Free Will Makes Love Possible

Everything in the garden is good, and God said to Adam and Eve, “You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden.” Therefore, the world is good, because God created everything good.

Adam and Eve, and we, their children, were also created good, along with the rest of creation, which was created and gifted to us by God - for us to cultivate and guard and enjoy.

But what about that tree of which Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Why would God say to us, “The moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die." If everything God created is good, what’s the deal with that tree?

I think the best way to understand God’s command regarding that tree is to hold that it signifies man’s ability to decide for himself what is good and evil. It is the risk God took in giving us free will. God desires our love, and only a free person can love. So while free will is the thing that makes evil possible, it is also the thing that makes love possible. That’s the risk God takes.

Sadly, Adam and Eve were seduced by an angel-turned-enemy of God to eat from that tree. So that first fall was not a sexual sin. Rather, it involved the perversion of the intellect and the will by Satan. As a result, Adam and Eve gave in to the temptation to decide for themselves how to relate to the things that God created - to decide for themselves what is good and evil.

Before the fall of man, Adam and Eve related to God’s creation by His Spirit living in them, His Spirit of understanding and knowledge and wisdom. But when they were deceived into willfully relating to God’s creation not by His Spirit but in a possessive way, they were doomed to die, as we are when we make that same mistake.

But it’s not that the tree was bad. We mustn’t blame free will for the fall, lest we become prohibitionist, afraid of everything, including God, and hiding in the garden. All of creation is good. The fall, rather, was our willfully choosing to relate to God’s creation in a disordered way, and that means death. For example, if we look at some of the sins that Christ names, like lust, greed, or deceit, we see that they are all examples of some disordered use of God's good creation.

The human person is attractive and good. But to objectify a person, or to use them for my own will, instead of cultivating and guarding that person, is to sin against God. Nor is money a bad thing. But the acquisition of wealth at the expense of another’s good is a sin. Even niceties are good and can be at the service of courtesy and manners, though intentionally deceiving someone in order to manipulate them for personal gain is treacherous in the sight of God.

So it's not that the world is bad, or that we’re bad, or that God is bad, but it’s a matter of constantly deciding to live either by God’s Spirit or by our own, one situation at a time, every moment of every day. “Lord, what is Your will for me in this moment?” And though it’s difficult and painful work to be a Christian - eating from the tree of Christ's cross by dying to self and being obedient to the Spirit of God - it will mean our being destined to live again, instead of being doomed to die.

When we live by the Spirit of God while relating to this world, we cultivate the garden and can, as the prayer says, joyfully bear fruit for the salvation of the world by helping people to see the goodness of life, and that we needn’t be on guard against God or His creation, nor against our neighbor or our own free will, but against the Evil One who wages his own war against the way we think and the decisions we make when choosing how to relate to people, places, and things. +