Real Men Reject Passivity

This Sunday is week two of six in The Art of Marriage, a class Sarah and I are facilitating at church.  The Scriptural focus for this week is Genesis 3, the most important chapter in the whole Bible for understanding the Christian worldview.  This chapter explains why things are as they are, providing the reason for death and suffering but also providing the first glimpse of the gospel.  That glimpse is encapsulated in verse 15,

And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.” (NIV)

In speaking to the serpent, the Lord God (Yahweh Elohim) makes the first messianic prophecy recorded in all of history, the Protoevangelium.  From the beginning of sin, God planned to deliver His people by crushing the head of Satan.

How did humanity find itself in need of a Savior?  Earlier verses in this chapter clearly show the path to sin.  While there are many lessons we can glean from this passage, in the context of the husband-wife relationship, one important lesson strikes me as a husband: Adam is credited with the sin.  Sure, Eve is also at fault, but God curses the ground because of Adam.  All of creation groans (Romans 8:22) because Adam "listened to [his] wife and ate from the tree."  The Hebrew word for listened is shama, suggests that Adam yielded to or obeyed his wife.  He agreed to follow her rather than obey God.

I think Adam's sin is largely the sin of passivity.  Rather than actively asserting God's command and correcting his wife, he passively went along with her suggestion to eat the fruit.  Then, when confronted by God, Adam blames Eve.  He even blames God for giving Adam this woman.  Rather than leading his wife away from sin, Adam passively followed her into sin, choosing a way of life marred with curses and a broken relationship with his creator.

When my son was young, I learned about Robert Lewis's four principles of biblical manhood.  Lewis teaches that "real men" (1) reject passivity, (2) accept responsibility, (3) lead courageously, and (4) expect the greater reward.  Genesis 3 reveals the consequences of failing to be a "real man."  In one brief series of events, Adam disobeyed God by (1) passively accepting Eve's plan to disobey God, (2) failing to accept responsibility for his passivity, (3) following into sin rather than leading away from sin, and (4) accepting a lesser reward rather than expecting the greater reward.  Men would be wise to learn from Adam's mistake by resisting our natural tendency toward passivity.  We must actively and relentlessly pursue our true calling in Christ.