It seems as if Adam, by his
disobedience and "original sin" initiated a process, brought a "curse"
upon the world which made life on earth as we know it, a little bit
more like death, especially in God's eyes. It seems as if life in
disobedience to God, life out of harmony with God, life apart from God,
in God's eyes is more similar to death than the true life. That's why
Paul wrote that the curse which had been brought into the world through
Adam's sin had been reversed by Jesus' sacrifice, at least for each one
of those who accept that sacrifice, which also explains Jesus' promised
of eternal life to all those who believe in Him.
So, technically speaking, Adam
did not die on the same day he ate of the forbidden fruit, in fact he
continued to live until he was 930 years old (Gen.5:5),
which was quite a common age in the days before the flood. But he
brought death into the world, and he turned life for himself and for
every human that was to descend from him into a state which in God's
eyes was more comparable to death than life. In God's eyes, our lives
are like living death, a state from which we desperately need to be
saved, which is precisely why He sent His Savior Son.
You might say, the whole thing
has its advantages, though. In fact, they were evidently God's plan.
First of all, for those who go for it, and whose idea of a good time it
is to "play God" and be their own little gods, this is their day. God
is like saying, "go for it!" And probably most people dancing on this
ball are precisely doing that, pulling off their own little "god act,"
at least until they get sick of it. I suspect that Adam never really
got the hang of it, because for him it was so obvious that he had blown
it. After all, he had known the real thing and had now made a gigantic
mess of things.
What's the lesson out of all of
this? Take God's Word for it, that it is so, just as He says, even if
it may not look like it to you right now.
Most people are not aware that there is such a thing as the first and the second "Book of Adam and Eve."
In my undaunted curiosity about our original ancestors I simply could
not resist reading them, and although there are certainly a few things
in there that are hard to believe or comprehend, and I wouldn't be able
to say without hesitation that they are authentic and on equal level of
credibility as the Bible (although I personally assume that it's quite
likely that they were written by Enoch, whose "Book of Enoch" is quoted in the Holy Bible [Jude 14,15],
and was thus obviously revered as divine Scripture in the first
century), there is another huge lesson one can learn out of those
writings. And that is the lengths to which the Devil will go in order
to deceive the children of man. He will really put on an act, concoct a
"Matrix" and make you think it impossible that anyone would have the
audacity to create a lie and a farce as outrageous as he does, but he
really does. As Jesus said, he is "the father of lies," and he's
extremely good at it. That's his art.
And I personally doubt that
anyone will successfully manage to go through life without ever falling
for any of his deceptions unless they become aware of that danger, and
of that ever prevailing spirit of "the Lie" that envelopes us. In the
Books of Adam and Eve, Adam finally gets the point and starts asking
the Lord about what's really going on when something "smells fishy,"
and lo and behold, the Lord is faithful to reveal to him every time,
"Oh, yeah, that's just Satan pulling one of his antics once again.
Don't fall for it." In my own life, I have experienced that God is
equally willing to do the same for us: to reveal the spiritual
background and causes for something happening in our lives. He will do
the same for you if you're interested enough to ask Him.
There is yet another lesson we
can learn from that tragic incident of the Fall of man someone else
brought out, and that is, that it should have been Adam's
responsibility to protect Eve from her act of disobedience against God,
and that he should have prevented her from eating the fruit... But then
I guess we all would have to be in that situation first to find out
whether that isn't easier said than done.
The good thing is, we can learn
from their mistakes. Life as it is, I'm convinced, is a continuous
learning process. It's school time for us, and we can learn from the
experiences of our elders. The sad thing is that the Devil has managed
to trick most of us into believing that those elders weren't even
there, that they were monkeys instead, nothing much to learn from, and
that we're supposedly the really wise guys now.
Unfortunately, God's plan won't
be able to come to its perfection and conclusion until he will have
allowed man to experience the ultimate result of his "god-hood" over
the earth. In "playing God," we are following in the footsteps of
Lucifer (or Satan), the first rebel against God who went out to play
god on his own, and since most of us did not accept Jesus, Who "came in
His Father's name," I'm afraid a large part of the world is ready to
receive one who "will come in his own name" (John 5:43).
That serpent is out for a grand
final act, deceiving mankind on the largest scale, ever, and I'm afraid
there will be few who won't fall for him when that time comes (Rev.12:12).
One more thing we can learn
from Adam and Eve's tail is that God understands and loves us anyway.
He has compassion. Even though there was nothing wrong with nakedness
in His eyes, realizing that for Adam and Eve things now were different,
and they felt uncomfortable with their new shameful and sinful
conscience, to be walking about naked, He killed two (we assume)
animals for them in order to provide for them their first set of
clothes. It's good to know that God takes us where we're at.
Wrapping up Adam and Eve's
lesson for mankind in a single word, I guess the most adequate one
would be responsibility. Adam and Eve were not aware of the
repercussions on countless generations to follow, of their selfish
(seemingly little) act of disobeying God in order to get something they
wanted, something they didn't have yet, something they weren't even
aware existed until they listened to the Devil's advertisement.
Similarly, most of us are not
aware to what extent we will influence those to come after us, or even
the children who are watching us now. We smoke our cigarettes, we live
our wasteful lives, we take things for granted, and pass on that sample
of living for the here and now in a selfish manner to our children.
Certainly we can't blame Adam
and Eve for anything. None of us would have stood their test any better
than they did. But we can nevertheless learn from them. We don't have
to endlessly repeat those same mistakes of falling for the Devil's lies
and temptations. We can reverse that process by telling the Devil,
"Shut up, you old snake! I want to hear what God has to say!" Making it
clear between you and the Devil that you know he's a liar and that
you're not going to believe a single word of what he's got to say
anyway is not going to solve all your problems. But at least it's going
to keep you from making some serious mistakes you might make, which may
not only affect you but others also. Striving to communicate with God,
and believing and obeying Him no matter what cunning arguments the
Serpent may come up with will help you prevent the repetition of "the
fall of man" over and over again in your own life. If you decide you're
going to believe and obey God instead of the serpent, you'll be
choosing a different way, not the ways of death, which seem so right to
a man (Proverbs 14:12), but the way of life.
Jesus showed that way, that way of truth and of life, by being "obedient unto death" (Phill.2:8),and
by following Him, we can each reverse the path of disobedience in our
own lives, which was originally initiated by Adam and Eve. We can "get
back to the Garden."
