Word forgive

The dignity of a person is high. See what the heavens, the earth, the sun, and the moon are; and it was not in them that the Lord was pleased to rest, but only in man.

Pdp. Macarius the Great

The Lord planted a paradise and placed man there, so that man could possess this magnificence. Everything in paradise was created for the sake of man. The Lord, who is absolutely self-sufficient in His unchanging fullness, needs nothing. Nor does He need man. But out of His greatest love, the Lord creates man as the center of the universe, giving him His image and everything visible and invisible, so that man may possess it, cultivate it, preserve it, and, perfecting himself in communion with God, transform the world around him.

Everything in paradise belonged to man, including the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But the Lord gave a strange commandment, according to which a person could eat of all the fruits in the Garden of Eden, except for the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And the Lord said to man, "In the day that thou eatest of it, thou shalt surely die" (Gen. 2:17).

It seems strange that a person created on this earth must understand both himself and this world in order to own the world? Why not touch this tree? How, then, do we know what is good and what is evil?

But the Lord commanded: "Do not touch! Do not eat!" Because good and evil are known differently.

If you think about it, good was fully available to Adam in paradise: the whole world, of which the Lord said that it was good (in Church Slavonic, good zelo) (Gen. 1:31), was before his eyes. God Himself was with man, spoke to him, giving him the opportunity to know Him, to move towards Him, to finally become like God, having fulfilled the highest destiny of man to become like God, to become God himself. God's plan for man, for his personality, freedom and dignity, was for man to know the height and power of good, to be filled with it, to feel it in himself, and in gradual communion with it he would receive the strength and power to defeat evil, remaining completely unconnected from it.

The ban was imposed precisely on participation in evil, that is, on complicity in it. Thou shalt know, and thou shalt die of death (Gen. 2:17), the Lord warned, protecting His immature creation from mortal danger. Revealing the Divine image in himself through communion with God, man had to overcome evil in good, without communing with it, to conquer with love and goodness. Adam, who had not yet tasted good, who had not known it in its entirety, could not know evil in any of its forms, and even more so through eating it.

This is the law, unchanged from Adam to the present day: if a person knows evil, partaking of it, he immediately takes it into himself, unites with it and is overcome by it. The prohibition of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge is a prototype of fasting, revealing its deep meaning. The tree of knowledge is the tree of discernment, the tree of the victory of good over evil. Not having established himself in the good, man cannot enter into the struggle, because he himself is not yet good. Fasting was imposed for the sole purpose of a person, having joined the good with his free will, to be able to defeat evil.

Paradise is closed, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree of their distinction, is embedded in every person, this is his conscience, which, in the words of Abba Dorotheus, is the natural law that reveals to man what is good and what is evil, protects from evil, and unites him with good. Communion with good enlightens a person and warms his heart, while it darkens and freezes the retreat and choice of evil.

And now the same temptation comes from the world: "Everything must be tried, everything must be experienced... How can you live without knowing both..." The evil that is happening around us is constantly advertised and presented to us as a tempting dish that we must eat. And man again eats the forbidden fruit, neglecting the first commandment given to him by God: "Thou shalt not eat, thou shalt surely die" (Gen. 2:17).

Evil in itself is nothing, for it is not a being and has no composition.