You know about the curse, don't you? No...not some horror movie. And not a woman's time of the month. I'm talking about the curse thrust upon the world because Adam and Eve decided to eat a piece of forbidden fruit.
If you aren't familiar with it, the gist of it is this:
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."
Of course, it goes on to curse the men as well. But I wanted to stop here. For thousands of years, theologians have debated the meaning of this. And, while I have had my own theories throughout the years, I finally have come to an astounding conclusion. I think that this is a fill-in-the-blank. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a little line drawn immediately after the word "husband"...but the Bible translators didn't know what that meant, so left it out.
But before I reveal the meaning of the curse to you, let me back up.
My wife is hot. And in this case, I'm referring to her body temperature. We never agree on the thermostat setting in our house, nor the heater setting in the car. It'll be fifteen degrees outside, and my fingers are bordering on becoming popcicles, but my wife will roll down the car window while driving seventy on the freeway because she is so hot. As it turns out, this seems to be common among most married couples I've met: Disagreement with body temperatures.
Well, in the past few months, something has changed. Suddenly, my wife is freezing all the time. Of course, this also happened to be when I installed a handy digital thermostat that allows me to reduce energy bills by automatically lowering the temperature in the house at night to 62 degrees, while keeping it at 68 during the day. Regardless, if I can sleep in nothing but my underwear at night, something is seriously wrong if I wake up in the morning to find my wife sleeping with her coat and mittens on.
So, it didn't take long for me to realize the significance of this. It is the curse incarnate. (That doesn't really make any sense, but it sounds cool.) You see...let's fill in the blank:
Your desire will be for your husband to turn up the heat, and he will rule over you by insisting we need to save money.
Now, in your household, you might find the need to fill in those blanks with other things. But clearly, this is the answer to one of the Bibles most controversial points. And, since it is supposed to be a curse against women (and if you don't believe me, go look it up yourself in Genesis 3:16), clearly, it is my duty to rule over my wife and get my way on the matter.
Now, now, don't start quoting me further scripture about how men are to love their wives as themselves. I just don't wanna hear it! Because then it means I can't get my way. After all, it isn't my fault my wife decided to choose this year to alter her own body temperature, is it?
I think I'm going to be buying my wife some warm pajamas soon.
