Choosing evil.

I've been contemplating sin.

Surely, there are more joyful things I could be thinking about, but such is my mind.

Sin became a part of human existence when Adam and Eve gained the knowledge of good and evil.

Before Adam and Eve were even created, good existed. The first mention of good is in Genesis 1:4, when God created light. Presumably, evil existed as well.

I always kind of assumed without realizing it's what I assumed that when Adam and Eve ate the fruit forbidden from them that all of a sudden all things bad, nefarious, and wrong sprang into existence. As if that act created them. But that doesn't make sense. Wrong obviously already existed. God told Adam and Eve not to do something, because it was wrong. Besides that, the tree was one of the knowledge of good and evil. Not of good and evil themselves. Also, in Genesis 3:5, the serpent says to Eve "'you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'" Apparently God already knew of its existence, so it obviously must have existed.

So then my next assumption is that they became aware of wrong and were suddenly empowered to do it, whereas they weren't capable before that knowledge. But that doesn't make sense either. Again, knowledge of what is, not a sudden alteration in ability.

Also, it doesn't just say knowledge of evil. It's knowledge of both good and evil. So if they didn't know evil, couldn't recognize it, then maybe they didn't know, couldn't recognize, good either. They were both there, good obviously because the word was used so many times before Adam and Eve were created, but they couldn't identify them for what they were. Everything just was what it was, there was no such value judgment made on them. But upon eating from this tree, the first man and woman were able to distinguish between good and evil, and see them for what they were. At this point is where the trouble started.

The next logical question is why was knowing good and evil, and being able to distinguish between them, such a bad thing? God knew both good and evil and we don't ever hear of it being a problem for him.

I think it's probably because they now had the ability to consciously choose evil, to choose to go against God and know good and well that they were doing the wrong thing and decide to do it anyway. And God knew that's what Adam and Eve and all the rest of us down through time would do: choose evil. The reason why that knowledge isn't a problem for God is because he doesn't ever choose evil. But he knew that we wouldn't be able to never choose evil.

Thus Adam and Eve were banished from the garden and kept away from the tree of life. They now were able to consciously choose evil and no one who chooses evil is allowed to live forever, thus saith the Lord.

Following this line of thought, it would seem that's what sin is: recognizing both good and evil in front of you and then choosing evil. Something that we people do all the time.

Which falls in line with something else I've considered. When people are conceived, it takes a while for them to develop an awareness of the existence of right and wrong. A baby crawling around on the floor isn't scooting around thinking about whether or not their next action is something that falls in either the category of rightness or wrongness. That next action might be to crawl over to a peer and snatch a toy out of their hand, which we would see to be wrong, but they don't know that. They have to learn. And I think that in their state of ignorance, if that baby lost its life, it would go to be with God for eternity.

Thus it all comes back to our choices. The fact that evil exists is not what has condemned us. Nor is evil something of our own creation. It's there and we choose it. That's why on our own we can't be with God, because we intentionally reach for things that are in direct opposition to him. Thank God for grace in the person of Jesus Christ.


As you can probably tell, I've been reading Genesis. Quite closely. I know it's probably going to take me a while to move through everything, but I'm attempting to read the Bible and think more about it on a daily basis than I have in the past. I've made it all the way through the whole thing a few times, so now that I have a broad view and a pretty good understanding of context (which I think is very important to gain, thus I decided to just focus on reading for the past few years), I thought it was time to move beyond just reading it and dig in a lot deeper than I normally do on a daily basis. And this is what my brain has been mulling over. There's a lot of good, evil, and sin in the first four chapters.