Eve's Story

The Bible tells a deep personal story about Eve, but hardly anyone really reads it. Everyone knows it. Everyone knows the gossip about Eve. Everyone knows the “official” version. But everyone focuses on Adam. Adam is the beginning of everything. Adam was the first. Eve is secondary and she was the one who tempted Adam. Clearly, Eve wore the symbolic, non-existent pants. Adam, instead of manning up, says “the woman made me do it.” What? We would have expected some manliness from the first man, wouldn’t we? But no, first he tries to hide from God. Then he throws his woman under the bus. It’s all there in black and white in the Bible. Read it and tell me it isn’t so. The Bible and science largely agree that there had to be a first pair of Homo Sapiens, or if there were not, the offspring would have been something else. DNA study largely confirms this, and this is evidence of creation, because where else could they come from? If they evolved, how do we wind up with two having human DNA at the same time? I’m not a geneticist, but it just makes sense. They certainly didn’t evolve from monkeys or apes. Eve would have been physically perfect. And her eyes worked just fine, as did everything else. After all, she was the mother of the human race. And She and the man were naked, and they were not ashamed, just like every other creature God created. True, God admonished them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is the type of figure of speech of people long ago. If you think about it, though this is not any ordinary tree, nor is its fruit like an apple or a fig or any ordinary fruit. Jesus uses a similar device when He says, “Unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the son of man, you have no life in you.” John 6:54. The spiritually blind couldn’t understand Him then either, if you read the whole passage. Thus, we are talking about something spiritual, not merely outward eating and drinking. See Mark 7:17-23; Romans 14:17. “Knowledge” is also the loss of innocence, and often a euphemism for physical intercourse. Genesis 4:1 KJV. And consider that “knowledge of good and evil” refers to the focus on the physical non-spiritual world. To become worldly, to “know” the worldly existence in the sense that it becomes the focal point of the mind. And before this fall, they were innocent in the sense that they were aware of God and focused on Him. See Romans 1:20. Now this is an important point: the human brain can only focus really on one thing at a time. This is why you can’t text and drive. Or rather why it is dangerous, because driving safely requires undivided attention; and so does spiritual life. And it is clear that Adam and Eve had a close relationship with YHWH. He was present in their daily lives, “walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” And Adam and Eve, were made like Him and in His image. But as Jesus mentions in John 4:24, God is spirit. And so are we. That is, God made us spirits like Him, and loaned us bodies of flesh to live and work and serve and worship Him. So, Eve, the beautiful, perfect and spiritual daughter of God, made by the hand of YHWH, and living in a perfect garden, with a man to love her and attend to her, encounters the tempter. And we must turn to Matthew 4:1-11. Jesus was tempted with food when He was hungry, with testing God, and with greed and lust for the things of the world. This last—the test of worldliness is the one we really need to consider. For, Christ was also a Spirit and worldliness is like spiritual kryptonite. And here is where Eve failed the test. The devil tempted her to focus on what is physical and worldly, losing sight of the spirit, because you cannot focus on both and there are so many things in the physical world to grab your attention, especially now in this crazy Twenty-First Century, as you have undoubtedly seen. Not only that, but also things that take up time and scream to be done first before you devote the first minute to God. Wash the dishes, take out the garbage, send the kids to school, walk the dog, pay the bills, clean the house, fix the dinner, pick up the kids, start the homework, and make yourself pretty before Adam comes home from the office. Writing this, I have to remember that this is so Twentieth Century. Eve could be a lawyer, and Adam could be the one at home. Or both may be breadwinners. Good grief! Of course, there are perfect people who seem to be able to manage all this. But really that is just a perception. They often wind up on the psychiatrist couch, divorced, or worse. Nobody is perfect. So, as the Bible says, their eyes were opened, and they saw that they were naked. Does this mean their physical eyes didn’t work before? Utter nonsense. They physically saw the physical, but their focus was pure and spiritual. The devil’s trick was the looking down, the re-focusing on the worldly, and thus the loss of the sight of the spirit. Look at John 3. Nicodemus was a learned Pharisee, Israel’s teacher. But he was unable to grasp the meaning of “born again.” The Pharisees had to memorize the entire Old Testament. But he was not spiritual. And this made him dull. See 2 Corinthians 14-18. And again, in John 9, the story of the man born blind, we see that the Pharisees and the priests were blind. John 9:39-41. Looking at Genesis 2:25, 3:7 and 3:10, the verb “were” is a form of the verb “to be.” “They were naked and they were not ashamed.” Gen. 2:25. “…their eyes were opened, and they saw that they were naked…” Gen. 3:7. “ “…I was afraid because I was naked…” Gen. 3:10. No place does it say they felt guilty or feared God’s wrath or that their concern was disobedience or sin. Read it over. It’s not in there. What is in there? They made coverings for themselves. They were afraid because they were naked. What’s wrong with that? All the creatures God made were naked. They were perfect, beautiful. But they were flesh, of the world, made from the stuff of the earth, fed from earth, the flesh is a form of earth, really. We return it to the earth. That which separates it from earth is the spirit, and to become worldly is spiritual death. See Romans 8. So, having re-focused on the worldly concerns, as Paul says, “the flesh,” Eve has lost sight of the spiritual and become entangled with the world to the point that she cannot see spiritually, and doesn’t have time to immerse herself in reflection and meditation to regain her spiritual presence with YHWH. And it is this, the focus on the physical and worldly that causes us to feel shame. The “to be” language does not direct us to misbehavior, or to violation of some rule, even God’s commandment. Shame is a negative perception of what one is. A person can change her behavior, but she cannot on her own change what she is. The passage is not about obedience at all, but about the spiritual death and the worldly thinking that is at the root of all sin if you really think about it. Even David, the great king fell prey to worldly temptation. And when we read the bible focused only on the worldly aspects of things; or like a cookbook, following the rules, we lose the deeper meanings. See 1 Corinthians Chapter 2. And this is why the Pharisees were blind. And this is where Christ comes in. He restores us to spiritual life. The spirit has the possibility to live forever. The physical body we have does not. We have to surrender it back to the One who loaned it to us. A lot of people focus on the Rapture as a way to escape the reality of physical death. Peter and Paul embraced physical death as a release of the spirit to be with our Jesus. The end times Rapture has its place, but we are to take up our crosses and follow in the footsteps of Jesus, up to the place of the skull, up to the place where the Romans kill people they don’t like. No, I don’t walk on water, nor am I immune to pain and fear. But my mind is set on accepting these things. I refuse to let them stop me. I refuse to yield an inch to them. Or to cancer. And I am determined to remain positive and happy in the blessings of the Lord to the end. To serve others no matter what happens to my body as long as physically possible. To sacrifice to do so, whatever I feel is demanded. And I am not in any way unique, you are able to do likewise; it is a decision you make, not any special talent. If you make up your mind to live for Him you can as long as there is breath in your body. But as Paul and Jesus and others tell us plainly, the spirit is eternal; the flesh counts for nothing. It is a tent, a vessel of clay. So, Eve’s story can have one of two endings. She can accept the way of the cross—she will probably do this better than Adam ever could—or she can remain lost as Satan, her seducer, left her, walking her walk of shame, sour and disappointed. And Adam, poor fellow, will probably just tag along. She is the strong one.