But in this blessed place there was one reminder of the lie. In His wisdom God picked a tree, apparently near the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and called it the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. All He had made was good, yes, very good, including the man and woman. Thus they knew good from the moment of their creation. But He did not want them to know evil. The lie had pierced His heart already, and He wished to save them from such knowledge. He knew that if they partook, it would tear up and desolate all of the foundation realities He had built into their existence. So He warned them to avoid that experience of putting good and evil together by making this tree a sign of it, and placing its fruit off limits to them, a symbol of the deadliness of such a quest. For if, in their freedom of love, they would choose this counterfeit love, His image in them would be destroyed, their oneness as male and female would be ended, their dominion lost, their diet perverted into life-taking ventures, their rest in Him wrested from them, and their pleasant activity warped into tiring labor. And with this loss of love, they would die.
