What was your Eve moment?
What was your Eve moment?
One of the first stories in the Bible is a story that discourages questioning authority.
The Bible begins with a story suggesting that life “used to be” idealic and paradise until a woman came along and began seeking knowledge.
The story goes that Adam and Eve were doing just fine and living perfect existences in the Garden of Eden until Eve followed her curiosity and did the one thing God asked her not to do.
Here is how the story reads (Genesis Chapters 2 & 3, NAB Version):
The LORD God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it. The LORD God gave man this order: ”You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From that tree you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die.” . . . The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
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Eve’s “sin” was questioning God.
Eve’s “sin” was doubting male authority.
Eve’s “sin” was disputing whether there was only one source of authority.
Eve’s “sin” was persuading her husband to also question his one God.
Eve’s “sin” was seeking a separate source of information for proof of what she had been told.
Eve’s “sin” was investigating whether or not what she had been told was true.
The Bible has many good moral stories. The story of the “fall of man” in the Garden of Eden is not one of them. Eve’s good faith and warranted search for truth is mischaracterized as a “sinful nature.”
Unfortunately, the Bible was often (or exclusively) written by men in male-dominated cultures. And sadly, too many women have followed a perverted rationale of “unquestioning loyalty” and have been discouraged or prevented from independently verifying what they have always been told.
In every person’s life, there come moments of character definition.
What was your Eve moment?
What have been your Eve moments?
When faced with rules you were told not to question, did you investigate them for yourself anyway?
I encourage everyone to question rules they cannot reconcile with personal experience or with separate sources of proof.
One of the key Eve moments in my life, after years of struggle and debates, was being honest with myself and the people close to me and saying, “I love you. But I don’t love only you.”
That was Eve’s moment in me.
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