I Don’t Have All the Answers

In the introduction to the book Life After Death by William Landon, he lays the foundation of a discussion of the actualities of the human soul, particularly life after death. He addresses ‘problematic verses’ and apparent inconsistencies that we will or have encountered in reading the scriptures. When this occurs, we need simply to wait and see how the Lord brings the needed clarity. This will prevent us from either throwing the bible out or trying to make things fit to our way of thinking!

I too am one of those many followers of Christ who is living more and more in the realm of not needing or having to know or have ALL the answers. We will receive the understanding from God when we need it. As Jesus said to his disciples, “There are many things which I desire to share with you, but you cannot bear them yet.”

In this dynamic tension of things not gelling or fitting together, our very real adversary the Devil is only too quick to oblige us. To quote Bill, “One of the ways Satan tries to trip us up is by giving us knowledge we are not equipped to constructively handle. This is what happened in the Garden of Eden: You shall not surely die, ‘the serpent said to the woman. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.” (Genesis 3:4)

“How Satan trapped humanity through the temptation of Adam and Eve in eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was to get our ancestors to take on an understanding they were not ready to receive constructively. The lie of the serpent was that Adam and Eve were ready to receive the knowledge of good and evil. In reality, the fall came as a result of humanity taking on a kind of knowledge that they did not have the right kind of life to use properly (a spiritual life and not just a physical/psychological life)." Case in point: my wife once heard that if a child is exposed to pornography at an early age when s/he is not emotionally or psychologically mature, that the child’s nervous system can actually become permanently impaired. If we are to subscribe to the truth that God is love, we must believe that he knew, in his love for them, that Adam and Eve were not yet ready to receive the knowledge of good and evil.

As a side thought here, later in Genesis 3 God says, “Behold the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.”

The kicker here in my thinking is that the knowledge of good and evil was not evil, but it was the motive behind obtaining it apart from God’s timing. There was NO need to be like God, but there was a need to be one with Him, to be joined to Him.
That knowledge they obtained via the serpent was a loaded gun so to speak without, as Bill alluded, the ‘right kind of life’ to handle it.

My pondering on all of this has significant ramifications far removed from the Edenic story. In the instant, click-of-a-mouse knowledge-infused Internet-charged world in which we live, is there this same propensity within our flesh to think that through obtaining ‘knowledge’ we can circumvent having to wait or trust God to prepare us for that which we need to know?

Rich