What Kind of Fruit?

Questions I bring to God about the Garden

I was preaching to a very small congregation when I asked a question: What kind of fruit would grow on a tree called the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

My seven-year-old grandson supplied the answer immediately.

“It was an apple.”

Seven years old, and he already knew.

I love that boy. His answer made me wonder how many answers I had accepted just as readily. Where had we learned them? Had we found them in Scripture, or had we seen the same picture so often that we stopped asking questions?

Genesis does not identify the fruit as an apple. Yet ask people to picture the scene, and many of us already have one hanging from the branch.

What else might I be bringing into the Garden that the account itself never placed there?

That question matters to me because the beginning shapes how I understand the rest of God’s story. Something was lost there. How can I consider that loss without giving some thought to what God had originally provided?

I cannot visit the Garden before the fall. I cannot interview its inhabitants. God is the One who knows its fullness.

So you know what I do? I ask Him.

“Lord, what am I overlooking? Help me read what You have given us. Show me where I have mistaken familiarity for understanding.”

What were these trees?

Genesis describes trees that were beautiful and good for food. Among them, two are singled out by name: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Why those names? What kind of fruit would a Tree of Life bear? What would it mean to receive it? And what would a person receive by eating from a tree identified with the knowledge of good and evil?

The account gives me reasons to ask. After the disobedience, God speaks of mankind taking from the Tree of Life, eating, and living forever. The other tree is bound up with the opening of their eyes and the knowledge they have acquired.

Could these trees involve something much greater than the kind of nourishment I ordinarily associate with fruit?

I think so. I have come to consider them spiritual trees. Genesis does not use that expression, so I offer it as my understanding, something I continue to examine before God. The account describes trees growing from the ground and fruit being eaten. Must their spiritual significance make that physical description less real? Could the difficulty be in my assumption that physical and spiritual realities must remain separate?

What if their names are inviting me to consider what their fruit imparted?

What kind of people could live in that Garden?

God formed the man, gave him life, and placed him there. Would He have made a home whose provision its inhabitants were unable to receive?

It seems reasonable to me that they were equipped for the life He intended them to live. But how much do I understand about that original condition?

I know what it is to live in this body, in this world, after generations of sorrow and death. Does that qualify me to imagine all that humanity could experience before the loss?

Perhaps I need to leave more room for what I do not know.

Could their life with God have included a fullness I have never experienced? Could the Garden have been a home in which receiving spiritual provision was as much a part of life as tending what grew there?

Those are questions I bring to Him. I do not have to pretend I possess a complete description before I begin seeking understanding.

Why was there a boundary?

God permitted the man to eat freely from the Garden’s trees, with one prohibition. He was not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

If mankind could receive its fruit, why must they leave it alone?

The ability to take something clearly did not settle whether they should. Was trusting God’s word part of the goodness of that home? Could they accept that He understood something they did not, and live contentedly within what He had provided?

Then I have to ask myself a less comfortable question: Can I?

How often do I insist on understanding a boundary before I am willing to trust the One who established it?

What does it mean that they were not ashamed?

The man and woman were naked, and they were not ashamed. I can read that sentence quickly. Can I really imagine it?

What would life be like before I had learned to conceal something about myself? Before humiliation, betrayal, or fear had taught me to protect certain places?

Their life began before the hiding. Did they understand the generosity of what they had? Would I have understood it?

I find myself wondering whether some things become painfully clear only after they are lost.

Why keep asking?

Someone may wonder why I spend time considering questions the account does not answer in detail.

For me, these questions lead back to the God who gave us the account. I want to understand His generosity, the home He prepared, and the relationship He intended. I want to recognize the assumptions that keep me from paying attention to His Word.

I believe our enemy is glad for us to remain satisfied with a familiar picture if it keeps us from considering what God is showing us. But that does not mean every unusual interpretation I develop must be right. My questions and proposed answers need examination and test.

Am I listening to Scripture? Am I willing to be corrected? Am I asking God for wisdom, or merely asking Him to agree with an idea I enjoy?

I want to pursue wisdom with enough humility to keep learning.

My grandson said, “It was an apple.” His answer gave us a place to begin. Perhaps my own answers need to become places where I begin asking again.

“Lord, You were there. You know what that home was like. You know what we lost. Help me understand what You have chosen to tell us.”

I do not know everything about the Garden.

But I know whom to ask.

Scripture references

Genesis 1:26–31 — Humanity made in God’s image, blessed, and given provision within a creation God called very good.

Genesis 2:7–17 — The man’s formation, the Garden and its trees, his work, and God’s permission and prohibition.

Genesis 2:18–25 — Companionship and nakedness without shame.

Genesis 3:6–11, 22–24 — Eating, opened eyes, shame, hiding, and God’s statement concerning the Tree of Life.

James 1:5 — The invitation to ask God for wisdom.

Psalm 119:18 — A prayer for opened eyes to behold what God has revealed.

1 Thessalonians 5:21 — Examining what we receive and holding fast to what is good.

Luke 11:9–10 — Jesus’ invitation to ask, seek, and knock, with His promise that the door will be opened.