Do We Need Morality?

When Adam sinned his sin was that he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good an evil even though God told him not to. Doesn’t it seem odd that God would forbid Adam from eating from a tree that would give human beings the knowledge of what is good and what is evil? Acting and thinking in ways that are good and not acting and thinking in ways that are evil is called morality. The fact that God punished Adam for eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil makes it seem like God doesn’t think we need morality!

God threatens Adam with death if he eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When Adam does eat of it he, his wife, and the serpent are each cursed. Adam and Eve are driven from the garden and the tree of life is withheld from them so that they can’t live forever now that they have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Not only did God not want Adam and Eve to eat from the tree (because if they do it’s a death penalty) but once they do eat from it, God clearly isn’t happy about it! If God wanted us to have the knowledge of morality why does he go through such lengths to prevent human beings from having it, and once they have it why does he drive Adam and Eve away? It sounds like God doesn’t think very highly of morality.

The Rambam tells us in pages 14-16 of his Guide for the Perplexed that our intuition about the text, that God does not want us to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (from here on referred to as the tree), is correct. Prior to eating from the tree human beings had a knowledge of necessary truth or a knowledge of the true and the false. Examples of this are: the speed of light in a vacuum is 186,282.4 miles/second is true while the earth is flat is false. The knowledge of necessary truths allows us to draw closer to God because we can understand the universe as it truly is.

After eating from the tree, human beings gained a knowledge of apparent truths or matters of good and bad. Examples of this are: Saving a life is good while murder is bad (evil). Knowledge of apparent truths distracts us from drawing closer to God. This is because apparent truths are very difficult to determine at times. Murder, for example is wrong, but are there times when killing is not evil? Perhaps someone is trying to murder another person, isn’t killing that person an act of good rather than evil? Such questions distract rathter than encourage a closer relationship with God. Before the tree questions regarding moral choices never would have been asked while now these question are essential to living correctly and being able to draw close to God.

Eating from the tree created a state of confusion in the world that we have not recovered from. God gave us His Torah, in part, to answer many questions (or to teach us how to find the answers for ourselves) regarding apparent truths so that these questions would not totally distract us from the goal of drawing close to God. The Torah, then, serves as a remedy for the after effects of eating the poison from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

It is apparent from this that humanity was in a much more perfected state before eating from the tree than after eating from the tree.  After eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil human beings became consumed with moral questions (apparent truths). This is clear because before eating the fruit of the tree Adam and Eve saw that they were naked but it did not occur to them that it was an issue. After they ate from the tree they were aware how much evil could be committed as a result of “nakedness.” This also shows us that after human beings ate from the tree they were brought lower and became closer to animals while at the same time losing a level of closeness to God.

There are some who make the mistake and think that we did not have free will until we ate from the tree. The fact is that the commandment not to eat from the tree would have been meaningless if we did not already possess free will.

Conclusion

The question that began this article was “Do we need morality?” Initially God intended for human beings to draw closer to Him from the state of perfection that we were created at. In this state the knowledge of apparent truths (questions of morality) were unnecessary. Once, however, we were brought lower to the level of animals we needed the Torah to guide us through and teach us how to correctly answer moral questions so that we can spend the rest of our energies drawing closer to God.

So, do we need Morality? We do now.