The Experiment with Sovereignty

          - Daniela Oakley    

           Good Character is essential to a life well-lived. Character is our make-up or "ethos”—it’s proof of our vitality. Character is the chemical compound made up of our ability to discern right from wrong and the projection of our moral in the physical form of action.
What we do, how we live, the pattern of our life: this is what defines us, this is what demonstrates to the world all that "I" value.
If this is true, then it follows that man must determine how good character is come by. Is there one ultimate source, or is it a thing each man chooses for himself depending on disposition and personal taste? And why the emphasis on good character?
It is my experience that defining "good" is nearly as impossible as trying to define "love." Let us instead, consider its source- perhaps that will speak of its essence more than our vain attempts of shooting at it.
Consider Jesus' admonition to His disciples that they might "know a tree by its fruit." He wasn't asking them  to try and figure the dimensions of the fruit and whether it could be improved, repeated or bettered; He invites us to observe the fruit and trust that the source of this good is itself good.
So the question is not why do we call good fruit good (Indeed, is this not an over complication?), but what or who is the good tree? Who was the first to name things as good? Was it not the Creator of all Himself?
At the last of God’s creation He knew all was as He determined it should be. The writer of Genesis tells us that “God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good." (Genesis 1:31, KJV)
I submit that if God is the Author of all that is good, then He must not merely share that attribute of goodness; rather, He must be the ultimate reality of good. He must be Goodness itself. He is the tree which makes the good fruit come forth.
And now we come to the point of no return: for if God is not good, but rather, good is God, then to reject the importance of good character in my personal life is to reject not only goodness, but God. It is to say that what God has created is not how I define good and that God Himself is not the extent of good. When goodness becomes subjective, God's goodness is called into question.
Again, let us take this point back to the very beginning and ask ourselves, “What happened the first time God's credibility was put into question and His command weighed in the tribunal of Man?”
I can picture it. The woman standing near the tree, not making eye contact with the serpent, but only thinking of the object of her desire. And then, "Did God really say...?" The serpent crawls closer to the woman as he says this, but she does not notice. He thinks on the luscious taste of blasphemy, it roles from his tongue with a mood of playfulness...
And here is the really scary part: when questioned, Eve repeated exactly what God said.
Her lust for power and independence from God was stronger than her love and commitment to the God of all good. And independence from perfection can mean nothing less than dependence on evil.
Eating the fruit was Eve's only way to determine whether she could create good apart from God.
But Eve missed something: good is not a definition, it is a being. It is God. To undermine the authority of goodness in one area is to rip away God's authority all together. And the result was that her experiment with Sovereignty, her decision to bite the bait, ended in death for all.