Falling

God made Eve in his image to help Adam rule over the creation and to be a life-giver, but something went wrong. Things are not what they were meant to be.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.

He said to the woman, "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." 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 themselves loincloths. Gen. 3:1-7

God the creator had made humans in his image and, treating them as intelligent beings, gave them great freedom to enjoy all he had made with one restriction. Do not eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Sometime later a new character was introduced into the story who could also speak to man. He is called the serpent. The serpent presented the woman with the first lie. Whereas God forbade the eating of a particular fruit and promised death if they ate it, the serpent said that eating the fruit in question would not lead to death but would bring enlightenment and transformation, making them like God. Eve believed the serpent and ate the fruit, offering it to her husband, who also ate it. The result of that act of disobedience was that their eyes were opened, and for the first time, they experienced vulnerability, shame, and fear as they recognized that they were naked.

Jesus treated this account as an actual historical event and not a myth or a metaphor for something else. He treated evil and the devil as real adversaries to be overcome. Jesus' miraculous birth, his teaching about being right with God, his work of mercy and compassion, his public torture by crucifixion, his death and burial in an actual tomb, and his resurrection from the dead all had one purpose; to reverse the problem that this event in Genesis describes. Jesus gives us more insight into the story by identifying the serpent as the devil, the adversary of God, a fallen angel, a created being who was the first to rebel against God and who now seeks to turn humanity away from our maker. Jesus said this about the devil and those he manipulates.

"You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies." (Jn 8:44).

Eve heard the first lie and, according to Jesus, the devil is the originator of all that is false. That serpent in the garden was more than a serpent, and he succeeded in turning the first couple from obedience and trust in the Lord to self reliance and rebellion.

Why Me ?

Why did the devil approach Eve and not Adam? Was she an easier target? Was she somehow more susceptible to the lie? Was she morally weaker? Was she more gullible? Remember that Eve was made in the image of God, just like her husband. She was created as a helper fit for him, and God did not make her weaker or inferior to him. God had equipped her to rule alongside Adam. Though her role was to be different from his, she was not less than he was. She was created to be an asset, not a liability. It was not because she was an easy target that the serpent approached Eve. In opposing God's will, the devil, disguised as a serpent, sought to invert God's created order completely. If he could tempt the woman to disobey God, he would make her do the opposite of what she was made for. By eating the fruit, she would bring death into the world instead of life. By obeying the serpent, she would be submitting to him, putting him in God's place instead of ruling over him, and by giving Adam the forbidden fruit, she would be helping him disobey rather than obey God. The serpent did not approach Eve because she was weak; he did so because she was crucial to God's plan for humanity as the life-giver and the helper. She was the one without whom the work could not be done and by getting her on his side the work would not be done.

Why did she do it?

The lie the serpent presented did something subtle and dangerous. It put a different spin on the reality they were living in. It suggested that they were not as like God as they could be, that there was this secret knowledge of good and evil that God was keeping from them, and that there was something deficient in their existence that would be remedied by the forbidden fruit. It also implied that God is not altogether good and that some other good could be obtained apart from God. It presented evil as something desirable, something worth knowing. Ultimately it turned Eve inward, giving her a view of the world with herself and her desires at the center of her focus rather than God and his expressed will. The conversation started with what God had commanded and then very cleverly shifted to what she would gain from eating the fruit. We are told that she saw that the tree was good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom. After she had listened to the serpent's lie and believed it, she started seeing things in a new light. The forbidden tree began to look appealing and was no longer the deadly thing God said it was. Eating the fruit became the most logical next step. The serpent presented her with a choice between pleasing herself and pleasing God. Sadly she chose to please herself.

Every woman who has ever lived is presented with the same choice. Will she exchange God's truth for a lie? Will she live to please herself or to please God? There is an actual devil, and he is a master of disguise. He is still the father of lies and he still spins the facts of our reality to present evil as something desirable, God as untrustworthy and ourselves as the having the final say on what is good and evil. The objective is always to get you to put yourself at the center of the story, to choose your opinion, your wishes, and your judgment instead of God's, to set the creature above the creator. He does this not because you are weak or inferior to a man but because a woman who puts herself above her maker is a complete inversion of God's plan for creation.