An Open Letter to My Sweet-Sixteen Granddaughter (Part 3/3)

Okay, let's move on to Eve and the original sin. She may not have been consciously aware of the concept that she was designed to fulfill the image of God together with Adam; but she was a whole person in and of herself, and the Devil deceived her into thinking she could improve the metaphor alone. It was a very clever ploy on the Devil's part to appeal to Eve's wish to be as much like God as she could; but the metaphor requires ish and ishsha unified in love. Once the Adam were separated into two individuals, neither was meant to be able to embody the complete image of God alone. Let me say as an aside that there are individuals who are genuinely called by God to celibacy, to live their lives not as part of a couple, but they are very rare. Celibacy sacrifices this potential to fully express the Adamic metaphor in order to pursue more single-mindedly a life of ministry to the Church.

Even though all the offspring of Adam and Eve are tainted with the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we are still capable of becoming members of a couple and recreating the Adamic metaphor - but that damaging perspective has consequences, and God acted to modify the nature of the man, the woman, and the world, in order to moderate those consequences (and to move the story on toward the redemption He would ultimately provide as the Christ, the sacrificial lamb). I will skip what He said to the Serpent as being off-topic, and get to what He said to the woman:

"I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in sorrow you will bring forth children; and your desire will be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."

That last point men have seized upon for the last hundred thousand years in order to lord it over women; but I would like to point out that God did not then turn to the man and say, "Okay, you're in charge here." No, He said,

"Cursed is the ground [the adamah remember?] for your sake. In toil you shall eat of it, all the days of your life..."

The consequences of Adam's sin were visited on the whole world; the consequences of Eve's sin were visited on her own body. Make of it what you will, but Dusty was made from the dust of the world; Eve was made from the living flesh of Adam. The only way the man can properly rule over his wife is in the love of God, as the New Testament also commands him to do. I am here to tell you that any authoritarian crap is not part of this picture.

So her conception was increased, which I believe means that God speeded up her fertility cycle. If women only ovulated one time per year, as many other large mammals do, they would be fertile for over three hundred years; but the ageing process that the Knowledge of Good and Evil has caused makes it dangerous for women to try to bear children much past the age of forty. And okay, I guess that menstruation is also a consequence of that speeded up cycle, sorry. At least now you know there's a reason for it.

Sorrow is another matter, and that word means something more than physical pain. I'm not saying it doesn't hurt to deliver a child, and being a man I cannot pretend to know what that's like; but I have been present at the birth of my children and I can tell you that the pain of childbirth is not like the pain of an injury. In the word there is an element of sadness as well as pain, and work. Going back to the metaphorical feedback, the Christ is described as "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." Women too, seem to be given an understanding of the sorrow (as well as the joy) that comes of bringing children into the world.

There is one last thing I want to mention. In Solomon's Song of Songs, the woman's lyrics mention at least twice that

"with his left hand he holds my head and with his right hand he embraces me."

Another way to translate embrace is to clasp, or to push it a little, to caress. We men want not only to put our arms around the woman we love, but we also want to caress their bodies. We want to gently clasp her breast or feel the contour of her cheek, her belly, her hip, her vagina. We men seem to gain a special knowledge of the world around us through our hands. Perhaps women share this as well, I don't really know. When we handle something, we feel as if we know it better; and we deeply desire to know the woman we love. Many misguided men, blinded by the Knowledge of Good and Evil, think this touching is an expression of ownership. They think that if they can get a woman to submit to this kind of intimate touching, they own her. And so, all too often, men become aggressive about this, even threatening. Even violent. This is clearly a violation of God's design, and when physical intimacy is not accompanied by loving tenderness, it is as if the fellowship between the Father and the Son were to exclude the Spirit. It is a violation, an insult to the metaphor. God is One. When physical intimacy, even this relatively mild form, is forced it becomes the most egregious kind of assault. Another thing the woman's lyric repeats in Solomon's Song is, "I am my beloved's and he is mine". Love prompts a person, not to take the other, but to give oneself; not to possess the other, but to belong with the other. Thus we can fulfill our ability to recreate the image of God in the world.

So to summarize, sexual desire, sexual affection, sexual intercourse, are all about expressing love, the very essence of the God who created this universe. I hope that I have given you some positive reasons to relax, take your time, and build a relationship. Resist our society's constant goading (which they do simply to make merchandise of your soul) to seek mere stimulation. If you examine your heart, I think you will see that there really isn't the urgency that you may sometimes feel in your flesh. As wonderful as a loving sexual relationship is, it is well worth approaching carefully, even reverently, in order to gain the greatest value from it.