IF ONLY SHE HAD KNOWN

 All of us can get valuable information wrong. For years, my understanding of clean and unclean food came from the Old Testament. Then our fourteen-year-old granddaughter helped me see something. Her love of exotic food from her family’s traditions surprised me until…I happened to see that I was wrong. Sure, pork was forbidden to the children of Israel in the Old Testament Law and so was octopus…which our granddaughter, Lilly loves. Then I saw what I had missed one evening in I Timothy 4:

 

“Now the Spirit speaks expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils. Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron. Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats (food), which God has created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.”

 

I was wrong.

 

Our son, Zach introduced a topic at the dinner table. He, his wife Roxy and children, Eric, my husband, and I were finishing dinner together, “What do you think about women preachers?” He looked right at me, knowing I would have an opinion on one of my favorite subjects: the respect and happiness of women taken from the Bible. “I don’t like them.” Was my immediate reaction, obviously not carefully thought-out. What happened next was a surprise. Roxy, our daughter in law spoke up with passion…that women are emotional, quarrel, argue on theological topics about women in the Bible.

 

For years I studied this question that is a hotly debated subject in our culture. Is the Bible dismissive of women? Does God demean the female gender? He, in fact, created them in His own image, Genesis 1:27 “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Why is there so much debate?

 

There is fear, I believe. It is a deep misunderstanding of the gifts and calling of “male and female” …made in God’s image.

 

Strengths of women are emotional sensitivity, a good trait. Creativity. Wisdom is one more powerful gift to women (consider the wisdom in the Book of Proverbs), “Wisdom cries without; she utters her voice in the streets…” Proverbs 1:20.

 

When we know that we are valuable, precious, important to God and to men, we can summon confidence and focus. Begin with your female biology, your beautiful self! Yes, your body and female point of view and personality! The layer of fat which adds beauty, softness to your features. Go to the way you care. You love. You automatically do…feel responsible for!

 

Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, "If you continue in my word then you are my disciples indeed: and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:31,32. 

 

If only Eve had known. We know now! Eve, the first woman created at the hand of God was deceived. She believed a lie, and she did not recognize this Deceiver, Satan himself.

 

Eve with Adam had firsthand access to God; "And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day…;" Genesis 3 relates that sad day early on!

 

If the first woman had known the awful trap by the enemy of God and rejected the lie, what would have happened? We cannot know. What we can know is that God is Truth. “I Am the Way, the Truth and the Life…,” said Jesus. He told Adam and Eve ahead of time and the command God had given was clear in Chapter 2. "And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die." Genesis 2:16,17.

 

The liar, “You shall not surely die…” paraphrasing Satan, God knows that you will be like gods knowing good and evil…God lied to you.

 

Eve was deceived. "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat." Genesis 3:6. Adam was not deceived: he defied God. I Timothy 2:14.

 

My simple deduction: we can look to God in the Bible for His powerful message in the creation of our bodies, in nature, in our sense of fairness and right and wrong, of good and evil. We can know the truth and be free.