Genesis 3:1-13: redefining good

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Genesis 3:1-5

In my first year of university, I attended a friendly student debate between the Christian Union and the Islamic society.  Somewhere near the beginning, the president of the Islamic society (who was doing the debating) said to his 'opponent': You are here because you desire my salvation - I appreciate that.  Whilst the two disagreed, they were disagreeing using the same terms of reference.  This Muslim clearly did not believe that salvation was found in Jesus Christ, but his understanding of what 'salvation' meant (i.e. reconciliation with God) was the same.  A very imperfect analogy would be like people looking at the same colour, but disagreeing on whether they thought it was the best one.

Imagine that it were true that red is the only good colour.  Maybe some would reject the truth that red is superior, but what is more common is that people simply redefine what 'red' is.  Two things then happen: some people say: 'we all want red - we are all the same' - not realising that actually red and been so redefined that it had come to encompass not only pink and orange but green as well!  Others, who had redefined red as purple, or blue, or green, would look at those who wanted actual red, and see it as vastly different to their own version of 'red' and look on those people as heretical, wrong, maybe even 'evil'.  Thomas Aquinas once said that people do not seek evil, but seek 'apparent goods'.  Many in my analogy are seeking good, but have either decided or been lead to belief that good is not red but another colour.

I have been reflecting that one of the most challenging things in witnessing for Christ is the fact that everything is redefined.  I believe in the dignity of all human beings, in celebrating the wonderfully diverse ways in which we are made, in inclusion, in lifting up the oppressed, in not passing judgement on other people, but as I write these things, there will be many people who would describe many of their values in the same way - they might even be reading this and thinking that I align to their version of 'good'.  Actually, these same words can be used to describe a vast array of different interpretations of the world that are as different as red and green - the only similarity is that their holders both define them as 'good'.

And anything that contradicts good is, by definition, not good.  This is why it has been said that for most people who reject Christianity, their objection is not about the existence of God, but a moral one.  Christianity is not irrelevant, it's evil.

And it's easy to assume that that is something that is a feature of 'these days', rather than the 'good old days'.  I'm not a historian, and there may be some subject areas where in the last 50-70 years our corporate definition of good has faced more divergence, but I think we would be naïve to think that this is anything but a very short-term trend, and to adapt C.S.Lewis's term, would be 'reverse chronological snobbery.  As the writer of Ecclesiastes puts it:

What has been will be again,
   what has been done will be done again;
   there is nothing new under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:9

And so we come, finally, to our passage.  The serpent did not say to Eve: come to me - what I can give you is better.  Reject good - come to evil instead.  He didn't offer Adam and Eve evil, but the ability to know good and evil.  Knowing good and evil is more than just knowledge in the receiving sense, but choosing, appointing, teaching - being the authority.  The serpent was, in a way, correct when he said: your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God - although a more accurate way of putting it would be you will be like gods: choosing to define not only within the bounds of our domain (see chapters 1 and 2 - human beings were appointed some authority), but the things that it is God's job to define, including good itself.   So the heart of the fall, and of sin, is rejecting God in favour of defining what good is for ourselves.  

Is there any encouragement to be taken here?  I always find encouragement in knowing that something is not a new problem.  From the Israelites who made God into a golden calf, to the Ephesians who declared the word of God to be evil because it did not honour Artemis, redefinition of good and moral opposition to God has always been there - but the word of God will still hold true.

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