Hi Everyone, Anca here.
I’m so glad I get to join in online and fellowship with everyone. I’m not there in the flesh but I’m with you all in the spirit! Jane, you have done a wonderful job with the slides, they are so beautifully written! I’m learning many new things 🙂
I’m going to share some of my thoughts as I’m reading through the slides.
Slide 6 & 7 immediately jumped out to me. Jane does a wonderful job pulling out all of the spiritual elements of Adam and Eve’s characteristics post-fall. I wanted to highlight some of the material and economic realities of the fall and how they play into the character traits of man and woman post-fall. What stood out to me was how the descriptive consequences of the fall seem to contain the seeds of Patriarchy within them.
Some examples are:
The physical shelter that man and woman had in the garden was now gone as they were thrown out. Pre-fall all food was provided for them in the garden by God but post-fall man would now have to work the ground by the sweat of his brow and the earth would no longer yield it’s fruit easily since it was now cursed. The mention of woman’s conception being multiplied and that it would be hard to raise children. All of these things lay the ground for patriarchy to spring forth!
If we think about it, a man usually has more muscle and body strength than a woman. Prior to the fall, God was the provider of food for both man and woman, the garden was safe shelter for the man and the woman, and the only thing they had to guard against was their own temptation. After the fall, the hard ground would have to be broken and food would have to be cultivated, due to physical advantage the man was best suited for this task. The animals were now also violent and dangerous. The woman would have small children dependent on her for breastmilk and pregnancy would be difficult and dangerous. These very real realities would make the woman dependent on the man for the provision of food, shelter, and protection from the wild animals and elements. This naturally gave the man an edge and advantage over the woman, and God was no longer the woman’s sole provider and protector.
Adam had already shown his treacherous sinful nature when he blamed his wife and God for his own actions. So the worse thing that could have happened to the woman was for her to now be at the mercy of the man, depending on him for food, protection, and shelter while she is vulnerable due to having small children dependent on her in this sinful world where there was now scarcity, sickness, danger, and death.
By the next generation, as seen in Cain, the man had also become murderous and greedy, killing each other in a fight for dominance, status, and resources, the beginning markers of war. This also put the woman at the mercy of the man as violence was now unleashed on the earth and she depended on her husband to protect her from other men. We immediately also see male lust which produced polygamy thus breaking the original command where the man was to leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, not the other way around. These are all markers of patriarchy and it’s beginnings! No wonder God gave the woman a warning that if she turn to her husband he would rule over her. Sadly, Eve had now become a “fearful man dependent woman” and Adam ruled over her.
I see it like Adam had the economic advantage because he was the primary one to break hard ground and raise crop for food. This automatically gives the man an advantage over the woman. Man being sinful now used his advantage as the provider and protector of the woman to rule over. In patriarchy, women do indeed sell out on all of their standards just to have a man provide for them. They put up with adultery, beatings, being ruled and bossed around, and accept they accept servitude. They idolize the man under that system.
Later in history, we see that the man also further enforced that system and set it up to his greedy advantage by denying woman equal share in the fruit of her labor and womb. Under patriarchy, man exploits woman for services and resources. A woman used to make almost all clothing for the man, she also made products at home for the survival of the family like medicines. She later toiled the ground with the man and was the primary one to process food and store it, she carried and gave human life. Yet, man denied her the legal and social right to the income that her labor and resources produced and instead forced her to depend on him and slave away in servitude to the man.
From the earliest clans of human history, historically, most families produced products in the home from raw goods and traded them among each other and sold them in the marketplace. A woman was usually the one making these products and even selling them in the market, yet legally she could not keep any of the money and was not entitled the authority to make a binding transaction. A woman also did not have legal authority over her own children, only the husband did. The man also did not leave his father and mother to unite and join with his wife, instead, the woman was forced to leave and join with his family and all exploitation and polygamy followed afterward.
So these are some of my thoughts about the real-life consequences of the post-fall curses and their economic ties.