Natural vs. Supernatural Life

We are studying the secrets of God—the so-called mysteries in the New Testament, which we’ve come to understand are not whodunits but new truths—truth revealed, truth not previously understood or even known. We’ve been talking most recently about good and evil: The mystery of godliness and the mystery of iniquity, two of the four great mysteries spoken of in the New Testament by Jesus and the apostles. 

A study of the two trees in the garden of Eden, the story of Job, and the death and the unbinding of Lazarus provide new insights into the discussion. They shed light, I believe, on the question of why bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people, and why discrimination factors in living a moral life. 

1. The Trees

In the garden are two trees. We speak of them often as the source and the substance of all of life. Although called the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they signify many other things: Grace and the law, creation and de-creation, life and death. We might also call them the tree of the supernatural (the Tree of Life) and the tree of the natural (the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil). They might be called the Tree of Oneness With God and the Tree of Loss of Oneness With God. 

The prohibition from eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil indicates that it was God’s original intention to live in oneness with Humankind, eating of the Tree of Life, living by grace, doing things God’s way—the way of grace and the way of creation, with eternal wellbeing. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the opposite. Eating from it is the way of right and wrong. It is the way of discrimination, of cause and effect, the way of the law, the way of de-creation, degradation, and death. 

What their eyes were opened to, what they saw after eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, was de-creation. God’s plan was that we would be blind to the degradation that would occur after losing oneness with God. The natural consequence of loss of oneness with God is the loss of the sustaining power of creation.

The Death God warned us of in naturally occurring degradation, of de-creation, is what God was trying to prevent us from seeing when he blinded us from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God’s eternal plan was that we were to live a life of grace as a result of God’s creative power, relying on him, oblivious to the law. But instead, we were exposed. Our eyes were opened to law—to the laws of nature, to the laws of relationships (social laws), to laws of economics, laws of weather, of mutation, of Newtonian physical laws of entropy and enthalpy to laws of gravity to moral laws—laws of ethics—and every other kind of natural, physical or social law that you can imagine which has been made by God or by man. 

It can be said then that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the tree of natural law. The Tree of Life is the supernatural tree. It defies law; it is the tree of grace. If that is the case, then all of evil can be seen as naturally occurring. God is not the source of evil: Evil results from natural processes of the degradation which occurs due to separation from God. When cut off from God, when we lose our oneness with God, the creative power of God is lost, therefore natural degradation occurs. This is the source of evil and suffering.

We ascribe suffering and evil to either God or to the devil; but in fact, it is naturally occurring. Even if we may not understand fully in every case, the proximate cause of our suffering—separation from God, loss of oneness—puts into motion laws of nature and laws of men that lead to degradation. It is de-creation at work, and the inevitable outcome is death. The only way out of the de-creation is the re-creation spoken of and promised in Revelation 21:4, where a new heaven and a new earth is created and there is no more death or sorrow or anguish, no more crying or pain. 

2. Job

If we don’t understand the natural world, we ascribe things to the supernatural. When it comes to evil, it is the natural result of separation from God. Job couldn’t have known it, but the losses that he sustained (recorded in Job 1) are natural. They are the result of the loss of social laws, war, and raiding tribes. The Sabeans come and take his donkeys and the Chaldeans come and take his camels. As well, the natural laws of weather affect Job’s possessions: Fire falls from heaven, lightning strikes his sheep and whirlwinds blow over his son and daughter’s house and kill all of his children. Job himself is subject to the laws of the germ theory of disease, resulting in boils. 

Like Job, we blame God for what we don’t understand. We call this the God of the gaps. But as information and knowledge and data increase, we will see more and more the causes of evil.

In the garden, and in the story of Job, we are introduced to Satan, the adversary. In the garden, he is confined to the tree, the tree of the law, the tree of the natural. In Job, he’s confined to doing his work by wandering to and fro upon the earth. It raises the question: How supernatural is the devil anyway? God is supernatural—we’re told he’s running the Council of Heaven. But the devil is powerless against God. That’s why in Romans 12:21, it says “Be not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.” 

The source of evil is natural. The source of goodness is supernatural. Satan symbolizes degradation and de-creation. God is the source of grace and re-creation. Not only is there more goodness than evil around us, but it seems that goodness is more powerful than evil as well. The overarching message of the Bible is that despite the fall of humankind, in the end goodness overcomes evil. Despite moment-by-moment events in our own personal lives, and our own personal experiences of evil and loss and suffering, good wins out over evil. To degrade is natural; to restore is supernatural. 

3. Lazarus

In the story of Lazarus we see the end product of this degradation. Lazarus is sick. We don’t know what the sickness is, but it is naturally occurring and it is fatal. We see, in the story, how God responds to illness and the death, and to the suffering and pain of Lazarus’s family. Jesus wept, we’re told in John 11:35. It brings God great sorrow to see humankind in sorrow. But the resurrection and the life himself is present at every sorrow to reverse the degradation, and to recreate.

The unbinding of Lazarus is the great reversal, the resurrection of life. It is the triumph of good over evil. If the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the tree of law, if it is the natural law, if it is the serpent’s tree, then what role does discrimination play in the moral life? The mystery of good and evil is that grace abounds and where sin abounds, then grace abounds all the more:

 The Law came in so that the offense would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,… (Romans 5:20)

The law came to increase and to expand the awareness of sin by defining and unmasking sin. But when sin increased, God’s remarkable gracious gift of grace, his unmerited favor, has surpassed it and increased all the more. 

The choice in the garden was not just to obey God. The choice was to accept grace or insist on the power of discrimination; to take the natural route of keeping the law or the supernatural route, the route of grace. We are so easily and instinctively drawn to the natural, the route of discernment. We so much want to make it about ourselves, about our own behavior, about our own attitudes about our own life. 

Paul talks about the struggle of trying to take the natural route, in Romans 7, following, he said, the law of sin and death, in Romans 8:2, where he talks about how his heart and his mind want to do the right thing but his body keeps doing the wrong thing. Like Lazarus, we are bound in sin and death. Only in the unbinding will the new creation do.

Jesus emphasized this point in many ways. In the Sermon on the Mount he spoke extensively about the futility of the law. He even called moral law itself into question. He emphasized that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees you will not enter the kingdom of heaven:

 “For I say to you that unless your righteousness far surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:20)   

This is the key point: He was alluding to the accepted definition of righteousness as “keeping of the law.” 

He gave the essential meaning—the true definition—of the equivalent concept of goodness and godliness, righteousness and grace, to the rich young ruler: “Give up all your worldly things,” he said, “and follow me.” Keeping the letter of the law may or may not be necessary for righteousness, but it is certainly not sufficient on its own. This is the truth revealed about the mystery of godliness and goodness of God. It reinforces the necessity for mystery itself, as distinct from law and commandments. It is a triumph of grace over obedience. 

In a long series of illustrations, Jesus contrasted law-keeping with the mystery of goodness. For example, he said:

 “You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not murder,’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be answerable to the court.’” (Matthew 5:21) 

He made similar statements concerning adultery, the making of vows, and the retributive justice of the Old Testament. He sought to replace the prevalent view of the time with diametrically opposed concepts such as loving one’s enemy and turning the other cheek rather than demanding an eye for an eye. In case this wasn’t enough, he nailed it by adding:

 Therefore you shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48)

In the kingdom of heaven, there is a suspension of all natural law. In the kingdom of heaven, you go to the back of the line, not to the front. You turn the other cheek. If someone asks you for $1 you give them $2. In the kingdom of heaven, God’s family takes precedence over the nuclear family. Gravity doesn’t hold us to Earth in the kingdom of heaven. Even the winds and the waves—the weather—obey God in the kingdom of heaven. The blind see and the deaf hear and the lame walk and the dead are raised. Natural laws are undone in the kingdom of heaven. 

Discrimination

That brings us to the question: What is the role of discrimination in the moral life? The mystery of good and evil of godliness and iniquity—the truth revealed—is that to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is to repudiate God’s grace; it is to choose the natural over the supernatural; it is to choose the serpent’s tree over God’s tree; it is to choose discernment over grace; it is to choose death over life. 

Living an obedient, moral, discriminating life cannot be done safely without a full appreciation and acceptance of God’s grace. We must never speak of keeping the law without emphasis on God’s grace. If you want a full appreciation of how grace and how good and evil mix and coexist in the world out of oneness with God, then read Romans 7 and 8 which point to the perception and the practice of how a moral life is lived in the Spirit. Romans 8 concludes:

 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or trouble, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? Just as it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We were regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39)

We always speak of living a life of law-keeping. How we can live a life of grace in such a broken and corrupt world?

David: We were not creative before the fall. Adam and Eve had no kids before the fall. They could not create. Can we even imagine what that’s like? Would we like being unable to create? As a process theologist, I believe God is both a being and a becoming and that in his becoming he relies on his creation to create. So his creation is both creature and creator. We, therefore, are creative. We cannot be uncreative. So I am having real difficulty with the notion of of Adam and Eve being uncreative in the garden of Eden, and even more with accepting that this is what God would want.

Donald: In Ohio, there is a life-size replica of Noah’s Ark. It is massive and takes hours to go through. I came away from it with more questions than answers. We read and accept the Ark story. We have a picture in our mind as to what it might have been but we don’t really think about the details of all that. 

What was God’s plan before sin? We don’t know how much time that was. God basically set up something based on faith, not knowledge. He said to stay away from that tree. He didn’t sit down and explain why they should stay away from it. Think of yourself in the garden thinking: “Who am I? Where did I come from?” 

Once they sinned, they recognized they were naked. So the plan wasn’t to have more kids? More people? Offspring? Going to the story of creation it takes a great deal of faith to understand the plan. Was the plan for them to fall? Was there any conversation? Was there a rulebook? Were there guidelines? Were they just wandering around finding berries to eat? 

We don’t look at the details. We accept it and move on, it seems to me; and maybe that’s all we should do—that requires faith. If there is a rulebook, then faith isn’t necessary—just follow the rules. 

But I don’t get that offspring thing.

C-J: I believe that the story of Adam and Eve is the story of origin for the Jewish people, those nomadic Bedouins. There probably was a chieftain—Abraham. It’s very clear through archeology and anthropology that there were other peoples living on this planet during the time of a developed humanity with cities and so on. There had to be. 

Even though there are tribes, as we’ve seen in Africa, even in our own communities there’s tribalism. It can be economic, it can be belief based. It can be just those that are educated and uneducated. But tribalism is everywhere. Family is tribe. So when you think about evolution, we cannot grow without grace, because grace implies we have to make for others, not just God, and it requires a tolerance. Some people are better at it, if it’s been modeled, if it’s been practiced. 

But in terms of faith some people are very comfortable with just saying: “This is unequivocally the work of God. It’s the beginning and the end. This is complete truth, nothing else can compare to it or should be considered next to it. And everything in it is literal.” It binds us, it binds humanity. But it doesn’t bind our soul and our quest for a spiritual truth—that’s a very personal journey. 

I think God meets us in our own culture, language, traditions. I’ve chosen Jesus Christ and I’ve put my toe in the water with a lot of other faiths. Maybe it’s because I grew up with it. But I constantly question it. I constantly try to see myself then and now in the pages of the Bible. But I also see it in other traditions.

Reinhard: I’m sure that God didn’t intend Adam and Eve to fall but being all-powerful and all-knowing, he knew they would. That’s why he has the plan of salvation. All the way through the Bible up to the Book of Revelation, we can see how God managed all the events. He pretty much destroyed the first humans in the Flood but it was necessary to his plan of salvation and his love for his creation. It was a process. He knew when he created the garden of Eden what would happen but he had to let the process unfold.

Jesus came as the embodiment of the Father to show the world how to live as God’s people, how to worship God and how to live among and love other people. He showed us how we have to live as a follower of God. So God has a plan. In the end, we see in Revelation that God will restore the dignity of humans once we have gone through this process and the Second Coming. 

I think God already knew. He planned the process. He has to channel his love. He has to show Satan that he—not Satan—is in authority, he has to show his compassion to his creation. 

Jay: To me, the contrast between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is a contrast in knowledge. To choose the Tree of Life is to choose ignorance (bliss!) But to choose the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is to choose discernment, which comes with a whole lot of problems. 

We look at the garden of Eden as the story of what God planned as the ideal creation. He created everything, and he saw that everything was good. But instead of it being about knowledge or discernment or ignorance, it’s really about what laws I choose to govern my behavior and my life. Do I choose (via the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil) natural law, or do I choose supernatural law—which I can’t understand, whose workings are a mystery to me? Or do I want to live under the natural laws, to have my behavior and my life be governed by them? 

As a creative being, I can wrap my mind around the different kinds of natural laws and understand how they work and understand most of the cause and effect relationships that occur. But I am unable to really understand the cause and effect relationships that occur inside supernatural law. Do you want to live under the natural law? Or do you want to live under the supernatural law?

As for the plan of salvation: Underneath the supernatural law, there is no need for one. There’s no need for Jesus to come to earth and the sacrifice and the quid pro quo and whatever takes place under supernatural law. If you choose to live under the natural law, that’s much more a cause-and-effect situation. You’ve chosen to live here, so now the plan of salvation has to go forward. In order for sins to be forgiven, there has to be the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. 

I don’t have it all clear in my head yet. But it’s interesting to see it as not a choice of wanting to know or not to know, but a choice of wanting to be governed by natural law or supernatural law. In the end, it seems, you can be governed by both and it all works out. But maybe that’s process theology—that they’re both good, they both converge back to the same spot in the end. The question is what law do I want to operate under?

Robin: What if Adam and Eve did have children before the fall, who did not go and eat of the fruit? What would God do with these children? He has to remove Adam and Eve from the Tree of Life. Would it be fair to those children to remove them too?

Sometimes I feel really upset with Adam and Eve and all they unleashed on the earth—all this suffering. But then, if no one else had ever sinned until I was born, I know I would have! So I think sometimes we’re maybe a little too harsh on our first parents. Someone was bound to do it. Cain slew Abel. So it would have happened eventually, if it hadn’t been the first two.

Jay: I think it’s important to keep in perspective that when we talk about the Garden of Eden, we often want to make it about the Origin of Evil. But I don’t think that’s what is intended. If you believe in the fall of Satan before the garden was created, then how did they get in the garden? So this is not the Origin of Evil story for mankind. 

I look at the garden of Eden story as being about the personal decisions we make every day. That’s what makes the perspective Don has introduced today so very interesting. How do I want to be governed? How do I want to operate? What, ultimately, do I want in control of my life? What law do I use to evaluate my own actions as I move forward in this life? 

So every day, I have my garden of Eden moment. Do I choose to operate under the natural laws—an eye for an eye and so on—or do I choose to be governed by the law of the supernatural—going to the back of the line, giving not just the shirt off my back by my coat as well, loving not just my friends but my enemies too? This is unnatural behavior for created beings. Maybe God is trying to show us both of the laws that we can work under.

Donald: Most of the nine fruits of the Spirit are premised on having other people around in order for you to exercise gentleness, patient suffering, and so on. You can’t do these things on your own. It is interesting that in the end, it says “Against such, there is no law.” So it makes sense that the law of the supernatural is different from natural law, because when we exercise goodness and gentleness and so on towards other people we don’t need to be governed by anything. I think that is how we have to live here.

C-J: I think Jason was right about by whom, and how, do we want to be governed—by others or ourselves, about our internal dialogue. I know the importance of muscle memory, and trusting training. Things happen in life requiring a split-second decision. Maybe it’s been in the back of our mind for a while, but when we’re faced with it, it really is about now: Make this decision! Say this or don’t say it, give or don’t give! 

I’m very grateful for the training I’ve had in many areas of my life. I’m very grateful for muscle memory. No matter how tired I am, I get up. I follow a very measurable routine, because it sets the tone for my day. I never leave my bed unmade. I always do the dishes before I go to bed. I never leave anything on the floor. I don’t just step out of my clothes. That was something I learned very young in training: Be kind to others, and if somebody offers you something again, you say “No, I’ve had my share.” 

So practicing good habits, good thinking, right thinking, right behavior, and muscle memory reduce inner conflict. It’s just present. I hope that God is present always in the room and present within me, that the Holy Spirit just knows what to do.

Donald: Muscle memory is very important. The stories we’re trying to unpack are ones that were shared with us by our parents when we were very young and didn’t really have much capacity to understand. Now you can either stay or walk away from your parents’ training and go a different way. It makes you who you are. You may be a very strong person to be able to break that mold. 

We’re told to bring up a child in the way that they should go. I was in education for years and had the opportunity to play a role in young people’s lives and it was thrilling. But I don’t know that I have the answers. It’s just maybe that muscle memory thing. There are two ways to do life: You can try to grab it, understand it, unpack it, but it could implode; or you can just go with grace and just keep walking, which seems easier to do in some contexts. 

I had the blessing of being told: This is the way life is, this is how it came to be. I was raised in a church school so it happened very early. Those stories are jarring to unpack, because when you just accept them, you don’t have to look at the details. It’s when you start looking at the details that you begin to wonder what you are accepting. You’re moving toward the knowledge way of doing things as opposed to just going with the grace.

C-J: I think we’re always held accountable for the knowledge piece. Know what you believe. Always have a reason for what you choose, because there’s always somebody watching you. “Why do you do that? Why do you do it that way? Where did you learn that? Why do you hold it? Why do you keep it in your life?” I’m not one of those people who say: “I believe in Jesus and you should be living this way and would you like to come to church with me?” I’m one of the those people who say “It has served me well.” 

It requires sacrifice and other things but it has served me very well. It has protected me, and I see the fruit of it. And I leave it there. If they want to ask me more, I might give them things to consider. In the walk of faith, God is always in control and will bring you to the right person in the right place at the right time for you to receive it. And if you’re asking questions, you’re on the right sidewalk.

Michael: I’m glad that finally we are talking about the possibility of what we call a life of grace being life on Earth. But I agree it’s a very tricky and vague concept. It also doesn’t seem like a creative life. For an innocuous example: Green cards are limited by quota, so one applicant’s success in getting a green card is another applicant’s loss. So should you not apply at all, because someone else may lose out because of you? 

Even if I accept the analogy that we were set up in the beginning, in the garden, with the devil / the snake being part of the natural law, it does suggest that natural law was there in the garden when Adam and Eve were living in grace with God. So it seems like natural law has been there from the beginning. 

I also second Robin’s statement that sooner or later somebody would have sinned, which might imply that it was God’s plan all along that we would fall, and our objective now is to find grace. But I would appreciate further discussion about what life in grace would look like. I understand turning the other cheek and so on but do I then become a doormat? I’m just asking!

Jay: That’s a good point. Doormat is a human concept. Does God want you to be a doormat? He might—that’s the interesting part of the whole thing! We set up this dichotomy in our brain between the Tree of Life (good) and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (bad). It’s interesting to explore the idea that they both just are, that in this universe you have supernatural law and you have natural law. They both exist and you get to choose which one you value, which one you want to operate your life under, which one you want to emphasize more than the other. 

In this way it doesn’t become an issue of good and evil: It becomes alignment of behavior. I would propose that both the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life were created by God. They’re both in the garden. Can God create something that is bad? There are fundamental principles of the universe, one of which is choice between good and evil, therefore I would propose that the universe has to have good and evil in order to exist. But we want to discriminate between them. It might not be about that as much as it is about being governed by natural law or the laws of God.

David: The Bible begins with a version of paradise (the garden of Eden) that clearly is not perfect and ends in Revelation with a new heaven that is perfect and does not contain the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Maybe this is the process. God is still working towards perfection in his creation. The Garden of Eden was not the end of the story of creation—it was just the beginning. We have to go through this fallen, mortal phase in order to reach the new heaven and the new earth, which are the real end of the story of creation. 

This restores some of my doubts and concerns about the Bible, seeing that it does after all present a process I can wrap my head around.

Carolyn: When Satan was cast out on the earth, we have no idea if the garden of Eden was here at the time. If it was, was Satan allowed to roam all through it? Because the sequence was that God made the earth and it was perfect, then the war in Heaven came, and Satan was cast out. Therefore, I think we have to figure out how to combine the two trees because we need the grace of God but we also need discernment. The garden of Eden was supposed to be wonderful, but do we know when Satan was cast out, in relation to its creation?

Anonymous: As usual, it’s a mystery, and life on Earth is too short to find the explanation. As Paul said, we can but “look through a glass darkly”—we cannot see clearly. But when Jesus comes again in the new heaven and earth then we will see clearly and we will solve this mystery. As long as we are living here on Earth, my desire is to know how to live in grace.

I even wrote this in my prayer list: “Lord, help me, teach me, show me how to live in grace.” It’s a common expression, “to live in grace.” We talk about grace, we understand grace, we have many examples of grace. We have a wealth of knowledge about grace. But we still don’t see the whole picture. 

Did Adam and Eve, before the fall, live in grace? We suppose so, but then why did they choose to eat from that tree, if they knew what grace is? We want—we love—answers. We want to know. We need knowledge. It’s as if we can’t live without it. Comparatively, grace is pie in the sky, other-worldly. Knowledge forces choice upon us. We have to choose. But we are also driven to ask what if we did not have knowledge and lived constantly in grace? 

Donald: Maybe I live the shallow, simple, life. I choose not to make my faith terribly complex because when I do I can get in the weeds real fast. All these questions require a certain amount of faith, of accepting Jesus as my personal Savior, end of story. Now, how do I live that life? That’s a very valid question, but I am lost when it comes to the linkage between the garden and the new earth.

Last week we talked about what leprosy does to a human being—it removes pain. But without pain, how can we know what the other is? If everything is perfect, how do you know it’s perfect? What’s the joy in everything being perfect? The world doesn’t seem to be trying to do its level best, but my relationships with others are what really matter, and how I live my life in that context makes a huge difference for me and for the others. 

When all is said and done, it’s going to be because God has planned a journey for us that I can’t even comprehend. Don’t talk to me about streets of gold. That’s only going to be good until you stub your toe on the gold. You don’t even know you’re on gold streets. Lots of people talk about seeing one another again in heaven. We are told that such is the case but if that’s the reason to go to heaven—to get back with your friends—I’m not sure about that. I think we are supposed to live in the world God designed for us. 

Reinhard: I think the ultimate goal is faith; God wants to see people surrender to his will. I think that’s the key. God wants faith from his creation. Because of the fall, Adam and Eve lost all their privileges, they went through hard times, delivered their own kids. God intended them to multiply, right from the start. 

But the ultimate loss is death. Jesus came to show how to live a godly life, and went through death. Did God wanted his son to die on the cross? I don’t think so. But God had a plan B to get us back to the original plan to live in perfect harmony with him and with others. In the end, we will all live happily ever after, but we have to go through the process. 

Jay: I think as we continue to grapple with this, it could help us to not be thinking about the garden of Eden and heaven as places. We talk about what God intended and designed, but I don’t know what God intends or how he designs. These habits may limit us from really thinking about the message

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