The Cost of Knowing: Lessons from Eden by Dekiya
Dekiya's entry into Varsity Tutor's October 2025 scholarship contest
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The Cost of Knowing: Lessons from Eden by Dekiya - October 2025 Scholarship Essay
Brennan McPherson’s Eden takes one of the oldest stories in human history and makes it feel heartbreakingly modern. Everyone knows the story of Adam and Eve, the Garden, the fruit, and the fall. But McPherson goes deeper, asking what happens after the fall. How do you live when you have lost everything? How do you rebuild trust, love, and faith when you are haunted by the knowledge that you were the first to break the world? Through vivid emotion and painfully human characters, Eden becomes less about ancient history and more about what it means to be human in any time.
The most striking thing about McPherson’s retelling is how real Adam and Eve feel. They are not just symbolic figures; they are people who love each other, hurt each other, and question everything. Adam wrestles with guilt and pride, wondering if he failed his wife or if she failed him. Eve carries shame and grief, feeling the weight of a single choice that changed everything. Together, they try to make sense of a world that no longer feels safe, a world they cannot fix. That dynamic feels timeless. We have all been there in smaller ways, when one mistake or argument spirals into something that feels unrepairable. The lesson McPherson builds quietly beneath the story is that guilt and love often coexist, and forgiveness is not a one-time thing; it is a daily decision.
What makes Eden meaningful is how it uses a biblical framework to explore modern struggles. In today’s world, we are surrounded by noise, endless choices, constant comparisons, and the pressure to be perfect. The story of Adam and Eve reflects that same tension: the human hunger to know more, to have control, and to decide for ourselves what is good or bad. Their fall is not just about disobedience; it is about curiosity, pride, and the longing for autonomy, the same impulses that drive so much of our modern lives. McPherson does not paint them as villains. Instead, he portrays them as the first people to discover that knowledge comes with pain.
Another layer that stands out is how McPherson handles the theme of distance, both from God and from each other. After being exiled from the Garden, Adam and Eve experience silence from the divine. That silence feels eerily familiar to anyone who has gone through heartbreak, loss, or even mental health struggles. It is the moment when everything that once felt certain suddenly does not. Yet through that silence, McPherson shows how faith is not about constant closeness; sometimes it is about holding on when you cannot feel anything at all. That is one of the most profound lessons the book teaches: that love, whether between people or between humanity and God, is not proven in comfort but in perseverance.
The novel also explores family and legacy. Adam and Eve become parents, and their children inherit not only their humanity but their brokenness. Cain and Abel’s story, which unfolds later, becomes a mirror of every generational cycle we see in the modern world: trauma, jealousy, misunderstanding, and the deep human ache to be seen and loved. McPherson does not just retell the story; he reframes it as a reminder that our choices ripple outward, touching lives we will never meet. That lesson hits hard in an era where so much of what we do, online or off, leaves a trace.
Ultimately, Eden is not a story about punishment. It is a story about redemption. Even after the fall, there is beauty in the way Adam and Eve keep trying to love, to create, to find meaning again.