08/10/21
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One evening a long, long time ago, God walked into the Garden of Eden to have another of His regular visits with Adam and Eve. But on this occasion they weren’t standing eagerly at the gate awaiting His arrival as they usually did. He entered the grounds and began looking around, calling their names. Presently He noticed the leaves and branches of a small fig tree shaking and swaying.
He called out, “Adam, Eve, come out of there.”
A moment later they shuffled from behind the shrub, their shoulders hunched, their eyes looking downward so as not to meet God’s gaze, and each cupping their hands in front of themselves just below waist level.
“What’s the matter? What have you done?,” God asked. “Hmm?”
Adam spoke first, “It’s not my fault. She made me do it.”
But Eve quickly cut in, “Nuh, uhh. It was, uh, it was the snake’s idea.”
“Silence! Both of you.” God rubbed His chin. “You’re going to have to be punished for this. Yes, that’s it. Punished.”
The sight of His smile sent a chill up the spines of Adam and Eve.
“Eve, let’s start with you. Ladies first, you know.”
“What?! When did that start?,” she asked.
“Just now. As soon as I said it. So, to begin. From now on you’re going to have monthly menstrual periods; they’ll be unpleasant and uncomfortable. And this isn’t just for you; your daughters and all women that come after you will have them as well. They’ll view this as a ‘curse’, and each month as they suffer they’ll think of you.”
“Hey! That’s too much,” she protested.
“Oh, no. That’s just the beginning,” God continued. “From now on you and they will have a strong desire to always have a man around. What’s more, men will view you as subservient and will act like they’re the boss of you. You may wish for equal respect and to make your own decisions, but the men won’t cooperate. And this will lead to an emotional conflict within you. On the one hand you won’t want to be told what to do, but on the other you’ll be afraid of being all alone if you don’t submit. Next, -–”
“Next!,” Eve shouted. “You mean there’s more?! Isn’t this enough already?”
“Next, you’re going to have a strong desire to have babies. Lots of babies. But when you do, it will be extremely painful. So this will set up another conflict. After you have one you’ll swear to yourself that you never want to do that again; but soon enough the desire will arise for more. So then there’ll be a fight to see which is stronger, the desire for more babies or the desire to avoid that terrible pain.
“These conflicts will continue month after month, year after year, until you reach middle age. At that point you’ll figure out that the children you’ve had are old enough to have children of their own. It will hit you that you can press them to start having kids, so your desire to hold more babies can be satisfied without suffering yourself. It’s at this point that you’ll experience menopause. A new type of discomfort to go through for several more years.
“At some point your husband will die and leave you to carry on by yourself. You’ll try to squeeze into your children’s lives, but will find yourself an unwelcome burden. So in the end you’ll be all alone despite your efforts to prevent that. Lonely final years until you too pass away.”
“Please, stop! That’s enough. Please!” Eve was crumpled on the ground from the weight of the sentence. “Adam do something.”
Adam stepped forward and stood between Eve and God. But then took a half-step backwards as God turned His gaze to Adam. Adam took a deep breath and swallowed hard.
“Adam. Now it’s your turn. First, your punishment is going to be -–.” God stopped and couldn’t finish because He’d begun to laugh. After a moment He continued, “Your punishment is that you’re going to have to live with the woman that’s suffering all these things. Bwah, hah hah!”
Adam looked confused. This didn’t sound like much of a punishment. Was there something he wasn’t understanding? But then God continued.
“Second, you’re going to have a strong desire for sexual relations. But this will not be as good a thing as it sounds. By the end you’ll realize this desire brings a lot more trouble than joy. As for your wife, her desire will not match yours, and she’ll say ‘no’ much more often than she says ‘yes’. This will be primarily due to all the troubles that have just been put on her.
“You’ll reach over and touch her meaningfully as you lay together at night, but instead of giving you what you need, she’ll want to talk about how hard her life is and how many emotional conflicts she has. You’ll agree to talk, hoping that once she gets whatever it is off her chest she’ll then be willing to give you what you’re needing. But the waterfall won’t run out; she’ll just go on and on. Two hours later there still won’t be any sign that she’s feeling any better. Finally you’ll roll over and mumble that you need to get some sleep because you have a busy day tomorrow.
“In the morning you’ll go to work but you’ll be all tense and frustrated because of the lack of release the night before, and you’ll be wondering all day if tonight will be any different. Then when you’re finally in bed and start to caress her, you’ll find she wants to ‘talk about it’ again. But, if you get impatient and make the mistake of suggesting sex first and talk later, you’ll see her sadness turn to fury. And boy, that’ll be the end of that idea for the night. Instead of talking, she’ll be yelling. Then you’ll be yelling too. And by the time you eventually get back in bed you’ll be so wound up that you can’t fall asleep for a couple of hours.
“That brings us to the third thing. Your daily toil is always going to seem hard. As you work you’ll not only be sexually frustrated and emotionally wrung out, you’ll also be constantly physically exhausted. That’s when you’ll stop going straight home after work, and will instead stop by the bar to hang out with your buddies to drink beer and talk sports until you feel you don’t dare stay away any longer.
“This cure will quickly become a habit. Half your paychecks will go to drink, games of luck, and flirty bar girls. You’ll feel sorry for yourself and complain how you’re overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated. The cycle will continue for years until you recognize that all areas of your life have lost their joy and become just drudgery. Life will seem to be no more than a place where you dig in the ditch, to make money enough, to buy food enough, to gain strength enough, to dig in the ditch.
“Finally you’ll come to the conclusion that maybe having a heart attack and checking out of this world is preferable to continuing to run its treadmill.”
By this time Adam was huddled on the ground with Eve and holding her as they both rocked slowly back and forth. The thought of years of toil to scratch out a sparse existence didn’t seem too appealing. But then he remembered, God had spoken of a place called Heaven where they would be taken after their time on Earth was over. That place had sounded pretty good.
His face brightened. He thought to himself, if we serve out our sentence here, then when we go to the new place maybe all these punishments will drop off. After all, it’s supposed to be Paradise; and a paradise can’t have anything bad in it. But then, I suppose that depends on whose definition you go by. I wonder …
Adam looked to God and asked, “In that Heaven place you mentioned, we get to start fresh, don’t we? You won’t still be holding a grudge about that apple thing, will you?”
An inscrutable look crossed God’s face, but before He could respond Eve joined in.
“And once we get to Heaven, he (as she pointed to Adam) won’t still be expecting me to do you-know-what anymore, will he?”
God was silent for a moment, then He let a startled look cross his face. “Oh, my Self! Is that the time? I’m late for another appointment. We can talk about the rest of this another day.” Then He was gone. Poof!
Adam and Eve stood looking at the empty spot for a minute. Then Eve spoke, “What do we do now?”
Adam looked at her and smiled. “Well, we could, um, you know. How about we -–. Hmm?”
“Give me a break,” she said as she turned.
Adam’s face fell as he watched her walk away. He then ran his hand over his ribcage. “You know, I have more of these things. I could ask God to -–. Yeah, next time He comes I’ll take Him aside and see if He won’t take out another rib.”
He smiled to himself as he headed toward the river to see if fishing had been invented yet.
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