MANY years ago, while travelling on a train to Pune, I started writing a play on Judas, and called it, “The Kiss!” This was before the age of laptops and computers and after writing the title on my pad, looked out of the window, as I normally do to get ideas.
I was startled a few minutes later to see the person seated next to me looking at me suspiciously and even trying to move a little away, as she read the title over my shoulder!
Today’s title of Eve and the Apple, may well do the same for you. “Biting Eve’s apple?” you scream, “What’s this about? Eve had a bite and that’s how we’ve all landed where we are isn’t it?” “Is it?” Let’s take a look at Adam and Eve after the Creation: How content they look as they wander through the Garden of Eden, “Oh Adam what shall we name this huge furry animal?” “Well we’ve already used up Dog, and Cat and Tiger, let’s call him Bear!” says Adam gleefully, and they both squeal with joy as the bear goes happily away with a name.
What a joyful scene, and then comes the hiss! Eve turns and speaks to the serpent who tells her about the Tree and the rest is history.
A lie has been whispered into Eve’s ear, that she needn’t go about being dependent on God for her happiness, but that with the eating of the apple, she can be her own independent person, like God himself.
Eve eats, and so does Adam. Well, as we tussle with our daily problems, and try to find solutions, is somebody whispering into our ear that we are capable of doing so by ourselves? “Hey Bob,” whispers the same crafty fellow, with a three-pronged tail, “remember what your friends told you?”
“What?” I ask, and like Eve, enamoured by the silky voice I hear flattery, “Remember your friends saying you are extraordinarily brilliant and find a solution for every problem, so why are you on your knees praying for help? Get up and do it yourself!”
And like Eve, I bite into the apple offered to me, and try to use my own resources to come up with a solution and how miserably I fail.
A disappointed God, looks down and asks, “When I am here reaching out to you, why do you try to use your puny strength?”
And even as I hear God whispering to me to stop trying to bite again and again and again, in the distance I hear the evil laughter of the serpent chuckling as millions like me do what Eve and then her husband did.
With His death on the cross, the garden is open to us, and isn’t it time, we stopped biting the apple and lean on our Creator again?
