What's Better Than A Nice Day Of Manual Labor?

I was walking through Wal-Mart last night for about an hour with my friend Kelly. We talked about various things, but what ended up dominating our conversation was a question of the oldest curse on man.

Genesis chapter three tells the story of the fall of man into sin. Man sins, and then a curse is placed on man by God. I might argue that man placed the curse on himself by disobeying God, where God had created a world that dispenses "curses" in reaction to deeds done apart from God's pre-established will. But either way, it happens. **it happens.

The first curse involves humanity at the serpent. They will be each other's enemies for history. The snake's (Satan's) descendants and woman's descendants will stomp and bite each other. It's strange how this is especially directed at the woman, even though she and man both had consequences, as did the serpent.

**Throwing in a random thought that came to me. This isn't traditional thought so you can think it's wrong, but I do want to post it cause it makes some sense. What is woman's descendants and the snake's descendants are the same people. It kind of works to the duality of man, how we're good and bad. Like Paul talks about, we are at war with each other. It's not my doing, but the sinful nature inside of me... the serpent inside of me, waging war against my righteous humanity. Jesus crushes the head of that snake, and thus shows us we can all choose to crush the head of that snake inside of us. What does get me though is this. "You will crush his head and he will strike his heel" You'd think the crush of the head would come first. Unless Jesus crushes his head by denying his sinful nature in what will become a fatal blow, but the snake strikes his heel; evil in humanity crucifies Jesus. This is not as fatal a blow as would be expected, it has only gotten the heel, it will in fact only increase the blow sent to the serpent.

Surely some of you will consider this heresy, but although it just came to me now, it kind of fits. I'm not holding it as sacred law, but I'll continue to play with it.**

The next curse is to the woman. She'll have pain in childbearing (physical and more than physical (emotional maybe even spiritual)). She'll also want to control her husband but he will dominate her.

For man, the ground he works on for food and provision will be cursed. He'll have to work through the thorns and thistles to get the grain. His work will be toil. He'll be a slave to hard labor until you die and become the dust you worked on all your life.

The world for pain in the woman's childbearing, and toil in the man's work are the same Hebrew word. Interesting huh?

So the big question is this... are these curses something we have freedom from in Jesus? Our question was mainly geared toward work. Does work have to be hard because of the curse? I believe I've seen someone who is no longer under that curse. Our grounds keeper at RMU is a man with a tough job, but he loves life and his work. He is never upset or discourage as far as I can tell. He is an amazing man of God, whom I wish everyone could get to know. Get to know him a bit here.

Are these curses gone, or can we just get some relief from them, but never truly escape until we go to heaven, if that's what you believe.

I believe that through Christ we have victory over the curse, and all other curses that come from sin and a sinful world. We may not see them disappear completely until the world is restored, but we can see hints of the old way passing and the new way coming. Now I believe that God desires the world to be restored by us through Him (Him in us), others of you may not believe that. Thus that could, but may not, be the dividing idea in if we can be completely free from the curse now or not.

Kelly and I ended up agreeing that you could be free of those things now, but I feel like our agreement was a fluke or unjustified. I need to talk to her about again in a location more conducive to thought.

This is a topic that I think I'm where I should be on it, but the solid foundation isn't as solid as I'd like it to be. I may find more holes, or maybe I just haven't thought through all the possibilities to be completely at peace with it yet.

How do you feel about that? How do you feel about my Genesis 3 blaspheming?