Adam and Eve were just babies

What are we teaching our children?

We all know that everything we do, or don't do for that matter, affects these little people. We have to think carefully.

I was in a very large supermarket with my kids. Seriously, when I say large, I mean gigantic. Of course everything is relative, except for this. Thirty meter long aisles stacked with mile high mounds of food is most likely Webster's definition of the word 'mammoth', or at least 'spoiled rotten'.

I'm not saying we shouldn't appreciate these things for what they are and be grateful for the plentiful generation we are privileged to live in. After all, how else would we find the low sodium, fat free, sugar free, calorie free, wheat free, nut free, pretzels we were looking for amongst all the other healthy, organic snacks?

But let's try not to get lost in the organic, new age, green generation.

I am saddened in many ways when I take my kids to the store. These days, there is so much selection, so much choice, I fear what message is being passed along. Do my children really need to know that there are 264 different types of cereals to choose from? I can bank that their taste buds couldn't even dream up a flavor that is not already sitting on the shelf. It's a message that says that whatever they want, they can have. And that scares me.

Not only that message but worse of all, in my humble opinion, is that of choice. What are we using our free will to choose? Which type of toothpaste we should use among the 46 different varieties?

Free will is an interesting topic, not one I will get into at length here. But on the most basic level, the Torah teaches us that we are only really free to the extent that we are making moral decisions.

So what's a moral decision?

Well it certainly isn't which flavor of yogurt I decide to buy this week.

A moral decision is one that's based on much deeper realities than that. It's based on a deep consciousness of self, who am I, what am I doing here, where am I going and how am I getting there? It is exactly these moral decisions that ultimately gets us to our goal.

Of course my children will eventually know how much choice is out there in the world, be it with toothpaste or with relationships, but when they're so young they just don't have the tools to know how to use their free will properly. They need to be guided.

In the Garden of Eden, we learn that Adam and Eve were told they could 'have it all'. They needed only to abide by one rule, which was not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Why? Why on earth, no pun intended, were they instructed not to eat from the tree of Knowledge? After all, wouldn't you think God would want them to KNOW? He wanted a relationship with them, he wanted them to connect to Him, so what's better than knowing?

One of the many understandings of why they were told not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge is that they were simply too young. They didn't have the tools to KNOW what they would have known as adults had they just waited a bit longer.

Our children don't know. They don't know how to use this incredible gift of free will yet and our job is to slowly guide them through the process of 'growing up' and 'growing into' this free will thinker that will use his free will on choosing loving, lasting relationships and meaningful endeavors, and leave the 'apple picking' for someone else.