The Lie: You Must Become Pt 3

Trying to Acquire What We Already Have

            The lie about God and about Eve made eating from the forbidden tree look desirable. This in turn provided Eve with a perceived solution to her emptiness—a solution that didn’t involve depending on God, who was now judged as being untrustworthy. There was something she could do about her hunger. The viability of the forbidden tree as a source of fullness gave viability to her embryonic autonomy.

            Just like Eve, we believe we can fill our emptiness by doing something and acquiring things. We believe we can give ourselves fulfilling worth apart from God by performing. We believe we can become self-sufficient through our efforts. We believe we can fix ourselves as well as other people. All of this is to say, we believe we can and should become wise, like God, knowing good and evil.

            It’s important to notice that the serpent didn’t promise Eve something she didn’t already have. This too is an aspect of all that blocks love and thus constitutes sin. The serpent promised Eve that she could be “like God.” Yet she and Adam were already made in the very image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26–27). The craftiness of the serpent is found in his cunning ability to make Eve think she had to become what she in fact already was. How else could he tempt a person who already had all she would ever need? The serpent convinced Eve that her life had to be found in doing rather than simply being. He convinced her to break fellowship with God in order to possess the very thing God had already given her for free: her being in “the image and likeness of God.”

            Had Eve remained in union with God, had she rejected the Accuser’s lie about God, the serpent’s promise that she could become like God would have been utterly vacuous. She would have remained in the peace of knowing that she already reflected God’s image and was full because of the unsurpassable worth God continually poured into her. Going beyond the “No Trespassing” sign would not have seemed desirable to her.

            Only when she accepted the lie and forgot who she was did the promise of becoming like God take on any significance. Rejecting the truth that she was already in God’s likeness, she blocked out the love that made her in his likeness. Then, instead of living life out of the fullness of who she already was, dependent upon God, Eve chose to try to become in God’s likeness by acting out of her emptiness, independent of God. Her life, and the life of her descendants, would from that time on consist of futilely chasing what God had always intended to give us for free.