Who Ruined Paradise?

This week, a boy in youth group asked whose fault it is that we’ve been “kicked out” from the Garden of Eden: Adam or Eve? He was trying to spark a debate between the girls and guys, but his question is more important than he perhaps realized. His question, in fact, is determinative of how one goes through life.

Who’s to blame for ruining Paradise? This question has hung over the head of humanity ever since Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam blamed Eve; Eve blamed the serpent. You could say that the rest of human history is marked by this same blame-game. Cain blamed Abel; David (seeing Bathsheba as his ticket to Paradise) blamed Uriah; Herod (eyes set on his brother’s wife) blamed John the Baptist.

For more recent examples, you could say that Hitler blamed those with so-called “bad genes” (namely the Jews); Marx blamed capitalists and Christians (if it weren’t for them, Utopia!). Even today, conservatives and liberals, natives and immigrants, neat folks and messy folks, husbands and wives…all playing the blame-game, accusing one another for the ruination of Paradise.

The problem? The blame-game is nothing other than continuing to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The desire to be like God by knowing good and evil is the same desire that led Adam and Eve to their expulsion from Eden. To keep asking that question and to keep looking for someone to accuse is to add sin upon sin upon sin.

Ultimately, the blame-game has led to the crucifixion of Christ. Everyone’s been looking for a scapegoat – someone to blame for all of life’s ills – and Jesus Christ has offered himself as that scapegoat. The righteous One has taken the place of the guilty. This is the end of the blame-game, for Christ has refused to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and he has become the sacrifice for sins for which everyone’s been searching. So who’s to blame for the loss of Eden? Christ’s answer: Blame me.

The fact that the One who is blameless has said “Blame me” is a call to stop accusing, gossiping, backbiting, etc., and to admit that we’ve been eating forbidden fruit. And so the Christian answer to the question “Who’s to blame?” is no different than Christ’s answer: Blame me. I once was blindly playing the blame-game, but now I see that my sin is a log in comparison to my neighbor’s sin, which is only a speck. (Matthew 7:4)

The good news? The sinner who quits the blame-game and empties himself of his claim to righteousness finds himself in the company of Christ. Furthermore, this same Christ, who emptied himself of his righteousness and humbly took the form of a slave, has been exalted into the new Eden. (Philippians 2:7, 9) In his exaltation, the humble are glorified, the sinners are made righteous, and fallen humanity is returned into the presence of God. To put it differently, the blame-game has been put to rest, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil has been supplanted by the Tree of Life: Christ himself.