Genesis 3:5 – God Creates, Man Tinkers

For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Genesis 3:5 ESV

I remember as a kid the first time I realized that if only Adam and Eve hadn’t fallen for Satan’s lie that we would still live in Eden.

I imagined living in the garden. Surrounded with flowers as big as my house. Essentially, living in a place just like Land Before Time (only without Sharptooth). But I’ve as I’ve grown up, I realized: if it wasn’t Adam and Eve who sinned, it would have been someone else—maybe even me.

Satan’s lie is as compelling now as it was then.

Eve was wooed into the idea of absolute power, control and knowledge.

In fact, the lie played off of the beauty that God had already created, because the tree “was a delight to the eyes” (Gen 3:6).

The lie that we can have ultimate control has invaded us in nearly every facet of life. We rest in our knowledge of the universe, we rely on our mastery of mechanics and engineering, we trust in biochemists and the drugs they engineer, but do we trust in God?

None of these things are bad to trust in, but if we solely trust in man’s ability and accomplishments we lose sight of the very truth that they show us.

Mankind can only make discoveries about what God has already created. We ourselves cannot create, only tinker. We can become so absorbed in the “delight to the eyes” that is God’s creation, that we believe the first lie ever told us, “You will be like God”.

Don’t let mankind’s great feats of engineering blind you from this basic fact: we are simply discovering the way in which God has ordered the world. Don’t let *stuff* grow larger than God.

Stay humble and vigilant so that your faith is ultimately in the God who creates rather than men who only tinker.