"The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil : What Was It? | The Deep End Series" Ep# 46

In this episode of Spiritual Hot Sauce, host Chris Jones tackles a listener question regarding the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, moving past traditional interpretations to view the Fall of Man as humanity's transition from a harmonious hunter-gatherer existence into a competitive, transactional society. By breaking down the serpent’s "double lie" in Genesis, Chris explores how humanity traded unconditional divine love for a perverted, ego-driven definition of morality based on pride and shame—ultimately pointing to Jesus as the Tree of Life and the antidote to this cultural poison. Finally, Chris wraps up the episode with a major structural update, announcing that the podcast is shifting from a weekly schedule to a bi-weekly release to ensure the show remains focused on genuine service over content production.

Transcript

Chris Jones 0:00

You've heard me talk about many times the tree of knowledge of good and evil and how a serpent would give us a fruit that is the poison to humanity. Today we dive into that. We also announced some big changes. Welcome. I'm Chris Jones, and this is Spiritual Hot Sauce. Big news today. We got big changes coming here at Spiritual Hot Sauce. But before we get into that, I want to answer a question that Susan and Ryan Ingler had. In episode three of Rebuilding Faith, I had said that the tree of knowledge of good and evil would give us a fruit that is the poison to humanity, that it's in the ideology of how we define good and evil is what creates a lot of our suffering. Now, the question Susan Ingler had was this What is the tree of knowledge of good and evil? Was it a physical tree or is it something that was metaphorical? Now, nobody knows for sure exactly what it is, but some believe it represents the age of accountability, understanding right and wrong, that when Adam and Eve realized that they were naked, they had become accountable. Now, I gotta be honest, I really don't think that's correct. And the reason why I don't believe that's correct is because it don't really line up with everything else and how it presents. I mean, to me, and there's a couple of different ways it could be, but they lead to the same place. I think that one of the things this could represent is how we move from a hunter-gatherer into a society. Now, when I first heard this, I really kind of rejected it until I gave it some thought. I think when we hear hunter-gatherer, we just assume they are intellectually inferior to us. But what we have found is hunter-gatherers actually had bigger brains than we do, and their brains functioned like ours do. So what does that mean? It's actually being debated right now amongst academics that hunter-gatherers may have been smarter than us. Weird, right? But when we think of smart, we think of IQ. But that's because we misunderstand what an IQ test actually measures. What it actually measures is abstract thinking in Western culture. There was a study done back in 1970 by a doctor Michael Cole. He went to West Africa and found the Capell people, and the Capell people lived more of a rudimentary life. They weren't in a modern-day social construct. Now, he gave them this IQ test to see how they would do, and they failed miserably. And he knew that it couldn't be accurate. That couldn't be right. However, when he repeated the test, they scored the same, which was an indicator that something is wrong. Now, one of the questions that kind of represents the overall test, it was asking to match the items. And they had a potato, a knife, and another tool. I'm not even sure what the other tool was, but the answer was to group all of the tools together. And they were taking and pairing the knife with the potato. Using that kind of logic was dramatically dropping their scores. Now he went back home, he thought about this, and he felt like the whole thing was skewed. So he decided to go back and retest everybody, except for this time he gave them the direction of when you answer, answer how a fool would answer. And this time, they matched the knife with the other tool, which dramatically improved their scores. See, in functioning life, we know that a knife does match with a potato. That makes perfect sense. When you start matching tools to tools, you're thinking like you would in a society. We have been trained to think that way. We naturally think like the Capel people, which is how a hunter-gatherer would think. If you are a hunter gatherer in the Garden of Eden, you don't know what ownership is. You don't think selfishly as in me. You don't think about power or money or greed. You think about community. I mean, Adam and Eve represents what the hunter-gatherer was, which is a good steward. They lived in balance with everything in themselves and one another. They took care of everything that had need as the need was their own, with bigger brains than us. I think what's happened is over time we developed a social construct, emergent society. And I think that's what the tree of knowledge of good and evil represents of how we constructed our emergent society. I mean, think of it like this: our first written word was a pictograph. It was an image of communicating something to people who couldn't speak the same languages. It came out of establishing a social construct, society. It was beer, goats, and wheat for trading in Mesopotamia. And ultimately, that's all a social construct or society is. It's just an overgrown market that has become exceptionally elaborate. I mean, we have an education system that is built around just helping us to be able to function in this society that we live in. I get that some of you might push back and say a modern society brings a higher quality of life and better health. I would argue that point. Did you know hunter-gatherers had the same lifespan as us? Except they were functioning up until the time of their death, fully functioning. It's like they just ran out of gas. That's kind of how they passed. We today go through this huge decline where we become feeble and weaker and weaker and sicker until we finally pass away. There wasn't a lot of suffering in how they did it. Now, the only caveat to that is you had to get past 10 years old. Now, there was a higher mortality rate. Survival of the fittest was in full swing. But once they got past that, they were fine. I mean, keep in mind, modern medicines treat modern problems that come from living in a modern society. Cancer, they wouldn't even know what that is. Heart disease, they really wouldn't know what that was. They wouldn't know what high blood pressures. All of the problems that come from living under our stress, that's an unnatural environment for us, they didn't have. They wouldn't have had any need for modern medicine, or very little. They wouldn't know what processed foods are. They wouldn't know what it means to have a poisoned water supply. Now, how does all of this tie into Adam and Eve and the serpent and the tree of knowledge of good and evil? Now, this is where it could go either way. And I'm going to give you my second idea of the theory of what this could mean. Because I think Adam and Eve, in one way or the other, they either represent going from a hunter-gatherer into emergent society, or they represent that Adam and Eve was a beautiful, wonderful society that had merged correctly, and that later on there was another element, a serpent that came in and gave us the poison that would bring suffering into us. So let me answer that by bringing us in this direction. We live and have always lived in a society that is based on trade. That's the social construct. It's the market. That's exactly what it is. If cash flow stops tomorrow at noon, then our society collapses tomorrow at noon. It is based on cash flow. We confuse humanity with the social construct. There are two different things. The social construct is like a trellis, it just supports humanity so we can trade outside of our immediate group. However, we have prioritized the social construct over humanity. And by forcing humanity to fit into such a society is what has caused us all the suffering that we have. Now, what has allowed us to put trade in society over humanity? It goes back to the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It's how we define good and evil, right and wrong. So now let me bring us all up to speed. Now, the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve in that garden either represent hunter-gatherers. Now you got to keep in mind, hunter-gatherers were much more developed than what we've kind of always thought. Or Eden represents a beautiful society that is in communion with God, that has a proper balance and experiences life as it was meant to be for us. And that Adam and Eve represents the leadership of that society. Now, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, a serpent would give us a fruit from it that would become the poison to humanity. What does that mean, Chris? Because I say that often and I know I do. Now, first of all, when you hear fruit and fruit tree and all of this, it represents something that came from a seed that's been developed, that's grown, and become something that is passed on. It's like when we talk about the gospel in the New Testament, that is always spoken of as in a seed and in a fruit, that we all receive the seed and we have to cultivate that, let it grow in us as it matures and it comes to fruition, it becomes fully synthesized, we become fruit-bearing. And that fruit is a seed. And when someone takes that fruit, they have the opportunity to take that seed and grow that in themselves. Now, typically, a fruit like that represents ideology. So it means that it's been a fully synthesized, brought to fruition, something that started as a seed that is matured and came to fruition that is a fruit. They were warned by God not to take that fruit, but yet we took the fruit. And in that fruit, we would learn suffering. In other words, it was a poisoned ideology. But once we got that ideology in us, we couldn't get it out. All right, so let's get into this. How did we get this fruit, this ideology of good and evil, a perverted one and to us? In Genesis chapter 3, it gives us the account. Eve is in the garden. She is in Eden. She's walking around and we would say in her society or hunter-gatherer, however you see it. Now it says the serpent, Aster, how come you don't take this fruit? Why don't you eat of that tree? In other words, why don't you use this ideology? And Eve quotes God. She says, Because when we eat that fruit, we will die. Now we've always been taught that the serpent lies to her and says, You won't die. Now that is true. But what we don't do is we don't say, but there was a second lie that the serpent told Eve. We always say that the second thing he said was a truth, but it wasn't a truth. It's still a deceitful lie, which is where our confusion comes in. Let me show you what I mean. The serpent says, You won't die. And then he tells her something else. In fact, you will be like God. You will know the difference between good and evil. For some reason, we always think that part is true, but it's not. That is also a deceitful lie. The serpent didn't say anything that was true. Number one, you will die. And not just a physical death, everything beautiful in your life will die. How you interact with the garden, the ecosystem, the balance, the stewardship, your kinship with everything around you, how you live your life and experience it, the communion you have with God. Everything in your life that is beautiful will be taken from you through your own choices. And from these choices, you will get suffering. So that's the first lie. The second one we always think is true. It's not true. It's still a deceitful lie. The serpent says, You will be like God. You will know the difference between good and evil. But that's a lie. Because that's not true. She doesn't see good and evil like God does. They already see good like God does. The life they're experiencing is good. Think of it like this: Adam is naked and he communes with God every night in the cool of the evening. He would walk with God in communion. What does that mean? That he's naked with God. It means there is no shame, there is no restriction. It is full communion with God. It's like a father with his child. There is no need for the child to hide or be shameful. It is just love. That's what Adam knew. He just knew love and acceptance. But after the fruit, after taking that ideology, that's when Adam has to hide in shame and in guilt. Now he knows suffering. He doesn't know full acceptance with God, nor will he ever again know full acceptance of God, nor will his descendants know that acceptance with God, that communion. But Chris, I mean, we do know the difference between good and evil. No, we don't. I mean, Jesus points this out to us in the Good Samaritan. A lot of you have heard me talk about this. And if you want to know the full depth of that teaching, that understanding, go listen to episode 11, becoming the antidote to the poison. But briefly, Jesus says that we see good and evil or right and wrong as either or, that we either see it where we hurt other people and we do what we want based on what we want. That's bad. Then we all define bad or evil in that way: selfishness, pride, and greed. And that we and our social construct and our laws of society and how we have been taught to think, we define good as refraining from hurting other people and perpetrating evil on others. And Jesus says that's not good, although you define it as good, but that's just refraining from hurting other people. Good is giving to other people when they have need, like Adam and Eve did prior to the fruit. They were good stewards. See, that's what the Samaritan is in the story of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan represents Adam pre-fruit, before that ideology that brought us suffering. Jesus represents the correction of that ideology. See, Jesus didn't come to start a social construct or a kingdom here on earth. He says that. You know, what is he tempted with when he goes out into the wilderness? He is tempted to be ruler of all social constructs. Jesus rejects that. Why? Because what Jesus gives us will work in any social construct. It's not about building a social construct, it's about us becoming something that works in any social construct, which takes us to a much more beautiful and balanced way of living, that we become the antidote to the poison that's in humanity. No amount of laws will get us closer to a utopian society. It's the opposite. We, the citizens, have to antiquate the laws and move us closer to a utopian society by how we interact with one another. Paul uses the word fruit too. It's in Galatians 5, 22, and 23, where he talks about the fruits of the Spirit, that the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness. And again, the fruit is the manifestation of the seed of what's been growing in you. Once you mature and come to fruition of what you're supposed to be, then that's the fruit you bear, like the good Samaritan, like a good steward, that you give on need versus deserve, because that's what Jesus did. He went about doing good according to Acts 1038. That we become like Jesus. We are the fruit of Jesus. As we become like him in his love as a disciple, not a worshiper, we are the attributes of him, his fruit, which means we carry on what he started. And what does Paul say? There is no law against this. In other words, this will fit into any society. The kingdom of heaven is in us. And when the kingdom of heaven comes to fruition, that's the fruit it bears, the mercy of God. And I want to go back to when Adam and Eve eat the fruit. What they learn is suffering. They don't learn good and evil. They learn evil and they learn a new definition of good, like I just defined it. What's good for me as long as it doesn't hurt you? Jesus says that's a perverted version. What's true is good is taking care of others when they can't take care of themselves. Has nothing to do with refraining from hurting other people. It has to do with leaning outward and helping other people. Two different things. But in that fall of experiencing evil when they learn shame and they learn guilt and they're hiding from God and they take fig leaves to try to cover themselves, they are no longer in communion with God. That's what that means. However, God says, here, let me help you. Let me give you skins because fig leaves aren't going to keep you warm in the cold of where you're going. They're not going to protect you from the thorns and the other things that can hurt you, the elements. Let me give you these skins. God is still trying to help Adam and Eve, even though they have separated themselves from him by believing the lies of a serpent and taking on a new God, themselves. When Jesus from a cross gives us the antidote to the poison and the fruit that would come from him, which is us, he is making himself the tree of life. But it's in that suffering that we have communion with God and our suffering of the condition of being separated, that we are reconciled back to God through the suffering of Jesus, the tree of life. So to Susan and Ryan Ingler, I hope that answers the question of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. I mean, ultimately, I think the serpent represents an outside agent that came in and spoke to our pride, that we could put our throne above everyone else's with God's and sit in judgment of other people. I mean, when you start defining good and evil, that's kind of what you're doing. You are making yourself like God. That's why I call it the serpent's venom. The serpent's venom is pride. It's arrogance, it's ego. It's what allows us to feel like we are important and we are entitled to go get what we want without thinking of other people's needs. Guys, this is the lens of the here and now. There's more to this, but for now, this is where we're going to leave it. All right, so I've got an announcement that I need to make everybody aware of. Spiritual hot sauce will no longer be doing a weekly release. It will be moving to every other week. Going forward after today, that means next Thursday, there will not be a new episode. It will be the Thursday after that. It's going to be dropping every other week. And as far as the bonus dab of the sauce, it's not going to be a scheduled thing. It will just be happening as it needs to happen. But you know, when I started this podcast, I wanted it to be something that could help people and actually do a service, not just create content. Sometimes I think I've strayed from that a little bit. And I want to kind of get things pulled back in and stay the course of where I feel like we are actually doing some good. And I haven't done anything you're supposed to do to promote your podcast. You really don't find me out on social media anywhere talking about or releasing clips. Although I do have a Facebook page. And if you haven't got over there, get over there. But I really don't do anything other than that. I don't do anything to promote. I don't ask for money. I don't have a Patreon account. I am just doing what I can because I feel like it's the right thing. But that means I am completely reliant upon you to follow me on the platform that you listen to me. So if you listen to the sauce on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or whatever it is you listen to, then follow me. And the big one is share me with other people. Let's get the word out. Because again, I don't promote. You are my plan. But I feel like we're doing the right thing here. So, guys, thank you so much. I appreciate it. And I will see you not this coming Thursday, not a week from today, but the following Thursday, two weeks from today. Love you guys. See you then.