A Bite of My Apple

This is an in depth revelation behind the origin of the name "BeyondApples." 




In the the Christian bible, there's the famous story of Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve, the two first humans created by God lived in the Garden of Eden, a place full of animals and fruits, where they spent their lives in peace, happiness and safety. In the middle of the garden, there stood a large tree. God gave Adam and Eve only one command: they could eat fruits from any trees in the garden except the ones from the forbidden tree.

Eve and Adam followed God's command without questioning it. However, there lived a cunning serpent in the Garden with impure intentions. One day, while Eve was alone, the serpent approached her and tricked her into shifting her curiosity toward the forbidden tree. Eat the fruit, the snake urged her.

"You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

Eve, believing the serpent's words, lost to the temptation. She took a bite of the forbidden fruit and persuaded Adam to take a bite as well. Consequently, they both received self-consciousnesses. When God returned, he could sense that both Eve and Adam felt guilt and asked them why they had disobeyed his command. Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. Witnessing their immorality, God cursed the earth and the serpent and expelled them all from Paradise and into the world.

The forbidden fruit was an apple. 



By taking a bite of the apple, Eve hoped to gained the knowledge of "good and evil." In the metaphysical world, good and evil do not exist. What the serpent had tempted Eve with was moral truth. By gaining self-awareness, Adam and Eve would be capable of cogitating their own beliefs of what is wrong and what is right. They would become their own God. 

In the Bible and in our society, the notion of forbidden fruit is viewed as a metaphor for immoral pleasure or a  symbol of sin. But is it a sin to be cognitive independent—to trust your own mind and decisions?

The serpent is evil because it is the incarnation of devil. It already possessed a vicious aim and took advantage of Eve through the immoral act of beguiling, but naive Eve had simply believed the serpent because she could not doubt. Because God is good and he had only taught her goodness. By believing, Eve became a sinner. 

However, there does not exist good without evil. God cannot be good if there exists no evil. The fact that the serpent existed in the Garden to begin with reinforces the idea that the sin of humanity could not be avoided and that the expulsion of Adam and Eve was destined to happen. At the same time, the fact that God grew forbidden tree in the Garden indicates that the tree and its fruits are not intrinsically evil.

Thus, the bite of the apple may be a sin to God but it is a blessing to humanity. It is a sin to God because in essence, Eve betrayed goodness itself by succumbing to the temptation offered by the serpent and, accordingly, lost God's trust. In parallel, it is a blessing to humanity because by encountering the evil, Eve had secured herself a gift of survival. The exchange was inevitable: the moment Eve met the serpent was the moment she had to sin and the moment she had to leave God's side.

Through sinning, Eve and Adam gained access to the world. The world we live in today. Eve and Adam had acquired us the gift of self-awareness. We've learned to doubt, to blame, to question. Why should we not use our means of survival to counter the evilness in our daily lives? 

Evil and goodness are like black and white. Once the tiniest amount of black touches the canvas, no amount of white can  revert the canvas to its original pure state. The moment we are born, our minds are all white canvases—tabula rasa. As you grow, you absorb colors from your surrounding, and you use these colors to paint your own individual picture: your own personality, your own thoughts, your own life.

The world is made up of billions of humans, each with their own mind and their own painted pictures. But why do we so often try to imitate the portrait of another human being? Why do we try to please other people with our colors? Why do we not paint our own picture? 

Because we're afraid. Afraid of being different. Afraid of sinning.


We want to be like Adam, listening obediently to God and following his commands. We want to believe all he says is the truth, and live in his Garden of peace and security. We don't want to be tricked by the serpent and enter a new world of uncertainty and fear, so we swim along the stream with everyone else like fish in the sea. It is easier to follow than to take lead.

But there's one fundamental flaw in this mindset: we do not live in Paradise. 

Eve and Adam already left it and we can never return. We live in this world now, and in this world, God and the serpent take form of good and evil. Good and evil again take form of moral truth. Moral truth is established by the human mind. In this world, humans are God.


We've already taken a bite of the apple. 

By not taking more bites of the apple, you do not become less sinful. By not questioning, not doubting and not taking a stance, you don't become a better person. You cannot pretend that what everyone says is right is right and what every says is wrong is wrong because in this world, what is right and what is wrong is determined by us. You and me. My thoughts are no more good or evil than yours if you are unable to determine by yourself what is good and what is evil—this is moral truth. 

God gave us life, but the serpent gave us the ability to think. Thinking is the most sinful yet also the most divine quality we possess because it gives us choice, a choice between good and evil. It is up to you to choose the right one. 

There's a reason why God grew the forbidden tree in the Garden but warned Adam and Eve against eating its fruit. He did not want living beings to suffer. The apple is a double-edged sword: it cuts you in one end and mends you in the other. If you look beyond its facet as a token of sin, however, you'd realize what a wonderful gift the apple was. Yes, it has made us to doubt, to lie, and to criticize; but it has also allowed us to believe, to trust and to be inspired.  The apple has granted us the opportunity to live a meaningful life, one full of adventures, emotional roller-coasters, and epiphanies. 

The apple itself is just a fruit; but once you bite into it, you can taste your real self. 

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And this is why my blog is called Beyond Apples. 
Here, I form my own thoughts. I draw my own picture. I eat apples. Again and again. 

This is my own little secret Garden of Eden, with a forbidden tree standing tall and proud. My own little paradise, where I interchange among being the good God, the evil serpent, the sinful Eve, the innocent Adam. This is a place for me to explore the world, to analyze other people's moral truths and to grow psychologically as a human.  A place for me to open my own eyes, and to savor the flavor of each apple. 

Sour, sweet or bitter.