Certain observations have got me thinking about the
roles God in his wisdom defined for our progenitors- Adam (man) and Eve (woman),
after they were cursed and thrown out of the Garden of Eden following their gross
disobedience. Thus in Genesis 3:16, God makes the following proclamation to the
woman: ‘‘I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you
shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband’ and he shall
rule over you’’ (KJV)
In Chapter 17-19, He said to the man, ‘Cursed
is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your
lie. Both thorns and thistle it shall bring forth for you, And you shall eat
the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you
return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to
dust you shall return’.
Yes, the curse has been with us ever since. However,
as the earth revolves, with days becoming night, years turning into decades,
and decades into centuries and centuries into millenniums, things have also
changed. Thanks to the economic challenges that confront humanity coupled with
the desire to ‘rise to the occasion’, this notion has been dragged through the
mud of nonsense thanks to women.
Women have come to assume and share in man’s curse
i.e. ‘cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it all the
days of your life… In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you
return to the ground’. They are now taking up certain roles that were ‘originally’
ordained for men.
It is now normal to see women aspire to the top of
their careers, becoming breadwinners for their families, heading big corporate
organizations, which God deliberately ‘forbade’ the fairer sex from indulging
in.
Women are increasingly and consistently helping in toiling the ground which
produces thorns and thistles so they could eat; whiles suffering their own
curse (increased pains in child-bearing; ‘with pain you shall bring forth
children’).
Modern women no longer stay at home as their mothers
or grandmothers did. The demands of the 21st century compels women
to move out of their comfort zones, as their male colleagues or compatriots
(husbands, brothers, boyfriends, and friends) do, competing with them in the
same space for the same task and the same outcome.
Is it not an irony that men, whom God had made, not
only ‘head of the house’ but cursed to provide for their
households-children
and women/wives have now made it a point to marry women engaged in some or
economic venture so they could help them ‘toil the ground’ for the rest of
their lives.
Men, courtesy women, have some degree of respite.
Women on the other hand have added another curse unto their already unpalatable
curse. Carrying a foetus for 9 months and the uncertainties surrounding
child-birth is an arduous and sacrificial task. It’s scary and men who have had
the priviledge of witnessing a labour session have never been the same again.
Women need to be celebrated for having the guts to
make nonsense of God’s curse as they did by defying His counsel (do not eat from
the Tree of Life and Death). But as a friend of mine opined, they brought the
curse in the first place so let them help in making it less painful for us men.
As a woman I am tempted to be bias but I think that men need to realise that when God said love the woman and provide for her he knew this was the only way women would submit but men lost that lesson along the way and now with no love and no provision of bread we are all out there and you knowthe rest.
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