Adventist Review: Pain and Promise


C O V E R S T O R Y

BY JENNIFER MINNER PAYNE

"To the woman he said, 'I will greatly increase your pain in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children'" (Gen. 3:16). ^*

HEN EVE FIRST HEARD THOSE words from God, she had probably not yet experienced physical pain.

Just the thought of the painful and complicated births that my mom went through--four cesarean sections and long, traumatic deliveries--makes me rethink my desire to have children. Is it worth it? Will I have the same experiences as my mom did?

It seems that I have heard horror stories about childbirth my entire life: long hours spent in labor, allergic reactions to medication, doctors on vacation, and other scary situations. Since Adam and Eve's removal from the Garden of Eden childbirth has been a painful experience. Although some women don't have as much trouble as others, and modern medicine is able to somewhat alleviate the pain, even today--thousands of years after the "curse" was originally pronounced--childbirth can still be a scary experience.

Fruits of Labor
Those who have never before given birth understand enough about pain to be terrified by the possibility of it. Yet despite the promise of pain, most women, from Eve onward, looked forward to the birth of their children as a fulfillment of their role in the family and community, and as the possible fulfillment of the promised Messiah. Although the pain that coincides with childbirth has been known to be intense and traumatic, women continue to have children. Why?

Certainly Mary would have known enough about pain to be aware of the physical consequences of giving birth. And yet she was honored to give birth to Jesus. Women today who believe that the Messiah has already come and gone still look forward to the birth of their babies as a new and more challenging and rewarding stage in their lives. Truly, motherhood is regarded as one of the most (if not the most) noble roles God has given women on this earth. "Would that every mother could realize how great are her duties and her responsibilities and how great will be the reward of faithfulness. . . . the mother's work is given her of God, to bring up her children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."1

God intended children to be blessings to their parents, not constant reminders of pain. I have asked my friends if their births were painful: most were. My follow-up question was: "Did you forget about the pain after it was over?" Most have answered, "Yes!"

God did not intend for childbirth to be a continual, depressing experience--the joy of having a child bless your life so greatly overshadows the momentary pain felt during labor that mothers soon forget the painful circumstances surrounding the birth; they rejoice in the new life. "Sons are a heritage from the Lord, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them" (Ps. 127:3-5).

Understanding Pain
It is significant that the first explanation of pain and the consequences of sin came at the same time as the first revelation of the plan of salvation, during the critical moment when God was pronouncing His judgment on Adam and Eve after their disobedience in Eden. Specifically, the enmity between the woman and the serpent (or symbolically, the church and Satan) was a type for what was to come of the great controversy. Adam and Eve listened as God told them that mankind would suffer because of their decisions.

Physical pain and hard work were now to be a part of their lives. "But before they [Adam and Eve] heard of the life of toil and sorrow which must be their portion, or of the decree that they must return to dust, they listened to words that could not fail to give them hope. Though they must suffer from the power of their mighty foe, they could look forward to final victory."2

They came to understand that although there were consequences to be faced because of their decisions, the Son of God had offered to atone for the sins of humanity by becoming a man Himself. Therefore, the understanding of the pain of childbirth was explained only with the promise of the relief from that pain by the very birth of a Child. Christ's humble and possibly quite painful birth in that stable so many years ago is the very reason that we will soon be freed from all the pain and suffering. The birth of a Baby has delivered us from all pain. Some would call this ironic; I call it providential.

There Is Hope
Christ explains the consequence of sin only along with the answer to it. We sinned; Jesus chose to accept our guilt. In Romans 6:23 Paul clearly lays out the consequence: "The wages of sin is death," and immediately gives the merciful solution: "but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." God provided a way out.

We are promised that there will be no more pain in the perfect world to come. "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away" (Rev. 21:4). Jesus pointed out that the pain a woman endures in childbirth but soon forgets is like the suffering that humans endure while on this earth, but that it too is fleeting. "A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy" (John 16:21, 22).

The concept of salvation is so deep and complex that we will never fully understand the plan until God reveals it to us face-to-face after the Second Coming. However, each baby that is born is a reminder of how Jesus fulfilled prophecy to save us from pain forever. And so, even though we still endure physical pain for a time, and expectant mothers continue to request epidurals, we can live with the constant hope that soon and very soon our tears will be wiped away by the divine and yet human finger of our Lord.

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* Bible texts in this article are from the New International Version.

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1 Ellen G. White, The Adventist Home, p. 233.
2 White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 66.

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Jennifer Minner Payne is an English and history teacher at Highland View Academy in Hagerstown, Maryland. She loves to travel with her husband, Jason, and visit friends and family around the world.

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BY STEFANIE JOHNSON

"For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). ^*

OR 11 YEARS I WENT TO A SEVENTH-DAY Adventist school close to our family home in Maine. Then I decided to complete my last year of high school at Shenandoah Valley Academy in Virginia.

Though I was venturing into Southern territory, I determined to stay connected to my Northern roots. Each time I introduced myself to someone new, I'd said, "Hi! My name is Stefanie, and I am from Maine." Quickly, my new friends were also introducing me that way to others. This placed me in an immediate context for those I met: moose, Yankee, lobster, L. L. Bean products.

In the Scriptures, names, lineage, and origins reveal a lot about a person's history. The Gospel writers each begin their stories by telling the reader where Jesus is from as a way to introduce who He is. The Synoptic Gospels begin by placing Jesus in a genealogical context, identifying Him with His relatives. Matthew starts with a complete family tree rooted in Abraham. Mark opens with a quote about John the Baptist from Isaiah. The first actors in Luke's script are Zacharias and Elizabeth, John the Baptist's parents. The fourth Gospel, however, is different.

A Dual Role
John chooses to open by introducing Jesus as part of the Godhead, conjuring up images of the earth as void, before humans. John establishes Jesus as the Creator of humanity before He establishes Him as the Son of man. John's Gospel uses the familiar phrase "In the beginning" to place Jesus in a historical context, before the conception of humanity. Then, in the space of just a few short verses, John draws a straight line from Creation to the incarnation. John writes, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . All things came into being through Him. . . . He was in the world, and the world was made through Him" (John 1:1-10, NASB). John introduces Jesus as the Creator who becomes the Created.

This unique introduction signals that Jesus' roles as Savior and Creator are intertwined. Jesus was there, John says, at the birth of humanity, and, as such, this Savior has arrived to provide a way for all of His fallen creation to flourish once again.

Empty Garden, Empty Tomb
The gifts given to humanity in Genesis 1 include the opportunity to partner with God in the act of creation. Adam and Eve are told, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth" (Gen. 1:28, NASB). The human creation is endowed with creativity. This gift, however, becomes a curse at the Fall. When Eve is told, "In pain you shall bring forth children" (Gen. 3:16, NKJV), this curse includes not only the physical pain of giving birth, but also implies the emotional pain of loving someone more than yourself, and knowing that he or she will die. The wages of sin are death. Outside of the Garden of Eden, everything humans create will inevitably be destroyed.

Genesis, therefore, suggests that the ultimate curse of knowing good and evil is that creativity is distorted and marred. God Himself understands this curse. He chose to create humanity even with knowledge of the Fall. God experienced the pain of rejection from His own creation. In a sinful world the creation of an object, an idea, a marriage, a friendship, or a child carries with it the possibility of rejection, and the inevitability of loss.

The good news of the Gospel of John--the Gospel that begins with Jesus as the Creator--is that the Savior comes not only to redeem all of creation, but also to restore to humans the gift of creativity as unfettered joy.

In Genesis 3 there is no clear promise of such a hopeful ending. With the exception of a vague allusion in verse 15 to the serpent's bruised head, Adam and Eve are not told of the Creator's plan of salvation. The chapter records a litany of curses followed by expulsion from the garden. However, John uses imagery and vocabulary associated with the beginning to connect directly with that hopeless image. This Gospel proves that the story does not end at Genesis 3:24 with the gate to Eden guarded and locked. John juxtaposes the empty garden with the empty tomb. He connects Jesus with the birth of humanity and, in doing so, splices a new ending onto the story of the Fall--one with hope of a resurrection. Jesus is the way back to Genesis 1 and 2, a new heaven and a new earth, not merely back to an Israelite heyday, as many of the Jews of His time believed.

The Ultimate Promise
John not only makes the connection between creativity and salvation by opening his Gospel with the words of Genesis, but also by employing metaphors of birth when speaking of salvation. In John 16 Jesus suggests that His impending death and resurrection will be an experience that mirrors the curse of Genesis 3:16, when Eve learns of birth pains. However, Jesus' metaphor introduces a new hope. Jesus says to His disciples, "Whenever a woman is in labor she has pain, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world. Therefore you too have grief now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you" (John 16:21, 22, NASB). Through Jesus' death and resurrection Creation on earth may be interrupted, but it will resume in the earth made new for eternity, with endless joy.

Another connection between salvation and birth is found in John 3. Jesus baffles Nicodemus by telling him, "Unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (verse 5, NASB). Nicodemus puts up a reasonable objection. "How," he asks, "can a man be born when he is old? . . . Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!" (verse 4). It is as impossible for one adult to return to the womb as it would be for all humanity to return now to Eden before the Fall.

Jesus then reveals the plan to overcome this impossibility. Jesus suggests that He will die and be reborn. All we have to do is believe. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (verse 16). Jesus offers Himself, as God's monogenes, only being, as the answer to Genesis 3:16. It is an offer of salvation by faith--the impossible becomes possible through belief. The Godhead experiences the pain of birth so that we might be reborn to eternal life.

The Gospel of John tells the story of the redemption of creation and the restoration of creativity as a gift of Paradise without the negative inevitability of the Genesis 3 curse. The new earth is a place of riotous creativity--of the birth of ideas and the relationships and things beyond imagining without restraint or pain.

In the final chapter of the Scriptures, John the revelator relays a vision of this hope of creation and its creativity restored. He describes Eden, reopened, and cites Jesus as both Creator and Created when Jesus says, "I am the Root and the Offspring of David" (Rev. 22:16). John the revelator writes, "Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life. . . . On each side of the river stood the tree of life. . . . And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse" (verses 1-3).

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* Unless otherwise noted, Bible texts in this article are from the New International Version.

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Stefanie Johnson writes from Takoma Park, Maryland, where she works at the Center for Law and Public Policy at Columbia Union College.