Article August 3, 1981 Issue

Are you searching the right tree?

MURIEL ROADMAN

Genealogy and family trees command much attention. Human pride readily claims admirable ancestral traits such as artistic talent but would disown so-called inherited faults and tendencies toward disease. We cannot, however, accept favorable genealogical findings and reject the unfavorable. If we believe in the first, we will find ourselves automatically subject to the second.

The search into human ancestry leads us back to the scriptural allegory of Adam and Eve, which includes this statement: "Out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil."^{Gen. 2:9.}

In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy's explanation of this passage begins: "The previous and more scientific record of creation declares that God made 'every plant of the field before it was in the earth.' This opposite declaration, this statement that life issues from matter, contradicts the teaching of the first chapter,—namely, that all Life is God." And in the next paragraph we read: "The 'tree of life' stands for the idea of Truth, and the sword which guards it is the type of divine Science. The 'tree of knowledge' stands for the erroneous doctrine that the knowledge of evil is as real, hence as God-bestowed, as the knowledge of good."^{Science and Health, p. 526.}

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