Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Child Birth and the "Curse" of Eve

As I approached the due date for my baby's delivery, I was not a little scared with regard to the pain of labor. I wanted to deliver the child as naturally as possible, but it just looks so much more painful than anything I had ever experienced. Could I do it? And then there is the story in Genesis 3, in which Scripture affirms that delivering a child will be necessarily really painful and difficult. At one point, in the middle of a contraction, I remember praying, "Oh God, I am so sorry for the sin of Eve..."

The funny thing to me here is that the word "curse" is never used in God's punishment for the woman. It is used in the punishment for the snake ("cursed are you," Genesis 3:14), and it is used in the punishment for the man ("cursed is the ground in your toil..." Genesis 3:17). But the woman stands alone with no "curse" language. What is more, the Hebrew word used with regard to women in labor, translated "painful," could also be translated "with great toil" and such (3:17), and it is the same word that is used for God's punishment of the man in the very next verse: "with great toil/labor/pain you will eat from it (the ground) all the days of your life." Finally, as a Christian, I believe that in Christ, we are new creations - the old has gone and the new has come. And so I'm not sure that it would be faithful for a Christian to wallow under the weight of the punishment of our sin when, well, the second Adam (Romans 5) has redeemed us from it. This does not mean that all the consequences of sin are abolished now - death still remains (see 1 Cor 15), but spring is coming and the trees are already blossoming.

My point is that I don't think that, at least for Christians with a New Testament added to the Old, Genesis 3 should be read as giving an inevitably terrible description of a woman in childbirth, anymore than it describes an inevitably terrible life of labor for a man. We are not a cursed people. In Christ, we are free and we learn to live into our freedom. I wonder what childbirth feels like within the peace of the cross. I don't know - I was so scared that I took the epidural.

... Years later, I will now add that I did give birth naturally to the child with whom I was pregnant when I wrote this blog post two years ago. There was physical pain. And my body did not recover very quickly. But there was also plenty of natural pain relief. At the very end, when I seriously considered it, I suddenly realized just how well my body was handing the contractions. I was all but falling asleep in between contractions, there was so much natural relaxation and relief. I was like, what do I need an epidural for? And by the grace of God I delivered into the world a wonderful, snuggly, sweet little boy. =)

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