The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…. And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Genesis 2:9, 16-17
“Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” John 12:27-28
To support and care for His newly created humanity, God is described as having planted a garden. From that garden would come food to eat and a place to call home. In the middle of the garden was the tree of good and evil. This is more than simply a moral standard. It was a representation of God who alone knows what is truly good and truly evil. Any attempt to eat of this tree would have dire consequences. Why? Because to eat of the tree was in essence an attempt to usurp the rightful place of God in the center of all things. It would be a grasping for control.
When God is in the center, life goes as it should. God loves and provides. Men and women return that love in gratitude. Harmony comes. Life is good. Yet such a state is fragile indeed. That’s why the warning was given. There is something in the human soul that will forever be tempted to put something else in the center of life. Basically, it is a choice between allowing God to be in the center or taking over that place for ourselves.
Sadly, it wouldn’t be long before the man and woman chose to violate God’s command. And the result was disastrous. It still is. For we have the same choice in our day to choose what is going to be in the center: God and His perfect wisdom or us and our flawed reasoning. When we choose to allow God to stay in the center, we experience the blessing of goodness. When we choose to take the center ourselves, we invite heartache and tragedy into our lives. There are no exceptions.
Jesus faced this very same dilemma. As He did during His wilderness temptations and as He would in the Garden of Gethsemane, we find Jesus in John 12 struggling between accepting the impending hour of His atoning death or rejecting it. It was in essence a choice about what was going to be in the center.
Notice the troubling or the anguish in Jesus’ soul. This troubling of the soul happens to us as believers as well. When we sense this inner turmoil, we should recognize it as the battle to choose what’s going to be in the center. Jesus framed it essentially as a choice between putting our self-serving will or the glory of the Father in heaven in the center.
Our choice has enormous ramifications for how we will experience life. The Genesis account indicates that when we put the self in the center, we experience death. This is more than the ending of our time on earth. This is a death to the kind of life we were intended to live – what the New Testament calls eternal life. However, when we choose to put God in the center and make the glory of the Father our chief interest, we are enabled to fulfill our purpose in the world and experience the life we were created to live.
Unfortunately, when we talk about giving glory to God, we have a tendency to limit it to what happens during a worship service typically during the singing. But glorifying God actually entails every aspect of our lives – the way we handle money, how we treat other people, the individuals we bring into our inner circle, even the choices we make in the voting booth. We are either allowing the glory of God to be in the center to inform our decisions, or we are choosing our self-will to be in the center.
Each of us then need to examine ourselves to see what is in the center of our lives. The questions are many. What drives us? What do we value the most? Whose wisdom do we trust? Whose will are we following? It is threatening when we find ourselves in the center. We like being in control. Letting go of it is resisted by every ounce of our being. But it must be done. We must allow God to have the primary place in our lives. Because the center determines everything.