Once, quite a few years ago, I spent some time doing work as a political volunteer. It was something that my mother set up for me, and I was assisting a candidate for a local office. My days would usually consist of me driving to his house, parking my car, and taking the train downtown to his office. From there, I would drive him around the county in his car, while he campaigned at various political events. I wasn’t particularly committed to him, or his cause, but I enjoyed the work.
Once, we attended an event in a golf club in the southern suburbs. As the candidate worked the event, I took a few minutes to attack the buffet of appetizers. It was a well-heeled event—after all, my mother was a republican—and it contained quite a spread of cheeses, meats, and exotic looking food.
As I was heaping food upon my plate, an older gentleman behind me pointed to something that looked kind of brown and smelled fishy. “What’s that?” he asked me, as he pointed to it. I had no idea, and told him so. “Oh well,” he said, and grabbed a couple. He smiled at me and said “God hates a coward.”
I found a place to sit and chewed on his comment. This man, who appeared to be well off, had an incredibly liberal attitude about his life. I remember being startled by the fact that he didn’t already know what that food was, since it was a tony golf club, and he appeared to be a member. I tasted the food … it was fishy and salty, and I didn’t like it because of the hair sized fish bones.
I suppose, however, that the real nutrition was in what the man said. Cowardice is certainly a function of self-preservation; often the fear that drives it is right in the sense that flight from a situation allows us safety. But the man wasn’t referring to food—he was talking about a willingness to try something new. And he implied the opposite: God loves those that take chances.
Maybe that’s what Eve said to Adam, as she handed him the fruit of knowledge: “God hates a coward.” How presumptive of her to assume she knew what God hated or loved. Yet the fruit was, in itself, a gift from God. If God is all knowing and all seeing, He should have easily been able to see that his creation of the fruit of knowledge was going to be a strong lure for his budding human creations. After all, as I raise a puppy, I carefully watch over things for him to find that he shouldn’t have—chocolate, pens to chew on, and cat food—and take them out of his reach. But I don’t take other things away—the water bowl, the books and the cat. Sooner or later, the puppy will discover the cat, and find that the cat isn’t what it appears to be. There is a chance that the puppy will be hurt, but within that pain there is a lesson to be learned.
In this way, I am acting as God must have. True, the cat is no fruit of knowledge, but it must have pained God to know he had to create this fruit, forbid us from eating it, and yet know we were going to anyway. After we ate this fruit, and our eyes opened, we began to realize that the ideal life we had up until then was going to end, and that there was no going back. But God knew we had the courage to face the trial of life with knowledge. Had Eve not tasted the fruit, and Adam not taken it from Eve, we would be nothing but a race of cowards. We would still be secure within the paradise of Eden, but we would have never been able to fully appreciate the gifts that God has given us.
Today, I found myself confronted with a difficult decision. I realized that I had made a mistake, and that I had two options: One that was a simple, yet brutal way out, and one that meant a lot of heartbreak and pain, but also honorable. I chose the latter.
I am going out to dinner tonight. The restaurant we’re going to will have an expansive and exotic salad bar. I will choose something there that I have never had before, and delight as it’s knowledge of flavor washes over me. After all, God hates a coward.
