The Family Cursed Before the Fall

None of the animals or birds could serve as "an help meet" for Adam.  So God put Adam to sleep, and roused him later.  God removed one of Adam's ribs, a part which--assuming an uncomplicated excision--a person needs scarcely more than the foreskin routinely removed from males.  Adam neither participated in any sacrificial aspect of the rib removal, nor did it cost him anything noticeable.  Yet it is the fact of Eve being the bone of Adam's bones and the flesh of his flesh that is most seized upon by Adam upon his arousal--not the fact that she is a glorious individual creature, as much the property of herself as Adam was the property of himself.

God should have been "an help meet" for Adam; any of the incredible creatures of the natural world should have been "an help meet" for Adam.  Adam, however, would not be so easily satisfied, and the cycles of "roused, readied, reaped" that he had already undergone lead to him (and Eve) reaping a formidable harvest: Mankind was to be confronted by the innumerable challenges of family life, a burden thrust upon humanity by the conceits of man, not by the foundational design of God.

"And Adam said, This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man" (Genesis 2:23, KJV).  We must not forget at this moment the grinding contrast between the "Christian family life" prattle of the denominations, and the shocking disdain for family life shown by Jesus.  This passage from Genesis would seem to be at the root of this contrast.  Adam, in an awful episode scarcely discernable from the arrogance of Lucifer, arrogates unto himself not only the role of pronouncing selfishly on the suitability of Eve, but also the role of naming Eve's kind ("Woman") almost as though she were just another animal, and certainly as though her stature was to be measured merely by her relationship to "Man."

Only now can we absorb the full, unsettling import of the ensuing verse, usually attributed as a quote from God, but even worse if it came from Adam: "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."  The notion, sometimes kicked around, that this verse is transmitting something about matrilocal unions is scarcely worth serious consideration; from Cain building a city through to the patriarchs fetching brides from afar, the notion of parent-in-law location seems to matter little, if at all.

No, the part about "leave his father and his mother" is as sad as it sounds--the progress of individual development throughout life consists of making some bonds, and breaking others.  For all its blessings, family life--as Jesus relates exhaustively--is a curse.  A family is what we participate in when such participation--as we have decided or absorbed--is denied to other people in the world, either entirely or in proportion to how we form or breed new bonds.  We have people who are our family because other people are not--it is a curse.

And then there are the myriad complications that arise because of the reproductive function--the "cleaving" and the "one-fleshing"--how it both pervades and drags down the nobler aspects of human interactions.  Don't even get me started on it; or perhaps I should say: Don't even get Jesus started on it.