Eve was Created Subordinate to Adam....Huh!?

[M. T. Cross]

Man those poor people are having a lot more fun than me.... I never realized I was supposed to do all those things..... Here I am trying to just get by cheque to cheque and feed the kids something that has a bit of substance to it. I knew I was going about this poor thing all wrong.

[Parade Orange]

u r sooo right on! welcome to the club

[teresaq]

I didn't catch on to your last sentence, Jacob, til ParadeOrange brought it up...

Dysfunctional looks "normal" to too many of us...tho that may not be what you were saying, or meant.

[Tom Wetmore]

Yes, the abnormal seeming normal is precisely on point to this topic. What is more disturbing is to caste it as as God's intended condition, even His ideal. It ends up with the normal being disparaged, viewed with suspicion and vigorously resisted with efforts to justify, promote and reinforce the abnormal as the ideal. Future generations quickly lose sight of the normal and even find it hard to understand and accept and more difficult to change. That is the natural course of sin passing itself from the parents to the children.

It reminds me of a real example that I witnessed. As a young boy I watched in shock as a relative used a bull whip to discipline his grandson that I had been playing with. I don't even remember what infraction instigated this extreme abusive reaction, but the scene, especially the sound, is etched in my memory. What I didn't know was that this extreme abuse was the norm in that family. Years later that boy, now a teenager that my dad had taken under his wing, told my dad that he thought other kids were lying when they said they never even got spanked. He genuinely believed that every kid got whipped just as he did. Without intervention, that kind of abuse is passed on as normal parenting from one generation to another. And too often it can become more extreme in successive generations unless something extraordinary breaks or weakens the escalating cycle of sin.

And so it also is with the relationship between men and women. From that first seed of discord with Adam blaming Eve, the God ordained and created harmony and oneness was disturbed, mutual trust and respect was broken. Little is made of this second sin of Adam and Eve's echo of it by not accepting her responsibility and casting blame on the serpent. Both indirectly blamed God for creating the object of their blame. That spirit is at the heart of the unequal partnership that resulted from their sins, an abnormal, even dysfunctional, state of our existence that has become comfortably normal...

[Parade Orange]

i agree TOM!

i grew up with horrific constant physical and mental abuse by both my parents and i watched THE BRADY BUNCH.

i was very little when that show was on and the episode where PETER was playing football in the house and broke an expensive vase.

i remember watching as a child waiting for MR BRADY to wail on those kids! i mean i was waiting for the red face rage. the trashing of the house. i was waiting for a serious drawing blood and children's anguish and being literly scared to death and the pleading of NO NO DADDY terror to happen.

it didnt happen. MR BRADY was calm.

i was stupified!~

[CoAspen]

Really liked the summation of your last paragraph. As in so many other things, we fail to accept what God intended for, a return to the ideal before sin, and say 'that is the way it's supposed to be now'. Blaming is a very difficult process to stop, might say that is at the root level of sin to begin with.

Very difficult to understand that thought process.

[teresaq]

Yes, for me abnormal was normal, but then abnormal is the norm in our world.

Reminds me of this seminar I went to where this woman enacts sitting in a cesspool making comments about how "comfortable" it was. It smells and we don't like it, but abnormal is "comfortable", it is what we know, it is how we cope.

It seems to come down to whether we find Jesus' humility and kindness attractive or not. We might find those two qualities attractive -if even understood - in theory, in words, and in a superficial way,

but when push comes to shove

Satan pops out too frequently.

[Parade Orange]

ummm i think my post came from left field i think

what i was saYing was that as THERESQ pointed out was normal looks abnormal to us when you grow up in wrong/evil.

i as a child thought all parents were like that to kids.

and it didnt make sense to me when i saw the opposite.

u see people reason and present the scriptures according to their dysfunction

[teresaq]

I understood what you meant in your previous post quite well. :)

[Tom Wetmore]

Out of left field is not a problem... I am often out in left field, so I had no problem understanding what you posted

[teresaq]

:)

[CoAspen]

The Bible tells us God created Eve to be an equal, neither head nor under foot. Adam and Eve were to be 'one'. The scripture does use the word 'helper' for Eve, but gives its own definition of the word which is different that from our understanding of word usage today.

People attache to the word 'helper' their own definitions of the culture they live in. To most people it means someone else is in charge and the 'helper' is in the secondary role. If Eve is neither to control nor be under Adam, but as an equal and one with him, notice the word one, also implying 'equal', maybe we should follow the created intention and stop trying to continue this defining of Eve as anything else but Gods intention? Or does someone which to say Adam and Eve were one, but really two parts, capable of fighting against each other? That is not what the Bible says! Only the mental diseased person fights against themselves. Adam 1/2, Eve 1/2=1 whole creation...what is there to argue about?!! Could it be man still wants to be the top dog? Is that not what Satan wanted? Is that not really the essence of sin? Desire to be in control?

Where do we get the belief that the 'one' God speaks of, is really 'two'???

[teresaq]

Oh good! I get to tell you what an excellent post.

I do tend to agree that it is more about needing to be the one "in authority".

Jesus was the One in authority on this earth and He was a Servant to all.

Peter even tells us, 1Pe 5:3

But maybe we misunderstand. Maybe that is what "they" mean. They want to have the "authority" so that they can be the servants of their wives...

[M. T. Cross]

I think the Creator meant for all to be equal.

However over time due to ego, sin, whatever you like something happened that was probably so deep in the subconcious that no-one ever realized it.

Men realized that women truly had all the power. Oh sure we are physically stronger. We can lift heavy things and possibly work longer and harder.

But what we can not do is create a new life within ourselves. We can not grow it and we can not give birth to it. Given the overall scope of it we play a very very minor part in the process of procreation. Somewhere in our psyche that was a problem. So we created a social status where we made sure women knew that they NEEDED us. To protect them, to keep them safe and provide for them. It became something that became so ingrained in our thought process that it became a part of our religions, it became a part of everything.

Personally I think it is one of our many insults directed at whoever/whatever created us. Women are as capable as men in almost every way, and men are as capable as women in almost every way. Together we are a whole. Together we are complete.

[teresaq]

I appreciate what you say here. The truth is man cannot protect their wives from anything. Their role never was to be "protector" except to protect their wives, daughters etc. from themselves.

You are right. We do not "need" men at all. We want to be with them.

[M. T. Cross]

That want is the basis of any good relationship. My wife is my partner. In life, parenting, business. THe protection thing is a two way street. Men may have a bit more prowness in physical protection, women have a bit more prowess in emotional protection. I am way more scared of a woman whose family has been threatened than a man. I man will just beat you up, a woman will destroy!

[Parade Orange]

i agree

given how our egos are so easly shattered!

goodness gracious!

most women know we need constant stroking of how big n brave and strong we are

in bed women know that it doesnt take much to decimate a mans performance or size or durability and turn him into a such a mess he cant perform under pressure

women know they cant always be as honest or direct with us on so many levels or we will fight or flee the situation or person

men learn to shut down or become a tryant! its hardly balanced

we are so weak

adam was weak in his perfect state

[Tom Wetmore]

And I think you have identified something that we men are loath to admit! Men are weaker than women in more ways than we care to admit. The evidence runs deep in the rationalization of the responses ( or lack of response) to the temptation by both Adam and Eve.

We readily assume that "weak-minded" Eve was duped and therefore not fully accountable because she was tricked by the clever serpent. But we also assume Adam knew exactly what he was doing, sinning intentionally. The underlying implication is almost a strangely ironic twist that his love for Eve was so great that he simply couldn't bear being without her, so he took the fruit to share her fate. No, he was just as foolish as she was.

And we see that refusal to admit to male weakness from the camp that adamantly refuses to accept the direct Scriptural statement that Eve handed fruit to Adam who was with her in favor of a very long-standing patriarchal church tradition. The elaborate mental gymnastics to explain away that little word and to rationalize that the strong-minded Adam couldn't possibly have stood by silently while Eve chatted it up with a talking serpent. He certainly would have stepped in and stopped the temptation right then and there. He would never have fallen for it. He had to have been too smart for that!

But think about it for a minute. It is not impossible for a man to be quiet while a woman is talking. And it's also not at all improbably that a woman might be rendered less speechless than a man when confronted with a talking animal. ( I think I might have been more than a bit taken aback if a snake talked to me from a tree...) I don't mean this unkindly, but women do tend to be more chatty than men and often can be less rattled by something quite out of the ordinary. (And most men tend to get a bit tongue-tied when around a beautiful woman.) So a man having nothing to say under the circumstances shouldn't be seen as all that improbable.

And assuming they were both there at the tree, let's give Eve a bit more credit, she did quickly responded with what God had told them. She seemed mentally sharp showing an immediate understanding of what was afoot.

[Gail]

I've thought for a long time that women hold the real power in this world... because of some of the reasons mentioned above

[Parade Orange]

btw when i say adam was weak in his perfect state i didnt say it as a put down.

i said it for a few reasons that are quite biblical

adam was a newborn to the world and if confronted with evil or something he didnt understand he was suppossed to seek GOD's FACE

to seek his DADDY

no matter how wonderful or perfect we are

we are still all thru eternity always need GOD

what a world will be if more angels seeked GOD as a shelter when confronted with lucifers lies

we all need JESUS

did Adam think he can handle this situation by himself?

adam sees eve running to him in delight (like adam was miles away?) holding the fruit!

Adam is like OH NO! O LORD O LORD where for art thou? I need YOOOOUUUUU now!

the reason is that i say adam is miles away cause they say he wasnt with her

I dont know how big the garden is but in my perfect heavenly state i would have BIONIC hearing and here chattering by two voices and know something is up cause we only have two total who can chat.

Adam wasnt that far away and should have used his star trek communicator immediatly!

[teresaq]

Yes, indeed! :)

[epaminondas]

Who says it was sin that put men over women? Didn't God make Eve as a helper for Adam? There is not enough evidence of conditions before the fall to say what God intended and what not. It always amazes me that people can come up with words and mistake them for facts. It's no sin for a woman to be subservient to a man.

Statistical outliers also don't establish a tendency. To invoke outliers to prove a point is not a sign of intelligence. Look at the hump of the distribution curve. Most drunks are poor. Yes, there are also professional people who are drunks, and politicians, and artists making a lot of money. But that doesn't change the fact that most people making a nuisance of themselves exhibiting anti social behaviour in public are poor.

[M. T. Cross]

I think that anyone being subservient to anyone is wrong.

About the drunks. Thats a little amusing. I was discussing finances with a friend the other day, neither of us really drink much more than the odd glass of wine. However most the people we know are borderline to full blown alcoholics. Yet they seem to have more disposable income than either of us.

[Tom Wetmore]

I'm not sure what the repeated railing against poor drunks has to do with the topic, but...

As for Adam and Eve being created equal, the first bit of evidence is that the Genesis 1 account says that God created male and female in His image and then said to both of them to have dominion over or rulership of all of the rest of creation. That suggests a co-rulership and not a single man ruler and female vice-ruler in a subordinate role to him. Also, the reference to them being one is indicative of equality. If two things are combined to become one, that one cannot be superior or inferior to itself. It cannot be divided against itself to be less or more than itself as a whole. And as has been suggested many times, the part of Adam from which Eve was made was taken from his side, to denote she was to stand beside him. It was not taken from his head that she should be over him or his foot to be beneath him.

As for the description of Eve as a helper, it is useful to look at the meaning and use of the original Hebrew word that is translated as such. Nowhere else is it used to imply an inferior or subordinate relationship to the one being helped. It is always used to identify the one giving the help from an equal or superior position. In fact that same Hebrew word is used most frequently to describe God as being our help. If one ascribes a relational role value to that word, that much more common usage would suggest it put Eve in a superior position to Adam since the Creator God is superior to his creatures that he helps. But really the word doesn't so much speak of the one doing the deed or receiving it, but the quality of the deed from one who is with or on the side of the one to whom the aid is rendered.

[teresaq]

Perhaps our friend is Mormon and believes in the 7 levels of heaven...

If subservience is not a sin, in the brother's/sister's eyes, then holding the black "man", or any group of people, in subservience is not a sin either.

Subservience is either a sin, or it is not a sin. Can't have it both ways. : )