Soon after Joseph was born, a little over 4 years ago now, one night while holding him in bed my heart froze in my chest, suddenly gripped with fear. Seemingly from out of nowhere, my mind began to race with horrifying scenarios of awful things that could happen to my newborn baby. Then, I saw a glimpse into the future–of all the pain and suffering he would go through in life, from being teased on the playground to being caught in a twin tower as it came falling down to the ground.
I felt overwhelmed and out of control. I told Sean everything that I had been thinking, and after rambling on for a while I ended it by saying this: “Sometimes, I wonder why be bring children into the world at all. I almost feel like I need to apologize to him or something. What is wrong with me?” Then, Sean said something that I will never forget. With compassion and tenderness in his eyes, he looked at me and said, “Because, Eve, the real pain in childbirth is not a physical pain. It’s the pain of knowing that you have given birth to something that is going to die, and deep down you know that it’s not supposed to be this way, and you are helpless to protect him from the enemy of death.”
Immediately that resonated in my soul as truth, and like never before I felt utterly tied to my Covenant Story, and my heart sank under the weight of feeling the burden of the curse.
Finally, Sean has written all this down, and I will have it as a permanent page on my site because each time I have shared this with someone, he or she has been given a new sense of clarity–in almost a “now my life makes sense” kind of way. Children are indeed a blessing from the Lord–in a new way to me though, that they remind me each day that this world is not my home, and that one day God will restore us and make all things new in a land of peace and glory, free from sin and death.
“So that’s what is wrong with everybody…”
by Rev. Sean F. Sawyers
If you say it often enough, it becomes fact. Seriously—try it sometime. How many wise-men visited baby Jesus? Think you know? The text does not say three; it says three gifts. “A sucker is born every minute.” P.T. Barnum, right? Nope. His biographer made it up. Here’s the biggie… as part of the curse of the Fall on the woman God promised to make labor pains intensely horrible. Right? I think not. It is actually much more profound than that.
Genesis 3:16 literally reads, in part, “and to the woman he said, ‘I will greatly increase your sorrow in conception and pregnancy; in worrisome hardship you will bring forth children.’” That sounds a bit more profound than the physical pain, as intense as it is, associated with labor, doesn’t it? Here’s another piece of the puzzle. In Gen 3:17, when God curses the man, he tells him “cursed is the ground on account of you. In worrisome hardship (sound familiar?) you will eat of it, all of your life.” Then God explains in v18-19, “thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.”
The curses actually hearken back to the original command for Adam and Eve in what is commonly called the “Cultural Mandate” as found in Gen 1:28: “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” Together they were to create human culture, filling the earth with other people, primarily through the “fruits” of women, and subduing the earth, primarily through the fruits produced by the man. When the curses come, Adam and Eve get specific curses addressing their parts of the Creation Mandate.
In the original Hebrew, the curses are parallel thoughts. Just as Adam no longer joyously gets to subdue the earth through his labor (note: work was given before the Fall), but instead must toil and worry over the incredible burden of weeds and thistles coming up with the food plants, so too Eve no longer joyously gets to bring forth children who will fill the earth, but instead must toil and worry over the incredible burden of conceiving and raising a child that will now die. She must now bring forth sinful children, under the curse of death, who are born spiritually dead and march steady on toward physical death.
Have you ever wondered why women worry about their children so much? Nikki and I have two children, and I want to protect them, but Nikki is constantly worried about them—about what seems to me to be the most insignificant unimportant things. It is neurotic! But it is not unique. Moms worry about how their daughters are going to be as mothers when they are still toddlers! They worry about if they are being good examples, or are they ruining their children for life? If the child does not do well at a piano recital, it is because the Mother is a failure; at least, that is what her mind tells her. Mothers of teens are scared to death (scared by death?) to let their children be emancipated and go on their own. Have they done enough? Are their children ready? Have they told them everything that they need to know? Will they follow after their parents values or abandon what they have been taught?
Mothers are worriers because they have had another life inside of them, felt it grow, absorbed its kicks, bonded with that other person, and brought them into the world. Because of the Fall, they are haunted by the knowledge that this child will die. Death is not a natural part of life. It is an invader into the created order, and it is the woman who feels this most of all, perhaps because she is the one who was first tempted and fell, but more likely because death more profoundly affects the filling of the earth, the part of the Cultural Mandate more focused on her. The net result is that women, out of the pain of knowing their offspring will die, live in the contradiction of bringing forth children that they both worship and stifle.
The men are just as messed up. Have you ever wondered why men are always so concerned with stuff? Why they measure so much of their self-worth on how they are performing in the marketplace? Why do men take it so seriously when they can’t work? Why are we so wrapped up in our careers? It is because of the curse. It is only through worrisome toil that we feed our families. Even if we enjoy and are fulfilled by our callings, there is never really enough money to have the lifestyle we want our families to have, because we measure ourselves by how well we provide. The curse ties men to bringing forth from an earth that resists them.
Because of the curse, we are to work by the sweat of our brow until we cannot do it anymore, at which time we ourselves return to the ground. So, the curse actually makes us act as if hard work is a way to stave off death. Men must accomplish something; men must conquer something—either another man in sports, a competitor in business, the environment with machines—anything just to show that we still can subdue, curse or no curse. The net result is that men, out of the pain of knowing that they will die struggling against the ground, live in the contradiction of toiling to bring forth validation from an earth that will only yield them thorns and bondage.
Thanks be to God that even before He pronounced these curses, He promised that a Redeemer would come from the woman to crush the Seed of the Serpent and restore what humanity had lost. Thanks be to God that in the fullness of time, He brought forth His own Son, a new Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was able to conquer death itself, and now builds His church, the redeemed community that will live with Him for eternity in a filled and subdued new Earth. What a day that will be!
