{"id":746,"date":"2005-12-20T14:38:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-20T14:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2005\/12\/the-mother-load.html"},"modified":"2005-12-20T14:38:00","modified_gmt":"2005-12-20T14:38:00","slug":"the-mother-load","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2005\/12\/the-mother-load.html","title":{"rendered":"The Mother Load"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I<\/p>\n<p>From the very beginning<br \/>The burden was clear<br \/>Sometimes bearable<br \/>Sometimes severe<\/p>\n<p>Ate from the apple<br \/>Shared it with him<br \/>Disobeyed the order<br \/>Indulged the whim.<\/p>\n<p>What was the outcome?<br \/>The fruit of the act?<br \/>Did she \u2018know\u2019 good and evil?<br \/>Did she experience it in fact?<\/p>\n<p>Did the earth creature join her?<br \/>Did he crumble into dust?<br \/>Did he die in an instant?<br \/>Or just tumble into lust?<\/p>\n<p>To love and to cherish<br \/>Becomes \u2018desire and dominate\u2019<br \/>Objectify the \u2018other\u2019<br \/>So you can subjugate.<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly self conscious<br \/>Instantly aware<br \/>There are no coverings<br \/>Only nakedness there.<\/p>\n<p>Hiding in the garden,<br \/>The creature in shame<br \/>Running from her Maker<br \/>Like some kind of game.<\/p>\n<p>Passing the blame on<br \/>From God to the wife,<br \/>From the wife to the snake<br \/>\u2018The\u2019 creator of strife.<\/p>\n<p>Banished from the garden,<br \/>But clothed by their God<br \/>Not allowed to live forever<br \/>Find a living from the sod<\/p>\n<p>Pain in her labor<br \/>Shortness of breath<br \/>The mother of all living<br \/>Gives birth near to death<\/p>\n<p>And would she be able<br \/>To raise Cain at all?<br \/>Or will her next offspring<br \/>Be first to fall?<\/p>\n<p>And how to redeem this?<br \/>Set the process in reverse<br \/>Put a stop to the death toll<br \/>Undoing the curse?<\/p>\n<p>II<\/p>\n<p>From the very beginning<br \/>The burden was clear<br \/>\u201cBe it unto me as you said,<br \/>The Lord\u2019s servant is here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A virginal conception<br \/>Had a child without a man<br \/>Which no one expected<br \/>And few would understand.<\/p>\n<p>She received a word of warning<br \/>A sword would pierce her soul<br \/>But the death of her first born<br \/>Would make the race whole.<\/p>\n<p>There beneath a crooked tree<br \/>Stood that woman and a man<br \/>Neither disobeyed the orders<br \/>Each accepting the plan.<\/p>\n<p>Then He rose in the garden<br \/>Reopened its gate<br \/>To the tree for the living<br \/>To the Adam without mate.<\/p>\n<p>And there in the Scriptures<br \/>Was a promise true and sure<br \/>\u201cShe\u2019ll be saved through the childbearing\u201d<br \/> That Mary did endure.<\/p>\n<p>The story revisited<br \/>The human tale revised<br \/>Motherlode now delivered<br \/>Curse reversed before our eyes.<\/p>\n<p>Dec. 20th 2005<br \/>For Brian, Lawson, Sandy, Bill, and David<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I From the very beginningThe burden was clearSometimes bearableSometimes severe Ate from the appleShared it with himDisobeyed the orderIndulged the whim. What was the outcome?The fruit of the act?Did she \u2018know\u2019 good and evil?Did she experience it in fact? Did the earth creature join her?Did he crumble into dust?Did he die in an instant?Or just&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Mother Load - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2005\/12\/the-mother-load.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Mother Load - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I From the very beginningThe burden was clearSometimes bearableSometimes severe Ate from the appleShared it with himDisobeyed the orderIndulged the whim. What was the outcome?The fruit of the act?Did she \u2018know\u2019 good and evil?Did she experience it in fact? 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What was the outcome?The fruit of the act?Did she \u2018know\u2019 good and evil?Did she experience it in fact? Did the earth creature join her?Did he crumble into dust?Did he die in an instant?Or just&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2005\/12\/the-mother-load.html","og_site_name":"The Bible and Culture","article_published_time":"2005-12-20T14:38:00+00:00","author":"Ben Witherington","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2005\/12\/the-mother-load.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2005\/12\/the-mother-load.html","name":"The Mother Load - The Bible and Culture","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-12-20T14:38:00+00:00","dateModified":"2005-12-20T14:38:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/d1fd6c7893819eabc624db38ecfd8426"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2005\/12\/the-mother-load.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2005\/12\/the-mother-load.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2005\/12\/the-mother-load.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Mother Load"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/","name":"The Bible and Culture","description":"All Things Biblical and Christian","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/d1fd6c7893819eabc624db38ecfd8426","name":"Ben Witherington","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/75e\/75ec11e1916a2008bc4cc638a0a0de2fx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/75e\/75ec11e1916a2008bc4cc638a0a0de2fx96.jpg","caption":"Ben Witherington"},"description":"Bible scholar Ben Witherington is Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary and on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University in Scotland. A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&amp;E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}