The Password on the Sticky Note

In 2017, a cybersecurity firm called Keeper reported that the most common password in the world was still "123456." Millions of people — people with bank accounts, medical records, family photos — chose the one barrier experts begged them never to use. It wasn't ignorance. Every login screen warned them. Every IT department pleaded. They simply believed it wouldn't happen to them.

That's the anatomy of the fall in Genesis. The Almighty didn't hide the danger. He spoke it plainly to Adam: "You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die." No riddle. No fine print. A clear boundary set by a loving Creator who had already given everything else freely.

Then the serpent arrived — not with a battering ram, but with a question. "Did God really say...?" Three words that reframed generosity as restriction. Eve didn't lack information. She could recite the command almost verbatim. But the serpent convinced her that the warning was overblown, that the consequences were theoretical, that she knew better.

We do the same thing every time we stand at a boundary God has set and whisper to ourselves, "It won't happen to me." The fruit never looks dangerous. It looks desirable, promising, reasonable. But the God who sets the boundary is the same God who sees what's on the other side — and He loves us enough to say no.