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What exactly did Adam and Eve do, since the Lord kicked them out of Paradise, and moreover, that for some reason we are all paying for their actions? What are we talking about here, what forbidden fruit is this, what kind of tree of knowledge is this, why was this tree placed next to Adam and Eve and at the same time forbidden to approach it? What happened in paradise? And how does this relate to our lives, to the lives of our loved ones and friends? Why does our fate depend on an act not committed by us, and committed a very, very long time ago?

Raphael. Fresco Adam and Eve

What happened in paradise? The most terrible thing that could happen between loving beings who trust each other happened there. In the Garden of Eden, something happened that, some time later, would be repeated in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Judas brought there a crowd of armed guards looking for Jesus.

Simply put, in there was a betrayal in paradise.

Human betrayed his Creator, when he believed the slander against Him and decided to live solely according to his own will.

A man has learned to betray those closest to him when accused his wife of his own sin.

Human betrayed himself. After all, “to betray” literally means to convey. And man transferred himself from the good will of the God who created him to the evil will of his killer - the devil.

This is what happened in heaven. Now let’s try to find out in more detail how this all happened and why it turned out to be connected with the lives of each of us.

God created man and placed him in the place most favorable for his life. That is, to the beautiful Garden of Eden, which is also commonly called paradise. Today we can only make various assumptions and conjectures about what the Garden of Eden was like. But you can safely bet that any of these guesses will turn out to be incorrect. Why?

But because the man himself was different then - pure, joyful, not knowing worries and worries, open to the world, greeting this world with the happy and powerful smile of his master. The reason here is simple: man had not yet erased God from his life, was in close communication with Him and received from God such knowledge, consolation and gifts that we have no idea about today.

We, today, as has already been said, can only fantasize about heaven. Moreover, with effort, squeezing these fantasies through the narrow gaps between gloomy thoughts about the falling exchange rate of the ruble, grievances against the mother-in-law, worries about the purchase winter tires for a car, the upcoming Unified State Exam for my eldest son and a thousand other unpleasant thoughts that simultaneously torment anyone modern man every day from morning to night. That meager stuffing of fantasies that comes out of this mental meat grinder will be our current ideas about paradise.

Of course, the Garden of Eden was beautiful. But life with God can turn out to be paradise for a person even in the middle of a waterless desert overgrown with camel thorn bushes. And life without God and the Garden of Eden instantly turns into ordinary thickets of grass, bushes and trees. Only by understanding this can one understand everything else that happened in paradise with the first people.

In creation God's man occupied a unique position. The fact is that God created the spiritual world and the material world. The first was inhabited by angels - disembodied spirits (some of which subsequently fell away from God and became demons). The second is all the inhabitants of the Earth who have a body. Man turned out to be a kind of bridge between these two worlds. He was created as a spiritual being, but at the same time had a material body. True, this body was not at all the same as we know it today. This is how Saint John Chrysostom describes him: “That body was not so mortal and perishable. But just as a golden statue shines brightly, just emerging from the crucible, so that body was free from all corruption, it was neither burdened by work, nor exhausted by sweat, nor tormented by worries, nor besieged by sorrow, and no such suffering depressed it. " And Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov) speaks of even more amazing possibilities of the body of primordial man: “...Clad in such a body, with such sense organs, a person was capable of a sensual vision of spirits, to the category of which he belonged with his soul, was capable of communicating with them, of that vision of God and communication with God, which are akin to holy spirits. The holy body of man did not serve as an obstacle to this, did not separate man from the world of spirits.”

Capable of communicating with God, man could proclaim the will of God to the entire material world, over which he received enormous power from God. And at the same time, only he alone could stand on behalf of this world before its Creator.

Man was created as a king or, more precisely, a vicegerent of God on Earth. Having settled him in beautiful garden, God gave him a commandment - to keep and cultivate this garden. Combined with the blessing, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, this meant that over time, man had to make the whole world a Garden of Eden.

To do this, he received the broadest powers and opportunities. The whole world happily obeyed him. Wild animals could not harm him, pathogens could not cause illness in him, fire could not burn, water could not drown, the earth could not swallow him in its abysses.

And this almost sovereign ruler of the world received only one prohibition from God:“And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou shalt eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest of it thou shalt die.”(Genesis 2:16–17).

It was this only prohibition that man violated in the Garden of Eden. The man who had everything decided that in order to be completely happy, he still had to do what he couldn’t do.

But Why did God plant such a dangerous tree in paradise? Just hang a sign on him with a skull and crossbones: “Don’t interfere - he’ll kill you.” What a strange idea - in the middle of the most beautiful place on the planet, to hang deadly fruits on the branches? As if a modern architect were planning kindergarten suddenly for some reason he designed a small minefield on the playground, and the teacher would then say: “Children, you can play everywhere - on the slide, on the carousel, and in the sandbox. But don’t even think about coming here, otherwise there will be a big bang-badabum and a lot of trouble for all of us.”

Here it is immediately necessary to clarify: the prohibition on eating the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil did not mean at all that a person without these fruits knew nothing about good and evil. Otherwise, what was the point of giving him such a commandment?

Chrysostom writes: “Only those who by nature do not have reason do not know good and evil, but Adam possessed great wisdom and could recognize both. That he was filled with spiritual wisdom, see its discovery. “God brought the beasts to him,” it is said, “to see what he would call them, and that whatever a man called every living soul, that would be its name” (Genesis 2:19). Think of the wisdom of the one who could give names to the various breeds of cattle, reptiles and birds. God himself accepted this naming of names so much that he did not change them and even after the Fall did not want to abolish the names of animals. It is said: Whatever a man calls every living soul, that is its name... So, he who knew so much, did you really, tell me, not know what was good and what was evil? What will this be consistent with?”

So, the tree was not a source of knowledge about good and evil. And its fruits were not poisonous either, otherwise God would be like the alternatively gifted architect already mentioned here kindergarten. And it was called that for one simple reason: a person had ideas about good and evil, but only theoretical ones. He knew that good was in obedience and trust in the God who created him, and evil was in violating His commands. However, in practice, he could know what good is only by fulfilling the commandment and not touching the forbidden fruits. After all, even today any of us understands: knowing about good and doing good are very much not the same thing. Just like knowing about evil and not doing evil. And in order to translate your knowledge about good and evil into a practical plane, you need to make some effort. For example, in a situation where close person he said something offensive to you in the heat of the moment, it would certainly be good to remain silent in response, wait until he cools down, and only then calmly and lovingly find out what made him so angry. And the evil in this situation, just as certainly, would be to say all sorts of nasty things to him in response and quarrel for long painful hours, or even days. Each of us knows about this. But, alas, it is not always possible to use this knowledge in a real conflict.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is named so in the Bible because it was an opportunity for the first people to experimentally demonstrate their desire for good and aversion from evil.

But man was not created as a robot, rigidly programmed for only goodness. God gave he had freedom of choice, and the tree of knowledge became for the first people precisely the point where this choice could be put into practice. Without it, the Garden of Eden, and indeed the entire beautiful world created by God, would have turned out to be just a golden cage with ideal conditions for man. And the essence of God’s prohibition boiled down to a caring warning addressed to people who were free in their decision, as if they were being told: “You may not listen to Me and do it your own way. But know that such disobedience is death for you, who were created by Me from the dust of the earth. Behold, I also leave open to you the path of evil, on which inevitable destruction awaits you. But this is not why I created you. Strengthen yourself in goodness through the renunciation of evil. This will be your knowledge of both.”

But - alas! - people did not heed this warning and decided to learn evil through the rejection of good.

The Bible goes on to describe the events in the Garden of Eden as follows: “The serpent was more cunning than all the beasts of the field that the Lord God created. And the serpent said to the woman: Did God truly say: You shall not eat from any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent: We can eat fruit from the trees, only from the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, God said, do not eat it or touch it, lest you die. And the serpent said to the woman: No, you will not die, but God knows that on the day that you eat of them, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil. And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes and desirable because it gave knowledge; and she took of its fruit and ate; And she gave it also to her husband, and he ate.”(Genesis 3:1–6)

The serpent here refers to Satan - the head of the angels who fell away from God and turned into demons. One of the most powerful and beautiful spirits, he decided that he did not need God and turned into Satan - the irreconcilable enemy of God and His entire creation. But Satan, of course, could not cope with God. And therefore he directed all his hatred at the crown of God’s creation - at man.

In the Bible Satan is called the father of lies and murderer. We can see both in the passage from Genesis quoted above. Satan created a false story that made God look like an envious deceiver afraid of human competition. And people who have already received so many gifts and blessings from God, who knew Him, communicated with Him and from the experience of this communication were convinced that He is good, suddenly they believed this dirty lie. And they decided to taste the fruits from the forbidden tree in order to become “like the gods.”

But instead, they just discovered that they were naked, and began to urgently build themselves primitive clothes from tree leaves. And when they heard God’s voice calling them, they were afraid and began to hide between the trees of paradise from the One who planted this paradise for them.

Traitors are always afraid of meeting those they betrayed. A what the first people did And was a real betrayal towards God. Satan subtly hinted to them that by eating the forbidden fruits, they could become like God, become equal to their Creator. Which means living without Him. AND people believed this lie. They believed Satan and stopped believing God.

This terrible changeling was the main tragedy of what happened in paradise. People refused to obey God and voluntarily gave themselves over to the devil.

God forgave them for this first betrayal and gave them a chance to return to Himself, but people did not want to take advantage of it. The wife began to justify herself by saying that the snake had seduced her. And Adam completely blamed his wife and... God, who gave him such a “wrong” companion, for his crime of the commandments. Here it is, the last conversation of people with God in paradise: “...have you not eaten from the tree from which I forbade you to eat? Adam said: The wife whom You gave me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate. And the Lord God said to the woman: Why have you done this? The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”(Genesis 3:11–13).

So the first man betrayed God, his wife and himself in paradise. Created to reign over the material world, he turned into a pitiful creature, hiding in the bushes from his Creator and reproaching Him for the wife ... which You gave me. This is what made him so poisoned by the lies he received from Satan. Once fulfilled the will God's enemy, man himself became an enemy of God.

Saint Theophan the Recluse writes: “The falling away from God was accomplished completely with disgust by a certain hostile rebellion against Him. That is why God retreated from such criminals - and the living union was interrupted. God is everywhere and contains everything, but He enters into free creatures when they surrender themselves to Him. When they are contained within themselves, then He does not violate their autocracy, but, preserving and containing them, does not enter inside. So our ancestors were left alone. If they had repented sooner, perhaps God would have returned to them, but they persisted, and despite obvious accusations, neither Adam nor Eve admitted that they were guilty.”

That's all, actually. Having betrayed God, people fell away from the source of their life. And they began to slowly die. Thus, a branch broken off from its native trunk still remains green for some time in the roadside dust, but its further fate is predetermined and inevitable. Beautiful human body, shining with the beauty and power of God abiding with him, immediately turned into a pitiful body, subject to disease and threats from the elements, when God departed from him. And paradise itself - the meeting place of man and God on earth - became for man a place of fear and torment. Now, having heard the voice of his Creator, he, overwhelmed with horror, rushed about garden of paradise looking for shelter. To leave such a person in heaven would be senseless cruelty.

So, according to the Bible, man was expelled from heaven, became a vulnerable, mortal and subject to Satan being. This was the beginning of human history. All these terrible changes in human nature, associated with the falling away of the first people from God, were inherited by their descendants, and therefore by us, and our friends, and all contemporaries.

Why did this happen? Because man was designed to be constantly with God and in God. This is not some additional bonus to our existence, but its most important basis, the foundation. With God, man is the immortal king of the universe. Without God - a mortal being, a blind tool of the devil.

A series of births and deaths did not bring a person closer to God. On the contrary, each generation, living in spiritual darkness, accepted more and more new shades of evil and betrayal, the seeds of which were sown by sinners back in paradise. Macarius the Great writes: “...Just as Adam, who transgressed the commandment, accepted within himself the leaven of evil passions, so those born from him, and the entire race of Adam, by succession, became partakers of this leaven. And with gradual success and growth, sinful passions have already multiplied in people so much that they extended to adultery, lewdness, idolatry, murder and other absurd deeds, until all of humanity was soured with vices.”

This, in a nutshell, is the connection between what happened in paradise to the forefathers of mankind and how we are forced to live today.

Scripture says that at the fall of our first parents, Eve was deceived, but Adam was not deceived. “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and fell into transgression” (1 Tim. 2:14). Eve herself agreed with this, saying: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (Gen. 3:13).

The form of the serpent, of course, was Satan (see Rev. 12:9). He did not appear before Eve in the form of an angel, but, in all likelihood, took the form of a flying serpent, dazzling with the splendor of colors and brilliance and very wise. Using this image, he seduced Eve in three ways:

The first relates to the love of God. Apparently, Eve moved away from her husband and began to gaze intently at the forbidden tree with curiosity and admiration. She might wonder why God did not allow them to eat the fruits of it.

The snake sitting on the tree said in a questioning and ironic tone: “Did God really say: do not eat from any tree in paradise?” (Gen. 3:1). In other words: “And such a God do you serve, who finds satisfaction in denying you free access to all the beneficial and beautiful fruits in this wonderful garden?”

Sometimes we say: “Nothing can be done about the birds flying overhead, but we can prevent them from building a nest in ours.”