Passion Fruit

Seeing how our disordered desires cause our sins

02/13/2019

Mark 7:14-23 Jesus summoned the crowd again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand. Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.”  When he got home away from the crowd his disciples questioned him about the parable. He said to them, “Are even you likewise without understanding? Do you not realize that everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters not the heart but the stomach and passes out into the latrine?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) “But what comes out of the man, that is what defiles him. From within the man, from his heart, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile.”

Arguably one of the most frequently painted scenes in the bible is the Garden of Eden, and specifically capturing the moment of the first moral mistake called “original sin.” One of my favorite depictions was the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens housed in The Hague, Netherlands. It shows a beautiful but naked Eve reaching up to pluck the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil with her right hand, while simultaneously handing an equally eager to eat Adam the same fruit with her left hand. But what captures my attention is the presence of all kinds of animals in the painting. We see dinosaurs and peacocks, dogs and cats, leopards and horses, lions and tigers, all enjoying that primordial peace and perfection. But the moment of the original sin plunges that peaceful paradise into confusion and conflict. In other words, sins are never a private affair, but always carry a cosmic consequence. Sins do not just hurt the sinner, but the whole wide world.

Now, every artist who picks up a paintbrush to bring that prehistoric scene to life must wrestle with the question: what kind of fruit did Adam and Eve actually eat? Most people assume the forbidden fruit was an apple, but the bible does not say that anywhere. By the way, that’s why men are said to have an “Adam’s apple” in their neck, the protruding thyroid cartilage surrounding the larynx. Apparently, the apple got stuck in Adam’s throat as he tried to swallow it. Other interpreters say the original sin may have been more sexual in nature. Scott Hahn once joked, “it may not have been the apple in the tree but the pair on the ground.” In this sense, “pair” can spelled “pear” or “pair.” Rabbinic scholars argue the forbidden fruit could have been a fig, or grapes, or mushrooms or pomegranates. What was the forbidden fruit that was so delicious that our first parents would forfeit paradise to taste it?

In the gospel, though, Jesus teaches that we are asking the wrong question regarding the forbidden fruit. That is, the problem of the original sin (and all subsequent sins) lies not with the fruit we eat, but with the disobedient dispositions in the human heart. Our hearts are ruled by disordered passions, and so the real dilemma is not apples or pears but passion fruit – the passions out of control in our hearts. Jesus says: “From within the man, from his heart, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.” In other words, all artistic renderings of the Garden of Eden and that original cosmic collapse cannot capture the state of the heart and the passion fruit Adam and Eve had already consumed. Their disordered desires caused their first sin, just like our disordered desires cause all our sins. The source of sin is not the apple in the tree, nor the pear on the ground, but the passion fruit in the heart.

My friends, I believe turning our attention to the disordered desires in our hearts can help us make significant strides in the Christian journey. At the risk of oversimplification, I am convinced this lies at the root of all marriage problems. Husbands and wives are quick to catch the faults and failures of their spouse, but rarely look into their own hearts to see the disordered passions lurking in them. Indeed we follow the example of our first parents Adam and Eve, in blaming others for our own moral mistakes. Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent, and we do the same. But no one sees the passion fruit in their own heart.

Perhaps this is why diet plans and programs do not always deliver the weight loss they promise. The problem is not the cheesecake or the alcohol, but the passion fruit in our hearts. Diets will finally fail if we do not master the disordered passion in our hearts, the desire for indulgence and overeating.

Could this by why our great government is mired in gridlock? The problem is not with the Democrats, and the failure is not with the Republicans. The difficulty is the passion fruit in everyone’s heart: the disordered desire of pride and the lust for power. Until we stop blaming each other and finally confess our own faults, very little will get done, whether in Washington or wherever.

What was the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve ate? It was the same forbidden fruit that we all eat, a kind of passion fruit. Until we stop eating of that fruit, we will never overcome sin.

Praised be Jesus Christ!