THE PSYCHOSOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF THE LITURGY

INTRODUCTION

The liturgy as the action of Christ himself within the assembly which is the church has different dimensions. It is not just a body of ceremonies; it has the capacity to bring about the development of Christian spirit. It is the epiphany of people gathered to worship.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF LITURGY

An indispensible aspect of humanity in its pursuit for survival and identity is its ability to live faith and induce it. Faith however is a psychological process within which a person and the community in general place an unreserved trust in absolute ideals. To this effect, a prior condition of being able to meaningfully recall the series of events that led to the emergence of the ideals is necessary. Any lack to this regard will initiate a descent to self-destruction. Therefore the urgency of transferring down generations the ideals and values of its tradition is realized in every society. The realities of the evolution, formation and development are so rich that they cannot be contained adequately in gestures; therefore symbolic languages are employed in the process of socialization.

Symbologies constitute a religion when God is the object of Faith. Religion allows the experience of the need for meaning and transcendence that characterizes the human person. However the case with Christianity is not a direct reference to a generic transcendence. Transcendence in Christianity is towards a specific Modality of the self manifestation of God in incarnation which constitutes the foundational reference of the Christian religious experiences. The ecclesial community draws its spiritual horizon and life blood from this foundation. To this regard, the catholic liturgy is considered as a process within which the ecclesial community commemorates their salvific experiences.

BASIC ASSUMPTIONS

These assumptions bother majorly on psychology and theology. The psychological model makes it presentation based on a dynamic psychology. This focused on the motivational and symbolical aspect of the experience; conscious or unconscious. Within this model, the theory of C. G. Jung is most functional for the understanding of our religious experiences. In the theological model, God’s action in history is fundamental. This model sets the law of incarnation, and the autonomy of the human and divine spheres as a hermeneutic principle. However, the relation between the human person and the divine is considered as a reciprocal autonomy. Based on a static concept of nature, the theological model lacks suitability.

LITURGY AND SOCIALIZATION

From a psychological viewpoint, liturgy is the process of socialization constituted in a ritual sequence by which the ecclesial community recalls, clarifies and reformulates the foundational basis of its faith in comparison to their culture. This involves the use of symbols through which the community grows, celebrates its faith and transmits it to others. However, liturgy as a process of socialization is realized when the efficacy of the symbols used is guaranteed to be able to transmit without reservations the ideals and practices.

BASIC PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONS FOR CELEBRATING THE LITURGY

Liturgy permits living and interpretation within the different tonalities of human condition, so as to successfully bring out meanings that enable living all historical situations in a peaceable by directing them towards the paschal mystery. The fundamental premises which are the basic psychological conditions to be met for the achievement of full self-realization include: firstly, the consciousness of human creatureliness which deals with the experiences of the maturing process, stating that humans have neither the reason nor sufficient forces for becoming a person completely. Secondly, Existential precariousness which with the fact that our historical form of existence is marked by a deep tendency towards death within which we set our personal identity definitively. However, learning to die is paradoxically the only developmental possibility adequate for living in fullness. Thirdly, need for transcendence which deals with the fact that historical reality cannot give an exhaustive answer to the tensions; desires, plans and ethical dimension experiences by each person. Thus there is a need for a transcendent referral.

The doctrinal aspects of the Christian liturgy do not contain primarily its values. The values primarily reside in the efficacy of its rites. It communicates a truth of experience that have a transformative power that serves as a catalyst for self realization. References to the paschal mystery open the consciousness the reading of reality. Here, in the ecclesial community, the dignity of the call to life is concretized, enabling the believer to become a channel of this gift of life to others. This brings to the consciousness the fact that everything human have meaning which witnesses to the continual possibility offered by the faith in Christ, tuning historical circumstances as opportunities of love. This instills among the people a feeling of authentic solidarity, hope and trust, because it reflects God’s listening to humanity and an expression of his creative Fatherhood in accordance to the revelation of Christ.

RITE

Rite is a codified and regulated sequence of gestures used in order to perform cognitive and communicative functions in rituals. It can also be considered the basic unit of the liturgical process. The human person notices the need for transcendence which from the experiential-behavioral viewpoint translates to an attraction towards mystery which results in the strong presence of our emotional nature. This however has incisive repercussions. However, from the cognitive viewpoint, rite tends to exalt contradictory and meaningless things, both within and without the subject.

Rite contextually presents itself as formal symbolic procedures that involve codes of communication believed to possess efficacy and a transformative power if performed and experienced in provided conditions. The diversity of roles in ritual actions expresses in a clear manner the social structure of the group and builds its protective capacity. However, in religious rite some elements enable the community to maintain the transcendent and universal nature of the religious event. The premises for the celebration and understanding, in a symbolic sense the meaning of religious rite is found in psychological structure.

From a personal view point, ritual ability develops from early childhood where experiences in relation to significant figures and environment overcome the functionality of behavior to give them a symbolic value. However, with maturing functions one becomes aware of some instances of the collective unconscious that stimulates the achievement of a full and authentic identity. For example Jung postulates a specific archetype of transformation which stimulates the individual to consciously be inserted into the changing rhythm of existence. The intensity and the ambiguity of the stimulus, if accepted, can bring the awareness that transformation cannot be satisfied by settling on the ego level but require quantitative leap; the activation of the transcendent function. The individual thus searches for a suitable setting for individuation, which indeed can be a religion with its own rite.

They psychodynamic viewpoint maintains that religious rite is linked to myth in its proclamation which aims at explaining reality through symbolic narration which verifies the subjectification and objectification of the external reality and the interior world respectively. In every myth there is a specific phase of the development of collective social conscience shines through, but it is atemporal.

The quality of myth is modified by Christian rite bearing reference to the logos. On one hand it historicizes it based on the life of Jesus, on the other hand it redefines the experience of time. The complexity of Christian rite is based on the myth of Jesus following two itineraries: the first sacralizes the five great rites of passage in the life of each person endowing them with meaning for the Christian proclamation. The liturgical calendar is structure with the transitional moments of Jesus’ life consciously inserted the celebrating community and the whole of humanity through a symbolic translation into the divine creative action. The second symbolic itinerary the Eucharist, by symbolically ritualizing the moments of the transition-initiation of Jesus, constantly stimulates the activation of Christian individuation. Therefore Christian rite presupposes and establishes a bond between the supercreatural and the creatural reality bonded in the divinized humanity of Jesus. The constant appeal to this myth communicates to the assembly the transforming power, and rendering him symbolically present is gradually accepting God’s transforming action until salvation is attained. Rite expresses the faith of the community towards the preserved, accepted and verified ideals. The rite also anticipates the ideals and the promises yet to be effected by appealing to the future as a horizon to measure historical pledge. By appealing to Christ, rite constitute the cognizance and the striving the community experience and express correctly the relational modalities and the vital offerings that anticipate and prepare in history the fullness of time.

BODY AND RITE

The body of the rite is the most significant and symbolic. It communicates constantly in a perceptible manner the transformative action of rite. The body is the repository of memory without which liturgy won’t be possible. Through the body rite expresses and effects the transformation of the person and establishes communion among the celebrants and train them towards the expression of the cosmic direction of the sacred. In the body, rite inscribes the premonition of the victory over death and the sign of supernatural identity. The gestures allow for the unveiling of latent meanings and transform them into newness. The body is the symbolic place for composing the conflict between self-realization and self destruction; salvation and sin. The reference to Jesus’ body is granted to us to experience the spirit-matter. The intimate contact in the Eucharistic incorporation is an immediate memory of the law of incarnation; it doesn’t evade the human but surpasses habitual human responses. In the body and with the body, rite invites us not to remove the breadth and depth of human desire, but to experience it with great awareness in order to tend towards the source and not the outlet of the desire, towards the radicalness of the question and not the persistence of the answer. Living this experience of the unification of life is only corporal, however, it does not end with the spirit-body split but in intuition which is mysterious, until we attain the perfect stature of the children of God.

MEMORY

This is the chain of remembrances which allows the person identity and ideation. Remembering the primary undertaking and task of rite is a recall that engenders unity from dispersion. Our subjectivity succeeds in effecting the differentiation between self and outer reality that builds and allow the stabilization of identity only in unity. Without the process of activating memory which enable us to recognize our own thoughts, sentiments and gestures there would be no identity or reality perceived as a sequence related to one another. By recalling, one comes to the awareness of his own peculiarity. From the personal point of view it offers a clear perception of ephemeral character of all action which is precisely a search for meaning. Destroying the memory is same as destroying the basis of identity and t continuity of time; memory is not passive but constructive; recalling a memory rebuilds, selects, chooses, transforms, searches, makes history and opens the continuity of the future. The efficacy and influence of the past depends on the decision of the present, to remove or to assume it.  Disregarding it imply the temptation to forget and deactivate the creative-transformative potential of memory.  Recalling a memory pre-figures the future and creates history so that the emerging newness can be deciphered and freed from cultural backwardness in order to liberate perceptible and efficacious energies capable of giving consistent form with the present culture. This implies the actualization of the salvific experience that are transmitted by the tradition, with this we can take decisions adequate to the demands of life and make the ideals, values and behavioral models lived and proposed by Christ historically present.

EMOTIONS

The action of rite which is transformative sinks into the emotions and makes them constructively incisive factors in life orientation. Liturgy does not Passover fundamental emotions and avoids reducing them too. However, the potentiality of liturgical celebration in supporting identity and guiding towards the recovery of meaning are very evident in the rites that bedeck the liturgy of the dead. They show that one who finds death, the interruption of affective bonds, in his path can express emotions without the fear of losing identity. The ecclesial community deal with the emotive resonance connected to empathic understanding, and also acts by faith as a container that hinders the flow of emotion into despair or disintegration of identity. This function of liturgical celebration stands out in the Eucharist through the constant reference to the paschal mystery, where the priest plays a role of activating and monitoring a composite whole for which the ritual structure serves as the organizer.

SACRIFICE

The Eucharist as the liturgical celebration per excellence constitutes one of the problematic knots in contemporary religious experience. The Eucharistic rite is hinge on the banquet-sacrifice pair; the first element is easy for us to experience while the second is remote to contemporary experience. The path of historical explanation is always too rational while the psychological understanding can provide some help; it helps us to understand that the psychodynamic essence of sacrifice is destruction of relation with things and their affective and symbolic content. By destroying the relation sacrifice upsets an order to create a void by separating us from the bonds that are ineluctable and creating conditions for the newness of life to emerge. By representing extreme destruction (death), sacrifice imposes a potential uselessness on the values that are the basis for reality and their meanings too. Our habitual reality calls for the need for a symbolic order. To this regard, cultural change is important; a projection onto the sacrificial victim is not suggested but rather sacrifices as a separation and annulment of the ego and its habitual world.

This allows us to pass from one order to another that is not contrary to the sacrificial order. This dynamic generates a confusion of meaning and indicates the effective readiness for sacrifice.  Room is made for something that is not a repetition of the past but a source of a new meaning; this is attained only if one is always ready to lose one’s life. It is necessary that the renunciation of one’s role identity should not abolish a constant reference that helps us to understand and contain, in other that experience lived in depth and authenticity might not resolve in madness. This is possible in the Eucharistic celebration when the community experiences a passage towards a transcendent level where we learn no to live for ourselves but for Christ who died for us. With constant demolition of old structures, the ego becomes suitable for hosting perennial newness that is offered in communion with Christ.

CONCLUSION

Essential elements for a psychology of the liturgy have been outlined here. A coherent confrontation with the epochal changes that characterize today’s cultural horizon is very important. Difficulties emerge regarding the liturgy, both as a ritual complex and as a symbolic language. There is a tendency to reduce the expressive ambit of the liturgy and take up a concrete language that makes the celebration immediately usable for example as it happens in the television.

THE BEAUTY OF CREATION AND THE RESPONSIBILITY OF MAN

TABLE OF CONTENT

1.0 INTRODUCTION

2.0 THE BEAUTY OF CREATION

2.1 THE RELATION OF GOD AND CREATION

3.0 THE RESPONSIBILITY OF MAN

3.1 WHAT IS AT STAKE IN A CASE OF IRRESPONSIBILITY OF MAN

4.0 CONCLUSION

1.0 INTRODUCTION

“…and God saw that all was good”. All was created good; the creator adorned his creation with so much beauty. Much more than that, the creator shared his essential goodness with his creation, even though it was not a necessity, creation is the creative initiative of the divine. The Christian affirmation of God’s creative freedom enables us to overcome the limitations of other points of view that, placing a necessity upon God, end up maintaining fatalism or determinism. There is nothing “in” God or “outside” of God that obliges him to create. Thus the catechism of the Catholic Church number 293 says “God created all things not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it”.

The beauty of creation include its importance as being the foundation of God’s saving plans; the beginning of our history of salvation. This is a truth accessible to natural reason. We can easily relate to the beauty of creation. However, this beautiful creation was left to the physical care of man. In other words, Man is the crown of creation. Man therefore is given the responsibility to tend and care for creation. The responsibility of the first man is thus stated; ‘to make an inventory of all the animals and give to each a name’. If man remains reluctant and apathetic to confront the ongoing destruction of the environment, soon the beauty will be wounded. The Genesis narrator describes the creation of man in retrospect. This crown of all creation was placed in the beautiful Garden of Eden, whose main source of blessing was a four-branched river carrying fertility to all the earth, both inside and outside of Eden.

However, it is important to distinguish between creation as the creative action of God (active), and creation as the created reality that is the effect of God’s action (passive). This work refers to creation as the effect of God’s action. Creation in the active sense is the bringing forth to being of all things by God from nothing. This implies that God brought everything into existence when there was no prior existence. This creation by God out of nothing means that there is absolutely nothing in common to the preceding non-being and being that follows it. Creation in the passive sense refers to the created order which God looked upon and said they were all good. In this sense, creation refers to everything that was made.

2.0 THE BEAUTY OF CREATION

The only ultimate beauty is the Lord God Almighty himself. He caused goodness, truth, and beauty in the world by virtue of the act of creation. Because God is good, what God does is good and the result of what God does is good. Thus, creation is full of the afterglow of God's goodness, leaving people with a taste of what goodness really is.

In the active sense, the beauty of creation is seen in the radical coming into being of what was not there ‘before’. Even the ‘before’ here is an imagination because before creation there was no before, only God existed. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church number 293, this beauty is also shown in the absence of succession in creation. God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness: creatures came into existence when the key of love opened his hand. The creation saga is a poetic expression which proclaims the divine intention and love behind the act of creation. Creation is a divine work of art, a reflection of the glory of God. In the beginning God created the world beautifully. God created all things there are, blessed them and gave them purpose and meaning. Creation has integrity given to it by God. It is not a necessity since it adds nothing to the greatness of God. Creation rather shows forth the glory of God who is beauty in himself. Thus we see the hands of the intelligent designer in the beauty of His creation.

 God is the creator and sustainer of all there is. The universe whose beauty and unimaginable size we are only now beginning to discover. This same God who created the universe is present in every single detail of creation; knowing and holding dear every atom, every speck of dust on every star and planet, caring about every blade of grass and every single thing of creation. God’s spanning of one and many, huge and miniscule, this instant and always, here and everywhere, omnipotent and vulnerable is even further beyond human imagining. “God wanted man to know him somehow through his creatures, and since no creature could fittingly reflect the infinite perfection of the Creator, he multiplied his creatures and gave a certain goodness and perfection to each of them so that from them we could judge the goodness and perfection of the Creator, who embraces infinite perfection in the perfection of this one and utterly simple essence.”(Robert Bellarmine 1542-1621). The whole of creation exhibits goodness and beauty which comes from the goodness and beauty of the creator himself; the source of all goodness. The creator created according to his design and purpose, by the power and the authority of his word. Thus creation is characterized by order and harmony. While each creative reality has the divine goodness in it, yet the totality of it has the bearing of being “very good”: goodness intensified, indeed becoming perfect, whole and holy, when communion and spirit of oneness is dwelling among all things. The totality of God’s creation includes the intricate web and network of relationships of the created realities with their limits and possibilities.

2.1 THE RELATION OF GOD AND CREATION

If God stop relating to creation, creation will cease to exist because it is God that sustains creation. When we consider this relation in terms of the act of creation, God as the creator has no real relation to creation because it real relationship imply that the subject and the term are simultaneous and are simultaneously known. This would put God in some obligatory relation to creation. This will also imply that God would, in a certain way, be dependent on creation, which is impossible. God is not related to creation substantially because creation would then necessarily be eternal, which is not so. However, creation has a real relation to God because it’s a relation of origin. Creation therefore is dependent on God, like the real relation of an effect to its cause.

3.0 THE RESPONSIBILITY OF MAN

According to the catechism of the Catholic Church number 294, the glory of God is man fully alive. God’s special intention for creating the human being is made specific in the responsibility and task given to them “to have dominion” (rādâ) over and to “subdue” (kābash) especially all living beings. These are very strong terms, but in view of responsible stewardship for God’s creation under God’s authority, stewardship is an awesome task. In essence, stewardship means rendering service to God’s order and plan in creation. This stewardship is meant to responsively safeguard the divine intention of “ecology” in creation.  In this the human being has a double task: first of all, it must be responsible to its own “ecology”, namely to take proper care of the goodness of communion of body and the breath of God in it, so that it can be a worthy personality and agent for stewardship; and secondly, it must direct and guide the “ecology”, namely the heart-matter of all creation.

The entire world is God’s creation, and its continuing life and preservation are thoroughly dependent upon God. However man is giving an important role to play within creation. Humanity created in the image and likeness of God is blessed through grace to be a partner with the divine in the continuing work of creation. The question of responsibility of man is a question that bothers also on the purpose of man. In creation, God brings into existence human beings with the freedom to love both God and their fellow creatures. To be human is to know, love, and delight in God and to share in God’s life as far as created beings may. Thus it is in praising and worshipping God that we discover who we are as human beings. However, our rejection of God compromises the proper relationships we were meant to enjoy with God, each other, and creation so that we no longer live up to our high calling as God’s stewards.

Man is called to preserve the beauty of creation. Man as the crown of God’s creation, created in the image and likeness of God, is created to take an active role in the task of caring for and tending the creation of God. There is a stewardship mandate that goes along with the prominent position of man within creation. In other words, man is commissioned and he plays a stewardship role to creation. Every created good by God, was left temporary under the care and stewardship of man. Creation is in a constant journey toward perfection and man guides creation on this journey. Therefore, man is the steward of God’s continuing creation.  However, this God’s given role to man is not a license for misuse or abuse of creation. Man is told and instructed to subdue the earth and dominate it, however this doesn’t make man equal to the creator; it only makes him a higher creation. Thus man remains accountable to God his creator in whom he hope he would have his beatific and eternal rest. As a matter of fact, man’s responsibility for creation and his duty towards nature is an essential part of our faith as Christians. Reflection on the Christian faith will make us more alert and responsive to the call to care for created things. As in the book of Genesis, we are meant to rule over creation, to practice dominion. But what is the nature of this rule? We should inquire how the different cultures of humanity relate to nature. Cultures shape human minds and give us an insight into humanity’s readiness or not to accept changing its attitude in dealing with its natural environment and exercising its stewardship.

Gaudium et Spes number 12 says, the Scripture teaches that men and women were created in the image and likeness of God and are able to know and love their Creator who had set them over all earthly creatures that they might rule them and make use of them, while glorifying God. John Paul II in the Social Encyclical Centesimus Annus number 37 reminds us that humanity in its use and care of creation must be very much conscious of its duties and obligations, especially towards the future generations.  Thus man cannot make an arbitrary use of the earth and also cannot subject it without restraint to his will. This is because creation has its own requisites and a God-given purpose which should be developed by man and not violated. From the days of Adam, man have seen and delighted the beauty of creation as the creator made it.

Unfortunately, creation is distorted; the beauty of the beginning is not exactly what is today; resources are becoming exhausted, climate is changing, pollution devastates large cities, and oceans are drying. As a matter of ignorance, majority of us know little about the logic of creation and the interconnectedness of everything created. Consequently we can ignorantly do harm to creation without knowing the implications of what we do. For instance some desert areas of our planet developed as a result of man’s abuse of nature. In as much as technology is positive advancement in the history of man, it equally makes possible the inflicting of harm and damages on nature. However, fortunately, our growing technology has enabled us to understand better how to embellish our earth and how to avoid the harm that has been done to it in ignorance or greed. Therefore man needs to develop his awareness, discovering in his responsibility the call to contemplate and care for God’s created world. The responsibility placed on man in creation is a call to discover and delight in the beauty and awesomeness of creation bearing in mind that beauty is fragile and can be damaged. Man need to have a high ecological aptitude. To this effect, John Calvin (1509-1564) once said

“Let him who possesses a field, so partake of its yearly fruits, that he may not suffer the ground to be injured by his negligence; but let him endeavor to hand it down to posterity as he received it, or even better cultivated. Let him so feed on its fruits that he neither dissipates it by luxury, not permits it to be marred by neglect. Moreover,…let everyone regard himself as the steward of God in all things which he possesses. Then he will neither conduct himself dissolutely, nor corrupt by abuse those things which God requires to be preserved.”

The point of mankind’s stewardship for creation places us squarely in creation’s ecology today in the face of climate change and climate justice. In this great era of mankind’s Industrial and Technological Revolution it is important to recognize the steward’s role to render service to the Creator’s technology and industry in the Revolution of Creation, to safeguard them and discover hidden energies thereof. Man’s responsibility to the created order run through several generations of humanity.

3.1 WHAT IS AT STAKE IN A CASE OF IRRESPONSIBILITY OF MAN

Our common stewardship strengthens strong human values which are foundational. This sense of responsibility cuts across generations of humanity. Since their first days on our earth human beings have looked at the world and seen that it is good. They have delighted in its beauty. They have been grateful for the good things that provide them with shelter, food and clothing. And they have been led to some crucial questions: To what extent must the beauty we admire be left untouched, save to be nurtured and safeguarded? How much is to be used so that we might live well upon this earth? And how are our resources to be cared for and replenished so that our children, too, might be able to live upon the earth?

Economic imbalance between advanced industrial countries and less developed countries, the destruction of environmental capital resources are at stake in a case of irresponsibility on the part of man. Resources are becoming exhausted, climate is changing; pollution devastates large cities; oceans are drying; population is increasing; nations close themselves in search of identity; globalization progresses promising benefits yet arousing fears.

Ugliness pervades our culture. We see the hatred of cultures, the destruction of our world, the sadness that affects our society day after day. Sometimes all we can think is negative. Where does positive even enter our frame of mind? The truth is yes, our society is bad. However, let us not forget the good things that God has placed before us. Let us remember the Lord still reigns in ultimate authority. Let us not forget the beauty of God. He is beautiful. His work is beautiful.

“If God is really at the center of things and God’s good future is the most certain reality, then the truly realistic course of action is to buck the dominant consequentialist ethic of our age, which says that one should act only if one’s action will most likely bring about good consequences, and simply, because we are people who embody the virtue of hope, do the right thing…Our vocation is not contingent on results or the state of the planet. It is simply dependent on our character as God’s response-able human image-bearers.” 

4.0 CONCLUSION

The God who is Love unconditionally loves all of the creation and not merely us who are able to enter into a conscious relationship with Him.  We may express the divine image and likeness by loving the creation as God loves it, and by exercising stewardship and earth-keeping as an act of love. God loves creation and uses it as a pointer to Himself. He made us an inseparable part of creation but gave us a special role within it. We have abused our rule, and damaged God’s creation. But in his plan of salvation, he will redeem creation along with us, and restore us to our proper place within it. The only ultimate beauty is the Lord God Almighty himself. He caused goodness, truth, and beauty in the world by virtue of the act of creation. Because God is good, what God does is good and the result of what God does is good. Thus, creation is full of the afterglow of God’s goodness, leaving people with a taste of what goodness really is.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1.  Andrews University Seminary Studies, Spring-Summer 1994, Vol. 32.

2.  Maurice M. Makumba, Natural Theology: With African Annotations, Pauline publications, Nairobi, 2006.

3. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Society of St Paul, Ibadan, 2015.

4. Rick Faw, A Brief Theology of Creation Care, www.goodseedsunday.com

5. Rev. Fr. Clarence Devadass (ed), Towards responsible stewardship Creation: An Asian Christian Approach, Office of Theological Concerns Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conference.

6. In the image and likeness of God: A Hope-Filled Anthropology, Anglican Communion Office, 2015.

7. Australian Bishops’ committee for Justice, Development and Peace, Christians and their duty towards nature.

8. Archbishop Roland Minnerath, Humanity’s responsibility toward creation – An ethical and anthropological challenge, pontifical academy of sciences, extra series 41, Vatican City 2014.

9.  Steven Bouma-Prediger, For the Beauty of the Earth, p. 186.

THE FALL OF ADAM AND EVE, THE CURSE ON THE WOMAN

INTRODUCTION

The first man, Adam, was set into a state of happiness and was promised its continuity, to him and to his posterity, under the condition of his fidelity in perfect obedience to the statues and ordinances given to him by his creator. Thus he should not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. However, in disregard to the commands of the Lord, Adam faltered and fell. In the garden, Adam and Eve lived in a state of perfection. They experienced total harmony with the Creator, with His creation, and with each other. This balance was destroyed when Adam and Eve submitted to the will of the tempter rather than to the will of God. At that point in time, both the woman and man were cursed, inalterably changing the course of history and the outworking of the original created order.

The initial creation was paradisiacal; death and mortality was not part of it. There was no mortal flesh upon the earth for any form of life; all things had been created in a state of paradisiacal immortality. The fall of Adam and Eve which is summed up as the concept of ‘the fall’ is used to describe the transitional deployment from the state of tranquility in the Garden of Eden to a state of hardship outside the garden. This is basically from the biblical interpretation of the book of Genesis. The fall is an apocryphal expression of the revolt of our first parents from God, and the consequent sin and misery in which they and all their posterity were involved.

THE FALL: WHAT HAPPENED?

From the beginning God placed Adam and eve in the primeval Garden of Eden to tend but, on the penalty of death, God commanded them not to eat the “tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Adam and Eve were persons of innocence, until they yielded to the temptations of the serpent. Consequently they were driven out of the garden, and they lost their paradisiacal immortality, and that was the beginning of a life of suffering for them. God proclaimed punishments on them for their disobedience: for the woman, her punishment was pain in childbirth and subordination to the man, and for the man, relegation to an accursed ground with which he must toil and sweat for his subsistence. The fall brought shame, degradation and pollution to man (loss of innocence), and displeasure to God.

The blissful harmony of the Garden of Eden came to an abrupt end. Man and woman brought this tragedy upon themselves. The story of this tragedy has three moments: temptation, fall and judgment. The serpent tempted Eve, and Eve succumbed and involved his companion Adam, causing the both to sin against God. Their disobedience disrupted the friendly relationship between them and God and destroyed the simple harmony between themselves, thus they blamed each other. This act of disobedience bothers majorly on man’s desire to acquire knowledge, but eating the forbidden fruit only revealed to man, in a humiliating way, his utter ‘creatureliness’ and thus they became shamefully conscious of their nakedness. They were cursed and sent out of the Garden of Eden, and doomed to die. These consequences extend beyond Adam and Eve to their descendants; the entire human race.

THE TEMPTING SERPENT

Being created in the image of God, Adam and Eve were moral beings with freewill. They had the capacity to decide for themselves. Some scholars are of the opinion that the serpent tempted the woman because she was weaker and inferior to the man. They were of the opinion that if the man was first tempted, mankind would not have fallen. However, some other scholars are of the opinion the serpent tempted the woman first because she was the final perfecting element in creation. Being the perfection of creation, with the fall of the woman, the man was already destined to fall. However this second group of scholars holds that if man fell first, the woman being the perfection might not have disobeyed too. Another common explanation is that the tempter addressed the woman because she had not personally received the prohibition from God as Adam had. A fourth possibility is that the serpent approached her because of a difference in woman’s personality which made her more vulnerable to attack. Some of these explanations appear plausible, but we may never conclusively grasp the serpent’s plan.

THE FALL: THE CURSE ON EVE

God’s original idea for man was to stay in blessings not in a curse.  However, when man became disobedient to the commandments originally given to him by God, it brought a curse to all humanity and distorted the image of God in man.  The fall made humans sinful, and brought death into the world. Man and woman lost their confidence in the sight of God and sort to hide away from his face. The woman was tricked into disobedience in which he involved the man. The consequences of their disobedience were instant. The created order was violated and relationships were impaired. God cursed the man and his wife as the result of their disobedience. Eve first transgressed the limits of the Eden and initiated the conditions for mortality. The very act of disobedience that started with Eve cost man his initial happiness. As a consequence of the very act of disobedience God cursed Eve thus: “I will increase your suffering in child-bearing, and you will give birth to your children in pain, yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you”. The primordial disobedience earn woman an inferior social position to man. The curse of the woman is categorized in three aspects: pain, desire and rule-ship of man over her life. The three are interrelated.

The curse is in two parts, each composed of two parallel clauses. The first part deals with child-bearing and the second with marital relations. With two quick strokes God illustrates the bane of women throughout the ages. The curse on eve bothers basically on motherhood and wifehood. God pronounced on her pain of child bearing, and subordination to man. Before the transgression there is harmony and peace, Adam and Eve lived a blissful life. It can also be argued that prior to their disobedience; there is a kind equality between man and the woman, or the man is not over the woman. However God subjugating of woman under man is her chastisement. The fall brought rule-ship of man over the woman. The immediate two sentences pronounced punishment that concerns child birth. Women suffering down the centuries have multiplied through the different generations; there are cases where expectation period prolong beyond nine months. Irrespective of the sufferings and pangs of child birth, the woman is still subjected under the man.

The second part of the judgment God pronounced on the woman is just as significant as the first; yet it is always taken lightly, just a few are aware of its implications. “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Following the sentence structure of the original Hebrew text, it explains the role difficulty women experience to this day. The pattern established prior to the fall was a hierarchy of roles characterized by unity and oneness. However the judgment would work against, rather than contribute to, this original created order and unity. The second part of the judgment necessarily subjected woman under the man; thereby setting a patriarchal standard for the basis of their relationship.

THE PLIGHTS OF THE THIRD WORLD WOMEN

The entrance of sin into the world changed man and woman’s relationship to God and to creation. No longer do women and men walk in harmony with God. The unity and equality present in the first relationship has disintegrated. Role confusion, rebellion, and disharmony reign. Eve’s curse has resulted in the virtual subjugation of women ever since. Women had few rights.  In the past, fathers sold their daughters into slavery or wed them to the highest bidder. In some places wives existed to give the husband pleasure and sons and to keep the house. Many societies insisted that women be veiled in public, and some considered it a criminal act for a woman to walk out of her house without a chaperone. In short, a woman was chattel. However, in the third world, the genesis pronouncement on the woman sowed the first seed of male chauvinism.

Since the time of eve, women experience pain in childbirth. According to a research done by a pain specialist, the pang of birth is far greater than the pain of amputating a finger without Anastasia injection. The pain of childbirth is too severe that some women can’t bear it, many had given up trying to put to birth, and many more have resorted to cesarean section. Some of the cases of the increase in mortality rate during child birth may be as a result of inadequacy of standard facilities, but it also is as a result of the curse of the woman.

With regards to male dominance, especially in the third world, women have sort to usurp male authority and dominance only for them to be crushed, suppressed and oppressed. The male counterparts have been so oppressive, domineering, unfair and uncaring. Women in the third world have wrongly and rudely been pronounced inferior. The modern feminist movement has risen in the past few decades to combat male chauvinism and domination. However, the principle of men ruling over and women fighting back to overcome this rule cannot be broken by our own efforts. This is not something that has evolved historically and culturally. It is a principle deeply engraved into our sin nature. It is a direct result of the Fall and the judgment of God.

Women go through different types of suffering and struggles all over in the third world. Its hard and a difficulty to be a woman in the third world; the women subordination in the third world is alarming. In the third world, women are taken to be slaves especially in the societies that uphold firmly the patriarchal system. These men have little or no interest about the sufferings of women. These women are subjected to men, used for sexual fulfillment, domestic duties etc. the women of the third world have be severely subjugated and humiliated. Of the 1.6 billion people who live in extreme poverty, the majority are women. Every day, thousands of women and girls are victims of violence, including sexual abuse, trafficking and early and forced marriage. The health of women also remains a global challenge. In 2010, 287,000 women died during or shortly after childbirth. Developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia had the largest share of these deaths. In many developing countries, there are far fewer girls than boys to be found in secondary schools and it is therefore harder for them to find good jobs. The women of the third world are always victims.

OUTSTANDING PLIGHTS OF THE THIRD WORLD WOMEN

The status of women’s rights today varies dramatically in different countries and, in some cases, among groups within the same country, such as ethnic groups or economic classes. Many disparities persist between women’s legal rights and their economic status mostly in the third world countries. Women today constitute nearly 70 percent of the world’s poor, despite international efforts to compensate women and men equally. Women also remain at a distinct disadvantage in education as well. While primary school enrollment for girls now roughly equals that of boys, women constitute about two-thirds of the world’s one billion illiterate adults.

Women in the third world face all forms of discrimination on the basis of their sex. Deep-seated cultural beliefs allowed women only limited roles in the third world societies. Many people are of the belief and opinion that women’s natural roles were as mothers and wives, and they should be relegated and considered on that level. These people considered women to be better suited for childbearing and homemaking rather than for involvement in the public life of business or politics. Widespread belief that women were intellectually inferior to men led most of the third world societies to limit women’s education to the learning domestic skills. Most of the women of the third world societies lacked the educational and economic resources that would enable them to challenge the prevailing social order; they generally accepted their inferior status as their only option. This is because most of the organized effort by these women to achieve greater rights and recognition in the society are not achieving their purpose. Fragile in every sense of the word, they are obliged to look up to man for every comfort. Thus some outstanding plights of the third world women include: humiliation and subjugation, patriarchism, maltreatment and domestic violence, genital mutilation, slavery etc.

HUMILIATION AND SUBJUGATION: Too easy deductions must be avoided and yet the interest of men dominance and women subjugation is worthy of reflection. Women of the third world are humiliated on daily basis in many different ways. Women continuously encounter many challenges in their Third World societies and in the World in general, one of which is to secure social status for themselves in a mostly male-dominated society. Women are devalued and taken to be the weaker sex with little or no importance attached to them. The dogma of women’s complete historical subjugation to men must be rated as one of the most fantastic myths ever created by the human mind. For instance in some societies, when a woman loses the husband, some bans are placed on her, she is not expected to come out in the public for a given period of time, and her hair would be shaved off. While in the same society, when a man loses his wife, nothing happens to him. In some cultures too, it is said that when a king die, he is buried with his first wife, while in same cultures when the wife of the king dies, the king will rather take another wife unto himself. Majorly in the third world too, women are mostly given a passive and not active voice.

PATRIARCHISM: The biggest challenge facing the women of the third world is the patriarchy system. In the third world regardless of a woman’s experience, education and abilities, she is relegated to the background, below the least of the men. The women are taken to be less qualified and competent. Patriarchy convinces people to see a strong and intelligent woman as a problem; a disruption of the social order. Many still believe that women are less worthy of the same opportunities afforded to men. With this social order men behave the way they like and always against women.

MALTREATMENT AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: this bothers majorly on sexual oppression. Women are taken as objects that exist to fulfill the pleasure of men. The third world women suffer verbal, emotional, physical and sexual abuses, along with traumatic injuries, sexually transmitted diseases, chronic pain, eating and sleeping disorders etc. it has been estimated that one woman out of three in the third world has been beaten, forced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Women are used for sexual fulfillment, for domestic duties, to tend to the children.

GENITAL MUTILATION: this plight of women of the third world is dehumanizing. It is worse in the societies where this dehumanizing act is carried out years after infancy. There is uncertainty regarding reasons for persistence of the practice of female genital mutilation. However, some hold that it is a measure of taming the sensual urge of the woman.

SLAVERY: this is one of the most dehumanizing things suffered by the women of the third world. The women of the third world are seen as less valuable. Women in some societies of the third world are used to pay off debts. Some fathers give out their under aged daughter to marriage and mostly against the daughter’s will to marriage because they are unable to pay up debts they owe. While in some other societies women are taken and relegated to mere domestic work force without education or empowerment plans for them.

CONCLUSION

Woman is necessary for man for the purpose of generation according to God’s command. However, women are not only for procreation but are help mates, sole-mates and companions. The woman accompanies man on the journey of life and not only to serve his need. Women are not inferior to men, thus the creator took out of the side of man to create woman this emphasizes an intended social equality, the woman was not taken out of the head of man to rule him, nor out of his feet to be under him, but from his side to be his companion.

However, the creation and Fall of mankind lay the foundation for New Testament role directives. Upon the third world women have been laid all the vices and follies of civilization and culture. Their senses are inflamed, and their understandings neglected, consequently they become the prey of their senses, delicately termed sensibility, and are blown about by every momentary gust of feeling. Most of the third world women are weakened by their culture and erroneous opinions in the favour of men as against women. The third world women’s condition is much below what it would be, were they left in a state nearer to nature. The sentences passed on man and woman affected their relationship to God, nature, and each other. These judgments affected Adam and Eve after the Fall and have affected every human being since. In Genesis the battle between the sexes began. Hard labor, sin, corruption, and death are unmistakable realities that face us every day. The judgments passed on Adam and Eve influences every human who has ever walked the face of this earth. This harsh treatment of women, which is pretty much the general pattern of human history, was not the original design of God. Sin brought it in and it therefore corrupted the original relationship between man and woman. In a very specific way, women have a general category of suffering and primarily their suffering is related to two things. It’s related to their children and their husbands; the perennial bearing and caring of children and the perennial dealing with husbands. It is a hard and has been a hard and relentless and often sorrowful duty through most of the history of women and even till today.