(Essay) Tree of Knowledge
From Fig Leaves to Freedom
“And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’”
A baby is born knowing only nurture. They cry when cold, scared, or hungry and relief comes. Swaddled warmth. A mother’s embrace brings comfort. Unconditional love needs no introduction.
Soul satisfied. Life abounds.
The toddler years give way to curious wonderment. A child explores everything: tastes, shapes, sounds, feelings. There are new discoveries everywhere. Same world, same love, deeper perspective. Personal expression becomes the new ambition. Exuberant joy when handed a red helium balloon. Piercing sorrow as it floats away. Each day a toddler tries on every emotion available to them. Every morning a new set of tantrums. Every night at bath time, a happy dance. Exhausted, they crawl back into their mother’s arms. Confident in the love they will find there.
Soul satisfied. Life abounds.
Boundaries come next. Done properly, a loving correction carries no judgment. Healthy rebuke brings no fear, respect for consequences, yes; fear of personal evil, no. Even the sternest warning can be erased by a soothing word. A flicker of irritation on a parent’s face during a moment of frustration is easily smothered away by a long embrace and a bedtime cuddle. Fair and firm correction from loving parents is part of the learning process. A child’s first experience with right and wrong has no connection to them being good or bad. It is their behavior being corrected. Not their identity.
Soul satisfied. Life abounds.
“Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” — Mark 10:14–15
Little children, living fully into their created expression. Holding nothing back, not their affection, not their wants, not their hurts, not what makes them scared. Pouring out their lives and their souls without shame.
These are those who will inherit the kingdom of heaven.
Soul satisfied. Life abounds.
At a certain age, something shifts.
A child begins to make the connection that their behavior carries a moral weight. That they are not just doing wrong, but they are wrong. This fruit is not offered by the Creator. It is handed over by the fear living inside the created. By disapproving adults, careless teachers, and most devastatingly by the ones who love us most.
The age of lost innocence. Not brought on by deviousness, but by brokenness.
“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” — Genesis 3:6–7
The memory I return to most. The one with the most frequent replay is the first time I stole something.
I was walking through a grocery store with my mother. I pocketed a few pieces of candy from one of the mounded piles on display. Cellophane wrappers around butterscotch candies were too tempting to resist. Later at home, my mother found the wrappers in my pocket.
Behind closed doors, after the wooden spoon, I learned the eternal ramifications of my evil.
It was mind-bending. I was 5 years old. I had never had a personal encounter with Jesus, never walked with Him, never known His voice. But I was told that my theft had nailed Him to a cross. I was told that when you steal, you make Jesus’ heart hurt. I was led in a prayer asking for God’s forgiveness. Then came the silent disapproval; felt, not spoken on the long walk back to the grocery store, where I was made to confess my sin to an employee.
This was my first recollected bite from the tree of knowledge.
I saw my nakedness. I knew shame. I began sewing fig leaves at the age of five. Introduced to ‘sin’ by a mother responding from her own place of fear.
Death introduced.
From that point on, avoiding sin, or at least avoiding my parents knowing of my sin was conditioned into me long before I had any concept of personal intimacy with a Creator. Avoidance of consequences became my aim. Not curious wonderment about the marvels of creation.
Three times a week I sat in church while flannelgraphs and dioramas taught me the miracles of Jesus. Every night before bed I was led in guided prayers and songs about the love of a God I had not yet met. Loaded with Sunday school knowledge about the sacrifice of Jesus, but no personal experience with any of it. So much time spent trying to make me a religious convert. No room left for the mystery of it. No room for the Holy Spirit to visit me and bring comfort and joy. Only the guilt and shame of disappointing a Christian God I had never actually encountered.
I learned that not showing forgiveness to my sister when I was angry was an act of hate. That not confessing my shortcomings before God and my parents was hardening my heart. On and on it went. Doctrine and vocabulary ingrained into my mind long before my soul had its first encounter with the divine.
Death introduced.
My fear grew into rebellion. On once in my teen years, after being caught for some misdeed, my mother told me she did not care if I ended up in a wheelchair, paralyzed. that she had prayed God would get ahold of my rebellious spirit whatever the cost to them.
On another occasion, after my parents searched my room on a tip from my youth pastor, they found pot and alcohol. I was grounded; not for a set duration of time, but until they saw the light of Jesus in my eyes again. My only permitted outings were church-sanctioned events and a short list of approved ‘Christian’ friends. It took seven months of my senior year under house arrest before they finally saw the countenance of Jesus in my face. I was put on parole just before graduation.
I became an expert at hiding my nakedness from my parents and from God. So began my apprenticeship into the religious practice of Christianity.
Death introduced.
Abundant, unconditional love did reach me. A decade later.
Surprisingly, it happened at a church, not the upstairs part, where the stained glass and hardwood pews and backlit crosses are. Down in the musty basement, where cheap coffee meets rock bottom. An AA meeting.
I was utterly miserable. I could not understand why a faithful, practicing Christian like me was such an alcoholic wreck. I surrendered to a higher power of my own understanding. Led in prayer, not by an ordained minister who had studied doctrine and theology, but by my first sponsor. An atheist named Matt. His higher power was gravity. Seriously. He didn’t give a damn what mine was. Only that I surrendered to something greater than myself.
Soul satisfied. Life abounds.
It took another fifteen years before I could say I had experienced true intimacy with the Cosmic Creator. Loving walks of communion with a benevolent God didn’t come to me until my forties, fifteen years after seminary, nearly ten years after leaving the professional pastorate.
Thirty years of rote Christianity is hard to unwind. But I am unwinding it. I am already in my own garden, communing with my Creator, learning what it means to walk with Him without fear.
These essays are those walks. Shared with you, not to entertain or inflame. But to encourage you to begin your own road toward a happy destiny. To stop settling for someone else’s prescription for reaching the divine, and start finding your own.
The garden is open.
Soul satisfied. Life abounds.
Author’s Note
I write this Substack anonymously for a few reasons, one of those is to protect my parents. They are both still living. Our relationship is strained but I know without question that they love me, and that they did the best they could with what they had.
That doesn’t absolve them from their role in what happened. It just adds context. All of us are broken people, imperfectly formed, living inside a perfect creation.
A note on what’s coming:
This week, all subscribers will receive three journal prompts written to go deeper with what you’ve just read. After this week, free subscribers will continue to receive essays from me, roughly monthly.
Those of you who choose to journey deeper will receive weekly essays and weekly journal prompts.
Blessings on your road toward happy destiny.
A.B. Evangelical
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