This was the potent temptation spoken by the Tempter as he approached the couple in the Garden of Eden! “And ye shall be like God, knowing good and evil.”   And we believed the Tempter! How could any creature be like God? A subtle and clever play to our conceit and vanity and it worked like a charm. This poison is still very much with us today unfortunately.

This subtle temptation fuelled our vanity and conceit and these two qualities are some of the worst consequences of that great approach by the Tempter. We got caught in the pursuit of “greatness” and “knowledge”, wanting to discover and establish laws by which all mankind was supposed to live by. We investigated and prodded and questioned and questioned wanting to do everything ourselves.

We wanted to be the ones who made all the rules. We wanted to be the discoverers of all the mysteries of the Universe. We wanted to work everything out ourselves. We disdained to simply ask the Creator to teach us about His creation. We wanted to discover the secrets of the Universe ourselves and achieve glory and fame as a result.

Since we had already fallen for the Tempter’s gambit and we believed him we thought we were actually like God, all knowing and all wise. We wanted to organise our societies as we saw fit but not according to how God wanted us to organise it. We never wanted to ask God about the structure of His creation and His Laws within this creation. We thought we knew it all, or if we thought we didn’t, it was only a matter of time before we discovered it all ourselves and laid claims to the glory and fame of discovering these Laws; so we thought and still think.

We thought that we did not need God since without Him we have managed to achieve all this: great technology, great scientific progress, longevity, pride, great architecture etc. We have enough to eat, or at least some of us do; so why bother to ask about God since we have achieved all these things without Him.

The Tempter had total and absolute victory over the souls of men with this temptation. He promoted pride and the thinking of the supremacy of man above all and even above the Creator Himself.

The effects and results are devastating as we all can see for ourselves.

The question though is: have we really achieved anything of note? Have we really achieved anything of what really matters in the lives of human beings? Do we have love and peace reigning throughout this earth? Do we have that brotherly and sisterly love which actually is the most important?

Greatness of a particular civilisation, or humanity in general does not lie in buildings and technology and material wealth, but in how much peace, and compassion and love there is in that society. So far we have never seen any of these higher qualities in any race of men on earth. We have always fought each other so much so that instead of love and peace what we have achieved so far is hatred, envy, murder, wars and oppression etc.

It is time to realise that we can never be like God and it is time to give up that delusion that we can discover everything ourselves and that we never have to ask God anything.

Let it be said that we can never discover everything of our own accord. Knowledge is a gift from God which can only be received by those who open themselves to spiritual streams with the requisite humility.

Let us pray that we will be able one day to achieve this ability to receive from spiritual heights. Amen.