ideas and beginnings...
This Fall, we are going to spend some time continuing to think about gender. Hopefully in productive ways that give us all a biblical framework to view our ideas through. How we think becomes what we believe which becomes how we live. So it is crucial to examine how we think.
So we will head to the book of Genesis where it all begins.
I’ve read the creation story over and over, picturing Adam and Eve before the Fall, naked and unashamed.
And I’ve wondered…
About their thoughts.
About their feelings.
About how they related to each other.
About how they perceived their similarities.
About how they perceived their differences.
So many things to ponder.
In the text we know that they were naked. So a physical reality- they had no clothes. But then I also wonder if it’s an emotional state as well.
Were their thoughts, desires, dreams, and feelings also naked before each other?
Because the text also tells me that they were unashamed, I lean into the emotional and feeling pondering.
Of all the things to record in this short description, to mention that they were unashamed seems remarkable.
For someone who has wrestled with feelings of shame longer than I knew a word to identify them, I read that with a longing I can hardly describe. To be unashamed even while being naked and exposed must feel incredible.
I think of myself and all the myriad of ways I might fear exposure. Rational or not, these fears lurk in my mind and often impact the ways that I relate (or choose to not relate) to others.
The few close friends that have seen these darker corners and yet still ‘stay in the room’ with me are invaluable.
In our culture today, there are many ‘clothes’ hung on the conversational hanger of gender.
I think of these clothes as stereotypes and fillers.
I think of them often being not useful or productive- but they do give a conversational starting point.
Yet Adam and Eve had none of these.
Certainly being naked, they recognized physical differences.But I’m left pondering how they understood each other in ways that were not as physically evident.
God creates them and infuses His image into their being. This sets them apart from all the rest of creation. He also speaks to them and relates with them in ways that we don’t see happening with the rest of creation. Then He tasks them with work: fill, subdue, and rule.
I ponder that He tasks them equally, speaks to both of them. And He blesses them and gifts them with abundant provisions.
Certainly they knew that they were different in some huge ways. Eve would bear children and Adam would not. Their body builds would lend to being differently suited for tasks. They would forever be surprised by the differences in the ways that their minds thought.
And yet, I’m still stuck on them relating to each other and to God without shame, without hiding, and without fear.
I’m wondering if they just knew that God had provided enough? That they would be satisfied and have enough?
In all the tasks given, did they believe that God had created them in such a way that they were enough for the job?
We don’t read their thoughts or questions- but it seems like they went along walking with God and accomplishing His plans for them.
You may be asking yourself, “what does this have to do with gender?”
In my mind- my answer is “everything.”
So much of our cultural conversation around gender disintegrates into ideas of ‘better than’, or ‘not fitted for’.
But as I read and sit in this initial story,
I don’t see competition.
I don’t read comparison.
I don’t see a power struggle.
Until the Fall.
As we begin a conversation about gender, let’s start with some pondering around God’s original design.
Often at camp I begin a discussion with the older campers saying, “if we all lived in the garden of Eden… here is how God made things to work.” We can then unpack the differences between life post Fall and the consequences of sin in and around us. I can encourage them to grieve ways that they and those around them suffer in our fallen world with fallen relationships.
We don’t live in the garden- that should be painfully obvious.
But we were created there and designed to function there.
So our ideas have a place to begin.