Yes, I am obsessed with Adam and Eve …
The other day I wrote a somewhat serious post about the historicity of Adam and Eve.
Today, I want to ask, what if they were not as attractive as we have made them out to be?
I have heard countless people describe Eve to be a ravishing beauty and Adam to be a muscular, handsome dude.
But what if they were not? What if instead of Tom and Giselle, they were more like George Costanza and Ugly Betty?
What makes me ask such a thing? I don’t know it’s a blog.
What makes me think they might not have been as attractive as the flannel board pictures in Sunday School?
Because the Bible describes Jesus as a mild-looking man (Is. 53:2’s prophetic description).
What if Adam was bald and had a beer gut and what if Eve looked more like Leah than Rachel and spoke with a lisp?
Of course it doesn’t matter what they actually looked like, unless we need them to be beautiful.
And what about this glorified body of Jesus that we are to receive upon our entrance into eternity? Further, what about all this last shall be first stuff too? If you were not attractive on earth, will you be a hottie in heaven? If you were a model on the cover of Christian Men’s Health, will you look like Homer Simpson (or Gary Busey or Steve Buscemi in heaven?
What if our heavenly appearance was in direct relation to your heart on earth? Ouch.
What if our heavenly appearance was in direct relation to our tithing record, or our service to others? We gonna have a lot of ugly peeps up there :-)
What if God’s idea of beauty is completely different to our earthy understanding of it?
OK, I can’t resist. Here’s a sermon opener I borrowed for a message from Ephesians 5 the week before Mother’s Day when the men were on a retreat:
One afternoon as God and Adam were talking in the garden, God asked Adam, “So, what do you think of the woman I made for you?”
Adam replied, “God, she’s amazing! Why did you have to make her so beautiful?”
God answered, “So that you would like her.”
Adam said, “That’s cool. But God, why did you make her so clueless?”
God smiled, “So that she would like you.”
Lol – and you don’t think this could work figuratively? (insert my sinister laugh here).
Remember I come down similar to your convictions, but I love wondering about it all. I find that it expands my view of theology and the grandeur of God.
Thanks for reminding me. Perhaps in the busyness of life I’ve lost touch with the ability to sit still and wonder about things. Pragmatism has gotten too strong of a hold on me, and I’m never caught up on the to-do lists. I’m starting to feel like Julia Roberts who needed to go somewhere and just marvel at something. But even then I’d be on the go, which in itself makes Psalm 46:10 an even harder challenge.
Keep asking – you may yet bring me back into the fold of those who are more than content to look at God and enjoy Him for who He is.
Interesting thought. Here’s what we do know: that incest was initially a necessity to populate the planet. As time went on, the imperfections in our genes (as a result of sin), now make the offspring of incestuous relationships deformed. We also know that Adam lived hundreds of years as did many in the ancient world. Therefore, the closer we are to creation, the closer we are to perfect genes and the perfect man and woman. We also know that women in the ancient world were attractive enough for angels to sin in Gen. 6, and they were just knock-offs of the gene pool, as are we. Based on all that, does it make sense that Adam and Eve would be ugly?