by Pastor Rich Carlson         

This is a continuation from the last installment of “God is Faithful.”

In the conversation with Eve in the Garden, I think the serpent lied—and then told the truth. He said, "You will not surely die." Here he was wrong, though sometimes I have wondered even about that. I would have expected God to zap Eve with lightning the moment her teeth sunk into the fruit. As it actually happened, the dying process began then and concluded hundreds of years later.

But I think the greater “death” was the death of those first human beings’ relationship with God.

"Adam, where are you?" came the familiar voice in the cool of the evening.

"We were afraid, so we hid," says Adam.

Wrong choices usually damage relationships, and it's no different in our relationship with God. Things have never been the same between humankind and God since that day in Eden.         

Despite his lie, the serpent did speak truth that day. Adam and Eve would indeed come to know good and evil. It was not God's will that humans be like Him in all things, and the thing that He wishes we didn’t have to share with Him is the thing we often want to claim as our right: to share the knowledge of good and evil.

I don't think it was ever God's plan that we understand evil—only that we abhor it. God knows about it because He is God and He knows everything, but His first warning to the human race is to avoid evil.          

Evil pervades our environment; it bombards us from all sides. But my desire and commitment to God today is to stay connected to Him and His word so that my choices will be increasingly directed toward what is good.   

I erase evil by saturation with good. I have to choose every day—when the opportunities arise—to remain ignorant about evil or to be well-versed in evil. God's plan is the former; my sinful nature tends toward the latter, God's Spirit and my connection to Him each day help determine the outcome.

Rich Carlson is campus chaplain at Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska. "God is Faithful" is adapted from the email devotionals he writes regularly for the Union College family. Rich enjoys filling his life with God, his family, and especially his five grandchildren.