To Apple that Adam and Eve Ate

I blame you. 

 

By itself, as a concept or theory, free will is not that appealing. The “free” part sounds great, but it’s the consequences later that no one gets excited about.

Try selling knowledge and free will without a prop. If the devil showed up that day in the Garden of Eden, snake-skinned, smelling like bees, and empty handed, he would have gotten nowhere. He slides up to Eve first says, “Walk with me.” She does.

“Eve, don’t you think the Lord is a know-it-all? He’s all, ‘Here’s a fish. This is a horse. These are plants but some are poisonous. You’ll have to figure that out as you go.’ And he creates this whole world--do you have any idea how big this place is??--and he wants you to take care of it! Do you know how many insects there are? How are you ever gonna manage all this? You haven’t even invented paper yet.”

“Look, I’m not trying to badmouth the man. I’m really not, but the way I see it, you ought to have some kind of say in all of this. You should be able to disagree--in a friendly way, of course--if you would really rather just go lay on that fabulous beach. Or take a hike. You should be able to say to God, ‘Not today! I got things to do!’”

But she’s not really buying it. She likes studying the insects and she’s named all the horses. Adam is busy with rivers and rain and ice; he’s fascinated with the water. So what more would they want? Goofing off for days on end sounds boring. She says no and walks away.

His sales pitch would never work.

But with a prop, he has something to show her, something hard to resist. As they talk, he curls himself down and around a tree branch; he rests his head just above that perfectly shaped apple, the one with the shine underneath the red, the one she can’t forget about, even when she sleeps.

“This apple, for example,” he says. “You want to try it. You know already what it would taste like, the way it breaks in your mouth, the salt in it, the sweet. And he says you can’t have even this small thing? One bite? After all you do for him? How can that be? If he’s your father, doesn’t he want you to be happy?”

She reaches up. She doesn’t even hesitate. For all the work I do? One bite.