Choosing Knowledge
When God forbade mankind from eating the fruit of The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil He was forbidding them from consuming and spreading the knowledge that comes from this world. I believe he did this for at least two reasons:
Once you know better you gotta do better
God is strongest in our weakness = God likes to show up when things are impossible
On one hand it could be said that ignorance is not an excuse. The legal term for this is ignorantia juris non excusat. This doesn’t make sense completely but the purpose of the postulate is to prevent people from using ignorance as a defense when they were actually witting of the law (lying about not knowing the law to avoid being held accountable ). On the other hand it could be said once you know better you gotta do better ( Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it (James 4:17 )). This makes a ton more sense but realistically cannot be implemented by man because man has no true knowledge of what another human being knows (or at least the extent of the other person knowledge - 1 Corinthians 2:11 says “ For what person knows the thoughts and motives of a man except the man's spirit within him? “ ) Our limited knowledge of others makes us poor judges. But God being God does not have human limitations he is the only exclusion to being ignorant of the content of another’s mind ( “You have looked deep into my heart, Lord, and you know all about me. You know when I am resting or when I am working, and from heaven you discover my thoughts. Psalms 139:1-2 CEV ) and this makes Him an excellent judge. Because God has the ability to know what we know, he can judge fairly, and since he can, he does... God hold us accountable for our actions when we know right but don’t do right. For this reason God commanding Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was actually God being merciful … he didn’t want to have to punish mankind so he rathered that we didn’t know right because you can’t know right without knowing wrong and teaching us wrong would then exposes us to it enabling us to get curious and explore it. ( “Does this mean that the Law is sinful? Certainly not! But if it had not been for the Law, I would not have known what sin is really like. For example, I would not have known what it means to want something that belongs to someone else, unless the Law had told me not to do this.” Romans 7:7 CEV )
People like to say that “… faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1 NKJV) and many focus on “the evidence of things not seen” bit of the scripture cuz what does “ the substance of things hoped for” mean anyway right? Well a more practical way to explain faith is, faith is believing God is telling the truth before (and even if he never) proves it to you. We can understand faith best when we change it from being self focused to being God focused, You see it’s not necessarily about our hopes and dreams it is more about God’s will (what God does and does not want ) and God’s promises (what God already said he would do). Pastor Tony Evans says it this way “Faith is acting like God is telling the truth.” When you operate in Faith you are operating based on what God promised you that he would do instead of operating based on the outcomes that seem the most logical and probable. Faith is action more so than it is a mindset — you show faith by doing stuff not by merely thinking it. James 2:17-18 KJV says: “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.” you can sit around and talk all day but talk is cheap…likewise, thinking alone is cheap also. Don’t talk about it be about it. I like to say you can tell a person something and be lying about it, you can do something and it could be a deception but you usually find truth at the intersection of your words and actions (the place where both your words and actions agree) Faith is not just knowing and quoting scripture it is living like you believe what it says. When your bills are due and you have no money to your name knowing “But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” ( Philippians 4:19 KJV ) is not faith. Faith is refusing to panic and think of worst case scenarios, faith is not packing boxes because you anticipate a foreclosure, Faith is not loosing your peace because you fear the worst, faith is not folding under the pressure, faith is not giving into defeat, faith is not letting go because your tired of fighting. Faith is hard…it requires a lot from you and it usually requires you to go through a lot for there to be proof that you have it. Faith is not all cute and cuddly like it sounds…where there is faith there is usually war. Why? Faith and war go hand and hand because Eve and Adam ate the fruit. Ignorance is a weakness. God operates fully in weakness. Eating the fruit removed ignorance. Therefore eating the fruit removed weakness. God now has to create weakness so that he can operate. God then creates weakness by allowing mankind to be beat down by battles (spiritual warfare). To be clear the fall of man (eating the fruit) was not the event that triggered spiritual warfare it was obviously already a thing ( the serpent tempting sinless Eve is spiritual warfare in itself) but perhaps the fall of man triggered an onslaught whereas unfallen man would have merely had periodic exposure.
Nonetheless, Once again we see that God forbidding Adam to eat the fruit from The Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil was not God withholding goodness from mankind but it was God providing mercy to mankind. God did not want us to eat from The Tree because he did not want the dumb painful stuff of life to strike and wound us.
Notice that wherever we are made strong that is the area where we resist God the most. If we are physically beautiful we often sin with our bodies and use them in ways that are far from God. If we are intellectually magnificent we usually believe in the sciences more than we believe in God’s existence and Word. If we are wealthy we usually view our money as our savior instead of Jesus Christ. If we have power we think our power is our protector. So it is no wonder that God prefers to work in environments of weakness.
Everything has a cost and the cost of putting secular knowledge above divine knowledge has consequences. So, If you can’t afford God’s consequences then don’t discount and disobey God’s commands.
A popular quote from Jay-Z (😉God can use you inspite of you) says: “If you can’t buy it twice, you can’t afford it”. Scripture says: “For the wages of sin is death …” ( Romans 6:23a KJV ). Seeing as though we only get one Earthly life none of us can afford what sin costs.
