Would you have eaten the apple??

If you surround yourself with church going women, or women who are at least familiar with common Bible stories, you have probably heard at least one them joke about Eve. Usually they say something along the lines of "You can think Eve for that" or "I have some words for Eve when I get to heaven" or maybe "It's all Eve's fault". I know these statements all to well, because I have made my fair share of the same or similar statements. I found myself thinking about this in much more depth this morning.

First, maybe you are not familiar with the "that" for which we are so thankful. A quick explanation is that in the Garden of Eden Eve is tempted by Satan to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge, from which she and Adam were forbidden to partake. Because Eve decided to eat from this tree and she shared the fruit with Adam, they were banished from the Garden of Eden and sin entered the world. God then passes judgment for the disobedience of Adam and Eve, condemning the man to sustain life through hard labor and the woman to create new life through painful childbirth.

Let me just say that I know the Bible does not specifically say that Eve ate an actual apple. We all tend to go to an apple because of how this story is often depicted in pictures or artwork. Also, for trivia people out there, another reason may be because the Latin word for evil is malum and the Latin word for apple is also malum. However, for the sake of the rest of this post we are going to go along with the precedent that Eve consumed an apple.

So, my question is would you have eaten that apple? I contemplated this question this morning as I laid in bed soothing Evan after he woke at 5:45 crying for some reason unknown to me. I am not sure why this question came to my mind, but I am sure it is God trying to teach me something.

My answer is yes. I probably would have. Satan made this fruit seem so wonderful; telling her that it will make her more like God, and that it will not lead to death. The fruit was perfect and looked delicious, it was tempting. And it had the ability to grant wisdom. I think just about anyone would have been tempted to eat it. In fact, I eat the "apple" regularly.

Now some would say I could just go back to the statements at the beginning of my post and thank Eve for bringing sin into the world so that I would have the sin nature to want to eat the apple. You would be right. I can thank Eve. But I can't go back to the beginning of man and change what happened. But rather I can look at this from a more current and applicable point of view.

As a result of Eve choosing to eat from the Tree of Knowledge she brought sin into the world, created painful child birth for women, and she was banished from the Garden of Eden - commonly described as a paradise. She gave up paradise for sin and painful child birth. That is a rough trade. Had she known, maybe she would have made a different choice. But she did not, she relied on her own thought process and understanding, along with Satan's temptations and decided that she knew better than God, who forbade her from partaking of the tree. God could see the WHOLE picture, he knew of the life that he had for both Eve and Adam, but the still had their own free will and they went against God.

I can look at my life over the past number of years and I can pick out different times where this is the case for me. No my decisions do not lead to sin entering the world, to labor pains or to being banished from a garden of paradise, but they do result to me committing sin, to bear the consequences, and to potentially miss out on the PERFECT plan God has for me. This is still a rough trade for immediate gratification versus waiting on God's perfect timing for the wonderful things he has for me; far more wonderful than whatever I settled for. Obviously some things are more serious than others, but don't we want God's perfect will for us in EVERYTHING.

Eve consumed an actual apple. Our "apple" or "apples" are not literal apples or pieces of fruit, but rather our own temptations and weaknesses. What is your "apple" or "apples"? I know I have my fair share. From not doing something that God is prompting me to do to choosing to do something that makes me happy over something that would be better overall choice to losing my patience to being selfish to being prideful and so on.

Just some food for thought! :)