Reclaiming Eve

This week, my pastor begins a multiweek exploration of the interesting women of the Bible.  I hope to continue writing a meditation each week for our church's electronic newsletter, and when I do, I'll post them here.  Here's the one for this week:

This week we start a multi-week exploration of interesting women of the Bible. What better place to start than Eve? In so many ways, Eve is one of the most problematic women of the Bible--or more precisely, the reaction to Eve has been intensely problematic.

Eve gets the blame for bringing everything into the world that we don't like; traditionally, we'd call it sin. And because so many have blamed Eve, that blame has spilled over into all women.

Traditionally we see Eve as unable to do as she's told, unable to constrain herself, too willing to listen to outside agents--unfaithful. And thus, traditionally, humans have assumed that all women are this way, and thus, they need a heavy hand to keep control. Often that heavy hand has been a violent hand, a control through use of violence or the threat of violent.

We could spend lots of time wondering why God put that tree in the garden. We could also go back to the first chapters of Genesis and read them again--and then we might be surprised to realize that there are 2 creation stories. In the first one, the oldest one, there is no expulsion from the garden. God rests on the 7th day. And then the story starts again, with many more details. The second chapter of Genesis is a later story, one influenced by other creation stories from other cultures. Here is where we see the version of Eve who can't obey the simple rules, the one who has to have the forbidden fruit.

Let's look at Eve through a different set of eyes. Instead of seeing her as disobedient, why not see her as intellectually curious? She's the first to ask why the rules exist--and by breaking the rules, she brings us a new sort of freedom.

We have great thinkers across a variety of disciplines who would tell us that unquestioning obedience brings all sorts of evil into the world. We have artists who would tell us that the innocence of childhood, the innocence that we assume Adam and Eve had in that first garden, keeps us underdeveloped. Psychologists would tell us that with experience comes full adulthood.

Perhaps God put that tree in the garden precisely so that humans could become more fully developed. Some creation stories present God as lonely. Puppet creatures who do exactly as they're told don't make for very interesting company for very long.

How might our human history have been different if we had accepted and celebrated Eve's intellectual curiosity? How might our future be different if we celebrated knowledge, not kept it for the privileged few?