Life Is A Struggle

[Gregory Matthews]

Life is a struggle  For a devotional meditation on this subject, see:: 

https://atoday.org/everyone-is-struggling-the-trauma-of-living-in-the-modern-world/

[Kevin H]

Yes, life is a struggle. We are told this in Genesis 3, but have amazing promises in both Genesis 3:15 and (while often misread and thus Satan blinds us to the promise) Genesis 3:16.

Now, we have not been fair to the world around us either. Different people have studied this, three who's understandings I'm impressed with include the poet/philosopher Eli Siegel, The psychiatrist William Glasser, and the Marriage and Family Counselor Lois Eggers. They cover much of the same about our nature, but each has additional insights and a basic (does not even need to be deep) of the thoughts of these three people will give us tools to lessen the intensity of the struggle and to start healing. 

Then there are others who have looked as how we as individuals relate to the world around us. For about 2,000 years people have recognized our temperaments. Over the centuries there were times where there would be focus on these and times where they were discarded only to be picked up again. In the 1970s and early 1980s there was intense study and research with Tim LaHay working with Andrews University. Due to LaHay's audience he would use some changes in language in his presentation. Some people, especially  Florence Littauer, her daughter Marita Littaure and their student Kathleen Edelman have had wonderful ministries taking these findings and applying them to common people. 

Besides our temperaments, we also seem to have been born with two out of five different natural love languages as well as two out of five different natural apology languages.  Gary Chapman and Jennifer Thomas have made careers out of studying these.

Then, as we learned as children on how to cope with others, we have developed different attachment styles. While many have studied into "Attachment Theory" the study and teaching of Milan and Kay Yerkovich tends to identify more of the styles (I think that there are probably one or two, maybe a couple more that have yet to be identified).

Now, I had forgotten about and am now starting to study into the 5 personality traits summarized in the world "OCEAN" for which points out a continuum we all tend to fall into within 5 catagories:

Openness to Experience – prefers routine, practical vs. imaginative, spontaneous

Conscientiousness – impulsive, disorganized vs. disciplined, careful

Extraversion – reserved, thoughtful vs. sociable, fun-loving

Agreeableness – suspicious, uncooperative vs. trusting, helpful

Neuroticism – calm, confident vs. anxious, pessimistic

Which are useful, but I believe that looking at the work of Siegel, Glasser, and Eggers for universal attitudes we are all dealing with, and looking at our personal applications through the Temperaments, Love languages, Apology languages and Attachment styles will give us a fantastic foundation that we can use to build other things such as the OCEAN, Crucial Conversations, EQ, Cognitive behavioral Therapy and other ideas on. 

And again I'm not saying that we need to become experts in Siegel, Glasser, Eggers, the Temperaments, Love and Apology languages and attachment styles, but an awareness of these will be useful. 

Yes, we live in a world that has struggle. But a large amount of the pain we deal with comes from how we struggle with contempt towards the outside world and wanting to use external control psychology. People find each of the above mentioned ideas as very useful to their lives and I believe that they are even more effective as we take them together. 

And thus we can find tools to understand the promise of Genesis 3:15 and 3:16. The poem starts in Genesis 3:14

14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
    and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
    and you will eat dust
    all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
    between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring[a] and hers;
HE will crush your head,
    and you will strike HIS heel.”

16 To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
    with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
    and HE will rule over you.” (Emphases SHOULD be there)

 

Genesis 3:16 is not only the physical pain when in "labor" and giving birth, but that in bearing children, the women would tend to have a natural intense connection to her little ones, even when they are not so little. There is an increased sharing of the joys, but as we deal with the hardships of life, a more intense pain for what they go through. This is besides the pain that she bears. Now, the husband is not outside of this relationship, it is not like black widows and praying mantis who mate then the male killed. But that the human relationship will include the man. Since the man is just mentioned here and gets a whole poem for himself, that implies pain in the husband and wife relationship as well. But there is a promise to help us bear the struggle and to look forward to redemption. These are the words that "HE," not he the husband as often read, but the HE of Genesis 3:15, the promised seed shall rule over the woman, the children and the husband. The promised seed is not merely pie in the sky someday way in the future, but "HE" is right there with Adam and Eve at the very start of the sin issue. "He" is here to help us through these relationship issues right from the start. Much of the struggle in life is because I or a wife/woman or a child or a husband wants to use external control psychology to rule over the others. The solution is to allow this promised "He" to rule over us.  "When we love the world as he [Jesus] has loved it then for us his mission is accomplished we are fitted for heaven for we have heaven in our hearts" (Desire of Ages pg 461).

Since I learned that the "He" of Genesis 3:16 is poetic Hebrew the "He" introduced to us in Genesis 3:15, I have been overwhelmed by the implications, and the insights it gives to both other parts of the Bible and to life. A couple of weeks ago at campmeeting I came across a long time friend. As we updated each other and shared things we have been learning, when I first mentioned this he gave his usual response as we shared what we have been learning, but then he took a double take, eyes went wide, head snapped in a circle with a look on his face as you could tell he was starting to see the implication of the text.