Where Are You? What Have You Done? Don’t Blame Others!

Yesterday, my old neighbor Ed called me, and our answering machine answered his call. When I checked the machine, his message was, “This Ed from Saskatchewan. Where are you? What are you doing? Give me a call back since you are not home now.” Ed has always been blunt in seeking answers. He often asks me, “Where were you? What were you doing? Why? I have often told Ed that he should have been a police detective rather than a farmer.

When I heard Ed’s questions on the answering machine, I was struck by how they reflect God’s questions to Adam and Eve in the third chapter of Genesis. God questioned Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. There God called out, asking Adam, “Where are you?” because Adam and Eve were trying to hide from God. They were trying to hide because they had eaten from the tree in the middle of the garden. God had commanded them not to eat of that tree because they would learn of good and evil.

God asked Adam if he had eaten of the fruit of the forbidden tree. Adam blamed Eve for giving him the fruit of the tree to eat and God for giving him Eve as his wife. Eve blamed the serpent for deceiving her.

When we make bad decisions, we may try to distance ourselves from them. When we are guilty of doing what we know we should not have done, we may deny our actions. We may try to hide what we did wrong. Hiding the truth of what we did will not make it go away. Yet, we may spend a lifetime doing this repeatedly.

Adam and Eve made bad decisions. They chose to do what God told them not to do. They had all the good possible in the garden of Eden, but the serpent deceived Eve into thinking that eating the forbidden fruit would make their lives better by being able to know both good and evil. Knowing evil means more sin, bad choices, pain, sorrow, and death. Today, we know both good and evil and death.

Many feel that if they blame others for their bad choices or sins, they can excuse themselves. If Adam and Eve had admitted their disobedience before God, it would not have changed what they did. Sometimes we can undo or make a mistake right, but often there is no undoing what we have done wrong. Adam and Eve brought sin or evil to us. Evil or Satan is like death and it is never satisfied. Evil is like a forest fire that grows in strength and destroys everything in its path. Evil as sin is invasive and becomes deadly.

God knew evil would not leave people alone, and God promised Eve that one of her offspring would crush the serpent or the devil/ evil, but her offspring would die in doing so. Romans 5:19 explains, “Just as through the disobedience of the one man (Adam) the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man (Jesus) many will be made righteous.” 1 John 3:8 states, “The reason the Son of God (Jesus) appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.”

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