The Call to Hand Back the Fruit

Recently, I’ve spoken with younger Christians struggling to make sense of evil that seems senseless. Their voices carry both shock and sorrow, as they confront tragedies that shake faith to its core. And as someone who’s lived through more seasons than they have, I can say this: it doesn’t get easier.

We hope that age and experience will bring answers, but wisdom is not always found in understanding more. Often, wisdom is learning what we were never meant to understand and what we must entrust back into God’s hands. In other words, it’s learning to hand back the fruit.

The Weight of Evil

Theologians call it “the problem of evil,” but anyone who has walked through tragedy knows the word “problem” feels far too small. We have all seen or experienced things that defy reason a suicide that no one saw coming, a child’s death from cancer, a marriage torn apart by betrayal, or mass tragedies that leave whole communities in ruins.

The deeper we look, the more we realize how heavy the knowledge of good and evil really is. God’s providence, His choice to allow certain events while preventing others, often lies far beyond our understanding. Most of the time, He doesn’t explain the “why” not in detail. Instead, He invites us to trust Him.

We were never built to carry the full weight of understanding good and evil. And mercifully, He doesn’t ask us to. He asks us to give it back to Him.

The Forbidden Knowledge

The story of Eden tells us why this weight feels so unbearable. When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17), they weren’t just disobeying; they were trying to hold something they were never designed to bear.

The serpent promised that the fruit would make them “like God” (Genesis 3:5), but what it gave them was a burden eyes opened to realities they couldn’t comprehend, a moral knowledge too heavy for human hearts. Ever since, we’ve been staggering under that same weight.

Our Distorted Vision

Sin has not only corrupted our hearts but also blurred our perception of what is truly good. Paul writes that we need “strength to comprehend… the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:18–19). Even God’s goodness is too vast for us to grasp fully.

If we struggle to comprehend the depth of His goodness, how much less are we able to make sense of evil? We simply aren’t capable of piecing it all together. Our hope lies not in becoming wiser than God, but in surrendering our demand to understand.

Learning from Job

The book of Job is a striking reminder of our limits. Job’s friends believed they had enough moral knowledge to explain his suffering but they were wrong (Job 42:7). God never told Job the reasons behind his trials. Instead, He confronted Job with a bigger truth: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2).

Job’s response was humility “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” (Job 42:3)

Job handed the fruit back. He stopped trying to hold what only God could.

The Gospel’s Invitation

Even Jesus, in His deepest agony on the cross, cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). This cry wasn’t a lack of faith it was the raw expression of suffering. And yet, He entrusted Himself fully to the Father’s will.

This is the heart of the gospel: not that God gives us answers to every “why,” but that He gives us Himself. He invites us to let go of our demand to understand and instead trust the One who holds the whole story in His hands.

Handing Back the Fruit

When we face evil or tragedy, we can either grip the fruit demanding to know, to judge, to carry the weight or we can hand it back, saying, “Lord, I don’t understand, but I trust You.”

Proverbs 3:5 tells us plainly, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” It’s not a call to blind faith but to restful trust in a God whose wisdom is higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8–9).

There is peace available “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” (Philippians 4:7) but we can only receive it when we lay down the burden of trying to understand everything.

We were never meant to hold the knowledge of good and evil in full. We were meant to walk with the God who does. And when the weight is too heavy, He gently asks us: Will you hand back the fruit?

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