The tree of the knowledge of good and evil and why I choose not to believe

I recently wrote a blog post about some of my confusion about what to believe. Reading a comment to one of my posts, I began to think again about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Back when I believed whole-heartedly in the bible, I had a whole theory about this tree in the Garden of Eden. Now I’m not so sure whether this story from the beginning of Genesis is actual history or simply a tale, but I still find the imagery to be helpful.

The story goes that the first man and woman, Adam & Eve, were put in a perfect garden with only one possible sin they could do–eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Of course, satan shows up as a serpent and deceives Eve into eating the fruit; then she gives it to her husband, and he eats too. They’re both kicked out of the garden for good, and now the rest of the human race must suffer with the effects of allowing sin into the world. Whether or not that story actually happened really does not matter if one looks at it as a parable.

What were the tellers/writers of this story trying to show us about spirituality and human nature? I believe that the point is, it is better not to know. If you try to know and understand everything about what is good and what is evil–in short, about religion–you end up kicked out of the garden, out of the place of intimacy with God.

When I look at religion as a whole, I see people eating every day of that fruit–always trying to know and understand, to have the “right” beliefs, to have the “truth.” What’s funny is that Jesus once said “I am the truth,” in essence saying that truth is not a set of beliefs but a spiritual being you can have a relationship with.

So even though sometimes I am freaked out that I don’t know what to believe any more, when I think of this story, my heart fills with peace. I don’t believe much in particular, but I do open my heart to relationship.  I do believe in God, but I don’t believe too many specifics about God or all the other peripherals religion adds on. And I would rather say I don’t believe for the sake of being real, than to pretend that I have all the answers.

The thing pounding on my head is that if I don’t have the right beliefs, not only do I risk the eternal punishment of hell, but I risk helping other people end up there by not witnessing. So I jeopardize my own salvation and that of every person I come in contact with. But I think this first story from the bible can help with that problem. According to the bible, trying to gain knowledge of good and evil is a sin. So I feel justified in choosing not to know and not to do anything about it for anyone else. Instead of spouting a bunch of beliefs at anyone who comes near me, I choose to be myself, regardless of the consequences.

Beliefs that stop intimacy

This morning I was listening, and I heard, you do not need to wear the label “Christian” to know me, and I breathed a sigh of relief, because I am so confused about what to believe, but I also heard that I don’t really have to believe anything to be with God. And I remembered an old Jason Upton sermon where he said “Be is the beginning of belief.” I have focused and worried so much about what I do and don’t believe, but in reality, I don’t think it really matters. It is far more important to be with God than to have a mental picture figured out about it all. And I’m so shocked at myself because of how many beliefs I have let fade away, even the ones I held to the strongest.

Yesterday I was listening to a Darin Hufford podcast about heaven, and he and his friend sounded so positive about heaven. I think I started letting go of my belief in heaven about the same time as my belief in hell. I do have a hope of eventually being one with God, and I hope for things to get better on earth, but I really do not have any idea what heaven might be like. In fact, I am probably more scared about going to hell since I have let go of the label Christian. But actually, that label feels like such a chain on my soul, and I just cannot hold onto it any longer. I think it is because if I wear that label, I feel that I have to convince other people that that is the truth. I cannot be free to just be who I am with others. And I and many other people are so turned off by people who have no interest in relationship other than to convert, that I just cannot be that person anymore.

I finally have a friend who does not believe in God at all. I could never have done that in my Christianese days. I could not have actually been real with her or held a deep friendship because I would have had to convince her to accept all my beliefs to save her soul. But isn’t it odd to believe that what a person does or does not mentally assent to will damn them to hell for eternity or allow them to live uttur bliss for that same eternity? It is so weird, because there are so many things that can cause or help us to believe or not believe something. I think my friend does not believe in God because she has no awareness of God and no experience of God. The Christian way is to take a person like this and scare them about hell and convince them about the Bible until the person “accepts” Christ, even if she still has no experience of God. I think that’s criminal. I think Christianity claims to be about introducing people to God, but for the most part, it is about introducing people to religion. And while I had a lot of experiences with God when I was practicing that religion, these have become very confused in my head and often intermingled with all the religious b.s., so that I can’t really hold onto any of it anymore.

Of course, the last several years of being in Christianity, I was deeply distrustful of religion. Groups I joined felt the same. And even though there was a vast difference between these churches and more religious ones I attended as a child, there was still a lack of intimacy there that went so deep I could not stand it.

In fact, I think lack of intimacy is what has driven me away from Christianity. The belief that your way is right and people who don’t believe it are going to hell forces you to hold back part of yourself from others. My own mother flat out told me that she cannot have real fellowship with me because I don’t believe the way she does. There is always necessarily an undercurrent of her wanting to convert me. As long as she wants to convert me, she cannot know me for who I am. She cannot accept me as I am because she wants to change me. No matter how close we may seem in one moment, in another her religiousness pops back up and she proves once again that she does not know me as she tries to lecture me and change me and I must put up walls once again.

But what about the new age ideas about God being this spirit that flows through all humans? It feels like a river that we can tap into at any time. I have a hope that this spirit that was in Jesus who said “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me” is really this spirit of God that flows through all people. It is the divine consciousness or whatever-you-want-to-call-it that anyone can tap into through meditation. It is this spirit of God that brings people to God, whether or not you put some religious name on it.

In fact, I really think that all this naming and labeling of things is really a human invention. It keeps us from God and from the God inside each other, because every label serves to divide us and put us into little boxes that we cannot get out of.

Perhaps all that crying out to God I did in my early 20’s has led to my heart no longer being able to stand all the devision that keeps me from being one with God and especially from being one with other people. Though I never expected my prayers to lead me out of Christianity, I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the very thing that did it.

I also think that religion does not foster intimacy simply because religious activities do not naturally lead to intimacy with others. That is not their purpose, and it is a rare thing when it happens, and one must go outside of the religious activities to find it.