B, but which we “hope” are real, lest nihilism and meaninglessness rule our lives (or self-delusion and an unwillingness to think hard about such unpleasant unrealities). These are eternal themes. These are what inspire us in movies. These make up Life, not even the most complicated of chain reactions. And these are what Satan, also known as the accuser, the fallen star, the father of lies… these are what he wants to destroy. He wanted to be God and thought he could, and this ugly jealousy and bitterness and false pride could not be tolerated in God’s presence, and he was thrown out.

And this brings us to our story once again. God had created a wonderful world for us, and given us the freedom to enjoy it. He was the source of our Life. He made us partners not only in enjoying creation, but in creation itself, allowing Adam to name all the animals. (That’s a whole nother symbolic journey). There was no sin.

God is Love. This is repeated throughout the Bible, and the Bible, if taken as a whole, reads as a love letter from God to his people. The spiritual reality includes real love. Materialism/atheism states that this is all there is, and, since your consciousness is the only reality, you are the center of the universe. This is implicit, not explicit. And this was the lie of the serpent, the most crafty. (This is Satan in disguise, if you weren’t sure). This is the alternative view: “You don’t need God. Once you eat from that tree God told you not to eat from, you’ll know everything, including good and evil.” That was a lie. It was disguised, as Satan always is (another verse, much later, describes him as masquerading as an angel of light). There was some element of truth to it, but ultimately it was truth compromised. For God did not lie. It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Only they already knew Good. They had a relationship with Good. God is good. Eating from that tree gave them the knowledge of Evil. And with that, an alternate way at looking at creation. Where before they saw Life, Love, and God’s creation, now they could see what that would look like without Good, without God. And it looked like a very complicated, but explainable chain reaction. And they saw the Second Law of Thermodynamics. They saw death. If God is Good, and the source of all Life and Truth, Satan is Evil, and the source of all Death and Untruth. God creates. Satan destroys.

And where does that leave us today, thousands of years after this (literal, symbolic, take your pick, I don’t claim to know for sure) story took place? I am not advocating renouncing science and praying for bread. God encourages us to seek knowledge, but knowledge without life is, well, dead. Knowledge with life is what we were meant for. We chose to go our own way, but God didn’t abandon us to entropy. We chose to believe that we could understand the universe on our own. We chose (and choose, myself included) every day to believe that lie. What is the logical consequence of the lie that the universe just is, and we can do without God? Death, just like God said. The second law of thermodynamics. And we can continue to believe it, with the implication that we can never reach the infinity we strive for, we can only try our best. But God didn’t abandon us. Though we decided to head out into exploration of Death, he followed us, spoke to us, loved us. And in Jesus, he entered this entropic world in physical form, God in Man, lived the perfection that all politics and philosophy try to capture, and we killed him. We killed God because he exposed our finiteness. He exposed the great lie that we can be self-sufficient and we killed him for it. Death is the inevitable consequence of sin. Separation from God is, of course, the consequence of choosing to separate from him! And without God, the only source of Life, the universe is mere matter subject to the second law of thermodynamics. We can believe that lie and God will allow us to. This is why I believe that “hell” is death, the end result of entropy. If you read “The Great Divorce,” by C.S. Lewis, he captures this beautifully in a story, where people who have rejected God, over the course of infinite time, become more and more isolated, and wish for more and more isolation.

But God is Good, God is Love. And in Jesus, he defeated death when he rose again to Life! You hear a lot about the cross in Christianity, a lot about Jesus dying in our place, and that is true. But it was his resurrection that is the real one ray of perfect hope in this universe. He defeated Death, and when we believe and surrender to Him, though we are tainted by the choice to know Death, he lives through us and creates real Life, the kind that we hope is true, but fear (thanks to the accuser) is just an illusion. Real Love, real Hope, real Faith, real Redemption, real Adventure. This is the miracle of the resurrection, and the fullness of true Christianity. Following the Christ to life.

One final note. Even in this, I see my attempt to wrap everything up in a manageable essay. I’ve tried to do this for years. If my goal in distilling my faith into an essay is to create something I can rely on, I am believing the original lie, that I can be self-sufficient. I can never capture infinity in an essay. The life of God will always elude definition, for it is not finite. There will always be a way to look at any explanation or story through eyes of faith or through the eyes of the serpent. Satan doesn’t believe in this great story; he has chosen not to. If this story were told to him, he would say “Well, God rigged it from the beginning! It really is just a big chain reaction, like I said, you’ve just added a layer of indirection! God caused me to reject him, and I inevitably went to destroy his creation, and Eve inevitably was weak enough to believe me… With or without God, I win.” The choice is always there. Do you want to “win,” or do you want Life? In order to choose the latter, you must believe he exists. And once you do, you begin to wake up to the battle going on around us: the lie of the self-centered universe vs. the life of the Christ centered one. Mormonism will promise life, but you have to work for it. Islam as well (with different rules). Buddhism will tell you that life and death are an illusion. Only Christ offers life, and the only requirement is implicit: to believe him.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
John 10:10

With every morn my life afresh must break
The crust of self, gathered about me fresh;
That thy wind-spirit may rush in and shake
The darkness out of me, and rend the mesh
The spider-devils spin out of the flesh–
Eager to net the soul before it wake,
That it may slumberous lie, and listen to the snake.
(George MacDonald)

I’m reading an excellent book called Waking the Dead by John Eldredge. The subtitle is “The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive.” This book is written for followers of Jesus who have settled a bit, I think. At least that’s what I had done. I knew I wanted more, but became hopeless because trying hard wasn’t getting me anywhere — which makes sense, given the numerous scriptures about effort alone, apart from a real dependence on God. This book showed me in part what I was looking for: why I needed to depend on God in a land of “abundance.” I don’t worry about where my next meal is coming from. But I need to depend on God just as the Israelites did in the desert, depending on his next provision of manna for food.

I need Jesus for Life. Something occurred to me in the shower this morning, which relates to the previous sentence. I resolved to make a google search because I figured the aphorism I came up with might have been said before. “Truth unapplied is meaningless.” Well, I didn’t find it, but I’m sure it’s been said before. 2 + 2 = 4 is meaningless unless applied in some way. Pages of solved orbital equations are meaningless unless Cassini is launched. Now, the truths contained in those pages could be applied in other ways, perhaps a computer animation of a trip to Saturn, or even through a physicist’s mental trip there. But these truths are far easier to apply than the truly deep, eternal truths.

Perhaps I shouldn’t say easier. Easier glosses over what it takes to apply some truths. “I need Jesus for Life” is easier in theory for me to understand with my intellect than E=mc². But the effort of the spirit it takes to apply it — that’s intense. Believing this truth requires me to depend on him, because without him my life is plumbing the depths of the Mandelbrot set — interesting, beautiful at times, but ultimately unsatisfying — “haven’t I seen this all before?”

Waking the Dead, well, “awakened” me to the truth that my heart is good (once redeemed by the perfection of Christ), and more importantly for me, real. It’s important, and needed to be healed of some pains that made me shove emotion and people and God himself away whenever confronted with them. The deepest eternal truths are not understood by our finite minds, but rather they are discerned by our hearts, which touch the eternal, sense the infinite. I should clarify: the book didn’t really awaken me. Just like 2 + 2 = 4, and just like this journal entry, it spoke of truths that required application to make them meaningful. The application came in the form of prayer, and Jesus revealed places in my heart that were broken. Actually, that’s not quite true either. Jesus initiated the whole process. He had to, because I normally avoided thinking about those broken areas at all costs. But before I came to the section in the book on healing, when I wasn’t reading, the thoughts arose, with the feeling that he was bringing them – not to punish me, but to prepare me for healing.

And the book then was merely a filter for truths contained in scripture. “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” (Psalm 147:3). Jesus quoting Isaiah:

For this people’s heart has become calloused;
       they hardly hear with their ears,
       and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
        hear with their ears,
        understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.

It is important that Jesus doesn’t say “forgive them” or “instruct them”. He offers healing for the calloused heart, if we turn. My problem, which the book has helped me see through, is that I have believed the lie that there is no heart. It’s a key lie in the strategy of Truth’s enemy to destroy God’s creation. I was willing to agree with this lie because it seemed to offer protection from the fact that my heart was broken. It needed healing. But covering the wounds without healing just allowed them to fester. These were things I had never really taken to Jesus, and he asks for all of us. When I did, I experienced freedom and a weight lifting off my soul that I had carried for years. Relief and hope came hand in hand, along with greater intimacy with Jesus; I could trust him with more. And what I trusted him with was a part of my heart that I had held back. It’s a great step in the process of becoming whole, in the process of becoming truly alive. Jesus promises to make us fully alive, and deep down, that is what we’re all looking for.

This is also when I came up with independently, and thus understood (just like in school, huh?), the unapplied truth aphorism. This process, this journey, wasn’t about learning the rules, figuring out the infinite ways I can optimize my path through this fractalized universe, and then trying harder to make it “work.” The step I had just taken was a baby one, and I had a lifetime of walking with Jesus yet to go. For in the end, the ultimate Truth, the one science and religion and all human endeavor are getting glimpses of — the ultimate, infinite Truth, unfathomable in our finite minds — that infinite Truth is God himself. I just went to look up the scripture I wanted to use here, and suddenly understood more about the passage, about doubting Thomas, about why we need Jesus and not some other road, and my faith in Jesus was confirmed more deeply as I looked at why Jesus said this: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” He was answering Thomas’s question: “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” I fear that the truth that touched my heart depends on my history with Jesus, and I can’t give it justice here. But it boils down to this: in order to know truth, we must know Jesus. And knowing Jesus isn’t saying a particular prayer, or attending church on Sundays, or becoming a missionary. These things may be expressions of getting to know him. But knowing him is a relationship, the most intimate relationship possible, and one which can make our other relationships come alive, our work come alive, our heartache cease. And thus it isn’t a ruleset, and it doesn’t have an end. It’s a lifelong friendship with the God of the universe, who entered our world to talk to us, to heal us, to forgive us, and to love us. “He is the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15) and through him we “have life, and have it to the full!” (John 10:10). Gospel means “Good news” and good news it is indeed! Praise God!