Banishment: An act of Love

I believe that God kicking Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden was ultimately an act of love.

Let me go back as this post is quite a long time coming.

I had that thought well over a year ago. I wasn't exactly sure what to do with it but as various events have unfolded since that time I am increasingly grateful for the insight it gives me.

Shortly after the New Year, a year ago (2008) I attended a funeral. It was for a man in my church who had a brain tumor. He was healthy and fit, playing soccer with twenty-something year olds on a weekly basis, that is, until the cancer hit. He was married and had 2 beautiful daughters. As a church we prayed, fasted, and interceded on the behalf of him and his family. He died around Christmas. I thought "this isn't the way it is suppose to be."

A few months ago some friends of mine, a young married couple with a toddler, lost their infant daughter. Her daddy never got to meet her as he was overseas serving in the military at the time. He never got to meet her and she died. "It's just not right," I cried.

I had breakfast with some friends a few weeks back, when I was in Denver. My friend told me of how her friend's mother died and her father was still struggling through the grieving and healing process. It seemed as though someone(s) had eluded if not blatantly commented that she died because he loved her too much and God took her away. While this seems absurd to some of us, and surely unhelpful to all of us, he is still living with the reality that she is gone.

In each of these situations, as my heart (and sometimes mouth) cried out, often with tears streaming down my face, the Lord seemed to draw my mind back to Eden. "It's not right," I would say over and over again about these and other situations. "It's just not right. It's not fair. This is not how it is suppose to be."

And again, my mind was drawn back to Eden. After the fall God told Adam and Eve, as well as the serpent, the consequences of their actions. In verse 23 of chapter 3, it says, "So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden..." I always thought that being "banished" or kick out was punishment. I'd read and heard the story what seems like 100 times, since I was a child, but there was something I missed.

In verse 22 it says, "And the LORD God said, 'The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." Then verse 23 happens where they are banished followed by "After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life," in verse 24.

When I consider the loss of others and even have to face it myself at times, I find myself grateful. I am grateful that God did not allow Adam and Eve to eat of the second tree. Once they ate from the first, humankind found itself in a place it was never meant to be. Although He gave us free will, in his infinite wisdom and love, God simply would not allow us to be caught in our sin forever. He would not let things remain a way they were never meant to be for all eternity.

And this is our hope in Christ. That when He came, he brought the age of redemption and even though it hasn't yet come in its fullness, it has begun. And one day, He will come again and there will be a new heaven and a new earth. Tears will be wiped away. Children won't starve to death or watch their parents die of AIDS. People won't be lonely or alone. Christ will come and bring the justice for which this world longs. Wrongs will be made right. Heaven will come to earth in its fullness. But for the mean time, we enter God's story, wherever we find ourselves and participate in the redemption that has come in part and will one day come in whole.