Knowledge of Good and Evil

My last post was a happy one about new life. Just 24 hours later, I'm feeling the weight of the world. I can't wait to hold that sweet little baby and the hope she embodies just by her existence. It's been a heavy day indeed...

The world is an absolute mess right now. In the last few months, it’s been Syria, Russia fighting with Ukraine, Malaysian Airlines’ missing plane, then Malaysian Airlines shot out of the sky over Ukraine, a horrible outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, continued suffering in South Sudan, the Rift Valley drought in Kenya, ISIS, North Korea, an new debilitating mosquito-borne illness called Chikungunya, an earthquake in China, and our own racial troubles at home in the US. And on and on and on…

I have felt utter despair today, and I’m not even directly affected by any of these things. In addition to the regular somewhat normal (though not painless) troubles and trials of everyday life with family, sickness, financial struggles, etc., things can feel downright hopeless. I am usually a very optimistic person, and generally I have no trouble at all putting my trust and hope in God for taking care of the world’s big problems. But today, I just feel overwhelmed by it all.

I read a book a long time ago called Margin. It was about leaving space in your life - like the margins on a piece of notebook paper when you are taking notes in class, we must leave empty space around the edges of our daily lives for when we must inject something, or do something God calls us to spontaneously. I learned this lesson many years ago, and have tried to live by this in terms of my activity level and what I say yes and no to.

But I’m finding that the same principle is perhaps true emotionally as well. I feel like my emotional page is full to the very edges of the paper, with no room left to insert anything. Heaven forbid my dog die or something, because I just ain’t got no room to spare.

I was thinking about Genesis 2 the other day, and then the subsequent chapter about original sin. God created this beautiful garden for Adam. He gave Adam free reign over everything, and gave him just one limitation: don’t indulge in this tree called “The Knowledge of Good and Evil.” Weird name for a tree, but I wonder if it was more symbolic, like a warning for all of mankind. Perhaps God saw forward to our time in history, when information zipped around the globe at the speed of light, so that when a journalist in Iraq is beheaded we not only hear about it within minutes, we could even watch it if we wanted to. That is just TMI. Indeed.

I am wondering if the very thing that has allowed us to be more aware and therefore compassionate and active in our world, has crippled us because we now have all the knowledge of good and of evil that we could ever want, and we feel overwhelmed and helpless. News can be addicting, and certainly social media is.

I’m not making any declarations here, but it is something to think about.