Danielle Bean - Manual for Women

eaven better be real good, a struggling friend once complained to me over the phone as a stomach virus raged through her busy household. Not just a bunch of people standing around talking to each other, but real good. Do you know what I mean?

For sure I did.

Life is a messy thing. Sometimes, in the midst of pain and sacrifice, all we want is some tangible assurance that our efforts will be rewarded. As we struggle through piles of bills and car repairs, rebellious teenagers and cranky bosses, and all manner of foul weather and human weakness, we would just like a little dose of heavenly perfection now and then. Is that too much to ask?

There were no stomach viruses in the Garden of Eden. There were no rashes, no bug bites, no burnt toast, no anxiety, no depression, no exhaustion, no unpleasant work, and no sin. There were none of the evils and annoyances, big and small, that we post-fall humans find ourselves contending with every day.

Can you even imagine such a place? Most of us cant, because the world we are living in feels impossibly far away from paradise.

Do ever think about original sin and get just a little bit annoyed at Eve? I mean, Eve had it made. There she was in her very own paradise, freshly created, beautiful, and intelligent. Her husband adored her, she knew no hunger or weakness, she had the perfect body, and she was surrounded by perfection and beauty in a natural world God had made just for her and her beloved man.

Why did she have to go and mess it all up?

In fairness to Eve, though, we must also ask why we continue to mess it all up. It is an inevitable part of the human experience to find out just how messed up the world is, sometimes in deeply personal and painful ways. We see it in war, broken families, addiction, violence, and abuse. But we see it in subtler ways toosometimes in our own pride or jealousy, or our own temptation toward anger, lust, or greed.

What We Are Made For

A nd yet those of us who believe not only in original sin but also in the redemptive power of God want to know and do Gods will in our lives. We want to fix the ways in which we and others are warped, wounded, and broken by sin. We want to be what God made us to be and calls us to be, despite our fallen nature. We want to take seriously the mission God calls us to.

But what might that be?

Ultimately, seeking to know who we are and what we are made for as women brings us back to the Garden of Eden. To know Gods plan for human beings, and in particular Gods plan for us as women, we must look to Eve, the first woman, and find out what we can learn from her story.

In the familiar story we read in the Old Testament book of Genesis, we first meet Eve, in all her perfection, when God creates her from one of Adams ribs. When Adam sees Eve for the first time, he is overcome by her beauty and perfection.

This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh (Gn 2:2324).

Adams words of joy highlight the complementarity and connection between man and woman as God planned it and as it existed, in perfection, in our natural state. Woman is made for man; man is made for woman. The two become one. This beautiful description of the unity that God intends between the sexes is a popular reading at weddings. We like to be reminded that we were made good, we were made perfect, and we were made for one another. We like to remember Gods original plan.