Every once in a while I wonder what I might say to Eve, if I were ever to meet her.
“Seriously — you couldn’t have just, like, not eaten that forbidden fruit? Did it taste good?”
“What was it like to enjoy, at least for a while, true partnership with a man?”
“Did everything in the garden just grow perfectly? Did you ever have to weed?!”
“Were you really naked? Like, totally? Weren’t there bugs? Did you really feel no shame?”
“What was it like to talk and walk with God?”
Eve has always seemed complicated. She’s not exactly a role model. And yet I find myself identifying with and learning from her.
Eve reminds me that God loves me.
I’ve gone through periods of deep questioning whether or not the God I know and love cares for women as much as God does men. Just as the cunning snake whispered into Eve’s ear, “Are you sure you can’t eat this fruit? Don’t you want true, full, God-like life?” I hear God's whispers in my ear, “Are you sure you weren’t just created second, as an afterthought? Don’t you see how God doesn’t want you to have any real power, influence, or authority?”
Dangerous words. Cunning. Lies. All too easily believed if heard on a bad day, a day with less truth, and too much room for lies.
But Eve calls me back to a God of love. “Remember,” she whispers through the words of Genesis, “God made you. God made you on purpose. The world was only ‘very good’ once you were in it. It was ‘not good’ without you. ...You were always a part of the plan. God let Adam discover the plan so he would know better to love you, value you, work with you.”
Eve reminds me that I, too, am tempted by power, knowledge, and the false promise of more life.
I find myself tempted to think that I wouldn’t have listened to the serpent’s offer of knowledge and everlasting life. Surely I would have seen through his deceit. Or not. Society around me, and my own heart, are constantly questioning, “Are you doing enough? Being strong enough? Proving you’re a smart, powerful woman? Isn’t there something you’re missing out on? God must be holding back? Don’t you know you can have it all? Shouldn’t you ‘lean in’ just a little more?”
Eve reminds me that “having it all” doesn’t mean much if “all” doesn’t mean God.
She looked around, or maybe she didn’t, at the abundance of the garden, her companionship with Adam, her communion with God, and wondered that dangerous wonder, “Maybe this isn’t enough? Maybe I could have more? Know more? Be more?”
That wonder slithers into my head and heart too when I turn my back on the abundance of the cross, the fullness of an empty tomb, the gift of the Spirit, the promise of restoration, and I wonder if there’s still something missing. I imagine Eve taking one look back at the sealed off and forbidden garden.
“I had it all,” her gaze says. “You will too, one day. Don’t listen to the snake.”
In those moments after eating the fruit, before being sent out of the garden, Eve is an imperfect being in an otherwise perfect world (well, aside from Adam, and the snake). Her communion with God, with Adam, with the Earth, even with herself is broken, changed. She can feel it. I can feel it. She can’t know the great hurt, or the great hope, the earth is about to receive. For a moment, just a moment, she’s utterly naked, spiritually and physically, and ashamed. What a strange feeling it must have been. Disorienting, the way the news of the death of a loved one or terrible tragedy brings sadness. How gentle God is with her — seeking her and Adam out, walking with them in the garden, coaxing out of them the world’s first confession, promising continued life and children, providing clothing for their naked bodies and grace for their naked souls.
It leaves me feeling almost jealous of the realness of Eve’s relationship with God.
I can only wonder how Eve may have longed for her days back in the garden, how her heart broke as she saw the ripples of sin unfold in her family, in the world. I’ve never known her garden, and yet I long for it on those days when the world seems full of cement and anger and death. But there’s no way back, Eve reminds me. There is only forward, with Jesus, the ultimate child of Eve, who is making all things new.
This piece first appeared on the blog for Grace Meridian Hill.
Stefanie Kreamer grew up learning bits and pieces about Jesus from all kinds of different places, and when the pieces finally all came together one day she thought it was the best story she’d ever heard.
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