GENESIS 2:9,15-17
9 Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

GENESIS 3:1-7
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’ ” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die, 5 for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil by BiblePhileTim on DeviantArt

Good seems obvious. We can all easily see when someone or something is flourishing. Evil, on the other hand, is mysterious. So mysterious, that we can barely understand what’s going on in these verses. Some questions come to mind. Why did God even allow for the possibility of evil? Why did Adam and Eve get so easily tricked? Who let the serpent in?

It is important to recognize that only in Jesus can we really start of answer these questions. For one thing, St. Paul tells us that Jesus in the new Adam. “Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.” (Romans 5:14) “Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” (1 Corinthians 15:45)

And not until the Book of Revelation is the serpent is identified as the devil or Satan (Revelation 12, 20). In that book the serpent is at war with God. In the light of Christ, knowing Jesus as the victor over sin and death (1 Corinthians 15), we can see what God had in mind.

Perhaps the best place to start here is to acknowledge directly what we all know. There is evil, sin, suffering and death all around us. And in us. Our families, communities, the world, all of history is infected with a fatal disease. As the old song says, we’re like “dust in the wind”.

Maybe we’ll the mystery of evil there for today. As the series continues, we’ll see how it plays out.