student of grace. part...i don't know...9?

i've made some biblical observations recently that are still ripple-effecting my thoughts. i'm a little embarrassed to explore them on this blog simply because i feel they're pretty basic faith 101 and i'm only just now making sense of them. but on the off chance you have misread these passages your whole life as i have, here's a little revelation.

when reading the story of creation, specifically of the temptation of eve and the banishment from the garden, there are a couple of things that have always bothered me. these kind of things are what cause me to literally throw my bible across the room in frustration (don't judge me...God has already forgiven me for this so you have no grounds for disapproval).

first misunderstanding:
there are TWO trees specifically named as the garden is being described (Genesis 2:9) -- the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. i don't know how a person can spend twenty-some-odd years immersed (to the point of drowning) in church, attending sunday school, and reading the Bible through a few times on her own and still manage to miss completely that the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil were not in fact the same. the significance of this oversight is monumental. i will get to why after i explain the second misunderstanding.

second misunderstanding:
the Lord's response to their disobedience has always bothered me...always seemed like the mean-old-God-of-the-Old-Testament we can never reconcile with the One we think we know. here's what He says (Genesis 3:23): "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever." so He immediately banishes them. this has always bothered me and in my fear and trembling as i've worked out my faith, this is one of the points of consternation. God cannot stand for man to know things like He does, so He punishes them by cutting them off of their Tree of Life? (which, by the way, was the same in my mind as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.) this is surely cruel and unusual punishment. i mean, really? you steal a piece of fruit and the consequence is the doom of an entire species? seems a little unreasonable.

third misunderstanding:
i always thought that when He put the Tree of Knowledge in the garden, it was His way of giving us free will even though He knew we would eat of it anyway. this always confused me...why not just not put the tree there? why the heck does the cursed tree exist in the first place?

new realization:
the fact that there were two trees of note in the garden makes ALL the difference in the world to me. as God created man, He had a decision to make in man's design: man could be like Him with innocence -- in the sense that he would have the capacity to choose; or man could be like beast with ignorance -- in the sense that he would not have the capacity to choose; or a third lesser-known option, man could be like Him with full knowledge -- in the sense that the choice would be made for him. note that the capacity to choose and the choice itself are two different things. God chose to give us the capacity. but He did not choose for us. the choice itself was simple: God vs. Not God. (Not God = evil.) i've always thought that He could have spared us the Tree of Knowledge and its magical fruit. but the fruit was not magical at all. there was no difference in the scientific make-up of this tree. the fruit looked the same...tasted the same...was the same. it was simply designated an option to disobey. it wouldn't work to have no source of the choice of disobedience. so He made it as easy on us as He could...one little tiny restriction that He surrounded with freedom so that we would be even less compelled to choose to disobey. there was nothing cruel about it. it was the Tree that offered us that capacity to choose. so that the choice of God (good) vs. Not God (evil) really was ours to choose (because you must have knowledge of a choice before you can make the choice at all). and it was the capacity that offered us innocence without ignorance. THAT is the picture He painted and longs to restore...innocence without ignorance.

fantastic realization:
ok, so my favorite realization in all of this is His response to the fall. He kicks man out of the garden. why? to keep him from eating of the tree of life (again, Genesis 3:23). before, man was restricted from knowledge but had free reign to partake of life. after the fall, he is given the knowledge and restricted from the life. why? i love this! because were we allowed to stay in the garden and eat freely of the tree of life, we would be in a perpetual sin-state. He wanted to redeem. AMAZING?! kicking us out of the garden was His first act of grace.

i can't get over how different grace becomes the more i explore it. i think i know what it looks like. but it goes so far beyond what i expect. it's frightening even. the awe kind of frightening. there is Death (separation from Him) and there is death (unification with Him). amazing how that one word holds two shockingly different meanings. i think death is His greatest grace. and it all began in the garden.