“I will put enmity between you and the woman.” Genesis 3: 15a)
Do you know that for all the hundred or more times that I’ve read this chapter, this verse went by unnoticed! It’s probably still gone over my head. I’m such an optimist that I put it all to the woman who would bear the One to bruise the “serpent’s heel”. In my scheme of things, there really wasn’t thorough intellectual or mental preparation for what is so factual all around me- the gender wars that issued and the “blame the woman” syndrome that has become acceptable as a biblically mandated position.
Maybe I simply and conveniently chose to read it my way; and so, I haven’t expressed much sympathy for the men who will not listen to women whom they label as the root cause in their being led astray, their having to toil for bread all the days of [their] life”.
And if the mother of all living is at the root of all going wrong, then should the wars last forever? Or should we not look at the harmony that existed when “the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed”?
If this “enmity between [the man] and the woman is premised on the Fall, after which the Lord clothed their nakedness (Genesis 2:21), and evicted them from paradise, should the focus not be on the restoration of relationship that God offers and the new paradise promised?
I see that in God’s future, not only gender wars, but colour (ethnicity-race) and class wars shall cease.
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3: 28).
So now that we have become like God, knowing good and evil (Genesis 2: 22), we have the capacity to good, wherein lies an abundant future with the God of this promise.
So then, will we stop fighting each other? whoever? Exclusion based on colour, class or gender will only keep us where we are together, but we cannot be together when we stand against each other. Fighting each other has only one dead end, really- hell itself!
Help us to help each other, Lord,
Each other’s cross to bear,
May we our friendly aid afford,
And show that we do care.
Help us to build each other up,
Our little stock improve;
Increase our faith, confirm our hope,
And perfect us in love.
Charles Wesley, 1707-88