Adam and Eve

Whose fault was it anyway?

The serpent's? Eve's? Adam's?

Katie and I did some Bible study tonight on Eve. At one point we had to answer the question of whom to assign the blame to.

We pondered for awhile and came up with reasons they all have blame, and since God did curse them all, He obviously felt they each had some responsibility in the whole deal. What really bloggles my mind is wondering how we can assign blame to Eve when she didn't gain knowledge of good and evil until after she ate from the tree. How can she have been deceived into doing something wrong if she didn't know good from evil? She didn't even know what evil was yet!

From Genesis 3:

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "

4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Eve blamed the serpent, but Adam went on to blame Eve for his wrongdoing. We say nowadays that people don't take responsibility for their actions, but these people weren't even accepting responsibility from the very beginning! At least no one blamed President Bush!