What Happened to Us in Eden? - Psychology of the FallNäide

EDEN AND THE MINISTRY OF RECONCILIATION

The woman was brought before Adam not merely to be led—that’s what the biblical text suggests to me—but for other purposes:

• to submit to one another in love,
• to manage themselves in light of the other’s presence, with neither going off on their own,
• to be one flesh—which also means to function and move as one, like a single unit,
• guided by the Creator and in obedience to Him at every moment,
• representing faithfully and with dignity the same “stuff” they were both made of,
• yet in two distinct bodies, with different and complementary capacities in various functions (as in the Trinity),
• leading them to help one another—something like bidirectional leadership, if we want to put it that way, which in practice means neither leads more than the other, but that they walk side by side,
• and, from there, to multiply, subdue the earth, and rule over it together (and I don’t see in the text that she herself was a part of creation that he was meant to rule).

Perhaps the key word here is just that: together. Breaking that togetherness was the beginning of the end.

• The Fall doesn’t mean that woman stopped being the gift she was to man;
• it does mean that she has not been seen in the same way since, nor usually taught about in that light.
• There was rupture—a certain kind of death—in the relationship between husband and wife, and between the sexes. We’ll unpack this more later. But because of that rupture, the positive connotation of the word “gift” often grates against the way many interpret us in light of Eden.
• Yet I can’t imagine life in Christ without recovering that aspect of woman as part of the original design.

If men and women truly become aware that woman was presented as a gift to man—and that this inaugurated a reciprocal relationship where both considered one another in the best possible way—then this has to change something in us here and now, not just there and then, as we think of the glory to come. The love of Christ, and our love for Christ, should be enough to push us in this direction—to seek something better.

This has massive implications for the ministry of reconciliation that Paul mentions in the same passage: what kind of message are we sending to the world if those who need reconciliation first—between the sexes—are us?