Through His Eyes; God's Perspective on Women in the Bible by Jerram Barrs
Chapter 2: The Second Face of Eve: Eve at and after the Fall
It has been a couple of weeks since I actually read this chapter, but I did highlight quite a few areas of it (mostly because it's on sin and, well, I can relate to sin).
Right off the bat on page 25, Jerram says:
"We sometimes work very hard at seeing faults, and we appear to think it is very biblical to search out the sinfulness of people around us, both the sins of our fellow believers and, in particular, the sins of unbelievers. But that is not what Scripture calls us to do. We are indeed to recognize people's moral failures, especially our own, but we are called first to recognize their glory as persons made in the image of God."
I love this reminder because I've experienced so often in live or blog conversations a consistently low view of people in other believers. I want to see people as people made in God's image first. I want to place a high value on their lives because they are human. I need to do better here.
Talking about Satan on page 27, Jerram writes:
"His purpose on this occasion [in the garden of Eden] is to turn Eve and Adam from their worship of God alone; to turn them from their trust in the Lord as their Creator, Provider, Helper, and Friend; to turn them from their contented knowledge of who they are and to make them dissatisfied; to turn them from their glad acceptance of their status as creatures in God's world and to cause them to become distrustful of God's good intentions toward them."
I'd say mission accomplished, no? How often am I so easily turned from a contented knowledge of who I am in God and simply dissatisfied with my life and surroundings? Often. How often am I distrustful of God's good intentions toward me? I think I'm growing in this area, but I have to be honest and again say often. Way too often.
Okay, here was the big kicker for me, from page 30:
"There is nothing more unreasonable than the choice she [Eve] makes. But all sin is like this. We all need to admit that this unreasonableness is the nature of any sin, any disobedience against God. There is no excuse for sin. Sin cannot be justified, excused, or explained away. No matter how we hold sin up to the light of rational inquiry, no matter which way we look at sin, sin makes no sense. Sin is absurd. We may ask, "Why did Eve disobey?" or "Why did I turn from God's commandments?" "Why did this woman or this man forsake her or his marriage vows, commit adultery, and wreck her or his beloved children's lives?" We are desperate to be able to give a rational account of sin; we want to give sufficient reasons to show why Eve, or why you or I, make such a choice, but there are none."
There's more. There's so much more. But I'll stop for now and see if any of you want to chime in thoughts from chapter 2.
The main thought I walked away with from this chapter (and the thought that has been resonating through my head and heart for the past two weeks) is this: How would my life and the lives of my husband and children be different if every day I woke up and asked, "what would dying to myself mean today?" If I asked that question everyday (and then acted on its answer) for a whole year, what would happen? I think amazing things. It's not an easy question and I haven't asked it every single day for the past two weeks, but I have been asking it of myself quite a bit lately, and it is changing my thinking very little by very little.
Okay, anyone else have thoughts here?
To read thoughts from the rest of the book, click below:
