the 'captivating' second chapter

Title: "What Eve Alone Can Tell"

To be short and sweet, this chapter has two big points: 1) Eve was the crowning glory of creation -- she was the missing piece after man was created, and the piece that made everything complete; and 2) Beauty is the essence of a woman, which is an important reflection that beauty is the essence of God.

Immediate reactions to those two points: 1) You can't really dispute it, and in a way it's nice to think about. On the other hand, if woman had been created first, man would be the crowning glory. You could argue it was just the luck of the draw. 2) The Eldredges come close to arguing that beauty is the single most important aspect of God, and that's a big claim to be making. That's a whole book -- or whole volume -- in itself. But at base, I agree that yes, a woman's beauty can be a reflection of God's beauty. And a man's strength can be a reflection of God's strength.

There's another caution in just reading this book. It builds up why women are so wonderful and how they reflect God, but since it isn't about men, you could leave it with a subconscious attitude that women are more important than men, or some such notion.

I will spare you all a yard-long post and stick to what I wrote in the margins. After all, if you felt it enough to write it next to the author's words, you might as well say it out loud.

What would you expect the Queen of a kingdom and the Beauty of the realm to feel when she wakes to find herself a laundress in a foreign land? A woman's struggle with her sense of worth points to something glorious she was designed to be. The great emptiness we feel points to the great place we were created for.

Something in me is not reacting well to this. 1) Someone has to do the laundry. 2) Does Genesis say that Eve was beautiful? It really doesn't give all that much detail about the personalities of either human. 3) When we're doing mundane chores like the laundry, is it because something inside us knows we're supposed to be workless-beings up in heaven? The mundane reminds me of something I read this summer...that's another story.

Most women define themselves in terms of their relationships.

Mmm, largely yes. Is it fair to say women are generally thinking about people, whereas men may think of ideas (at least more than women)? Just throwing that out there.

Ooh, this was a big theology thing that caught my eye.

God wants to be loved. He wants to be a priority to someone. How could we have missed this? From cover to cover, from beginning to end, the cry of God's heart is, "Why won't you choose me?" It is amazing to me how humble, how vulnerable God is on this point. ... We seem him as strong and powerful, but not as needing us, vulnerable to us, yearning to be desired.

No, no we don't. I have problems with picturing God as vulnerable and certainly with him needing us. But I could be wrong.

(They quote from "Wild at Heart" a lot. It seems cheap to me to quote yourself very much.)

Well, I said I'd keep it shorter. I think there have been a few good points, but it still seems redundant -- like other Christian lit, it might make a more effective essay. But there's not much mass-market appeal for that. There's still the feeling that they're dramatizing a bit and suiting examples to fit their needs.