Is God ‘Mean’? How a Child’s Question Unlocks the Truth About Sin and the Fall

From trust to temptation, Pope St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body reveals why the fall wasn’t about an apple, but about doubting the Father's love.

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I have a friend who had a very sweet and precocious son. When he was very little, she told me, “Jack has a question for you.” The question: “Why is God so mean? He wouldn’t even let Adam and Eve eat apples!”          

Don’t we all kind of feel that way? I know I did. It took my beloved Pope St. John Paul II and his Theology of the Body to set me straight.

Adam and Eve (and each of us) were created for our own sake, in the image and likeness of God, and loved madly by him. The love between Adam and Eve was likewise perfect, with each wanting only what was best for the other. He placed them in paradise, where they wanted for nothing.

And he gave them only one rule. “...but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die.” (Genesis 2:17)

This was fine with them. After all, God had given them everything. They had no reason to question him.

Until the serpent came along and introduced doubt. Would you really die, or would you be like him?  He tempted them to question the loving protection of the Father. Does God really love me? Does he really want what is best for me? Or can I find a better life outside of him?

And so they ate the fruit. And they found out.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was just that. Before, they only knew good. As Pope St. John Paul II said, the ethos and the ethic were one. Our “ethos” is what we are. It is what we are naturally inclined to do if there are no rules or expectations. The “ethic” is what we are supposed to do, the right thing. For Adam and Eve, these were one and the same. They were naturally inclined to do the right thing.

But that all changed when they ate that fruit. Suddenly, they didn’t only know good. They knew evil. And the ethos and the ethic ruptured. They knew the right thing to do. But they didn’t want to do it.

What is the first thing they did after they sinned? They hid because they were naked (cf. Genesis 3:10). Obviously, this is a significant change. Adam and Eve in paradise were “naked and not ashamed.” Now they feared their nakedness and wanted to hide it. What changed?

Before sin, Adam and Eve wanted what was best for each other. But now they realized “There’s another way to play this. If I weren’t so worried about you, I could get more for me.”

According to Pope St. JPII, they discovered lust.

It’s important here to talk about what Pope St. JPII means by “lust.” It is not merely a reference to sexual attraction. (We will discuss that a lot more in upcoming months.) Lust simply means the will to use another person for my own personal satisfaction, without caring what happens to them. It disregards their dignity. That doesn’t just happen in a sexual context. It can happen in a million different ways.

Adam and Eve discovered that instead of loving each other, they could use each other. And that turns the purpose of their creation upside down. “Man is the only creature created for his own sake, and he finds himself only in a sincere gift of himself” (Gaudium et Spes 24). But now Adam realizes he can treat Eve as created for his sake, and Eve realizes the same, which makes that gift of self not quite so sincere anymore.

The opposite of love is not hate. It is use. It is seeing another person, a precious image of God, not as a good to be treasured, but as an instrument, a road, a way for me to get what I want. It turns a person into a thing. It is what I call “pizza love,” loving a person only as a source of enjoyment, pleasure or benefit to us.

And so they hid. Why? Because for the first time, they experience what Pope St. John Paul II called the threefold shame. First, Adam hides from Eve. He no longer loves her perfectly. Before, in their perfect state of love, he could be “naked,” utterly transparent in her presence. But now he has secrets, hidden agendas. He can’t allow her to see all of that, so he hides from her. Second, not only has he figured it out, but he’s figured out that she’s figured it out. He has to hide from her because he’s not sure he trusts her. And third, they both hide from God because they know they messed up.

It is important to note that the goodness of the body did not change. The body remained (and remains) good. What changed was that the “heart” became corrupt. The body and the heart used to be perfectly integrated; the purity of the body reflected their purity of intention. But now there is a rupture. The body is no longer a reliable sign of the inner person.

There are so many ramifications to all of this: for life, for sexuality, for relationships between men and women. We will discuss all of that. But for now, I want to make one simple point: this story teaches us about the nature of sin.

All sin is in some way a failure to respect the image and likeness of God in ourselves, in another person or both. And hence, all sin does damage to us, to others and to our relationship with God.

In Adam and Eve’s sin, we discover the nature of our own temptation. When I want to sin, it’s because I think I’m going to find something good there. I think I’ll find more happiness outside of God’s plan. I think he has been holding out on me; maybe he has given me some good things, but the really good stuff, he doesn’t want me to have. He can’t be trusted.

So all sin is, at its root, a denial of the Father’s love. It’s a rejection of his protection. It’s our way of saying we don’t believe he really loves us, that he really cares about our welfare, or that he has a plan for our lives.

But was Jack right? I mean, they committed one “little sin.” Did it really merit kicking them out of paradise and uprooting all of human history?

What the story tells us here is that yes, sin is really that big a deal. Remember, because the ethos and the ethic were one, Adam and Eve didn’t experience weakness like we do. They made a cold, calculated, rational decision to defy him. They looked straight at the God who created them and gave them everything, and they said, “No.”

And that is a very big deal. Not because God is picky or vengeful, but because he is the very source of our life. And to reject that is to reject all that is truly good.

It’s a big deal because, in every breath, we need him.