The very first command God gave to Man was to not eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. (Ge 2:17) He imposed a dietary law providing a simple, standalone boundary condition, a restriction on what we could consume as food.
Why did God do this? Was the tree poisonous? Did it cause disease? Evidently not; as far as we know, eating from it caused no physical harm. God doesn’t explain exactly why we are not supposed to eat it, so, understanding how obeying a command is beneficial for us must not be the main point; the fact God commands it is all we need. A restriction reminds us we are not God; we are subjects in God’s kingdom.
We should implicitly trust God as intrinsically good, without evaluating and double-checking Him based on our own limited perspective. But believing the lie that God is keeping something good from us by imposing restrictions seems to be our natural inclination ever since the Fall, when the serpent first suggested it. It wasn’t too hard to convince us even when we were sinless.
So, if God’s first command actually was good, an outflow of His love for us, and He was not withholding something good, what was He shielding us from?
Some presume knowledge itself must be bad for us, that God is discouraging us from earnestly pursuing understanding. They admonish us for digging deeply into spiritual matters and trying to more fully understand God’s ways. They remind us that knowledge puffs us up (1Co 8:1a), so we shouldn’t bother with systematic theology, critical thinking, apologetics and the like, just love one another. (1b) Yet God encourages us to seek knowledge and wisdom, to get understanding above everything else. (Pr 2:3-5, Pr 4:7) We ignore it at our own peril. (Pr 1:29-31) Something else is in play.
Notice carefully the full name of this forbidden tree; it’s not the Tree of Knowledge, but the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. There is a specific kind of knowledge which is harmful and destructive: the knowledge of good and evil. What is this, exactly?
Satan’s claim in the immediate context provides a clue: in eating the forbidden fruit Adam and Eve would “be as gods, knowing good and evil.” (Ge 3:5) In other words, by disobeying God we start deciding what is right and wrong for ourselves, making up their own moral law as we go, and since moral law is God’s domain, we’re actually acting as if we are God. (Ge 3:22)
Trying to act like we are God when we aren’t is problematic on a number of levels, not the least of which is that it insults God Himself; it’s our attempt to displace God and position ourselves at the center of the universe, at the center of Reality, at the epicenter of Being itself. Yet there can be only one true Center (Re 4:11); when we all start jockeying for this position we create conflict, confusion and resentment, making up rules for everyone else so we can please ourselves.
Most all of the human-induced suffering and injustice in the world can be traced back to each of us acting as if we are God without the loving, selfless wisdom of God. At heart, when left to ourselves, we’re selfish, needy, fearful little creatures, constantly competing with God and with one another. So, in forbidding us to eat from the forbidden tree, God is commanding us to not do that which we are all now naturally inclined to do: to sit in judgment of His laws and of His ways and decide for ourselves what is good and evil, abusing Him and one another in the process.
What would it be like if we all started obeying God, just because He’s God? Call it Paradise. (2Pe 3:13) God’s commands are the definition of righteousness (Ps 119:172) and all of them are truth. (152) Those who walk in them comprise His kingdom. (1Jn 3:10)