The Tree, The Trial, and the Trap: A Reflective Muse On First Fruits, Forbidden Knowledge, and the Wounds of Awakening

In the beginning,
they say there was a garden...
lush, lush with the unspoken.

No barbed wire.

No border.

No badge.

And in this sacred space,
they say,

a Man and a Woman walked naked
without shame...
without knowledge.

But they did not know.

Did not know that hunger could be crime.

Did not know that questions could be rebellion.

Did not know that obedience,
without understanding,
was the first plantation.

They ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

And for that,

they were punished.

Exiled.

Banished for seeking to know.

Yet...before the bite,
they didn’t know wrong from right.

So we ask, again, as all who’ve ever stood on trial should:

How can you condemn someone for a crime they didn’t know was a crime?

Is justice truly just, when knowledge comes only after the sentence?

Now… shift your gaze.

From Eden to Elmina.
From Paradise to Port-au-Prince.
From Genesis to Jamestown.

Ask:

What Tree did the African eat from,
to be cast out of their own lands?

Cast out of Humanity?

Cast of of God's grace?

What fruit did the Congo bite
that made the King of Belgium
carve hands from children
like spoiling bananas?

Was it evil
to know the rhythm of drums?

The codes hidden in cowrie shells?

The divine names whispered
before the Nile had a nation?

Did we not walk naked, too?

Before they dressed us in chains?

And like the first Man,
were we not blamed
before we knew the rules of the conqueror’s God?

"We didn’t know it was wrong,"
the child says.

"We didn’t know it was wrong,"
the stolen say.

"We didn’t know it was wrong,"
the rebel,
the runaway,
the raped.

But the whip didn’t care.

The court didn’t care.

The gods of empire did not wait for us to eat fruit...
they fed us steel and scripture at once.

And when we bit back,
they said we were savage.

Pause.

Reflect.

In every courtroom of conquest,
the same trick repeats:

First, deny them knowledge.

Then, criminalize their ignorance.

Then, punish their awakening.

It happened in Eden.
It happened in 1619.
It happens still...
in classrooms that erase,
in textbooks that lie,
in legislatures that whitewash.

Ask yourself:

Who taught you what was right?

Who benefits from your definition of wrong?

What fruits have you refused because someone told you they were forbidden?

What trees have you been told to fear?

And who planted them?

Technically, the serpent did not lie.

“Eat, and your eyes shall be opened.”

He just left out the price of vision.

He didn’t mention the exile,
the curse of consciousness,
the pain that comes from knowing
while living among the willfully blind.

But the first lie...
that knowing is sin...
was spoken not by the serpent,
but by those who feared what we might do
if we ever remembered who we are.

Baldwin said:
“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”

And Toni Morrison whispered:
“The function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work.”

But I tell you:

The function of deception is divine control.
And the antidote is divine disobedience.

Not lawless.
Not reckless.
But a holy rebellion rooted in love,
in memory,
in truth.

So eat.

Eat from every tree they told you not to.

Taste your history.

Bite into your brilliance.

Digest your pain, your prophecy, your possibility.

Let it stir you.
Let it unsettle you.
Let it guide you to ask:

What gods have I obeyed without question?

What empires have I upheld with my silence?

What knowledge have I feared because it might free me?

What exile am I willing to risk… for truth?

This is your Garden.
This is your Trial.
This is your Trapdoor.

Will you open it?

Let love be the question.

Let justice be the answer.

Let truth be the road,

even when it leads you away
from everything you’ve ever known.

Ase.