mattbraunlin
Member
Eve
Eve captivates me. Everything about her is so very crucial to understanding our world. She is the ultimate, blessed archetype, the very deepest root of everything we understand about our world.
But with this blurb, I want to focus on a very important part of her story: the fact that she came after Adam.
God created Adam first, and Eve second. The Bible makes this very clear. And not a little controversy has emerged in our modern world because of this fact.
Why didn't God just create Adam and Eve together? If men and women are equal (as the Bible makes extremely clear) doesn't that sound like the morally right thing to do? I remember reading an article years ago that went so far as to say that ‘God created Adam wìth purpose, and Eve as an afterthought.’
Now to you, my young female reader, let me make this clear: God does not have afterthoughts. You, as a woman, are not something that God whipped together at the last minute because he forgot something. Women are an absolutely equal part of God's eternal plan, and you are every bit as precious and useful and important to him as I am.
So first let me explain the context of Creation as it is described in the Bible.
Over the course of six days, God progressively created everything we know: the earth and sky, the sun, moon and stars, plants and animals of every kind. And when the earth was prepared, he made Adam. Adam spends time alone with God, naming the animals and getting the feel for life.
But while God created males and females of every kind of animal, Adam, as a human, was alone.
At this point, God makes one of the most momentous statements in the entire Bible:
Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.’
Genesis 2:18
This is where the afterthought accusation comes in. It seems as though God hadn't thought of ever creating a woman, but when he saw that Adam needed a significant other, he then came up with the idea.
My friend, this is such a sad misinterpretation. A terrible lie which creates a nasty worm of controversy before the Greatest Story Ever Told has even really begun. And far from being a sign of God's dismissal or underestimation of women, this verse, when read properly, is a championing of women. A divine statement of exaltation of the masterpiece he was about to create.
When God said It is not good for the man to be alone, he was not telling himself; he was telling men. He was letting us know that he was giving us something we need. Something we cannot do without. In women, he was giving men something which should be treasured and respected above all other things, most especially ourselves.
That is why he created Adam first, and Eve second. As God's firstborn (an important position in the Bible) Adam was to lead. He was to guide and protect and provide. But he held back with Eve in order to teach Adam a solemn lesson: you cannot do this alone. Adam needed a helper, a healer, a guide for the guide. And as a result of this lesson, when Adam saw Eve for the first time, he was overcome with a love and joy (and probably relief) the like of which no other human has ever experienced.
There is another lovely aspect to Eve's late arrival.
At each stage of the Creation, God saw that what he had created was good. God's Creation was perfect, beautiful, without a single blemish. It was good.
But then, at the very end of the story, God sees one single flaw in what he had created: it was not good that Adam was alone.
In holding back with Eve, God demonstrated that she was to be, by her very nature, a righter of wrongs. A remedy to incompleteness. The answer to so very much of what would ever be wrong with our world.
God allowed one problem to exist in his perfect creation. And the solution was Eve.
You can't live the life I've lived without developing a towering love and respect for women. Jesus took a very bad man and transformed him into someone who sees women as God's crowning achievement. And in Eve, I see the cure for the tragic hatred and division which is tearing men and women apart. I see billions of her daughters, her fellow helpers and healers, who are every bit as powerful a force as they were when God, in his wisdom and love, declared to the pages of history that what was not good, would be put right.
And you, dear woman, are a part of that force. God loves you. He can accomplish so very much through you. Give yourself to him, and he will give you to the world.
Eve captivates me. Everything about her is so very crucial to understanding our world. She is the ultimate, blessed archetype, the very deepest root of everything we understand about our world.
But with this blurb, I want to focus on a very important part of her story: the fact that she came after Adam.
God created Adam first, and Eve second. The Bible makes this very clear. And not a little controversy has emerged in our modern world because of this fact.
Why didn't God just create Adam and Eve together? If men and women are equal (as the Bible makes extremely clear) doesn't that sound like the morally right thing to do? I remember reading an article years ago that went so far as to say that ‘God created Adam wìth purpose, and Eve as an afterthought.’
Now to you, my young female reader, let me make this clear: God does not have afterthoughts. You, as a woman, are not something that God whipped together at the last minute because he forgot something. Women are an absolutely equal part of God's eternal plan, and you are every bit as precious and useful and important to him as I am.
So first let me explain the context of Creation as it is described in the Bible.
Over the course of six days, God progressively created everything we know: the earth and sky, the sun, moon and stars, plants and animals of every kind. And when the earth was prepared, he made Adam. Adam spends time alone with God, naming the animals and getting the feel for life.
But while God created males and females of every kind of animal, Adam, as a human, was alone.
At this point, God makes one of the most momentous statements in the entire Bible:
Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.’
Genesis 2:18
This is where the afterthought accusation comes in. It seems as though God hadn't thought of ever creating a woman, but when he saw that Adam needed a significant other, he then came up with the idea.
My friend, this is such a sad misinterpretation. A terrible lie which creates a nasty worm of controversy before the Greatest Story Ever Told has even really begun. And far from being a sign of God's dismissal or underestimation of women, this verse, when read properly, is a championing of women. A divine statement of exaltation of the masterpiece he was about to create.
When God said It is not good for the man to be alone, he was not telling himself; he was telling men. He was letting us know that he was giving us something we need. Something we cannot do without. In women, he was giving men something which should be treasured and respected above all other things, most especially ourselves.
That is why he created Adam first, and Eve second. As God's firstborn (an important position in the Bible) Adam was to lead. He was to guide and protect and provide. But he held back with Eve in order to teach Adam a solemn lesson: you cannot do this alone. Adam needed a helper, a healer, a guide for the guide. And as a result of this lesson, when Adam saw Eve for the first time, he was overcome with a love and joy (and probably relief) the like of which no other human has ever experienced.
There is another lovely aspect to Eve's late arrival.
At each stage of the Creation, God saw that what he had created was good. God's Creation was perfect, beautiful, without a single blemish. It was good.
But then, at the very end of the story, God sees one single flaw in what he had created: it was not good that Adam was alone.
In holding back with Eve, God demonstrated that she was to be, by her very nature, a righter of wrongs. A remedy to incompleteness. The answer to so very much of what would ever be wrong with our world.
God allowed one problem to exist in his perfect creation. And the solution was Eve.
You can't live the life I've lived without developing a towering love and respect for women. Jesus took a very bad man and transformed him into someone who sees women as God's crowning achievement. And in Eve, I see the cure for the tragic hatred and division which is tearing men and women apart. I see billions of her daughters, her fellow helpers and healers, who are every bit as powerful a force as they were when God, in his wisdom and love, declared to the pages of history that what was not good, would be put right.
And you, dear woman, are a part of that force. God loves you. He can accomplish so very much through you. Give yourself to him, and he will give you to the world.