Somewhere between “a long time ago” and “just the other day” I was trying to explain true love to a close friend. Specifically, how to know if love is “true love” when you don’t trust your own heart to tell the difference.
Now, this conversation was within the context of faith and shared values and I was intentionally using an example that would be familiar to her in that context. I don’t typically use Biblical examples to make my points, so bear with me.
The Book of Genesis has many important object lessons in it. It lays the foundation for concepts like sacrifice, honor, faith, trust, the will of God, the nature of God, the nature of man, and the ultimate relationship of the creator to his creations. But I believe it’s very significant that the very first lesson illustrated in the Bible is the nature of true love.
While the story of Adam and Eve is significant for many reasons, it’s central theme of true, utter and total love is often forgotten in the debates over belly buttons, the nature of knowledge and the role of an external force in personal temptation.
Adam was created as a perfect and wondrous being by God. Ultimately intelligent, ultimately passionate, ultimately aware of his God, his environment and his role in the universe. And ultimately lonely.
God could have created another being just as he created Adam, made from the very elements of the new Earth, infused with the breath of life straight from God’s own lips…but he didn’t.
God created Eve from the very material of Adam. Flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone. A soul made from his own soul. Eve was the pinnacle of beauty, grace, intelligence, passion and companionship.
We know that Eve chose to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Not because she was sinful, but because she was striving to know as God knew. The nature and cause of her decision is a subject of much debate. The nature and cause of Adam’s is not.
Adam knew that Eve had gone against God’s wishes. Adam also knew God perfectly. he knew that God could create a new partner for him, just as perfect as Eve, if he refused to do as she had done. But man wasn’t made to love that way. Man was made to love utterly, completely and totally.
Adam didn’t have to eat the apple. Adam chose to eat the apple. Adam didn’t eat the apple because he wanted to have knowledge of good and evil as God did…Adam ate the apple because he wanted to be one with Eve. Adam chose Eve over everything else in the universe.
The very first lesson in the Bible isn’t about sin, it’s about true love. Utter, complete, total love that would sacrifice anything and everything for the soul meant to complete the other.
I believe that is the very nature of Love as God created it. So deep, so powerful, so all encompassing that the bond between soul and soul trumped all other hands that a universe of possibilities could deal out.
I believe that the test of true love is “would he eat the apple to be with me?”
Or stated differently, “would another soul give up paradise, perfection and eternal life to be with mine?”
Adam didn’t give up a lot by biting the apple, he gave up EVERYTHING but Eve. By choice.
No matter how you feel about the Bible, wether you believe in it literally, metaphorically or only mythically; the example is powerful.
I believe that there is a heart, a soul, that is worth biting the apple for…that is worth giving all, utterly and completely, to be with.
I believe in True Love, and that’s how I define it.
essaytch | 25-May-08 at 8:15 pm | Permalink
Very insightful, DC. Just don’t forget that after God found A&E hiding in the bushes w/ their new clothes and He asked Adam what happened, Adam said “The woman made me do it!” Veeeeery supportive, Adam! Now THAT is true love…..
:)
hollihawk | 26-May-08 at 2:40 pm | Permalink
Too funny Essaytch.
Dead Charming | 27-May-08 at 10:01 am | Permalink
Of the twenty one replies to this post, Essaytch and Hollihawk are the only ones who weren’t either crazy or offended theology students.
Or crazy offended theology students. OR offended CRAZY theology students. I digress…
I’ll actually reply to this common line of thought in a follow up post.
First I have to go lash myself for a few hours for being stupid enough to touch on religion or faith on WordPress.
On the bright side, this post got viewed more than five hundred times over the weekend…whoopie!
essaytch | 27-May-08 at 1:24 pm | Permalink
Ha ha! Yeah, I was a little ‘crazy’ at one point in my life. But these days…meh. Just don’t get me started on Ephesians 5:22…
Amy | 27-May-08 at 7:19 pm | Permalink
i’m not crazy or offended. that was lovely. glad i found my way here. :)
Scomerican Girl | 28-May-08 at 1:46 am | Permalink
Yeah, I just choose to ignore Ephesians 5:22. No way I’m submitting to ANYONE. At least unless he’s submitting to me in equal measures.
And DC, don’t worry about the crazies. They should be happy someone’s actually reading the bible and has something interesting to say, instead of jumping down your throat about it. But that would be too easy…
Dead Charming | 28-May-08 at 12:25 pm | Permalink
I have an entire post on this already in the works…so this is just a sampler if you will.
Gensis 3 is difficult at best. When God asks Adam “who told you that you are naked?” his reply was “the woman brought me the fruit and I ate it.”
While there’s certainly a reading of that where one could assume Adam was saying “not my fault, the woman made me do it!” the simple truth is that Adam bluntly states “she ate, I love her, I ate it too.” No muss, no fuss, no blame, no recriminations.
Adam wasn’t a dupe, and Eve wasn’t an easily tricked fool. The shift from origon myth to morality play was a latter addition.
As for Ephsisians 5:22…well, I have no personal issue with the origional greek. I have big issues with the KJV translation.
Imagine Eph 5:22 reading this way: “Wives, AUTHORIZE your husbands to lead, protect, provide for and cherish his family as Christ does for his church.”
It’s not an instruction, it’s an invitation to cooperation and unity.
And as with any invitation, should the husband fail to satisfy the entire authorization (or commission in this case), then the responsibility for restitution lies with him.
In the social and spiritual mindset of the time, Christians weren’t messing around. Screw this up, go to hell. Christ wasn’t exactly handing out the divorce certificates in droves. In fact, Christ left very little…if any…room for divorce among the faithful.
This isn’t a slavery edict, it’s a social contract. Two parties, equal responsibility, yadda yadda yadda.
The funny thing, was that in NO way was Paul trying to tell wives to spread their leggs any time their husbands wanted (which seems to be the most common mis-application of the traditional wording)…this particular chapter was essentially laying out how friggen difficult marriage is for both parties.
Paul was quite convinced that the role and responsibility of “husband” was more challenging and carried more spiritual risk than apostolic life.
essaytch | 28-May-08 at 4:05 pm | Permalink
will….not….comment…..BAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!
*shuting down*
Dead Charming | 28-May-08 at 4:17 pm | Permalink
oh come now! You are ALWAYS allowed and encouraged to comment. I’m the fool that went there on Eph 5:22 so I clearly brought it on myself.
But for clearity, I don’t believe that the word “submit” (or submission, OR subdued) is an appropriate translation of the greek word “υποτασσεσθε”.
It’s a verb that implies COOPERATIVE action, not singular behavior.
Dead Charming | 28-May-08 at 4:44 pm | Permalink
And as a follow up to that last comment, let me add that I don’t think much of Paul’s writings by and large. Christianity 2.0 (everything Paul) is interesting in a “Hellenic Greek sweeping away the Judaic origins” kind of way…but it doesn’t actually trip my personal “faith” mechanisms and I don’t place any direct spiritual stock there.
So bear in mind that while the entymology of Ephesisians is interesting, and potentially even discussion-worthy, it doesn’t guide my personal moral compass.
Following or just laughing at Ephesisians chapter 5 are equally valid spiritual decisions in my mind. As for how to live a married life, I don’t think Paul had any particularly good insights…as a confirmed bachelor he wasn’t exactly preaching from a place of experiance.
Allison | 29-May-08 at 6:34 am | Permalink
Hmmm….now I’m very curious about the comments that didn’t make the cut :-)
I feel so shallow after reading this post. My husband took care of a wolf spider (who wanted to cohabitate) for me, and I thought that was love. Sure, I had to threaten to call my daddy (how sad is that for a woman in her [early] 30′s?), but he did it and that’s what counts.
essaytch | 29-May-08 at 8:56 am | Permalink
Ok, you asked for it!!!
My biggest quibble w/ Eph 5:22-24 is just that people (read: most young Christian men I have ever met) try to make it stand alone. They don’t look at the next portion of text, which begins “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church…â€. And HOW did Christ love the Church? He sacrificed himself, dying on the cross for her, to cleanse her of her sins and make her “holy and blamelessâ€. So to those who cling so dearly to “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife…â€, I say: “The day you agree that you will willingly lay down your life for me, sacrificing yourself selflessly and with no second thought, and agree to love me as ‘you love your own body’, then I’ll concede the point.â€
In fact, a family member is the wife of a Southern Baptist minister, and in college (when I was in the midst of my all-out Christian zeal), she and I got into a discussion of this very Bible verse in the kitchen one Thanksgiving. She took the position (one that was obviously hammered home in her household) that wives should submit and almost worship their husbands, as Eph 5:22 demands. I innocently responded along the lines mentioned above, and I’ll never forget the look on her face. It was as if she had never heard verse 25 before, and a light was suddenly switched on in her brain. I’d like to think that her hubby caught a little hell from his formerly-submissive wife after that.
Oh, and ALLISON: You’re not shallow. If I had a husband to step in and take care of a wolf spider for me, I’d think it was love too. As it stands, I have to overcome being paralized by fear in order to roll up a magazine and kill the f*@!er myself. *sigh*
Dead Charming | 29-May-08 at 9:20 am | Permalink
Sequence of comments:
1) Facing off with a wolf spider IS love. That’s not shallow at all. ICK.
2) Even though I didn’t specificially mention it, I was talking about the whole chapter, not just verse 22 in my rediculously long comment. Arbitrary verse numbering is a big downfall of the KJV based translations (read: 99% of them published in english).
3) Comments that don’t make the cut include one or more (and almost always more) of the following factors:
- Written in all uppercase.
- More quoted biblical passages than commentary.
- Direct hostility to non-literal views of scripture.
- Direct hostility to non-Baptist/Catholic/Scientology views.
- Refusal to use punctuation.
- Comments that exceed the origional post length by more than a factor of three.
Long comments, stingy punctuation and a heavy use of the imperative voice are fine if you’re a regular commenter. In fact, unless you’re being hostle or rude, I can’t imagine yanking a comment from an approved commenter…
And I’ll never EVER yank something by Essaytch after skewing her google search so baddly with some of my own comments on her blog…
But if your first comment breaks three or more of the above general guidlines, you’re not gonna be approved.
And on that note, I’d point out that I’ve refused more comments to this post SINCE YESTERDAY MORNING than I’ve gotten on the rest of my blog.
Apparently Adam and Eve really bring out the crazies. Although most of the last batch were REALLY upset over Ephesians 5:22…
If you all want, I’ll collect some of the more choice chunks from “the refused” and make a new post out of it. That should make them happy, right?
essaytch | 29-May-08 at 11:15 am | Permalink
Wow, and you thought YOU opened a can of worms! I think I brought up the Ephesians verse. Oops.
Well, I guess we’re even, considering the mess you made about anime. :)
Allison | 29-May-08 at 2:36 pm | Permalink
A post of rejected comments would make for a very amusing read (not that you need any advice on what to post).
I like that you put so much thought into your refusal criteria. I usually just refuse if the comment gives me the heebie jeebies (like the freaky guy who called me a misandrist when I drew a picture of my husband purchasing little girl skivvies at Wal-Mart.) However, I don’t typically post on controversial topics that might attract the dreaded non-punctuator.
Dead Charming | 29-May-08 at 3:24 pm | Permalink
I never realize I’m on “non-punctuator” (that’s my new favorite word today) ground until I’ve already steaked my claim to it.
Taoist Biker | 10-Jun-08 at 1:09 pm | Permalink
I actually very much like this example. But yeah, I’d think loooong and hard before I posted anything about religion. (I have an as-yet unpublished post to that effect that I keep thinking “Should I?” only to answer myself “HELL no.”)
Wordage | 19-Jun-08 at 1:03 am | Permalink
Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation :) Anyway … nice blog to visit.
cheers, Wordage.