Temptation

Social media question (paraphrased):

Original sin does not make sense. Eating the fruit would have enlightened Adam and Eve as to what was good and bad. How could they have known it was bad to disobey God, before taking a bite of the fruit?

My metaphorical response:

Adam and Eve are like children, who don’t yet comprehend the consequences of not listening to one’s father. Alternatively, we could view them as naive, inexperienced adults, indifferent to an authority’s warning about a risk or potential danger. For example, without the physical experience of being burned, the warning against playing with matches often goes in one ear and out the other.

We just don’t know how bad something can be, or what a specific “bad” experience feels like, until it happens to us. And the opposite is true as well, where we don’t know how good something can feel, unless we personally experience it. Temptation often lies between these polar opposites, within a zone of ambiguity. We are most tempted by the situations or things that may turn out either very good or bad for us. Temptation is the nexus of uncertainty, where our most powerful desires meet our darkest fears.

The most soul riveting possibilities in life, come with the highest perceived risks of pain or loss. If you choose to climb the highest mountain, to experience the ecstasy of being on top of the world, then be prepared to fall 29,000 feet – bouncing against jagged pieces of ice and rock – to your eventual death. This may be the ugliest and most painful experience that one can imagine, but it’s the potential cost of pursuing one of the highest highs.

Eve

The serpent told Eve that she would be like God – knowing both good and evil – if she took a bite of the fruit, and that God was lying about the consequence of punishment or death. To further obfuscate matters, Eve had no means to distinguish between good and evil. What reference did she have to either experience? The only thing she’d known thus far, was her experience in the garden, nothing worse or better to compare it to. There was only the garden experience. However, since Eve had never witnessed or experienced death, nor anything painful for that matter, the serpent’s intriguing words were able to sway her final decision towards consuming the fruit, as God’s warning was a scary but somewhat hollow threat at that point.

How can one fear something never before experienced or encountered? At most, we may have some sense of foreboding on an instinctual level, such as having a knee-jerk reaction to seeing a creature in the brush glaring at us, baring its sharp teeth with salivating growls. However, a warning about something that has no comparison to anything else, not through memory or immediate confrontation, leaves us less than convinced of its validity. In fact, neither Adam or Eve had any experience or memory of being punished by God, not to that point in the biblical story.

Eve was given a choice between a potentially fulfilling experience, beyond anything she could imagine, given her limited knowledge and history; and a fear or threat levied by a God with no previous history of enforcement or punishment. Eve chose what seemed most beneficial or provocative to her, which was the tasty fruit before her, and buying into the serpent’s great sales pitch about becoming wise like God, as if it were not something to miss out on, the mystery of it being a source of great intrigue for Eve.

It is human nature to become unsatisfied with the status quo, no matter how good our current situation may be. Enough is never good enough for many people, and Eve is a metaphorical example of this. She lived in a beautiful garden with a God who had been providing everything necessary for her sustenance, peace of mind, and simple human satisfactions, including a mate and lover in Adam. Yet, she was tempted by the possibility of experiencing something better, or different, or maybe even worse – to satisfy an inner yearning to enlarge her experience of the world, or whatever was beyond the bounds of the great garden.

For many people, there is a psychological pleasure or satisfaction inherent within an experience itself, no matter how painful it may be. This is one of the many contradictions of human nature: seeking happiness within or through the experience of pain, as if we must traverse a rainbow of dark colors, before reaching the proverbial pot of gold.

Adam

Eve had an easy time convincing Adam to take a bite of the fruit. If I’m to interpret Genesis as the metaphorical beginning of everything, including humankind, then Eve tempting Adam is clearly the first act of seduction – a pretty girl offering a piece of tasty fruit, with the hint of something “more” to come, imagined or otherwise. I will take the liberty of reading too much into this – if I haven’t already – by suggesting that Adam was more interested in pleasing the girl, rather than making a choice between being Godlike in knowledge, or struck dead by lightening. Is this not typical male behavior, to lose one’s common sense when encountering a beautiful woman offering a gift or invitation of some kind? Although, I will argue that Adam had already yearned “to know” more of Eve, prior to her fruity offering, rather than lay the blame on her. We are not tempted by what we’ve never desired in the first place.

Aftermath

Metaphorically speaking, consuming the fruit represents Adam and Eve’s decision and efforts to experience one another more intimately, among other things. This leaves them exposed to each other’s nakedness, as they have been many times before, but now with an increased familiarity; and so they quickly cover themselves with fig leaves, a knee-jerk like reaction. Nothing bad has happened to either one of them, no punishment thus far; but they’ve noticed each other, this time in a not so innocent way; this being the first carnal experience – loaded with feelings of both desire and shame, or good and bad: humanity’s first experience of emotional conflict. And so they hid themselves from one another.

This reminds me of the first time I found “somebody’s” stash of porn magazines in the closet. My eyes were opened for the first time, and I was both intrigued – to put it mildly – at what I was looking at, and frightened of the consequences of having found what I was not supposed to see and know. I’d made the leap from heeding an adult’s ambiguous warning to stay out of the closet, to giving into my yearning for discovery, knowledge, and experience.

There was a price to pay for my discovery though, that being the loss of my innocence at a young age, rather than being punished by the keeper of the magazines. This was my choice though. Neither the magazines nor the keeper of magazines were to blame. In a sense, I created the opportunity for the fulfillment of my yearning to know and experience – my temptation – by being a keen observer of what was going on around me, ultimately noticing and narrowing my focus on the mysterious goings on within the closet. I was drawn to the ambiguity of it, wanting to experience and know what was hidden from me within that closet, all the while having an intuition or gut feeling of what was waiting for me there. It was the seed of an experience waiting to be experienced by me, my temptation taking me there.

As for Adam and Eve, they moved from the protected, nurturing garden, into the human world of experience; requiring them to take care of themselves within the harsh realities of an unforgiving and uncertain environment, but now without God’s direct assistance. That was the price to be paid – sacrificing the dependable safety and nurturing of their father’s home, to live in a world filled with strangers, friends, enemies, competitors, and lovers; where they transform from one to another in a moment’s time. Traditionally, we think of this change as God’s punishment for disobeying his command to avoid the fruit, but I view it as Adam and Eve’s choice – subconscious or otherwise – to leave paradise for a wider experiential reality, where good and bad exists in various forms, requiring their contribution to one or the other, or both. We can view this metaphorically as the first act of free will – the pursuit of experience.

Experiential growth

Temptation is something that begins inside of us, as a compelling desire for “something” better, more fulfilling, or just different; but without knowing exactly what we will receive and sacrifice for it. The possibilities intrigue us, but scare us at the same time. Often, the fear of what we may sacrifice, is what keeps us from acting on a temptation. However, when the possible benefits become more convincing than the perceived or imagined costs, we often give into our temptation. But make no mistake, the temptation is ours, not the result of something or someone on the outside persuading us to act on this or that. We find our own way to the temptations/opportunities we daydream about, even though we often blame others for pushing them in our face.

Neither God or the serpent, nor the fruit on the tree or Eve’s feminine wiles, were the instigators of temptation. Adam and Eve, like the rest of us, were inherently restless spirits, seeking new experience, as a means of growth or the next step in their personal evolution as human beings. The means or props for achieving this – the serpent and fruit – are less important than the actual desire for life changing experiences, which are necessary for growth.

Without an ongoing broadening of experience, our knowledge and competence in the world becomes stunted; sometimes bound by the intentions or agenda of our current caretakers, whether that be a God, parent, institution, or even a partner or lover. Childhood is one of many life stages where people often become temporarily stuck at some point, needing to move forward through the embracing of new experiences.

God’s warning

Back to the original question, “How could they have known it was bad to disobey God, before taking a bite of the fruit? “

I view God’s admonition as being more warning than threat, that life as they’d known it would change, upon choosing the path of experience. Thus, a physical death was not being implied or threatened by God, but rather the death or ending of childhood was being warned about: leaving one’s primal home and the safekeeping of the primal parent, to face the harsh realities of the world on one’s own. If there had been any hesitation at the tree of knowledge, it was related to the the fear of this change, rather than a fear of committing a wrong or sin before the eyes of God.

As in real life, there is no turning back once we leave home or childhood. Nothing is ever the same once we experience and begin to know things; our innocence lost. Even as children, we sense the boundaries of childhood, knowing that once we cross them, through the acquisition of knowledge and experience, there is no return to the naivety, innocence, and security of childhood.

Personal reflections

I remember the fear of growing up too fast, not wanting to experiencing some things just yet. Knowing that it would be the end of childhood as I’d known it; that I would be ejected from my bubble of comfort and security, into a world where the struggle to survive and thrive were the dominant themes.

I did not fear parental punishment, nor did I fret much over what was good versus bad, not in the moral sense. As much as I desired it – was tempted by it – what I feared most were the experiences that would bring change, as it would mean not being able to return to where I’d felt most loved and safe, where life was as simple as playing in my backyard, riding my bike, and eating mom’s home cooked meals. Eventually though, the temptation for experience surpassed my fear of it, moving me out of childhood. I’d crossed into the world of experience, taking my participatory role within the beautiful and ugly, the good and the bad.

Note: In this post, I’ve interpreted the Adam and Eve story from a purely metaphorical perspective, for the purpose of explaining my thoughts regarding temptation. There was no intention to disrespect, discredit, or replace the religious interpretations of Genesis.

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