A Tree in The Middle

Why not just eliminate evil altogether?  This is the question that I’m sure we all ask at one point in life or another.  Powerful windstorms rip through the southern United States, ripping entire homes from their foundations and smearing them across the landscape.  Why God?  A scared wife cowering with tears in a corner, fearing the rage of her husband’s continual drunken stupor.  Why God?  In the remotest corner of a secluded home, Christians meet incognito.  When suddenly, bursting through the front door a government official storms in, grabbing each worshipper and carrying them off to prison and almost certain death.  Why God?  

In the center of a beautiful garden, a gentle breeze wafts through the rustling leaves of a beguiling tree.  Its long limbs stretch over a delicate figure finding repose in its shade.  Gazing above, her eyes apprehend the delicious fruit hanging from its branches.  However, she does not reach toward the fruit, she has been told that it was not created for her consumption.  Being eaten was not the created function of this fruit, no it had a much different, and far more weighty purpose.  

If not for food, just what was the purpose of this fruit?  Certainly, God could simply have refrained from creating the tree in the beginning.  Furthermore, why for heaven’s sake would he place it in the center of the garden?  Every late November I wait with bated breath, with my eyes fixed on a vacant place in the center of the dining room table.  The aroma of a perfectly cooked turkey begins to fill the entire house.  Finally, the bird arrives at its celebrated destination.  

We place the Thanksgiving turkey in the middle of the table for the same reason that God placed that tree in the middle of the garden, aside from man its the main course of creation.  God did not plant a fruit bearing tree in the middle of the garden for food, but for the sake of His image.  God created humans in his image, and the image of God included freely given, non-manipulated or coerced love.  If Adam and Eve were to truly participate in his image, they must also participate in his love.  C. S. Lewis once observed that God took a great risk when he gave humanity free will.  A risk because, humanity could abuse the gift.  

Unfortunately, in the immortal words of Paul Harvey, the “rest of the story” tells the sad tale of the fallout of a squandered gift.  When Adam and Eve consumed the fruit, all creation crumbled into pieces.  Creation, nature and humanity, were broken, no person or thing has been exempt.  Yet, even in the light of all the affliction in all the world, would it not be a greater tragedy to never participate in the love of God?  The distortion of God’s image in humanity is the greatest evil that could ever be perpetrated on creation.  As the Pogo comic strip would suggest "We have met the enemy and he is us.”  It was not God, we are the perpetrators.  We embraced the deceitful tones of a slick talking serpent.  We abused God’s greatest gift.  God gave us love, but love necessitates the potential for evil if it is to be true divine love.  To eliminate the evil would be to eliminate love, and that would be the greatest evil of all.