What If It Wasn’t Disobedience?

I woke up with great anticipation. Today was the first official day of silence. The only talking I would do each day would be with my spiritual director. I would meet with him in the morning, and he would give me the assigned passages to pray through and be my guide through whatever presented itself that I might need help digesting.

I had been briefly introduced to Father Randolph at the social the night before. My first impression was skeptical at best.

He was a professor of mathematics at a Jesuit college. That was one of the first things I learned about him, and I am a little embarrassed by how much I did with that information. A mathematician. A man who spends his days in a world where every problem has a right answer and you can prove it on the board. He sat stiffly. He spoke in a monotone. There was nothing touchy-feely about him, nothing particularly warm, no signal at all that he was going to meet me anywhere near where I was hoping to be met.

Because here was my concern. That he would be in his head as much as I was in mine. That was the entire problem I had brought with me. I did not need another person who could think about God. I have been able to think about God my whole life, at length and in detail, and it had not gotten me where I wanted to go. What I desperately needed was someone who could help get me out of my head and into my feelings, into my body and my soul. And judging from the way he sat and the sound of his voice, I could not pick up the faintest indication that he had ever traveled that road of embodiment himself. So I wondered how in the world he was going to be able to “spiritually direct” me there.

I decided that I would trust God and find out.

The day’s assignment was straight out of the Spiritual Exercises book. I wondered how I would do with the first week, which was all about feeling the depth of our sin. I wanted to be open to the process, but it would be interesting to see where it all flowed; over the last few years, I’d found myself being drawn more and more to the grace of God and less and less to the fear of His wrath.

The God I was not sure I liked

My dread arose when I saw that one of the assigned passages for the day was from the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel. I couldn’t stomach this kind of passage anymore, even though it was ostensibly about God’s mercy!

Basically, the prophet has God saying, “I’m going to be merciful to you, but only because I look bad in the eyes of the other nations. I’m going to wash you clean and put a new spirit in you, so that you will obey me better this time. I will be your God, you filthy, wicked people, you. I’ll restore your land and stop the famines. Now, we’ll see what the neighbors say and whose God is better. But don’t you ever forget how deplorable and detestable you have been.”

I wish I was exaggerating, but I’m not. The last line, word for word, is, “I am not doing this because you deserve it. O my people of Israel, you should be utterly ashamed of all you have done!”

Alright, already. I got it. We sinned. Disobeyed. Served other gods. We deserved punishment, not blessings. But, really, were we supposed to like this God? Or believe he loved us? I pondered this scripture as long as I could tolerate it before going for a cleansing walk in nature.

It was only 2:00, and the day already felt long. How in the world would I fill this time? And how in the world was I going to pray for four hours every day? On top of that, walking and meditating and journaling didn’t count among those four hours. I didn’t think I would miss social media much, although I’d thought of picking up my phone and checking for texts several times. I missed connecting with those I love, and it had only been one day without my phone! I knew I wouldn’t miss knowing what was going on in the world. It reminded me too much of the Old Testament, anyway. Lately, everything on the news and social media was about war and power struggles and “us against them.”

It was finally time for dinner. It was just us 30-day-ers. As we all sat in the dining hall, together but silently and alone at separate tables, I felt a sweet sense of communion with all the retreat participants. Like, “I’m with you. We’re all in this together. I hope this is all you hoped it would be. I’m cheering you on from over here!”

In the silence and stillness that had already begun to descend and settle, the food tasted like bright colors as I ate. I loved the way the butternut-squash soup felt like a cozy blanket on my tongue and a warm hearth down my throat. As I drank my water, I could almost feel myself squatting beside a mountain stream, cupping and slurping the liquid ice from the melting snow above. Slowing down to savor each bite, each moment was already having such a lovely, heightening effect on my senses.

Looking for the why

I had one more assigned passage to pray before the end of the day: the first few chapters in Genesis. As I read, I wondered if the story of creation and the eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil wasn’t only a story to illustrate the consequences of disobedience to God. I found it mildly interesting that, in Sunday school, it was emphasized to us that Adam and Eve disobeyed God and were thus punished and banished from the Garden of Eden. But as I looked underneath God’s decree not to eat of that one particular tree, I wondered about the “why” behind that mandate. As a parent, I always had a reason for any rules I imposed on my children. I wanted them to obey, but not because I was on a power trip and would punish them if they didn’t honor my authority. It was because I loved them and wanted to spare them some kind of hurt or negative consequence that I myself had probably learned the hard way. Wouldn’t the reason God told Adam and Eve not to eat from that tree be just as important, if not more important, than simply establishing his dominance and need for control, even if it was for their own good?

So, as I prayed through this story I had read and heard hundreds of times, I looked for the “why” behind the blatant prohibition. What was He wanting to teach them, aside from unquestioned obedience? As the account goes, he creates them and sets them in the midst of this beautiful garden with two important trees in the middle: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He tells them they can enjoy and eat of any of the trees in the garden, except for the latter one, and if they do, they will surely die. Along comes Satan in the form of the serpent, who plants doubt in Eve’s mind by saying, “You will not certainly die. God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

It had never occurred to me until today that God was fine with them eating from the tree of life and living forever, he just didn’t want them to eat of the fruit that would open their eyes to start judging good and evil. Apparently, only God was safe enough to trust with that particular power. When humans start judging, separation enters the picture. Separation from the bliss of the garden with God. Separation of good from evil. Holy from unholy. From that point on, we felt the need to cover our nakedness because we judged our most vulnerable selves as unworthy, so we covered ourselves in shame. There was no longer union with God because there was shame and its attempts to hide between us. No wonder God didn’t want us eating from that tree.

Why had we been taught the primary lesson from this story was obedience? It seemed to me it was about the danger of trusting ourselves to hold the power of judging what is good and what is bad. Look where that had gotten us! From this point on, we no longer could simply be who we were. We judged some parts of ourselves as good, and then we hid and covered the parts we thought were bad. We no longer walked naked and unashamed in the garden. We could no longer simply be who we were created to be. In Adam and Eve, I recognized my resistance to accepting life as it came. I wanted to judge everything as good or bad, so that I could get more of the good and avoid the bad. And I wore myself out trying to be good and not bad. I was covered in shame and hiding under layers of attempts to cover that shame.

As I finished reading the creation passage for the last time, I noticed it ends with, “Then God saw everything that He had made and indeed it was very good.” It isn’t until the fruit of judgment enters the human race that we are told “sin” enters the world. I don’t think we were ever supposed to judge. I think we were supposed to trust that it was as God said: all good. It all belongs. Once again, I was learning the profundity of the theme song, “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have, the facts of life.”

Next week, barefoot on the labyrinth, I look down at my own feet and see my father's. And the leather belt I had not thought about in years.Was there a story you knew by heart that cracked open one day and showed you something else? I would love to hear what you saw. And whatever else this stirred up, that is what the comments are for. I read every single one, and Thursday is where I pull up a chair and really answer.