WG-04-5. THE SEEDS OF DOUBT

5. THE SEEDS OF DOUBT THE narrative which we read in the third chapter of Genesis is severe in its brevity and is quite ungarnished. The Narrator described this tremendous event with superhuman simplicity and calmness. He is not man, to delight in the account of great wickedness or of a great calamity. This is the tragedy of the universe, and the heart of God is grieved. Hence, the account is given in the smallest compass. It is devoid of comment, moralizing, or exhortation. There is no attempt to paint the scene, no indica­tion anywhere of the human propensity to heighten the effect by a single superfluous word. The generation of the doubt. —At the outset God’s command is brought under discussion and a question is asked: “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden?”

Turning from this question to the state of human nature we find that man recognizes himself as a moral creature who is somehow invested with a sense of accountability. We find a universal tendency of the heart of man to appease that sense of accountability by debating whether God has really forbidden the desired thing. In the life of every son and daughter of Eve this scene has been many times repeated, with the result that the clearly defined commandment has been lost sight of in the fog of discussion, question, and argument. But this is precisely what we should expect to find if man’s present state has resulted from giving entrance to doubt and suspicion of God. Either that is the explanation, or we have none. The tendency to disbelieve and to question God’s Word is undoubtedly the common legacy of the descendants of Adam and Eve. This inherited trait is not usually exhibited in any uncompromising rejection and denial of the Word, but (as in the incident given in the text, whereby the human heart was first inoculated with the microbe of unbelief) the inherited trait is usually manifested in the form of a disposition to shade the meaning of the Word, to enlarge or diminish it, or to evade by interpretation, professing all the time a laudable regard for the spirit (which may be anything the interpreter likes) as a pretext for disregarding the plain letter.

Many religious teachings which find favor with man rely for their acceptance upon plausibility. How often we hear the echo of this conversation: “Has God really said?” “Surely God, who is all love and tenderness toward His dear children, could never have meant it; for God doth know,” etc., etc. This has a very familiar sound. Where did it originate, if not in the scene described in the third chapter of Genesis? The contradiction. —Doubt having been gene­rated as the result of bringing God’s command under discussion, the adversary sets up his own word in direct opposition to what God had said: “Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil” (R.V.). This doctrine is very comprehensive, and its acceptance by the parents of our race has produced effects bearing unmistakably its imprint—effects which are everywhere and most palpably evident in their descendants. The doctrine seeks to gain favor by pretending to defend the character of God against an implication of harshness and severity. “You are unjust to God,” says the great questioner, “in supposing that He would visit with death a thing done with a laudable motive.” Eternal death is yet disproved to the satisfaction of many by arguments professedly based upon the character of God, upon His love and tenderness. This is a religion that commends itself to the natural heart. It has many forms and millions of adherents to­day. Small wonder is it that men wish to discard or glaze over that part of the Word of God which says plainly that these religions (though they be termed “Christian”) were derived, not from God, but from Satan.

Then again, what trait is there which is more common among men than the inclination to believe the first article in Satan’s creed: “Ye shall not surely die”? That article of faith has been in­corporated into many of the religious systems of mankind. Its influence may be traced in all the manifold attempts of man to disguise to himself the real nature of death, and in all his attempts to make that grim and hideous enemy—the wages of sin—appear to be something different from what it is.

“There is no death; what seems so is transi­tion,” says the poet; and men quote this and like phrases with almost religious fervor. What is this but an echo of the first lie which was imposed upon mankind? We place flowers on the coffin and speak of the “angel” of death, endeavoring with such vain expedients to disguise the character of this, “the last enemy that shall be destroyed." This lie has, indeed, eaten deeply into human nature, and where is there any explanation of this significant fact, save in the holy Scriptures?