The Fall of Family

I've been thinking about the fall. These are my thoughts:

Last Sunday I heard a sermon about the fall and the preacher was talking about where it tells us "She took and ate and also gave some to her husband who was with her." (v. 6)

She said that maybe Adam was so excited about his new bride that even though he knew what she was doing was wrong, he was afraid to speak up- afraid he'd might make her mad and she'd leave.

I realized how right John Acuff was and how he probably hadn't noticed. I've quoted this particular tidbit before:

The one thing men want above all is to know that they are enough. That their masculinity, their power, their value, their strength is enough for their wife.

The one thing women want above all is to know that they are not too much. That they can be as big and as beautiful and as powerful as God made them without overshadowing a man who is too fragile or insecure.

See, at the beginning of Genesis 3, Eve didn't know there could be anything more. But deceived by the serpent, she suddenly wanted to be all that she could be. She was the first poster girl for the US Army. If she could be more for Adam, her perfect man, then she wanted to be. She didn't understand the delicate balance of the relationship that God had created between her and her husband.

Adam, on the other hand, was standing there, watching the serpent deceive his bride. (Every time "you" appears in this passage, it's plural in the Hebrew). He was just happy to be enough for her. But when he saw her taking that fruit, he didn't want to scare her. She was so big and beautiful and had so much power over him. He didn't want to overwhelm her.

So we see in this passage John Acuff's statement about our greatest fears coming true. Eve was too much. She instantly became too much for Adam, not when she ate the fruit, but when she first took it down from the tree. And Adam was not enough. He wasn't strong enough, man enough, for his wife. He saw when she took the fruit that he was not enough for her now. That she wanted more than just him. And so he shied away from his responsibility to set her straight. He let her do the one thing that God had told them not to.

And in that one moment, he put his relationship with Eve before his relationship with God. And that was the real sin.

The first family had now been corrupted because God was, just for an instant, not at the center of the relationship. But what they didn't know- what they couldn't have known- was that it wouldn't work without God in the middle. Donald Miller talks about this in "Searching for God Knows What".

He says that we were created to receive our sense of self-image from someone else. And that when they ate the fruit, Adam and Eve were instantly cut off from receiving that sense of self from God. So they looked to the next (only) available person- each other. And it wasn't enough.

"And they knew that they were naked."

Suddenly, they looked at each other and felt things that they'd never felt before. Maybe Eve was so great, so much, that it was overwhelming for Adam. I can see him truly wanting her for the first time and then being shocked at his own sinful lust. He wanted her for himself- to please him. And he is ashamed.

And Eve. Imagine her looking at Adam and thinking, "Now that I know what I know, how can he possibly please me?" She glances at his body, her face making the slightest twinge of disgust. But then she sees the look in his eyes. The monstrous unbridled desire. It hits her. At first she wants him too, but then she finds herself feeling, for the first time, objectified. Misused. Their desire for one another is now perverted without God in the middle controlling it all. Now she's ashamed and wants to hide herself from his probing eyes. He wants to protect himself from her disapproving stare.

I can see them sewing fig leaves together. Only, they've never made clothes before, so the knots keep coming untied and they're left constantly having to hold up the clothes they've made for themselves.

So when God throws them out of the Garden to prevent them from eating from the Tree of Life, when He curses them and the earth and their bodies and the serpent, He's protecting them. As John Acuff puts it, He's giving them a chance. If they stay in the Garden and eat from the Tree of Life, they'll live forever in their corruption. They'll be separated from Him forever and their relationship will never be restored.

But if He lets them die physically, then their sinful flesh will one day be restored, the sacrifice of the Perfect Lamb will wash away their imperfections, and they will be able to commune with God- and with each other- again.

And we'll be a family again.