Eve as an image of God (part 2)

In Eve the virtue of hope becomes real. Eve, the other half of humanity, is stark illustration that God will not be controlled, that God will rise in whomever God wills. The fact is that God is often where we refuse to see. God is in those who some might call “ungodly” while we make God in our own image and likeness. But Eve is God’s proof that God has plans for all of us that will not bow to the chains of those who have no plans for us at all. In women everywhere Eve rises to begin again, full of life, an intelligent, unsung hero for the lowly of the world.

Eve is a sign of the nature of God. First we learn” “We shall make humanity in our own image.” Then we learn: “Male and female we shall make them.” God clearly is female as well as male—and if you think I’m being heretical just check out what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say on the subject. God is a woman’s mind, a woman’s sensitivity, a woman’s understanding, a woman’s creativity, a woman’s sense of values and principles. As long as Eve stands, God’s truth stands in all things, too, no matter who chooses to try to repress it in any part of them.

Eve is the first witness we have to human freedom. It is Eve who, faced with alternatives, was given the right to chose. But choice then, as now, has consequences. What could have been easy becomes difficult. What would have been obvious becomes obscure. What would have been guaranteed becomes uncertain. But in it all, Eve becomes an icon of the refreshing frailty of humankind, of humanity struggling to be fully human, of the process of slow growth that brings with it the wisdom that is born of an open mind, a wealth of experience, and a thirsty heart. Eve did not sin because she hated life. Eve sinned because she was struggling to live life to the full, however confused her perception of the way. Succeed she didn’t, we sometimes think, but grow she did, a proof that the human being is capable of learning from errors.

Eve is also a sign to us of how warped we are in our concept of the characteristics of the genders. It was Adam, after all, who failed to see beyond the present. It was Adam who simply stood by and said nothing while the serpent negotiated with Eve. It was Adam who was dependent and irrational and easily duped. It was Eve who was leader in the lust for life. Nevertheless, we have frozen life at its lowest levels—woman the temptress and man the victim. With those icons in our eyes we have turned men into avengers and women into sex objects. We have called half the human race brutish, and the other half a commodity. As a result women cannot get the jobs they seek nor the promotions and wages that are their due. As a result, men are trained to be ruthless, to torture and murder in the name of good government. And as a result, women are still, by and large, excluded from having a voice in the decisions of the church.

Eve recalls us to our real selves, to our full selves, to our incomplete selves. It is Eve who makes being female as normal as being male. She makes us mourn the limitations we have put on ourselves in the name of God.

The fact is that Eve is an icon of strength and hope, sign and life, star and promise, possibility and opportunity to all of us, and she challenges each of us to be the same.