Imagine two people living in perfect community with God and with each other. They were created as fully alive human beings who got their identity, security, worth, value, significance from simply being in relationship with the Creator. Then, the devil shows up in the form of a serpent and starts a dialogue with Eve by asking a question.
There’s nothing wrong with asking a question. Eve went wrong, though, in getting in a dialogue with the Devil–it’s never a good idea to get in a dialogue with the master deceiver in whom is zero truth! His question is a legit question, saturated in curiosity and, likely, deception:
Did God really say you couldn’t eat from any tree in the garden?
Eve steps into the dialogue and in the context of the conversation begins to remember Creator more tragically than He is.
We can eat from any tree except for the one in the middle. We musn’t eat from that one, or touch it, or we will surely die.
Is that what God said? Turing back a few verses, we see Creator talking to Adam using the language of freedom and abundance with boundaries. He does say they must not eat from the tree in the middle because they they’ll die–but He never says anything about touching it.
You won’t die (said the Devil)…you’ll be more alive than you are right now!
Satan is deceiving Eve into believing that she’s been duped. She’s not fully alive! There is something that she can do to make her more alive than she is right now. He says, “See that tree? Tasty huh? Go, Take, Eat and you’ll really be alive!”
So she does. And in that moment, Eve transitioned from a human being into a human doing. Her identity and significance and security are no longer going to be coming from being in relationship with Creator…they were now going to come from her doing.
I live in that same deception. I do not live like I’m convinced that God created me as a fully alive human being who gets life from being in relationship with Him. I live as a human doing, trying to get what I already have available to me.
Hearing myself write, I guess I’ve been living deceived for quite some time.
It’s been killing me.
It’s time to let Him guide me back into a human being.
