It seems at times that God will go to any length to thwart the very thing we most deeply want. We can’t get a job. Our attempt to find a spouse never pans out. The doctors aren’t able to help us with our infertility. Isn’t this precisely the reason we fear to desire in the first place? Life is hard enough as it is, but to think that God himself is working against us is more than disheartening. As Job cried out, “What do you gain by oppressing me? ...You hunt me like a lion and display your awesome power against me” (10:3, 16 NLT).
I want to state very clearly that not every trial in our life is specially arranged for us by God. Much of the heartache we know comes from living in a broken world filled with broken people. But there are times when God seems to be set against us. Unless we understand our desperate hearts and our incredible tenacity to arrange for the life we want, these events will just seem cruel.
When we lived in Eden, there was virtually no restriction on the pleasure around us. We could eat freely from any tree in the Garden. Our desire was innocent and fully satisfied. We had it all, but we threw it away. By mistrusting God’s heart, by reaching to take control of what we wanted, Adam and Eve set in motion a process in our hearts, a desperate grasping that can be described only as addiction. Desire goes mad within us. Gerald May observes, “Once they gave in to that temptation, their freedom was invaded by attachment. They experienced the need for more. God knew that they would not — could not — stop with just the one tree.”
Our first parents are banished from Paradise as an act of mercy. The thought of the human race gaining immortality — eating from the Tree of Life — in a fallen state is too horrible to imagine. We would be evil forever.
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