THREE CURSES

Part Two

By A. Prentice

Scripture references are to the New International Version, UK (1984 edition).

The first instalment of this subject deals with the curse on Satan for his setting in motion Eve and Adam’s disobedience.

It looked at his motivation and his effort to control human destiny. This second instalment considers Eve’s transgression and its implications for her and the human race.

The Second Cursed: Eve

16. To the woman [the LORD God] said, ‘I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.’

Like Satan, Eve and Adam were free moral agents, and were temptable. The question of why God made His creation this way is beyond the scope of this presentation. Free will is a fundamental component of self-aware creatures, and they may choose to do as they wish. Only a controlling sense of morality and an intrinsic love of virtue keeps them obedient. In the case of Eve, her disobedience is (partly) excused by naivety, as pointed out by St. Paul (1 Timothy 2: 14):

Adam was not the one deceived [or, deluded]; it was the woman who was deceived [or, deluded] and became a sinner.[*]

Contrary to myth, Eve’s sin (and Adam’s) has nothing to do with sex. The physical human condition is primarily sexual, and disorder in this respect has often been at the root of human depravity. But in the beginning, sexual relations between Eve and Adam were a godly part of their make-up, necessary to fulfilling God’s command to reproduce and populate the planet. That on eating the fruit the pair felt exposed as ‘naked’ (Genesis 3: 7), suggests that their conscience alerted them to the changed situation, and they now felt disapproved before the eyes of their Maker.

Pregnancy and Childbirth

Eve is called the ‘mother of all living’, because the human family would begin with her. Not yet a mother her sons Abel and Cain were not born until after she and Adam had been evicted from the Garden God told her that pregnancy and birth would be painful, implying that a new state of affairs would now exist. Had Eve remained perfect, these natural functions would have been without risk or discomfort.

Because Eve was the prototype for all women, it is evident that this indictment applies not just to her, but to all women who become mothers. Yes, it seems unfortunate that in fulfilling the mandate to ‘fill the earth’, such a stigma should attach to motherhood. If there is an offsetting benefit, it is that the pain of labour is eclipsed by the joy following a successful birth. As Jesus remarks (John 16 21), ‘when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world’. The pain occasioned by birth is a metaphor for the pangs of grief which society (earth) must suffer before humanity’s final deliverance, ‘groanings as in the pains of childbirth’ (Romans 8: 22).

Submission and Suppression

Eve, standing for women in general, was made to be a suitable companion for Adam, standing in for all men. This purpose has been met, for it is largely women who make the world work. The pronouncement of that aspect of the curse on Eve, that her ‘desire’ would be for her husband and that he ‘will rule over you’, touches on what has become the near-universal condition of women in general, mothers or not. This pertains to the woman’s historical subjugation in a man’s world.

This is an auxiliary feature of the curse on Eve, and through her on all women. Because of it, the female has been denied some freedom of action and intellect. The necessity of nurturing children and looking after the male cohort, has shifted a disproportionate amount of work and suffering onto her. Even today, economic deprivation hits women, especially mothers, the hardest. For example, it is often left to the women to walk miles to collect water, which they must then boil for drinking or cooking. High rates of maternal death still plague under-developed countries.

Suffrage, Franchise, And The Integration of Women

With the accumulated burden of work, worry over their families, grieving for their men lost in war, and the numerous other insults imposed on women by men, it is hardly surprising that women have acted in concert against these conditions. But only relatively recently have we seen a lifting of the curse in this regard. For example, the movement for female suffrage began to spread in the mid-1800s, but it was opposed by male society (Christian and non-Christian alike) and it took many decades to succeed. The female franchise was eventually introduced into several jurisdictions, but on a limited basis. The full right to vote was granted to women by New Zealand in 1893. Other countries expanded their legal provisions and followed suit: United States (1920), Ireland (1928), United Kingdom (1928), and others. See <http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/suffrage.htm> (retrieved Sept. 22, 2012).

Concurrent with these changes in the political sphere, industrialisation brought more women into the workplace. Two World Wars accelerated this latter development. Electrification and the automation of the home helped to liberate women from many aspects of drudgery. As the result of these and other changes, too numerous to mention especially, though not exclusively in the West the past few decades have seen increasing numbers of women enter the boardroom, legislative politics, medicine, science, and on and on. In many instances, women have attained to the pinnacle of power, such as (alphabetically) Clinton, Ghandi, Merkel, Thatcher, and others.

In The Church

However, it is a mistake to impose on society at large the status which applies to the female within the church structure, or vice versa. Woman’s role in society is not governed by the same rules which govern her place within the church or, by extension, within Christian marriage. In the religious framework the woman represents the Church, the Bride of Christ, and her role is subordinate to that of the male, who represents Christ, the Head. Under this figure, the woman does not belong in the pulpit, despite the heroic, misguided efforts of her supporters or the political attempts of the civil authorities to graft this perceived ‘human right’ onto the church. As for marriage between Christians, the wife is nominally subject to her husband, though unlike her role in the general church, her place in the marital union has a wider latitude, and is amenable to negotiation and mutual respect.

It is said that desperate people often do desperate things. As in so many areas in this fallen, cursed and dying world, women and men sometimes take unreasonable positions, each demanding more rights than is sensible, feasible, or just. But after all, we live in an extreme milieu: as a race, we are ultimately faced with a raw choice between life on the one hand, and death on the other. What could be more extreme than that?

Strictly speaking, no one female or male has any permanent rights before God, all rights having being forfeited in Eden. But the Lord is nonetheless gracious, not wanting any to perish, and He will work out all things to the eternal benefit of all. We will explore this part of the topic in the next instalment.

To be continued

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NOTES

[*] The following verse (15) is a conundrum: ‘But woman will be saved through childbearing – if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.’ The difficulty lies in part with the first use of the singular woman, followed by the use of the plural they. That the mother or mothers in question are godly is made clear by the caveat, ‘if they continue in faith . . .’, but commentators offer no firm guide as to what is meant by their being ‘saved’. It is not credible to believe that only godly women survive the process of giving birth and that the ungodly do not, or that motherhood is the road to redemption.

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