How Could Anything Possibly Go Wrong?

Those who are wise will take all this to heart; they will see in our history the faithful love of the LORD.

EVE WAS CREATED by a perfect God and placed in a perfect environment, and Adam sure seemed like a perfect husband. After all, when he first laid eyes on Eve, he broke into spontaneous praise of his new wife. And he had a great job: tend a perfect Garden. They didn’t call it Paradise for nothing! So how could anything possibly go wrong?

A small thing: Eve wasn’t perfect! She wanted more out of the Garden. Waking up every day next to a handsome man wasn’t good enough. (I am assuming Adam was handsome, because God was the creator and the Fall had not happened.) And living in a perfect setting wasn’t good enough (it hadn’t even rained yet!). No, Eve wanted more; she wanted to have God’s ability, God’s power to know good from evil.

Now this is a lofty goal—wanting to know what God knows—and a finite being can never know what an infinite one does. Eve wasn’t designed to be God; she was designed to be Adam’s helpmate. But she didn’t take her job very seriously—she got Adam into trouble right off the bat!

What can we learn from Eve? Here are a few principles I have gleaned from her:

• Self-improvement is a good goal if I do it God’s way, in his time, and according to his principles.
• Listening carefully and obeying can save me a lot of trouble. Eve added to God’s rule not to eat the fruit; she told the serpent she couldn’t touch it! It’s easy to get an attitude about rules that don’t make sense to us—Eve’s addition may have made her vulnerable to the serpent’s persuasive words.
• Be careful to whom you listen. Why was she talking to a snake when she had God to talk to? She hadn’t even been in the Garden long enough to get bored with Adam’s company.