Eve

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lemonbeam

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Why did god punish Eve by making her pregnancy/birth painful? And is this a punishment too all women, for her sin?
 
Why does God choose any method of punishment? Here’s just my speculation: the Garden of Eden was the perfect place to live, wherein the necessary components for life existed. Food was readily available, clothing wasn’t even necessary, and the climate was the best shelter for Adam and Eve. It is the perfect place to live and raise a family. Life at that time was eternal life.

When sin came into the world, food, shelter and clothing took on a different urgency. Man now has to work very hard and often at great personal sacrifice to provide for himself and those for whom he is responsible. The gift of life is tempered with the reality that the life itself will one day come to an end due to sin. Childbirth is really bittersweet when you think about it–the newborn baby will eventually get old and die. Life is now painful, rather than perfect.

Having to till the ground by the sweat of his brow speaks to the hardships of life. Pain in childbirth points to the mortality of life.

Just my own thoughts. I don’ t think there is a definitive answer.
 
I can’t imagine how giving birth could possibly be anything but painful.
 
This is a mystery but here is my best theological understanding at this time. God wants His creatures to be one with Him. Sin is the turning away from God, which is why we are called to metanoia (turning back to God). So the “punishment” is of 2 consequences I see. There is the natural justice in rejecting God. The punishment of birth pangs, and also Adam having the world fight against him, are temporal. Sin has natural temporal consequence even today, as Christ has taught through the Church.

The other consequence of these sufferings that we all inherit is, mysteriously, God’s love in reaction to our rejection of Him. Temporal suffering produces in faithful child to learn detachment from the things of this world. For here, there is suffering, and with unblemished union with God there is not. Thus, God discipline’s His children to cry “Abba!” to Him. Suffering can influence us to cry “Help!” And God wants us to turn to Him. Temporal suffering is a means by which children learn the truth of matters in order to fulfill one’s proper goal…in this case, to be united with God. If we can try to wrap our minds about the nature of our suffering as temporal, and a means by which we can spend eternity in bliss, at the eternal banquet of joy, then we see God is most wise.

And of course, without Christ’s suffering none of this is possible. If God had not come Incarnate and showed the Way of the Cross, then the discipline is for naught. By accepting our crosses, we are united with Christ’s Passion, which is the way to Resurrection. Suffering with Christ is thus transformative, as I said, leading us to become detached from the things of this world, as Christ taught us.
 
It was always painful: God merely intensified that pain. Genesis 3:16 says:
To the woman he said: “**I will intensify **the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall be your master.”
If you’ll notice, the man had his duties made for difficult as well. Whereas before he had gone out to find food with relative ease, now he must do so by the sweat of his brow and fighting against nature:
To the man he said: "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat, “Cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, as you eat of the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat, Until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; For you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return.”
 
Scientists are always looking for signs of a “missing link.” But what if there were only two - Adam and Eve - from which all modern man arose? Scientific study of mitochondrial DNA has already identified a single original female somewhere in Africa. That’s why it would be near to impossible to find this evidence of a “missing link.” How do we find two lone fossils?

Blessings
 
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