As I was reading the story of the Fall I began to wonder what Adam and Eve thought about death, when God warned them that if they disobeyed Him they would surely die.
Death had not entered the world then, so they had no experience to go on. Did they, like some today, think it would just be the end of their existence? Did they think it would be a severe reprimand from God and a temporary subjection to His anger? Were they so bathed in His love that they could not imagine any dire consequences (as some New Agers today cannot)?
If they could have had a mental video clip of emaciated bodies tumbling by the truckload into the smoking lime pits of Auschwitz; or of the living dead in a murky cellar injecting and smoking themselves into a half-world of daze and demons; or of frightened pre-pubertal girls and boys displayed as goods in a shop window for the pleasure of lascivious middle aged men, would they have plucked the fruit from the tree and eaten it? It must have seemed such a minor disobedience to take some delicious-looking fruit and eat it.
So often my little disobediences seem quite trivial to me yet I wonder if there are unseen consequences reverberating, unknown to me, through the spiritual realm. At the very least they become another reason for the searing pain of the nails through those holy Hands.
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