Catharine If you haven’t read it yet, please read this Disclaimer post.
I grew up interpreting Genesis as literal truth. Here are some of the ways the way that I applied the beginning of it, especially, that harmed me.
1. It caused me to have a distrustful view of science, public education/educators, and science education.
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.
Genesis 2:1-2 NIV
I (when I was quite young) believed that the creation story was literally true- that God created everything in literally seven twenty-four hour days. This caused me to have a distrustful view of science, public education/educators, and science education.
I started out life thinking that there was “God’s way” and then false things that would be taught at school. This impeded my ability to learn well in school, because I was taking everything I was taught with the grain of salt that it was “worldly” and might not be true. I treated evolution as a “theory,” not something that there was overwhelming evidence proving.
Anyway. This didn’t last very long, but it’s fair to say that it harmed me because it meant I took my education – my education about facts- with a grain of salt.
It meant I didn’t trust my teachers at school to
1- know the truth
2- be teaching it to me.
It caused me to think I knew better than my teachers… at the age of 5.
It also put pressure on me to.. stand up for the truth. To “not be swayed.” To be obtuse. To be impervious to instruction. To evangelize to my teachers and classmates about the “truth” about how everything really came to be.
And the extent to which I did these things was a test of my faith, and of my willingness to obey Jesus.
2. I learned to view humans as fundamentally different than animals, and that we were to “dominate” them and the earth
The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
Genesis 2:15 NIV
Some translations say “dominate” (or a similar) word instead of “take care of.”
Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.
Genesis 2:19 NIV
I understood that humans were not on the same level of creation as the rest of creation- that there were animals, and then humans, on their own distinct level of creation.
The way this was applied led me to disrespect everything, at some level, that wasn’t a human. Though I didn’t take this as far as some do (and some do), it meant that I thought humans were special, and that we deserved our place on earth. The we deserved…the dominance that we have. That God had given it to us. After all, Adam named the animals.
I see ramifications of this thinking in others as animal rights’ are disregarded, including minor efforts to improve their quality of life and treatment in mass “production” of meat, and the realities and current threats caused by human-driven climate change ignored/denied, if caring about those things could have a cost to humans financially or in terms of comfort, in the guise of *individual rights* and “caring for our families,” and not caring about animals when people are living in poverty, as if peoples’ needs negated the needs of any other needs existing, or as if animals’ lives were not truly lives, due to the belief that they do not have souls, and are therefore of lesser value than humans (I am aware of how long that sentence was. I’m only a little bit sorry).
It also created huge problems for me when I learned about evolution, because it conflicted with the ideas of humans emerging from previously existing species of creatures. I simply had to believe something that science did not support.
(Do I think there is something unique about humans? Call it pride, maybe, but yes. Is it possible that there was something special that happened when humans *happened*? Maybe. I love the romance of this story. I love thinking that humans are special. I’m just saying.. my understanding of this teaching created some problems for me and some huge barriers that I encountered when I learned about natural history).
3. It gave me low self esteem on the basis of who it said God made women to be in relation to men, and hurt my marriage
The applications I drew from teachings about the order of creation between men and women, that women were made “from men” and “for men,” and the story of eating the fruit, have screwed me up in more ways than I can possibly list. Here are some.
- – The concept of being a “help-meet.”
The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Genesis 2:18-24 NIV
I have lived my life thinking that my purpose was to serve my husband (and- that I needed to find one- a wound in itself as an assumption), and that he needed me- he wasn’t going to be ok on his own.
This, along with the way I interpreted other supporting verses, and church teachings, led me to approach him, especially in our early marriage, as if my role was to take care of his needs, and to support his calling from God (not mine), from a place of submission. Given the choice, I’d put him first whenever I could (he didn’t demand this- this is just what I willingly chose to do). After I had children, I often did the same (I’m not saying parents shouldn’t do this, or spouses shouldn’t ever do this). The problem was I believed I was designed to do this.
I believed that since Adam named the animals, and named Eve, and he had authority, and she didn’t, that God didn’t expect as much from me, when it came to leadership, as he would expect from men.
I thought that this was what God wanted from me, and any deviation from it was sin. I understood that the smaller I made myself, the more obedient I was to God.
This hurt our marriage, because I didn’t show up as my full self, for years, and we didn’t get practice working out conflicts, if I simply submitted (or, frankly, if the opposite happened, too. We didn’t learn how to reach agreements that were truly good enough for both people. Neither of us knew how to show up as our full selves, since we were playing roles- roles where one had to submit, rather than collaborate/cooperate).
Additionally, I was the natural leader in our relationship, and my husband wasn’t. I felt a calling in life to be a teacher, and was passionate about it; he didn’t feel the same sense of purpose in his life as it related to vocation. Our personalities conflicted with what we thought God wanted from us. This caused lots of unnecessary turmoil, as we tried to make ourselves match what we thought was the Biblical model.
4. It gave me low self esteem when it came to views of the deceivability of women, how sin entered the world, and a sense of poor boundaries when it came to mens’ actions
Additionally, since Eve was deceived (and Paul would later reference this as a reason why women should be under authority), I internalized the belief that there was something wrong with me, being a woman.
A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.
1 Timothy 2: 11-15 NIV
I internalized the belief that I, indirectly, had been part of how sin entered the world. I internalized the belief that I had caused Adam to fall.
Later Bible verses that talk about women being sources of temptation seem to corroborate this idea- that women are a source of sin, and that women are to blame for what men do.
Do not lust in your heart after her beauty
or let her captivate you with her eyes.
For a prostitute can be had for a loaf of bread,
but another man’s wife preys on your very life.
Proverbs 6:25-26 NIV
I find more bitter than death
the woman who is a snare,
whose heart is a trap
and whose hands are chains.
The man who pleases God will escape her,
but the sinner she will ensnare.
Ecclesiastes 7:26 NIV
Each of these verses about sexual action seem to place the focus on women as the source of the problem. Maybe it’s a misinterpretation, but it’s what it has appeared to be, to me.
I truly cannot even begin to describe the damage that has been done to me just using the beginning of Genesis, and other Bible verses that layer on to some of the same ideas.
I believed that, at some level, God didn’t love me as much as he’d loved men, because if he did love me the same, he would have made us equal, and he didn’t.
I’ve heard people say that the broken relationship happened after the Fall, but no, I argue that, in the story, it happened at the moment of Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib. She is already inferior. She is already #2. She is already not her own.
I’ve worked so hard on self esteem over the years, and there are a lot of reasons I’ve struggled to have high self esteem, but being taught (from a child) that I was created from man, for man, and that women are the ones who were deceived and led Adam to sin, and should therefore take positions of submission, ???!?!??
It’s no wonder I’ve struggled to see myself as a person.
It’s no wonder I’ve struggled to think my needs matter.
5. (how it hurts men)
And, quite, frankly, it’s no wonder some Christian men struggle to treat women as people, and as if their needs, matter, too.
It’s no wonder that so many Christian men I know have ended up deep in misogyny, whether they are aware of it or not- thinking their purpose is to dominate creation, put women in their place, and think any unhappiness they have is not their fault (it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone), but womens’ fault.
It creates an external locus of control, for men, to think that they aren’t in charge of their own happiness, but that they need someone else to complete them.
Being taught that women are easier to deceive than men (a common Christian teaching- see the verse above) teaches men not to trust women to have good judgment. It teaches men not to trust women. And in context, that verse tells women to also take positions of submission, whether or not they are the gifted leader in a situation, and wheter or not the men present are gifted either- disempowering them, and creating inefficient and lower-quality funcitoning of organizations and partnerships.
For years, I thought that having low self esteem meant that I had a problem- that I needed to simply believe in myself more, or like myself more.
The problem was that I had been taught that I wasn’t equal, and that my needs weren’t equally important as mens’ needs.
And anyone who says men and women can be “separate and equal” needs to review the results of Brown vs. the Board of Education.
Some aspects of disequality between men and women may not be surmountable as long as society is dependent on womens’ wombs, and women carry that unique burden, but there is still a great deal that can be done to bring men and women into greater equality.
