Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!

"Yea, hath God said?" This was the question from the adversary that opened the proverbial can of worms, the pandora's box of evil for humanity. Satan was calling God a liar. He was putting God on trial. Who was really on trial here, and who was, really, using whom?

Imagine the adversary's state of mind entering the "scene of the crime". Initially, he had been the top guy in all of creation, who had unlimited access to the throne of the Almighty. He had been the the most brilliant and beautiful one. That's when he decided he was smarter than God. Maybe he got tired of all the bowing and scraping, and didn't feel all his energy should go towards honoring God and serving others. He felt he was powerful enough to be God, himself. God knew what satan was thinking, and satan was thrown out of paradise.

Satan sees this new creature that God has created, and thinks that man is physically weak, not nearly as smart as himself, and not nearly as beautiful by half. Satan becomes a door to door salesman and picks the more emotional woman to sell the idea to, that each person can actually be a god unto themselves. It wasn't about a piece of fruit. It was about choosing God's way, or satan's way. He induced them to follow the error he started, and by extension, to following himself. Now man is experiencing all of the terrors of the consequences of "the knowledge of good and evil." Man drinks the dregs of the pain and ugliness of relying on something less loving and giving than the God who made him.

Satan already knows his own ending. God is simply using satan in the meantime to teach those, who do want to follow God, the wisdom of knowing God, and the folly and destruction brought on those who refuse Him. In abject weakness and through dependence on Christ, christians defeat the incredibly powerful and cunning adversary.