Once Upon a Time in Eden
A Retelling of the Story of Eve's Choice and Adam's Fall
She sits on a rock. Eve weaves a basket. She is the genesis of all things basketry. In her hands, she determines new knots, weaves, shapes, and patterns. It’s been millennia. Suppose you weave baskets yourself; I apologize because you can’t do anything further. She already did it all. Eve loves her baskets, and with each one she makes, she burns one. You see, after you make a few thousand baskets, you logically conclude that some must go. After all, Eden is only so big. But Eve doesn’t mind. She has even begun to design baskets that, when burned, crackle, pop, and unravel in mysterious ways. Her creations prepare for the end. Perhaps she lives vicariously through them.
Elsewhere in the Garden, Adam chisels tablets. He loves the way that stone can crack stone and the techniques used. He only has a few things to write on these tablets, though: the commandments God has given him. They, after all, are the only things important enough to chisel. Thus, he sits there chiseling every day, depicting new patterns of writing for the same words. His work seems monotonous compared to Eve’s, whose baskets are used by the birds for nests and pigs for slop. But he has the most prized art of all, he is sure. Because, after all, he is proud to be God’s puppet.
Eve has finished her basket and she looks over the creek to see Adam chiseling away at a rock about 100 yards from her. As she lays her finished basket down, it takes her no time at all to decide which basket to burn. It’s almost as if the basket she made was meant so that she could burn this specific one. Why not just burn that basket, then, she didn’t need to make a new one? Well… Something inside her tells her that isn’t the way it’s meant to be. There are rules here in Eden, and one of those rules is balance. The idea of it is odd as she thinks of it, but she doesn’t know any other way. So why shouldn’t obedience be the default?
She lays her basket down and begins to prepare a fire. She recently discovered that if she wrapped a vine around the hardwood, she could make a sort of bow and spindle. When she showed Adam this, he simply looked over his shoulder, gazed, and asked, “Why would you need heat in paradise?” He continued his chiseling. She loved him for his simplicity. But she also loves her diversity. You see, she thinks, you can’t truly appreciate the perfect weather of Eden until you’ve slept next to a campfire.
She starts the fire within a few minutes, and as if it's her own child, she gently lays her basket on top of the kindling. Her eyes sparkle as she sees something she spent days weaving slowly collapse. There’s something beautiful in this act, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Because while on the surface she was destroying, it was as if something else was being created entirely. Not a thing, but a memory. She liked to muse that things were to memories as wood is to fire. But, with an eternity ahead of her, would she remember this moment? If she tried as hard as she could to take this moment and internalize it, was she guaranteed to remember? There is so much she has forgotten, and the arbitrariness of the memories left over through the millennia eats at her.
While she sits there, hearing the fire crackle, a snake slithers by her side. She had seen this snake often when making fires to burn her baskets, but this was the first time it ever came so close. “Hi,” Eve softly whispers.
“Hello, Eve.”
“It is nice to meet you.”
“You as well, my dear,” the snake hisses back.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“The fire or the basket?”
“Both.”
“Yes. They’re beautiful. I never thought anyone but me would find beauty in the cycle of existence. You have no cycle, so you have created your own — miraculous”
“What do you mean I have no cycle?” Eve asks curiously.
“You don’t die. You don’t get to experience what it's like to accept your own fate. So, you play god and kill your baskets. Your creations.”
“Is… That wrong?”
“It isn’t wrong. It is just… fascinating.”
They both stare at the fire for a while. Blue, purple, white, red, and orange flames all crackle and flare up together in various patterns. Eve had learnt that some kinds of fruits, when mixed with the water she used to soak and soften the baskets before weaving, would create different colored flames when the basket was burned. Eve, after about ten minutes, turns to the snake and says, “Do you die?”
“Me?” The snake returns. “Oh, no I do not die.”
“Then how do you appreciate the cycle of existence?”
“I kill. I eat. And I give thanks for the sacrifice that those creatures make to nourish me.” The snake responds matter of factly.
Eve pauses for a minute and asks, “I thought it was forbidden to eat meat here in the Garden?”
“Who says that?”
“Well, God said that.”
“Do you agree with Him?”
“I obey Him.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“I don’t have enough information to know whether or not I agree with Him. So, I obey. I have always obeyed.” Eve says, almost discouraged.
“You have not always obeyed.”
“I have!” Eve exclaims.
“Where are your children? Were you not commanded to multiply?”
“I don’t think we are ready to multiply.”
The snake pauses, and in a calm voice asks, “You do not eat meat, nor do you multiply. You will not actively sin, and you will also not actively obey. Is passive obedience all you have?”
Eve, taken aback, looks back at the snake and says, “Well, I weave baskets. I make fires. I tend to the plants. I help my husband.”
“And are any of these things good?”
“Good?” Eve asks back puzzled.
“Yes. Are any of these things good? What do you do that is good?”
“I obey.”
“And that is good?”
Eve, startled by the question responds, “I mean… I guess I don’t know if obedience is good.”
“Then how could you know whether or not the opposite is not good? How do you not know that God doesn’t intend for disobedience?”
“That seems counterintuitive.”
The snake, understanding Eve’s dilemma, as if he has been through it himself asks, “What do you, in your heart, think is good?”
Eve, completely dumbfounded, pauses for a minute. Then for five minutes. Then for ten minutes. The snake patiently waits as they both watch the basket take on a form of ash and as the flames begin to die and smolder. The crackles, finally quieting, all that can be heard in the Garden is the noise of the wind, birds chirping, and Adam chiseling away at stone. The snake is patient, and dares not say a word.
“I don’t know if it is actually good to obey, or weave baskets, or spend time with my husband, or to tend to the Garden, other than that I have been commanded to do it.” She pauses for a few seconds. “But, I don’t even know where to begin to understand what is truly good.”
“Oh but you do,” the snake responds, turning its head towards the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
“That… That we have been forbidden to partake of.”
“By who?”
“My husband, Adam, said that God commanded it before I was created.”
“Did God command it of you, specifically?”
“No.”
The snake, knowing perfectly when to retreat from a conversation once a seed has been planted says, “Well, regardless…”
“I sense what you are getting at; that perhaps that it is good to disobey.” Eve says, stuttering through her words.
“Would God want you to guess what is good?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Let me rephrase, would you want to follow a God that makes you guess what His true intentions are?”
“No.”
“How does God make you feel when you are around Him?” The snake asks with a genuine interest in knowing the answer.
“He makes me feel better than I could ever describe.”
“Is that good?”
“Yes. That is good.”
“Then perhaps He, above all else, wants you to make your own determination as to what is good, by using his presence as a yardstick for truth.”
Eve, looking down, ponders the snake's words, and responds, “So if I were to use the way I feel around God as a basis for making my decisions as to what is good, what would I decide?”
“Yes, that is what I am asking.”
“What this conversation has revealed to me is that I feel the greatest good is to increase my knowledge what is good and what is evil.”
“So, what will you do?” The snake asks.
“I will partake of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.” Eve says boldly.
Without a second thought, she leaves the snake behind, walking past the now charcoal remains of the basket that is now almost completely cool, and towards the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. She plucks a fruit off, and sits down cross-legged under the tree to examine how to consume it. While she has seen this tree and the fruit literally a million times, the way to consume it is still a complete mystery.
The snake slithers over to her and says, “Smash it against a rock.”
As the snake says this, she turns her attention back to the fruit and does as he commands, and the fruit splits open. Inside, seven small distinct, separated portions of the fruit expose themselves too her.
Eve turns to the snake and says, “Oh my goodness, it was so impolite of me. You know my name, but I never caught yours.”
The snake turns its head and asks, “Is it bad to be impolite?”
“I think its good to be polite.” She responds.
“Yes, while you understand good, you do not understand bad. Because of that, you don’t know when you have hurt people, or when you have done something wrong. You are crippled by your ignorance.”
In that moment, Eve looks down at the fruit, and grabs one of the pieces of the fruit and consumes it entirely. Overcome by the tangy sweetness, she closes her eyes, a completely euphoric experience overtaking her. When she opens her eyes, she turns to the snake and says, “Yes, indeed, it is bad to be impolite.” With a smile on her face she asks, “So, what is your name.”
“Lucifer.”
“Well, thank you Lucifer, for making me feel more alive than I have ever felt before.”
“Let me be clear, Eve, I didn’t do this, you did this yourself.”
Eve, not quite processing Lucifer’s words, realizes that she must tell Adam. That surely it would be bad of her not to allow him to partake in this experience with her. “Goodbye Lucifer! I hope to see you soon, but I must go now.” And she runs, fruit in hand, as the snake smiles and slithers away in the opposite direction.
“Adam, Adam!” Eve yells as she approaches him chiseling away at stone the same words over and over again: “Be fruitful and multiply,” and “From every tree of the garden you may surely eat. But from the tree of knowledge, good and evil, you shall not eat.”
Adam, with a bright smile on his face, turns to his lovely wife, and immediately his countenance drops. “Eve, what is that?”
“Adam, it is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but hear me…”
Before she can finish Adam cuts her off saying, “Eve, why? Why would you do this? Do you not know what you have just done to us?” Adam, every fiber of his being moving into a state of extreme panic.
“Adam, I have done nothing to you, for I was the one to partake of it.”
“Yes, but… But, why?”
“Because I knew it was the good thing to do. Adam, do we know that obedience is intrinsically good?”
“Huh?”
“Do we know that obedience is the way. That it is what God truly wants of us.”
“Of course it is! Otherwise, why would he command it.” Adam says, oblivious to any deeper meaning behind Eve’s words.
“But just because he commands it does not necessarily mean that he wants it. Don’t you see? Don’t you see that these two ideas are not mutually exclusive?”
“They are, Eve. They are mutually exclusive. And now we are doomed.”
“No, Adam. I am free.”
“Don’t you see Eve, now we can not multiply as you will be cast out. Our laziness has become our executioner.”
“Adam, in your heart do you not feel that you should partake so that we can multiply? Is that not what is the greater good?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to leave you.” Adam says as he begins to choke up.
“Then come with me.” Tears streaming down Eve’s face.
Adam steps close to her, embraces her, then places his head on her forehead. He looks down, grabs the fruit, and whispers, “I will never leave you. I will follow you to the ends of the earth. Even down to the pits of hell.” And in that moment he grabs a piece of the fruit out of the shell, places the entirety of it in his mouth, chews, and swallows it.
“Adam? Eve? Where are you?” God inquires.
Adam and Eve, hiding behind a bush, show themselves, and Adam says, “We heard Your sound in the garden and we were afraid, for we were naked, and we hid.”
“Oh, my children,” God murmurs. “This pain you feel I know so deeply. But, the dawn of self-awareness and shame was inevitable.”
“It was?” Eve questions.
“Indeed. It was never a question of possibility, but of timing. But, my aspiration that it would be under different circumstances.”
“How so?” Adam probes further.
“Eve, you are truly enlightened. You realized that unwavering obedience, whether to your partner or to me, is not an intrinsic good. Thus, you used your agency and chose to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil for the sake of good. For not even am I the arbiter of good, for good is its own entity and I placed it within you to be able to discern it. And now, because of your actions, so can evil be distinguished within your heart. You have found the greater good, not by rebellion, but through valor. Now, you must depart from the Garden. However, it isn’t retribution; it’s a gesture of love. Beyond these boundaries awaits a vast world for you to discover.”
God then turns to Adam, “But Adam, your choice, though the same, was not motivated by the greater good. You were driven by a desire to remain with Eve. Self-centeredness drove you to partake of the fruit. Due to this, you also must leave, and the earth will now be cursed for your sake.”