Garden Of Eden

In the Genesis creation story of the Bible, God planted a tree called "The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil."  Then he tells Adam and Eve not to eat its fruit.  Why plant the tree in the first place, and to top it off, say we cannot eat it or else bad stuff might happen?  The answer that makes sense to me is that God wants to be loved freely.  God wants us to CHOOSE to love God.  This would be an act of the will on our part. You choose freely not to eat the fruit. The truest and best love is when it is freely chosen.  Some of us at one time or another don't trust that we will be freely loved, so we try to manipulate things to get love from someone.  We act "nice" in order to get love.  We use money, power, looks to get love.  At times we are afraid that if you truly have a free choice you will not love us.  I guess God did not have self-esteem issues or control issues.  There was another tree in the Garden, the Tree of Wisdom.  This could be eaten.  Wisdom brings us to love ourselves just for being alive, and then to love others for themselves and not what they can give us.  We don't need their affirmation to love ourselves.  But it would be nice!