The Little Prince, in the book by Saint-Exupéry, is concerned about baobabs growing on his tiny planet. If the Prince were to allow the baobab trees to grow, they would eventually split it open and destroy it with their roots. But he must be careful not to dig out the good plants – just the dangerous baobab shoots.
Today’s first reading tells the story of so-called ‘original sin’. Some people treat this as a literal description of a real event that took place at a particular time in the past and that subsequently has made all people sinners. This rather vulgar interpretation doesn’t pass the test of what we know about the history of the human race. The very idea of ‘original sin’ was mentioned by St Irenaeus in the 2nd century and was then developed particularly by St Augustine two centuries later. Interestingly enough, this idea had been completely alien to the Jewish people, who had read that story well before Christianity.
First of all, in the whole of this passage in the Bible, there no names are mentioned. In Hebrew ‘Adam’, the name which we use, means ‘man’; add one letter and you have the word ‘adama’ which means ‘soil’. In the Bible adam is made out of adama. Moreover, this word has an even broader genderless meaning as ‘human’. Why is all this important? Because it reveals that the author of this passage wasn’t talking about a particular pair of certain human beings. His story was an attempt to find the answer to a question that has tormented people from time immemorial; the question about evil in us and around us.
The biblical author was pondering on that very question, looking into and around himself. He must have noticed his own imperfections, weak will and inclination to evil. He must have noticed social injustice, abuse of power and merciless dominance in his society. Even nature was perceived as hostile and destructive at times. All of these must have resulted in a fictional story describing humankind as inclined to evil.
The story of sin reveals him as an insightful observer. The process of committing sin begins with subtle doubt planted in the heart of the woman: ‘Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees of the garden?’ The suggestion looks ridiculous, and the woman’s reply is obvious. But she adds something about the banned tree: ‘You must not eat it nor touch it, under pain of death.’ She makes the ban more rigorous, but her attempt is counterproductive. She is told by the serpent that they are banned from that tree out of jealousy of God: ‘God knows [that when] you eat it […] you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.’ In the Semitic culture knowledge means power to decide what is good and what is evil. All of a sudden the tree and its fruit look very attractive and promising. Eating them is just the final and inevitable act of the process that has just happened in her mind.
In Lent particularly we are invited to look deep into our hearts, because any injustice, dominance, abuse, exploitation and everything evil begins there, in a subtle, almost imperceptible way. It grows slowly, while we convince ourselves there’s nothing wrong with that, finding justification and excuses. Quite often this part of the process is drowned out by ubiquitous noise and the everyday rush. Usually we notice the final outcome of that long process – an evil act. In Lent we are invited to slow down, to become still, in order to find out what is growing in our hearts so that we can uproot the bad shoots and tend the good ones.