Us vs. Them
That first time in the wilderness was the beginning of a lesson I would continue learning and re-learning the rest of my life. I suspect the same is true for most of us.
Indeed, this lesson is one that goes back to the beginning of humanity.
In Genesis Chapters 1-2, we read about how God created the universe and world including Adam and Eve. God gave them everything they needed and life was good. But the serpent (Chapter 3) convinced them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Have you ever wondered why that was a bad idea? Isn't it good for us to know the difference between good and evil so that we can seek what is good and avoid what is evil?
My own time in the wilderness showed me that the problem is not knowledge but perspective. I gave up on God because my immediate problems weren't solved the way I wanted. I had only a limited sense of my larger life or the lives of those around me.
When we seek good we can only do so from our own narrow perspective. What seems good to us, may actually be harmful to others. What benefits us and those we know may injure others we can't see. It is impossible for humans to gain a complete enough perspective to ever really be able to tell good from evil.
Yet, there is a still bigger problem. When we seek good based on our own perspective, we make our own perspective the "right" perspective and attempt to arrange our world around what is best from this perspective. Sometimes we include other people in "us" and work to ensure safety, security and wellbeing for "us".
That divides the world into "us" and "them" and the battle is on. Each group of "us" fights for what is good, often against "them" who seek what they think is good for themselves. When we can't see the entire creation as "us" (like God can) we create division.
In contrast, from God's perspective all actions and consequences are known across all actors and over time. Seeking what is good for all of creation isn't always in the obvious best interests of some folks - especially in the short term.
The real problem of the tree of knowledge is that it set humanity up to seek what is good for themselves as individuals, families, cultures, nations, and to categorize anything that does not advance this narrow purpose as "evil". It casts "us" as heroes and everyone else as either allies or enemies. As long as humans view the world through this dualistic lens, there can never be peace or wholeness. Our perspectives are too narrow for us to seek the well-being of those who are "them". Sacrifice for "them" make no sense.
