Eve, we live with a curse far beyond what you could ever have anticipated.
You never once thought that eating the fruit could cause anything other than good. You did not know what a curse was. You did not know evil. You would never have chosen what came.
What you anticipated was more. More good. You only knew good.
You were utterly deceived. It’s why you took the fruit. You were lied to that there was more good to be had. But instead, you got things you never knew about – lies, separation, brokenness, death. The Serpent had fed you the lie that God was holding out on you.
I begin to understand Gomer¹, humanity, and myself when I look to you, Eve, the only woman who has lived and experienced the perfection of love – and the ruin of sin. When God was your sole source, you were satisfied in every way (Hosea 13:6, NIV). His perfect love filled up your human heart, soul, mind, and body with all you needed. But when you fell, comparing what God said with what the Liar fed you, you ate, and have ever since battled a conflict within – that what you have is not enough (Hosea 4:10, NIV).
Where you were without lack in every way, you now feel lacking in every way.
I admire you, and I grieve for you, and for us, your daughters. As a woman, I look at what you had and who you were. You had and were everything that I have ever longed to have and be. You were delighted in as female, and it wasn’t tied to our world’s sexualization of women. You were valued for your intelligence, and contribution, and for your feminine worldview. You were made to be like God – beautiful, alluring, inviting, the giver of life, intimately relational, full of tenderness and mercy – the feminine expression of him.
I’d love to ask you about life before sin. I’d love for you to describe to me the words and feelings I cannot find, but my soul searches for, of being perfectly loved by God. What was it like to live perfectly loved? What was it like to be loved by Adam, a man who too had known nothing other than perfect love? And what was it like to be a woman without insecurities, to love him in return?
You were bodily perfect. Physically, you were beautiful, with no flaws! Emotionally, you were perfectly healthy, with no emotional needy-ness! You didn’t know the meaning of feeling unvalued. You didn’t know self-esteem could be low. You didn’t beat up on yourself. You didn’t have emotional scars or baggage from being hurt. What you did know and experience was value, love, safety, and security. Everything you did and said and felt added to what was being done and said around you. You never had to think twice about whether what you said was not important enough. You never felt an idiot or wished you’d kept your mouth shut.
It was in this environment that you knew what it was to be fed and be satisfied. Love fully, absolutely, perfectly satisfied you. It was an emotional filling, which left no room for value issues.
How great the manipulation of truth to tempt one who lives in perfection – perfectly loved, safe and secure, perfect in bodily form, perfectly fulfilled in purpose – to want more! How masterful his deceptive words!
Having fallen into pure evil, the Serpent became the father of lies, the one who ruins. He enticed you to look – to physically see – that the forbidden fruit was pleasing to the eye (Genesis 3:6a, NIV). He didn’t do this because he cared about you. Evil does not care. It is self-seeking and other-destroying. He enticed you to consider – to mentally see– your eyes will be opened (Genesis 3:6b, NIV).
When the Serpent said,
“For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5, NIV),
it was to deceive you that what you had wasn’t enough. There was more. You were missing out. Not only was there more about seeing (pleasing to the eye) that you didn’t have, there was more to be (you will be like God), you loved and adored God. And there was more to know (knowing good and evil).
You were already filled up with feelings that who you were, was very good (Genesis 1:31, NIV). But he manipulated you into believing very good wasn’t enough. Was God holding out on you? What would it be like to be like God? And God knew good and evil! You knew good – everything was good, and good was good!! Could knowing good and evil be even better? What did evil even mean? You’d known none! Would it mean to have more wisdom? To see everything as God sees it. Was evil knowing the full story, getting the full picture? Was there a euphoric cloud over your existence that only gave you half the picture, and the fruit would let you physically and mentally see all?
“You think you’ve got it good here? You want to see what God has that He hasn’t shown or given to you that He keeps for Himself. There is so much more…eat and see…”
Eve, the more you desired did not come with the good you anticipated, rather it was a lie that has ever since become your curse, and ours: pleasing to the eye is the new truth. Pleasing to the eye is seeing and knowing and having the physical dimension as priority over the internal perspective. You knew you were loved to the very depth of your soul, Eve, and it satisfied every part of you, emotionally and physically. For us, it is something we have to fight through the wall of lies for, that every human around us is also fighting. This new truth speaks only to our outward appearance and leaves us always feeling not enough.
Am I enough?
The truth of God had been screwed with. Something pleasing to the eye took place over the truth of God. Something on the outside, that you can see with your eyes was considered the new truth over what is on the inside, that which you know with your heart. Something that entices the senses became desired over truth. The physical became the new sense of value: if we are not pleasing to the eye, then what we have is not enough. Or equally, if something or someone is not pleasing to the eye, then they have little or no value. It’s a lie, but it is the often unchallenged lie we live by. Our sense of value is measured now based on being pleasing to the eye and if we are not, then what we have is not enough, we want more.
Who even determines what is pleasing to the eye and what is not?
Immediately on taking the fruit, you realized (Genesis 3:7a, NIV) you had been deceived. Instantly there surfaced unfelt before frightening feelings within. Terrifying shame – a painful consciousness from the betrayal of God. Terrifying regret – sorrow, remorse, and loss for which you felt to blame. Terrifying insecurity – feelings of anxiety and uncertainty. A terrifying Fall from perfect love to ruin. The instant foreboding you must have felt. The act that had brought fear and misery to your soul must have been a heavy reality to bear.
For the first time, you knew you were physically naked (Genesis 3:7b, NIV). It was evidence that the physical had become the new truth over the internal, but it was the deeper spiritual nakedness that made you afraid. You were left without the covering of truth, with no protection from the deception of Satan, vulnerable, separated from love, exposed, defenseless, stripped bare and open to deceit, lies, and ruin, and with the nagging question about your value.
Because of this new terrifying consciousness of evil, God covered your body (Genesis 3:21, NIV). He clothed you, but it was only external. The consequences of fear, insecurity, anxiety, vulnerability, regret, sorrow, grief, uncertainty, and shame remained. They are mine today. Thousands of years later, here I am living in the reality and the consequences of being outside of perfect love, and struggling to find my value. Looking to others, and to external measures instead of what God says about me.
Yet, I know I am loved. I know it because you, Eve, were loved…
Though the consequences have since challenged your sense of worth, to God you have continued to be treasured. When the Serpent enticed you and won, he caused a barrier to Love, but never broke the heart-bond. Your worth to God has never diminished or darkened.
It was not your sin, or lack of it that defined the love God had for you, it is that your being was…loved. It was an act of love that God covered your nakedness, shame, and vulnerability. And it is an act of deep love for you that since your Fall, God has sought to return you to Love, whispering the truth of your value, and encouraging you to hear once again that which is on the inside, not the outside – the knowledge that you are precious, treasured, loved.
We just have to find our way back into Love again. To hear the song again. To listen to the right voice.
Continued in next week’s blog…
¹[Hosea was a prophet of God to the nation of Israel. It is where much of this journey of love has been awakened. His story is found in the Old Testament part of the Bible. Read more here.]