Lies the Enemy Tells Us (part 2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8MYiyNwGy4

Forbidden Fruit
Nina Simone

Eve and Adam had a garden everything was great
Till one day a boy says pardon Miss my name is snake
See that apple over yonder if you'll take a bite
You and Adam both are bound to have some fun tonight

Go on and eat forbidden fruit
It's mighty sweet forbidden fruit
It's quite a treat forbidden fruit
Go ahead and taste it you don't wanna waste it

The Lord had said in the beginning everything is free
Except that apple that leads to sinning so let that apple be
But Eve got tempted so she tried it and as all chicks do
Teased her man till he decided he'd just try some too

Go on and eat forbidden fruit
It's mighty sweet forbidden fruit
It's quite a treat forbidden fruit
Go ahead and bite it I bet you'd be delighted

I hate to tell you all what followed the Lord was most upset
Saw them making love and hollered "what have you two et?"
And when they made a full confession the Lord said hmm I see
I guess I'll have to teach you a lesson about not minding me

Go on and eat forbidden fruit
It's mighty sweet forbidden fruit
It's quite a treat forbidden fruit
You all went and did it now you gonna get it

The Lord made Eve Adam's madam have his kids and all
Placed some labor laws on Adam and he made the snake to fall
Ever since the days of Eden folks been sinful my
Nowadays they're even eating apples in their pie

Go on and eat forbidden fruit
It's mighty sweet forbidden fruit
It's quite a treat forbidden fruit
Go ahead and taste it you don't wanna waste it
Oh go ahead and bite it I bet you'd be delighted
You all went and did it now you're gonna get it
Forbidden fruit

If you haven't heard Nina Simone's recording of this song, it's quite catchy. I have posted a link to the original recording (sorry bout the ads).  I heard another version on the radio tonight that has a kind of Samba beat (I think).  If you click on the link and listen while reading the text along with the song you might just find yourself tapping your toes or nodding your head to the song. Music has that effect: we get so caught up in the melody that we miss the message.

It's the same with Scripture. We are so used to hearing the Bible stories that our minds wander. We know about the biblical characters, but we forget that it was real life. We gloss over the fact that the decisions these men and women made at that very moment had consequences, both for them and for us several millennia later. 

On my last post I identified 3 lies that Satan literally told Eve, and that Eve presumably passed on to Adam, that made them disobey God. These three little lies plague us even today:

• You will not die; 
• You can be like God;
• You must experience evil to truly know good.

It won't kill you

I won't rehash what I wrote last time, but the gist of it is that if you take the argument that Satan used to its logical conclusion, it is that death with knowledge is better than life with ignorance.  Blind faith is ignorance, and if God demands your obedience, you are missing out on a lot.

God's perspective is much different.  If Man had just obeyed in the first place, we would still be living in Eden, which was literally Heaven on Earth.  If we learn that lesson today, we would know that obedience to God is always preferable to sinful disobedience.  Unfortunately we usually don't see it until it is too late.  A junkie would not be on skid row if he had not taken that first hit.  An alcoholic would not be in jail charged with DUI if she had never taken that first drink.  The family would not be broken by divorce and bankrupt keeping separate households with court-ordered alimony and child support if the couple had been faithful to each other in the first place.  But when the party is in full swing, and everybody says go ahead, it won't hurt you, it'll be fun--it is tempting, isn't it?

We know better

Satan often tempts us by appealing to our minds.  We all have our own biases and opinions; sprinkle in a few facts, and we think we know it all.  All that stuff in the Bible is just kid's stories, or myths, or outright lies.  This is the 21st Century, for God's sake.  We have all this accumulated knowledge about science and stuff, so God didn't create us.  We don't believe that we are created in His image, so we have self-esteem problems that we try to solve by saying drivel like, "You're the best you that you can be."  What does that even mean?

We believe that our morals trump those of Scripture because our culture says so.  We can have sex with anyone we choose, because we have modern birth control methods that work 99% of the time.  And if it doesn't work, we have abortion, so there won't be any pesky kids to remind us of our past indiscretions.  We don't even have to limit our love-making to the opposite sex, because "you can't choose who you love."  Again, what does that even mean?  If that isn't enough, this generation thinks they can choose among dozens of gender models, and self-identify as one or more of them, without ridicule or shame.

What we forget is that we all will die.  When your dead body is on the exam table at the morgue, the Medical Examiner is going to look at your DNA and say you are biologically either a male or female, based on chromosomal evidence that has been present even before you were born.  When you were in your mother's womb, you were biologically identified as one gender or the other.  

When we die, our spirit lives on.  What will we tell our Maker when we meet Him face to face?  "I knew better than you did how to live my life"?  God told the prophet Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations." (Jeremiah 1:5).  Before a thought even went through your tiny little mind, God knew all about your life, what you would be like, and whether you would choose Him.  King David sang this song to God:  "For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb.  I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." (Psalm 139:13-14).

God knows us.  He knows what is best for us.  All we have to do is trust Him.

How can I know what's right for me if I don't experience it all for myself

Sometimes we accuse God of being unfair.  He made this list of "Thou shalt not's", and we don't even get a say in it.  So we rebel.  We go our own way.  If it works out, great, and if it doesn't, we think we can self-correct.  In the end, we want to be able to say we were in control.

Trouble is, we weren't.  We never were in control.  So many variables are thrown at us, there is no way we can be in control.  We all face a million micro-decisions every minute, and our response is tempered by our education, our family support structure, our finances, our employment status, our culture, our friends, our food choices the day before, our toilet schedule (and whether a clean, sanitary toilet is even available to us), our hunger or thirst at any given moment, the way we feel physically, our emotions, whether there was coffee available that morning, how we slept last night (and with whom), the weather, the traffic, the news--the list goes on and on. And we think we can control any of it?

The Bible says, "Yet  you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.  You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away." (James 4:14).  We are all ships on a vast ocean, tossed to and fro by the winds and the waves.  We can trim the sails and turn the rudder, but what good will that do in a tsunami?  If we are honest with ourselves, we should admit that we can only control the choices we make, and that we will ultimately be judged by the outcome of those choices.

If God demands an account for our actions, we have no defense.  If we say, "Nobody's perfect," His response is "I AM."  If we say "I did the best I could," He will answer, "I gave you my Word, did you refer to it at all when making your decisions each day"  If we say we had a hard life and we weren't as well off or as protected as Billy Bob or Sue Ellen, he will bring the conversation back to us and ask, "But what about you?  Did I not give you all you needed for life and godliness?  You didn't have to die to know that life was preferable to death, did you? "

We may feel hopeless, but we shouldn't.  God made a way for all of us to find Him.  "All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him." (Isaiah 53:6).  No matter what you have done, He still loves you.  No matter what choices you have made, he sent His Son to die for you.  Jesus took all of our guilt and shame on Himself, and was punished severely for it.  Because of His sacrificial death and resurrection, we can have a hope for new life, too.  We don't have to go to hell to know it is somewhere we would not want to spend eternity.  I am grateful He made a way for us, if we will follow Him.