Oh Man!

A few years ago, I discovered that when typing papers for college, it was no longer politically correct to simply say “man” when referring to people in general. “What about woman?” said the teacher, who made a point to include both sexes in formal writing. Likewise, it was incorrect to say “mankind” as this too had a male slant to it. Of course, I had no problem typing in my papers “men and women,” until I learned that the trend in academic documents was moving towards the phrase “women and men.” I had always heard that it was important to put ladies first, but the phrase took months to even sound normal to me. The reality is that the battle of the sexes, whether seen in the world or in written format, will always exist. These issues will not go away and humans will struggle with the tension forever. Still, there was a time when this wasn’t so. God formed man (I mean Adam), and then he formed his wife Eve. Eve was the first “woman,” a term that literally means “womb of man.” Eve and Adam were united as she came from his flesh and they lived together as one. Yes, there was a time when man and woman (or woman and man) lived together in unity! The garden story in Genesis 2 was where these two found peace.