I had always thought God’s first prohibition in the Garden of Eden was a bit arbitrary. Why was it about eating? Couldn’t God just as validly have forbade any another activity—like talking, walking, or drawing? 

Or, if the point was to prohibit Adam and Eve from potentially dangerous activities (of which foraging for fruit can be one), God could have made swimming, mountain-climbing, or fire-making off limits instead. 

Why did it have to be eating fruit?

What if the forbidden act had to be something that looked good, and which—in another context—was good, but would be deadly in this one? Further, what if it couldn’t be something they could’ve known on their own, but something about which they had no option but to trust? 

In other words, humanity had to obey God’s command to avoid something that otherwise seemed good for the simple reason that it was God saying so. And I can’t think of any other way God could’ve better loved His daughter in the Garden.

Nightshade Just Sounds Bad

Our oldest daughter has loved tomatoes ever since we introduced her to that peeled, raw fruit from our garden as a weaning food her first summer. (We called her “Denethor Baby” at mealtimes, if you’re one for whom the Middle Earth moniker provides a visual.)

The month of July is when our garden begins putting out the first of the sugary sweet, sunset-orange cherry tomatoes coveted by the now two-year-old little girl. Throw a few stray strawberries from our struggling bushes into the mix, and you’re serving some Edenic eats as far as she’s concerned. 

So it was that one day, as my daughter ran across the yard to me and I glimpsed a fleck of red fruit flesh on her cheek, I assumed the remnant to be nothing but one of these favorite foods. 

But a panicked thought arose when I remembered the nightshade that creeps along the corner of the fence on the yard’s opposite side…Nightshade, whose mature fruits look not unlike tiny tomatoes. 

A quick search easily revealed that only strawberries, messily eaten at dinner, were to blame, but the momentary scare had been enough to make me engage my toddler on primeval matters: “Never eat fruit from outside on your own.” “Only eat fruit if Daddy tells you it’s OK.” “Did you eat anything from this part of the yard?” 

Initially I felt relief when my daughter answered the latter question, “No”—she had not picked any fruits outside the garden. But almost just as soon, I considered, What if she’s not telling me the truth? 

What if fear at the prospect of a reprimand was keeping her from exposing her disobedience? I’d be unable to remediate the effects of an ingested poison. What if hesitancy at being discovered was making her hide a choice that would end up sickening her? She’d be shutting out my only chance of participating with her to help her.

When I tell my daughter what she can and cannot eat on our property, the rules are not arbitrary. It may seem so to her, who could think nightshade looks every bit as pretty as her cherry tomatoes. 

But the rules aren’t established on terms she can understand yet: how edible tomatoes and bittersweet nightshade both have genetic makeups which belong to the same family, yet differ in their content of toxic compounds. At this point, all she can act on is trust. 

Trust, which not at all arbitrarily will keep her alive. 

The Faith of God

I wonder how the personal faith of someone who’s unsatisfyingly accepted the notion of a transactional punishment meted out at Eden would receive this Father-Daughter story instead: A Daddy told his daughter what she could eat and live, and what, if she ate it instead, would lead to her poisoning, though she’d have no way of knowing it if not for His loving instruction. 

Is there a more universal, primal, human story than this? Can mutual trust between father and child be portrayed in any context as poignantly as this? Food is needed for life, and fruits and vegetables are foraged for nourishment. As a gatherer, there is no way to eat and keep your life and enter maturity without this parental relationship of trust. 

In a real sense, the trust is communicated both ways. It is obvious how the child must act with faith in the parent, avoiding which fruits have been forbidden, no matter the appearance. But I’m only now discovering the heroic and sacrificial degree of faith a parent would have to place in their child who, once they’ve been taught the way of life, will be set free in the garden to make choices on their own in accordance with trust. 

Loving the child can’t look like hand feeding her every grape for life. To become who she ought, she must freely choose to subject her will and—as far as it may seem to her—even her reason itself to the entrusted word of faith given by One Who loves her more than the world He made for her. 

It can’t be attained except by one living in faith.  It can’t be given except by a Love giving with faith. 

The stakes of love have always been life and death. Maybe in this life, the stakes can’t be anything but that.

Trusting a God Who calls Himself Love, I can’t believe He would’ve planted the tree if it weren’t worth it.