Have you ever gone to a restaurant someone recommended? They were raving about how great the food was, so you went on their flattery, and you were disappointed because the food was good at best. Whose view was right? Was it the person who thought the food was great, or the person who thought it was good? You see the issue here. The experience is subjective because we don't just apply direct definitions. We add feeling, and that alters the absoluteness of its value. In Genesis 1 we don't see anything created by feeling. What we see is God establishing a standard, everything in harmony and unity, doing what it was made for. Seven times He looks at what He made and calls it good. That leads me to the question: when did our good shrink from God's standard to a little above average?
"So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate" (Genesis 3:6, ESV).
This is where the shrinking of the good started. She saw that the tree was good. But the tree looked like every other tree in the garden; Genesis 2:9 says every tree was "pleasant to the sight and good for food." That tells me this tree wasn't a trap. If it were, God would have made it stand out so there would be a temptation. That backs up the Scripture that God doesn't tempt anyone (James 1:13).
So why put the tree there at all? Look at where the boundary sits. Before God names the one tree, He says, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden" (Genesis 2:16). The limit was set inside abundance. Relationships grow on trust, and God gave us room to trust Him. The choice was there so love could be real. And God wasn't surprised by what happened next. He knew, and the provision was ready before the failure. The cross was never Plan B. Jesus was delivered up "according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God" (Acts 2:23), "foreknown before the foundation of the world" (1 Peter 1:20). That's love: He saw the fall coming and planned the rescue first.
Put Genesis 1:31 next to 3:6. "God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." Then "the woman saw that the tree was good." Same seeing, same word, but a different measure. God saw good in what He made, the thing itself doing what it was made for. Eve saw good in what she could get from it: food, delight, wisdom. Good moved from what something is to what it gives me. That's when good got small.
And she was never supposed to be the one seeing. In Genesis 1, God sees and God declares. Man's assignment was different: "The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it" (Genesis 2:15). God never asked us to decide what's good. He asked us to tend what He already called good. We traded the garden tools for the judge's seat.
In my opinion, her new view of good wasn't really hers. It was the serpent's. He told her God was holding out: "you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:5). That promise is exactly what she's looking at in 3:6. Isn't that like the frequency illusion? The serpent mentions the tree, and now it's the most visible thing in the garden.
Eve wanted wisdom, and wanting wisdom isn't wrong. Proverbs tells us to get it (Proverbs 4:7). But Eve didn't go to the source. She decided for herself what was wise. Proverbs 2 shows the other way: receive His words, incline your heart, call out for insight, and "seek it like silver." Then comes the promise: "the LORD gives wisdom" (Proverbs 2:6). How hard we seek depends on how much we value the treasure. If God's standard is our standard, then God is the treasure, and we love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30). Seek Him like that and you'll find Him (Jeremiah 29:13). Eve grabbed wisdom. God gives it to those who seek Him. (I went deeper into this in Unforgiving Waters.)
Look at the tree's name: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17). God named it, and we looked at how it would benefit us. What it really offered was the power to decide good and evil for ourselves. We didn't just learn what evil was. We gave ourselves the right to define it, and we've been shrinking it ever since. Good got smaller and evil got softer. We even downplay the word and quietly trade "evil" for "bad." But evil isn't just bad behavior. It's whatever sets itself against God's good. Isaiah 5:20 warns, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil."
So how did good start sounding like "just okay"? When we made ourselves the judges, we started comparing. Good had to compete, so we kept stacking bigger words on top of it: great, amazing, the best. Paul says those who "measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another" are "without understanding" (2 Corinthians 10:12). Underneath it is identity. When we don't fully understand who we are in Him, we chase "great" from people because we've forgotten that God already called His work good. That's why the restaurant let you down. Your friend's "great" and your "good" weren't measuring the food. They were measuring each other.
Eating cost them their innocence. Their eyes were opened, which means they now saw everything through their own lens. They had knowledge now. They understood they were naked. Before, they saw through God's view. Now they see through their own. That tells us our eyes, and everything we see, come through a skewed lens. So yes, your family might be broken generationally, but it didn't start there. It started in the garden, and it has been passed down from the beginning (Romans 5:12). But inherited brokenness is not the final word.
I didn't just read about this. I lived it. I was in California listening to "Satisfied" by The Walls Group, and I felt the Lord ask me, "If I never gave you anything else, would you be satisfied with Me?" It took me a while to answer, because the truth was hard to admit. I was satisfied with what it meant to be a child of God. I wasn't satisfied that God was my Father. I was measuring Him by what He gave me, the same way Eve measured the tree. That's what shrunken good looks like today. We still call God good, but we mean good for us. Good for food, good to look at, good for getting ahead. The question still stands for every one of us: if He gave you nothing else, would He be enough?
"And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them" (Genesis 3:21, ESV).
Why weren't the fig leaves enough? They were a temporary fix for a permanent problem. God knows His creation, and He knows a leaf pulled from the vine starts dying the moment it's picked. Adam and Eve, now cut off themselves, tried to cover themselves with something that was dying too (Genesis 3:7). And they were about to leave the garden (Genesis 3:23), where leaves would never hold up. So God made garments of skin, and those skins cost a life. Their covering was made by their own hands, but His required blood. That points ahead to the cross: "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" (Hebrews 9:22). We still try to cover ourselves with what we make, but only what God provides lasts.
We are skewed, so how do we get straightened out? Back to the good God declared. It started with God, so it has to end with Him. The real covering came from Him, and it still does. The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:23), and He cleanses everyone who receives it (1 John 1:9). Cleansed means new: "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17). But a new creation still needs a new lens. Romans 12:2 calls us to be transformed by the renewal of our minds so we can discern what is good. That happens daily, through Jesus, by the Holy Spirit. We give the judge's seat back and pick up the garden tools again.
Stop devaluing what God called good. What in the garden was mediocre? Absolutely nothing. God's good is the standard, and relationship with Him is the intention. So if you want to be good, know God. There is no good outside of Him (Mark 10:18). And when His good is the only good you're listening for, everything changes. You're not capped by someone else's opinion anymore. You stop competing and start receiving. Nothing is limited anymore, because His measure has no ceiling. Good isn't measured by what you do but by whom you're aligned with. The doing follows.