Main news for 14 February 2022

Most questions usually arise over what "knowing good and evil" means. How can one judge the moral act of a person who does not know, as was apparently the case before the fall with Adam and Eve, what good and evil are? We do not judge a child; we explain that he acted badly, and even in purely legal terms we do not judge him, because we understand that he simply does not yet know what good and evil are. But here the issue is something entirely different. To imagine the situation this way is fundamentally wrong. In reality the issue is that the serpent offers Adam and Eve the possibility of deciding what is good and what is evil. "To know" in Hebrew, yada, often means "to be able," "to possess," "to have mastery." The understanding of what is good and what is evil lies at the foundation of creation; it is a meaning-giving or structural part of the universe. That is why it says "like gods": they are being offered the chance to build their own little separate world, where they would be masters of themselves. And then everything is very simple. Once one step is taken in the wrong direction, one thing catches on another. It is far easier to abstain completely from temptation than, having thought, "I will allow myself a little," to fight later against its tenfold strength. Such is the law of every sin.