Hate What is Evil: Eve

I'm ready for Hate Week to be over. (and yes, I am making a 1984 reference.)

This morning, I decided to skip my morning jog, make myself a latte and not leave my room. Cozied up on my couch in my pajamas, I sip my creamy, slightly caffeinated beverage and think, "This is good. Really good."

The funny thing about spending a week hating what is evil is that, by the end, all you want to think about is what is good. There is a reason Paul says both. Hate what is evil: cling to what is good.

Truthfully, there is only so much hate you can develop without needing something good. I find myself drawn to those things that are delightful more and more as I born those things that are evil.

I am so ready to stop hating.

During this whole week, there was one thing that I kept dwelling on. One evil I could not let go of: primordial sin.  Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve first become sinners and are removed from the garden grieves me. I hate the sin. I hate the story. I hate the deception. Yet, I cannot hate the people.

Dr. Johnson, one of my favorite professors, discussed Genesis 3 all week in class. I assure you, I have only the utmost respect for his thoughts and the way he delves into the topic. I have only one concern: he is fully and utterly a thinker.

My biggest problem, and I believe my greatest strength, is that I am a feeler. I can try to fight it with my whole being, craving to be purely intellectual, but at the end of the day, I feel theology more than I think it. Therefore, when we discuss the first sin of mankind and talk about Eve, I will emote with the situation with great sadness, and will be unable to say things like Eve was already off track the moment she first speaks and misquotes God. I cannot look at it rationally, but must see it relationally.

For all of you who have followed my blog long term, you have already heard my Redeeming Eve diatribe. For everyone else, let me abridge it by saying: there is so much more going on than a selfish woman eating an apple.  There is the first example of deception, something Eve nor Adam had experienced; there was a rightful desire to do what was best, even if it was wrong; there was second-hand knowledge and male passivity; there was a lack of knowledge of good and evil.

I don't claim to know it all. I don't even claim to know a little. But what I do know is that sin should grieve the community of God. Sin is not merely individual -- it has corporate ramifications. Sin happened in the Garden and we should hate that fiercely as evil. But at the end of the day, we have no right to hate Eve. She sinned by her own decision but was influenced by her circumstances. Adam should have backed her up. Satan should not have been there. She was wrong -- like we all are.

Its easy to demonize Eve and make her out to be the reason why people cry out for epidurals during childbirth and farming is back-breaking labor. Truthfully, Eve was just like the rest of us: doing the wrong thing because it seemed like the right thing. Eve sinned in context of her relationships. Her sin had consequences on those same relationships.

And that's why sin is so worthy of hate: because it never lives in isolation.

Let love be genuine. Hate What is Evil.

How I long to cling to what is good.