Before we dive deeper into the tree in the Garden of Eden, I want to take a quick glimpse at another significant tree described in the Bible. The scandalous event of the New Testament portion of the Bible is undoubtedly the killing of one part of the Triune God which happens on a cross. This man made “tree” was the torturer and executioner’s tool of choice used by the most powerful state in the world at the time (the Roman Empire).
There is a curious cry by Jesus Christ just moments before he died during his execution on the cross. It is a clue to the darkest suffering, the deepest terror that he endured while he was alive on this earth. While the physical pain must have been tremendous (and certainly illustrated in its most gory detail by a recent motion picture depiction) – crucifixion was tantamount to state sanctioned torture and Jesus would ultimately die by asphyxiation while suspended by nails in the wrists and feet, our attention is drawn to a different concern. At this point in time right before his physical death, Jesus is preoccupied by his sense of abandonment. He cries out “Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani”, which means, “O my God, why have you abandoned me?”
If we take Jesus’ cry at face value (“Why have you abandoned me?”), it implies that he felt abandoned by his heavenly Father during his death on the cross. Some theologians have explained this by saying that at the point on the cross when Jesus took on the guilt of the world’s transgressions, the heavenly father could not be sullied by the imperfection and thus turned his face from his own son leaving him to die alone on the cross. In this line of reasoning, dying alone is the just punishment for missing the mark of perfect intentions and perfect behavior. This death penalty was meted out against Jesus who was substituted for every other person in the world who deserves to die as a result of Adam and Eve’s transgressions in the garden of Eden (the partaking of forbidden fruit) and the inheritance of their guilt and proclivity for disobedience. Because Jesus never exhibited imperfect intentions nor imperfect behavior, his payment of the death penalty could be applied to everyone else in the world who did deserve that penalty. One conclusion that this line of thinking could lead to is that God is supremely interested in perfection, and that Jesus’ death was just a mechanism for transferring perfection back into an imperfect world. It is as if God made a perfect world, (plan “A”), man messed it up in the garden of Eden, and God had to come up with plan “B” to fix it by sending his son as a cosmic payment [to whom?] to cover over the unsightly mess of imperfection. I believe there is a much more compelling story than God’s attempts to maintain perfection in the universe, and it centers around the concept of aloneness – the aloneness that Adam (and Eve) were created with, and the same aloneness that Jesus felt on the cross as he died.
Jesus’ cry of abandonment was not a single isolated statement, but rather, the opening line to an age old Psalm of lament, Psalm 22. Psalm 22 opens with a three stark questions of “Why?”: Why has God has abandoned, why is he so far from saving, and why does God not answer? A careful look at these three why questions, however reveals that they are really questions about proximity. Where is God in the midst of the suffering? (abandonment implies that God is not near). Is he too far away to save one from the suffering? Is he too far away to hear the cries and groans and answer them? (Surely if God were close by, he would answer the cries and save one from the suffering)
These “where” questions are followed by an admonishment and reminder to trust in God. The first supplication in Psalm 22 is for God not to be far away (verse 11) which is repeated again in verse 19. It is followed by an entreaty for God to come quickly, and then to be delivered from the sword, rescued, and saved. The Psalmist wants the concern about (God’s proximity) to be addressed before anything else.
It is not a coincidence that the very need that Jesus expressed at the point of his death was the same need that was alluded to in the Creation story – “it was not good for man to be alone.” These two illustrations of aloneness – Adam (and Eve’s) at the point creation and Jesus’ feeling alone at the point of his crucifixion and death bind the two together under the same need and demonstrate that God, in the person of Jesus, has himself experienced the sense of alone-ness we humans all struggle with, and can therefore relate to our suffering out of his personal experience.
Psalm 22 highlights the tension between feeling abandoned (and alone) with an admonishment to keep trusting in the God who delivers those who trust in him. The resolution of this tension is revealed in verse 24:
For he has not despised or disdained (ignored) the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.
This is a reminder that God is very near to those suffering and is attentive to their cries is not far away as first considered.
While the Psalmist requests for his life to be spared of the sword, to be rescued and saved, Jesus’ deliverance does not come before his death, but after it when God raises him from the dead.
What is most remarkable is that the triune God of the universe chose to limit his power to such an extent that the Son “part” of the Trinity required a power outside of himself in order to be raised back to life. A definition of death is the point where one’s capacity to maintain one’s own life and and one’s own existence ceases. The Son’s willingness to die forced him into an utterly dependent state as well as an utterly alone state when he became the sin of the world. This is the scandal of the New Testament, that the God of the universe would give up self sufficiency and become dependent on another.
Jesus became the example of entrusting one’s self to the heavenly Father. Indeed, the Greek word for faith, pisteuo, means “to entrust.”
This act of entrusting is central to the Christian faith, and becomes the mechanism of salvation – both for Jesus and for all who would become his followers. The degree to which one entrusts things of value to the Creator is the degree to which one is saved. Until one releases control – or the need for control – over something of value, and transfers it to another, no faith has been exercised.
Taking a step back, we see that the most important question is not Why, but Where [is God]. And the answer is that God is in fact near, and that our only recourse is to entrust ourselves to him.