In Genesis 2:9 we are introduced to two trees in the Garden of Eden entirely different from all other fruit-bearing trees—“the tree of life and the tree of the experiential knowledge of good and evil.” A divine ban was placed on the latter tree (2:17). The reason the word experiential is inserted is to remind us of the Hebrew meaning of “to know.” It means “to know experientially.”

Of the other trees, God said, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden” (2:16). In his hospitable environ, a bounty of food was available for man (‘adam)—more than enough. We are reminded of a name of God—El Shaddai—the God who nourishes so much that He is always more than enough. The sufficiency was such that man would never need to eat from the banned tree. But the tree served a divine purpose in its being banned.

Trusting God

Standing there, the banned tree allowed man to be what we know now as the state of being human—apart from God. God who made us for Himself also put within us the capacity to choose his rule through faithful obedience. Our Maker was worthy of our full trust and devotion, but we could do otherwise. Thus, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the testing ground for our faith in Him, our trust in his Word demonstrated by faithfulness to his commands.

What we should understand first is the positive aspect of this tree. It is not only about our freedom to choose, which we will focus on today, it is about our faith in God, our trust in Him above any other voice of reason. Adam would see the tree that offered him the possibility of unfaithfulness, but he would decide, “No, I am trusting God above all other voices and desires.” Faith always—from the beginning—was the basis of our abiding relationship with God even as it is today.

Two “Metaphorical” Trees

Now the two trees that are distinguished by the LORD from all other natural trees are placed in the middle of the garden. They are the centerpieces of the garden. To understand them and their purpose, we must approach them metaphorically. They are tied to the purposes of God and the psyche of man—“pleasing to the eye and good for food” (2:9). They stir something within man’s mind—pleasure and appetite.

Our concern at this moment is only with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But we need to understand something about the metaphorical use of the word “tree” in reference to these two particular trees.

Metaphorically, a tree is something that belongs to the earth. Though it appears lofty to the eye, its origins are lowly and contains no breath of life. It is silent, without speech. The tree makes no pleas to man, teaches no truth beyond the fact it exists, has a name and bears fruit. It may provide shelter beneath its lofty boughs and man may harvest its fruit. What trees do is to help provide an environment for man to live amidst them. Of course, for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, man is forbidden to harvest it. It would show his lack of faith and devotion to God’s Word.

The tree of life offered deathlessness—immortality. Animals and man were so attached to their own lives that they were unaware of death in the Garden. By the very nature of the existence of the tree of life the possibility of death loomed near if man chose it by choosing to act in disobedience, i.e., as independent of his Creator. Man—male and female—in Genesis 1-2 was yet untested to determine if he would choose eternal life—to eat of the tree of life— or choose a temporal path bent on dying, i.e., to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil addressed the freewill issue of man, the latent tendency within his psyche to seek a certain kind of knowledge apart from God—a knowledge independent of God, an autonomous knowledge where man can not only choose, but judge for himself what is in his best interests.

The Fruit of Autonomy from God

What is the metaphor of this fruit? Fruit is the product, the result of a tree. It is the tree’s offering to the eye and appetite. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil offered a certain kind of fruit—a certain kind of result—that distinguished man from God. To eat it man would be autonomous, a separated man (‘adam) from perceived dependency on God. He would be dependent still, but he wouldn’t believe it any more. This kind of experiential knowledge would puff him up with a false sense of reality and human potential.

Now we must recall that this disobedient, unfaithful act of separation from God would be man’s choice, not God’s design. God offered him the potentiality to separate from his rule to seek self-rule and self-mastery, to separate from God’s purpose to have his own way. Isn’t that the goal of independence, of self-autonomy? Isn’t that the crux of possessing freewill—the will to obey or to disobey? Isn’t the temptation then to be autonomous, arms folded against God and the world, rather than to be submissive to his will?

The issue is about who controls my life, my mind, my body. And your life. Since it is your life, your mind, your body, don’t you have the right to rule and determine what is in you best self-interest? God says the tree of the experiential knowledge of good and evil stands before man bearing forbidden fruit. The ban is necessary for us to break so we may be self-empowered to overrule God, to become the master of our own destiny and fate.

What is Good and Evil?

The tree has a certain kind of fruit—experiential knowledge of good and evil. The phrase “good and evil” is dualistic. In Hebrew, the word “good” [tov] generally means that which is complete or finished. In our Romance languages we generally use the word “good” to describe a moral view about something. This is not the case here. On the other side, the word “evil” [ra] is to do that which works against the “good”—that which is complete or finished. It means “to unravel” or “undo” what is being built or is already finished. It works in the opposite direction of that which builds towards a completion. For example, an evil wind is a destructive, violent wind that tears down what was being built or what was finished. Evil is violent towards creation because it unravels its progress in two ways: restraint and destruction.

In the cosmic story of creation in Genesis one, the creation of the heavens and of man were never declared “good” [tov]. Man was blessed by God rather than be declared “good.” Why are these two creations—the heavens (a place of angelic beings) and man (male and female) not “good”? God allowed for angels in heaven to choose to submit to his rule and humans on earth to choose to submit to his rule. Where choice is yet undetermined it is an unfinished state and, therefore, is not yet “good”—complete.

The Tree of the Autonomous Self

When the serpent appeared to Woman in the garden to tempt her, and through her to tempt her husband, the issue was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—nothing more or less. Would she reach for her autonomy and become self-aware, or would she remain in her state of submissiveness and remain only God-aware?

At the moment of temptation the woman, as was the man, were only God-aware. We have no indication, as strange as this may sound, that man neither the male nor the female had a high degree of self-awareness independent of God. Their sense of self was inextricably linked to their experiential relationship with God given them by default when they were created from earth’s dust. God blessed them at the moment they breathed air and became living beings. This is how they knew Him—as their Creator who blesses them. Everything they were and had was a blessing from God. They were absolutely God-aware. Their defined themselves absolutely and completely by their dependent, submissive relationship to Him.

What’s at stake here in the serpent’s temptation is humankind becoming self-aware to such a high degree that they perceive themselves, though wrongfully, as independent and autonomous persons. Self-awareness, as we understand it today, by definition requires self-attention and self-focus that sees oneself as an autonomous person independent from others, including God.

The Tree of Reasoning and Philosophy (the World’s Wisdom)

What the serpent offered was reasoning powers apart from God. This was freely available to them, he said, if they would eat the forbidden fruit of the experiential knowledge of good and evil. Reasoning powers, he promised, would leap within their heads. They could think for themselves for the first time without utter dependency on God. Why, he opined, they would become like God.

Independent knowledge is based on our own reasoning powers to think for ourselves, to judge what is around us according to our own set of criteria, and to determine for ourselves what is morally good or evil, depending on our own sense of what is in our best interests. We call this kind of reasoning powers philosophy. Philosophy is the world’s wisdom. It is apart from truth because it is autonomous knowledge. It redefines truth to conform to worldly wisdom. We can judge things to be absolute or to be relative. It really makes no difference in the end as long as we determine ourselves our own standards of logic based on our own reasoning powers.

The Rise of Man

The original act of sin is traditionally referred to in classical theology as “the Fall of man.” A “fall” is was not, at least in the perspective of the man in the Garden. Rather, a heightened self emerged. What was discovered by eating the banned fruit? Self-interests. Their attendant needs. Desires and imagination apart from God. Mental powers to reason for ourselves what seems to us to be best for our interests. All gave rise to a new humanity independent and autonomous from God and others. Self was discovered apart from God.

Recall the woman’s words to God when she was called to accountability for her hiding from the presence of God. Our English text reads something like this: “The serpent deceived me (or beguiled me)” (Genesis 3:13). The way the text reads literally in Hebrew is as follows: “The serpent lifted me up [hishi’ani] and I did eat.” What does she mean “lifted her up”? No repentance is in her tone now. She may be thinking that God is angry with her and wants to put her down or, in her opinion, keep her “down” where she thought she was before she ate. After all, she’s learned to think with higher levels of rationality apart from God. The woman’s response to God’s question seems to be self-defense, blaming God instead of self or the serpent for her actions.

God will show her in his next statement that the serpent is hardly one who will “lift her up” from now on, as she thinks of herself in this new way. Remember that up to this time the serpent is considered to be upright. But notice in the text that the LORD responds not to the woman directly but to the serpent:

Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly And you will eat dust all the days of your life (3:14).

What we have is the furtherance of “the Fall of Satan.” He will eat the dust from which God created man.

The rise of man to his/her autonomous self where self-expression rules cost the serpent his uprightness. But it also cost us our uprightness. We did not fall to the dust of the earth like the serpent, but we became bent out of our upright state. The word for being bent out of shape or to become twisted in Hebrew is ‘avon which, translated into English, is the word “iniquity.” We became people bent and twisted. Our bodies didn’t lose their upright look, just our minds. We didn’t lose our minds in eating the banned fruit, just the soundness of our minds.

If we are to ever become upright again in our minds, we cannot look to the animals or the serpent to help us. None are upright in their minds, let along their bodies. The last of the upright animals was the serpent equipped with human speech. Now he crawls on his belly in the dust.

How then can we become upright? Is there any hope for healing and restoration? The answer is that we may never become upright again in our minds. We are hopelessly bent out of shape. Religion cannot reshape us. Philosophy can only offer a way of thinking about ourselves to accommodate our misshapen minds. Politics can reshape the world about us, but it fails to reshape the human mind. Education is a necessary part of living to shape us for living in the world, but it cannot shape us to live beyond slavery to our bent-out-of-shape, iniquitous minds. Our bigheads of self-awareness, pride, self-reliance in an attempt at self-mastery give us only a warped vision of reality.

Autonomous Knowledge Makes for Big Headedness

Paul speaks of this autonomous knowledge as a knowledge that puffs up a person—a knowledge grounded in one’s pride. What becomes puffed up is the head—the artificial way we think of ourselves and our high-mindedness. We rise, puff up to a new level of self-awareness, but It is not true knowledge, that is, it is not knowledge that is truth. What becomes puffed up also deflates. It’s a false sense of self that fails to save us from our actual selves.

We see this in the description God gives of painful childbirths the woman must endure to procreate life. God said: “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children” (3:16). Physically, this means the head of a child would be larger than the birth canal. Because the child within the uterus has a bigger head in proportion to the delivery canal, its bigheadedness will cause much increased pain. Birthing is metaphorically the story of our big heads—our puffed up knowledge in our minds that expands our sense of reality beyond truth. Our bigheadedness causes much pain in the natural process of separation from our mother as well as to those we live about throughout our lives.

If you remember the quest represented in Abraham Maslow’s (1908-1970) hierarchy of human needs, he said the highest need was self-actualization. (The five levels of needs he described in ascending order were physiological needs, safety needs, belonging needs, esteem needs and self-actualization). Everything he said about human beings was that we are in a quest for what we are not yet but want to become. He called this our highest need—to actually become what we see ourselves to ultimately be. God is not in the picture. Just man and woman alone, finding themselves. What is the goal of self-actualization? Where does it take us, but to a lofty pinnacle of puffed up knowledge. A self-actualized self-image is a bloated self-image. It is alien to our human design that called us to be children of God. Rather, self-actualization sets up the dream that we are like God—his colleague, his counterpart, his fraternal relative. Let me say that this quest is the quest of human pride to rid us of our sense of awe before God. Further, it is the collective effort represented in philosophy and psychology to rid us of our sense of shame (responsibility) and guilt (accountability). What self-actualization actually is, therefore, is self-justification.

Autonomous Knowledge and the Quest for Anonymity

What eating of the tree of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was to give us our freedom from God, but enslavement to ourselves, to our mortal will. We got autonomous knowledge based on our rise or uplift to self-awareness beyond God. Our quest for another kind of knowledge independent of our knowing God separated us from Him, alienating us from our Maker and Benefactor. Our new knowledge not only made us ashamed before each other (“they realized they were naked” – 3:7), we hid from God (“and they hid from the LORD God among the trees” – 3:8). It distinguished us as a new kind of humanity not only with reasoning powers for self-determination, but gave us shame, guilt and a profound knowledge of our lowliness before God who we now know is to be feared with reverence and awe.

This high sense of awareness of something greater, far greater that is beyond our existence and control gave birth to a sense of morality and piety. Such piety should lead to repentance, not hiding. Hiding is the opposite of repentance. Autonomy and anonymity combine in an effort to hide among the other trees of our environment—to withdraw into our wood-made homes and wood-made cities and attempt to become anonymous—to take flight from God and others who remind us of our nakedness.

Anonymity for man and woman was to get lost in the trees—within our own environment—away from any accountability before God and his overshadowing rule. If we lose our anonymity and are called into accountability, we blame others for our enlightenment about our naked selves. The man replied to God saying, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree” (3:12). In turn, the woman gave this account: “The serpent lifted me up” when you didn’t (3:13).

In we stand in the face of God, our autonomous knowledge—that experiential knowledge of a high state of self-awareness—causes flight (mobility) and the quest for anonymity. This is one reason cities are refuges amidst civilization where people can be mobile and anonymous, without accountability before God.

Self-Esteem Drives towards the Idealized Self

When man and woman ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil something dramatic happened that we now take for granted. They created within their imagination an idealized self that they envisioned they would become if they did the right things and the right things came their way. They saw the gulf between their real selves and their idealized selves, but sought to close the gap through self-help initiatives. If they could get the right break, if the cards fell the right way, if their ship came in, if fate would just favor them, then they would be a success—proud of their lives and their achievements of an idealized self. Or if they work hard enough, till the ground long enough, water the dry earth long enough, then they could make it on their own. But God cursed the ground they walked on, lived on, worked on. They raised thorns and thistles better than any other crop (3:18). Work was not enough to fulfill their idealized self. Their joy in labor met resistance, unpredictable weather, and failed crops. Struggle became the way of life, and a stiff upper lip was one of the conditions for survival on your own.

Our sense of self-esteem is measured against an idealized self we hold in our imagination. An ambitious, positive-minded person measures his or her present reality against his idealized self and says, “If I can conceive it, I can achieve it.” At the other end of the emotional spectrum, a depressed person measures reality against his or her idealized self and says, “I conceived it, failed to achieve it because of so many circumstances, and am now a failure without hope of recovery.” Both are yet blind to what is reality. They live off of what is not and is unachievable in the end. Those who meet their goals find it wasn’t what they were hoping to find. Those who miss their goals think that others or their lack of ability stopped them.

We think of Abraham Maslow’s famous chart of the hierarchy of needs, the ultimate one being the actualized self. Or we think of Hinduism’s goal of Nirvana where self is fully absorbed. Or consider Eric Fromm’s book on psychotherapy, Ye Shall Be as Gods.

What is reality? Reality is that God made us to be under his rule and to be submitted to it. Reality is that the kingdom—God’s rule—is still offered to us, but not through the idealized self. We must abandon the idealized self and let it die. Jesus came with this message, “Repent, turn around from your own ways and standards of achievement and success, and receive the kingdom of God within you” (cf. Matthew 4:17 et al). It is not a message of suicide where you kill yourself to achieve God’s good. This is folly. What must die is the motivation towards an idealized, autonomous self. Every bruised ego, every wounded spirit, every shamed person, every guilty individual, every angry person, every defensive person is a result of measuring oneself against an idealized self that is illusive, deceptive and far from the truth of what God’s best is for you.

Our desires, passions, imaginations and will became bent towards controlling our relationships and destiny. We became seekers of self-aggrandizement, self-pleasure, self-glory instead of God’s. We developed an illusive self-image of an idealized self from where we set our standards. As the Apostle Paul said of himself, “I die daily.” What does he mean? He put to death his idealized, autonomous, flesh-driven ego. He recognized it as a deception, illusive dream that never satisfies and misguides. Instead, Paul said to all of us, “Die to yourself so you may live in Messiah Jesus the abundant life.” This is the message of the Bible—and it’s God’s message to you today.

Cares of the World

The cares of this world detract us from submitting to God’s way. Not because they are evil but because these cares are cares of the idealized self. Cares of the world turn our attention from living forever through repentance and submission to God’s rule (his kingdom) to living well through our human efforts. Living well is no substitute for living forever.

In our busy lives focused on the cares of this world is a brave new revelation about us. We find that we possess an innate sense that what the world offers us is worthy of spending our lives to care for it. We run the race of caring for what helps us achieve a higher sense of esteem and self-worth. What we discover is that through our concerns for and care of the world, we are simply saying that the world offers us a better life than what God offers us. The taste of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil remains in our mouths.

When we give our lives to God in repentance for our sense of self-autonomy—our sin--and the acts represented by it—our sins, we learn that the cares of this world are designed to distract us from our divine calling in life. If we don’t discover the truth about why God made us for his glory, we remain in a wild, restless, state of mental and emotional misery. The only antidote is self-deception—to deny that we are most miserable people—or repentance before God that restores our joy in living. There is no middle ground.

Humanism—the philosophy of self-autonomy—argues skillfully and cleverly for our self-interests. Humanism is the philosophical outcome of eating the forbidden fruit. And this helps us understand the serpent better in his speech about gaining wisdom by eating the banned fruit. Satan is ultimately a philosopher—the father of philosophy, chief advocate of humanism, high priest of human wisdom. He is the fountain of the wisdom of this world that is contrary to God.

When the woman and her husband ate of the fruit, they did not alter themselves physically in this tragic event. They were still human. But they changed incredibly within themselves. Their eyes were opened from within themselves to understand what they did not know before. They were naked. They discovered their vulnerabilities. They were unguarded, exposed, and what they saw in their self-consciousness was that they were ugly, that is, they were anything but divine. What they rose to was a higher level of self-awareness, the fundamental necessity for the development of philosophy and humanism.

An inner craving for ultimate justification without shame and guilt was sought. The man and woman sewed fig leaves with a needle—the first invention—to rebuild their world. It was a modest beginning about modesty. It was a way of hiding shame without God. It was an attempt at morality without repentance. One person did not use the needle to sew the fig leaf covering. Both man and woman did it together—“they sewed fig leaves together” (3:7). It was their way to offer a new moral man and a new moral woman. Through external adornment through their fashions of clothes they attempted to overcome their physical ugliness. Have you ever met anyone fully happy with the appearance of his or her body? Our bodies bother us. They reflect on us on the inside. If the outside isn’t altogether lovely, how can the inside be? So the wearing of fig leaves sewn together by the use of a needle—the mother of all inventions—did more than hide their physiques, it was a cover-up of shame—something felt inside the human psyche. It was a statement that my good, moral works make me a moral person.

The Spirit of Antichrist

Meanwhile, the search for the idealized self remains elusive, illusionary and ultimately deceptive. We seek counseling, help, read self-help books and try to stir our imagination that we can achieve what we can conceive. If we get the breaks—that is, if fate favors us, if luck happens—then we can be better persons. If we set rules and obey them, then we can be moral and upright. If we can just love everybody and not judge anyone, maybe the world will be a better place. Optimistic philosophy, however, is distracted time and again by the face of an out-of-control world and a self-understanding that tends towards hopelessness. Optimistic philosophy fades for pessimistic philosophy. Existentialist worldviews try to rescue the crumbling state of the idealized man without success. Nihilism, the philosophy of nothingness, evades the dark soul.

Because the humanistic vision of mankind is an idealized self apart from dependency on God, we may come to a better understanding of what the New Testament calls “the spirit of antichrist.” Most of us have heard about a revelation of the Antichrist in the last days before the return of the Messiah to earth. In the Antichrist the idealized self we seek apart from God is projected into a futuristic, living super human—a perfect ideal human.

The Emergence of the Antichrist

When all philosophy fails and the prospects of humanism’s lofty vision is at its bleakest, darkest hour, a towering figure of apocalyptic proportions emerges to save the idealized man. He will be a man determined to reconstitute a humanistic world order that rejuvenates the longings and passions in darkened souls who sought for self-enlightenment but failed. He will show them the highest order of humanism, the best within the ideals of the autonomous self. This futuristic man is already anticipated in the Bible as Antichrist. He is the idealized man in flesh with a vision for mankind set apart from God.

We encounter this ideal, fully autonomous, self-actualized person in the apocalyptic writings of the apostle John—in the Book of Revelation. Messiah Jesus offers a new humanity through faith in Him, repentance and renunciation of the world’s evil systems. The Antichrist, however, attracts the maddening crowds of the earth as he proclaims a philosophical message of humanistic revival for all mankind, not through repentance, but motivational speeches about self-actualization of the human potential. While he offers peace, that is a sense of wholeness to the humanistic dream, the true humanity of self-awareness ultimately is revealed as deadly violence against any who teach repentance before God. The masses are wooed by his illusions. They follow him as the savior of mankind.

Meanwhile, the spirit of antichrist is already at work in this world. John wrote in his first letter these words, “ . . . as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come” (John 2:18). Later in his letter (3:21-24) he explains:

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God . . . This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Messiah Jesus has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

What then is the spirit of antichrist but the denial of our full humanity in the Messiah Jesus, insisting instead for the autonomy of the human race independent from God through self-awareness? It’s a distorted knowledge based on philosophy and human wisdom apart from the revelation of God to us in his Son Jesus and by his Spirit. Antichrist, that is, the spirit of antichrist is already here. It is the spirit of human mastery over the elements of the world, over each other and over ourselves.

The “Fall” of Mankind

Traditional theology speaks of the fall of man in the Garden of Eden when contextually we find instead the rise of mankind to autonomy, mobility and the quest for anonymity. What is needed for mankind to become whole again is a fall from autonomy. This is behind the reason the Bible teaches that pride comes before a fall. The autonomous person as represented in our first parents does not so much show a fall from grace as traditional theology terms it, but rather a spiritual and prideful rise above dependency upon and intimacy with God. In the rise to a higher consciousness of self-awareness, pride rose up as the new paradigm for humanity. What is needed for everyone is a fall from autonomy, a fall from self-independence, a fall from the judgmental self so prone to detach everyone and everything from us. This requires repentance and humility, values opposite our so-called higher enlightenment.

Pride comes before a fall. Two kinds of falls or collapses: (1) failure to achieve the idealized self and its resultant crash of one’s ego and (2) repentance and humility before God. The first is the consequence of delusion and remains within its self-destructive paradigm. The second is a proactive position by those who have a revelation of their own sin and its bitter consequences and seek to return to the way of God.

The apostle Paul experienced this fall from autonomy. It began on the road to Damascus in a blinding confrontation with the Risen Messiah. It began there, but continued throughout his life. He called it the struggle between walking (living) after the flesh—the idealized self—and walking in the Spirit of Messiah Jesus. We see this in the curious retrogression of his self-descriptions from the earliest to the last letters. Galatians, his first letter, has him identifying with a title, that of an apostle. Later he writes and considers himself an apostle, but the least among them. Then he refers to himself as a saint and then the least among the saints. Eventually he calls himself the chief of sinners. Is this progress or retrogression? It depends on how we look at it. It is progress towards the collapse of autonomous knowledge that creates the autonomous self. It is retrogression as far as the ideals of humanism are concerned. It is post-humanism in its finest form.

1 Corinthians 13 – It’s About the Autonomous Self!

You may think “the love chapter” of the Bible is about lovingkindness. Rather, while lovingkindness is the standard of measurement of self, it is about the folly of the autonomous self and its need for a collapse. In verses 1-3, the first paragraph, seven times Paul refers to himself as “I”—as ego. In the same three verses he mentions love only three times. Then in verse 4-8 he reels off the word “love” a dozen times without mentioning himself. Then he reels off 14 self-references as “we,” “I,” and “my” without a single reference to the word “love.” Finally, he mentions love twice in the last sentence: “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

What about Paul’s ego and the ego of those believers he embodies in his references to “we”? Does it remain in the end? No. It collapses. Every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus is LORD.