Years ago, while serving as a youth pastor, one of our teens opened her heart to my wife. In tears, she asked, “What is wrong with me? I don’t want a career. I just want to be a wife, homemaker, and mother.” She was suffering, even back then, from the deconstruction of the biblical understanding of femininity by influential voices in her culture. Those voices have only gotten louder. No wonder this teen was in tears. Understanding God’s design of femininity is profoundly deep and personal for a teen girl. It has to do with her body beginning to remind her each month she is a woman who can be a mother, the growth of her attraction to boys, and what all this means when it comes to pleasing Christ. This episode identifies many common, destructive narratives our rising young women are hearing about their feminine identity that will squeeze them into its mold if we do nothing. Then the episode takes a brief glimpse at God’s design of the magnificent creature called, woman.
In every culture of the world, men have used their power to abuse women. Sin corrupts God’s perfect design of male and female to complete one another in harmony, certainly by men exploiting women, but also by leading many to rebel against God’s design of the headship of the husband. This is a truth we must help our daughters and sons understand. Satan hates the very concept of headship. He fell because he said in his heart, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High (Is 14:14). His temptation to Eve to eat the fruit was to be like God. And God tells us that the headship of the husband in marriage will be a major source of conflict in Eve’s relationship with her husband. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you (Gen 3:16b). As the ESV Study Notes observe, These words from the Lord indicate that there will be an ongoing struggle between the woman and the man for leadership in the marriage relationship. It should not be surprising then, that at the root of many of the false narratives that are shaping the rising generation is elimination of the husband’s requirement to lead his wife and family and her responsibility to follow that lead. The pain of marriage failure and women being abused is blamed on God’s design of roles in Scripture. That is like blaming the coach’s play call when the team members don’t execute. Here are some of the toxic messages the rising generation of girls and teen girls are breathing in daily about womanhood because of sinful rebellion against God’s creation design, that they might not even be aware of.
1. Your feelings of wanting to be a nurturer need to be denied. Real fulfillment comes in being like men. Wanting to nurture children or others makes you weak and exposes you to male oppression.
2. Observing differences between girls and boys is old-fashioned and sexist. Admitting differences causes girls and women to be exploited.
3. To have value, you must prove you can do anything a male can do.
4. Seeing males as protectors is old-fashioned, weak, sexist, and even dangerous.
5. Be independent. NEVER let yourself be in a relationship where you have to depend upon a man.
6. The Bible’s teaching of hierarchy is responsible for many wives being raped by their husbands. Reject this hierarchical view.
7. A wife submitting to her husband is demeaning. Period. It proves she thinks she is inferior to him if she submits to him. She is NOT inferior and should NOT submit!
8. God never said a wife should be submissive to her husband. This teaching from Paul in the NT was influenced by the backwards, misogynist, ancient cultures of the Jews and Romans that didn’t yet understand women’s equality.
9. The NT taught wives to submit to their husbands in order to fit into their culture since Paul commanded that we should be all things to all people. But the Bible actually teaches that there is “no male or female,” proving that submission of wife to husband is outdated since modern culture recognizes it’s sexist.
10. The biblical teaching that a wife should submit to her husband is because of the fall. Since Christians are to show redemption, and that we are free from the law, in the NT era gender role distinctions are wiped out.
11. Christians who still teach the outdated idea of role differences and the requirement of men to lead their homes are extremists like other complementarians who teach that their adult daughter is under her father’s authority, that women should not have jobs outside the home, or be able to vote.
12. Since the role differences of Adam and Eve are given in the context of the mandate to have a family and reproduce, those gender differences don’t matter except in marriage. Christians are just CHRISTIAN PERSONS. To always talk of them as male or female harms the church’s outreach to single men and women.
13. Never acknowledge that estrogen affects you as a woman or that testosterone in males makes them any different from you. You must prove you are no different from men.
14. All generalizations about gender behavior and characteristics are evil, outdated stereotyping.
15. Valuing motherhood is passee and proves you are out of touch with modern womanhood.
16. The biblical view that marriage is between one man and one woman and that children need both a mother and a father is passee, and homophobic.
17. If you don’t fit the stereotype of girly girls, you are transgender and need to bind your breasts, if not remove them, hang out online with other teen girls who have become transgender, and start taking the wonder-drug testosterone.
18. If you are romantically attracted to men, that may be your real sexual orientation—heterosexual. But you won’t know for sure if you never try sex with another girl.
These false narratives are causing something very precious to erode in the hearts of the rising generation of girls—an understanding of the womanhood she was designed by her creator to experience.
The Truth That God’s Design of Femininity is Glorious
Genesis 1
God made Eve to fully bear God’s image as Adam does. Without womanhood, God’s full image cannot be revealed. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Gen 1:27).
Gender is specifically identified in the first chapter of the Bible and in the first mention of mankind being created in the image of God. The text pointedly identifies the image of God with both male and female. They are both endowed with intrinsic value as his image bearers and are equal in value and dignity. Both exercise dominion over earth in the name of God. Vocation—our calling to develop the potential of the earth—is not assigned just to Adam, while Eve stays at home to clean house and take care of the kids. Christian fathers and leaders need to make sure that no daughter of Eve ever thinks she is inferior to a male because she is a girl. The intrinsic value of a woman, because she is made in God’s image, as taught in Genesis 1 has always been the biblical, OT, and Christian worldview.
Corruptions of what the Bible teaches, however, have been rampant. For example, according to the Jerusalem Talmud, Rabbi Eliezer the Great famously said angrily to his son that he would rather burn the Torah than teach it to a woman. Sadly, much abuse of women has taken place because wives, husbands, and church leaders have permitted abuse of women to take place in the name of wives being commanded to be submissive to their husbands. These are corruptions of biblical teaching. The biblical truth is that every woman must be treated with the same dignity with which men are to be treated—because both bear the image of God.
We must help our rising daughters and granddaughters know the true facts of history about how the biblical view of gender has elevated women consistently throughout history. Here are a few facts from history.
- In almost all ancient cultures, women were considered inferior to men. Aristotle, for example, considered women to be essentially the result of birth defects—they were “misbegotten men,” incomplete and inferior physically, morally, and intellectually and these were the common views throughout the ancient world. Despite corruptions and failures in Israel’s understanding of Scripture, Jewish women were more highly valued than women in any other culture.
- When God, himself, broke into history we see Jesus demonstrate revolutionary respect for women. From Jesus’ healing of the woman with an issue of blood, to the raising of the widow’s son from the dead, to his protecting of the woman caught in adultery, to his affirmation of the woman who washed his feet with her hair, Jesus was radical in the way he treated women as the full equals of men—having intrinsic value because they, like men, are fully made in God’s image.
- Christianity has always affirmed that women are full members of the body of Christ. Galatians 3:28 states: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
- History records that because of Roman disdain for women, the typical family would keep all the healthy boys born to them but only one girl, drowning or abandoning the rest. But the early Christians would find the abandoned little girls, adopt them, and raise them in their loving homes. Several generations after this practice began—Roman men ran out of Roman women to marry! The irony is that they found lovely wives in the homes of Christians, who led the men to Christ. In fact, according to the Colson Center’s Michael Craven, that is part of the way Christianity spread through the Roman Empire (Speaking the Truth in Love Online course).
- Here is another historic fact. The crippling practice of foot binding, i.e. tightly wrapping the feet of young Chinese girls in order to reshape them into small “lotus” feet that were deemed sexier by men was practiced for centuries, the bones of little girl’s feet being broken and crippling them as late as the nineteenth century. But in the space of one generation, foot binding disappeared because of the successful campaign against it by Western missionaries and native Chinese Christians.
Despite occasional misogynistic views of Christians in history, we must help the rising generation see that anyone who blames the abuse of women on biblical teaching is ignorant of the facts of history. The high Biblical view of womanhood is clear, consistent, and in fact has been the most powerful force in history to overthrow the oppression of women. But we must also help this generation see that having proven the immeasurable dignity of woman in the first chapter of Genesis, God designs different roles for male and female in the home and the church in Genesis 2—in no way undermining that dignity and worth.
Genesis 2
A. Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a HELPER FIT for him.” Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a HELPER FIT for him (vs. 18-20).
Eve, the protype of womanhood, was created to be a “helper fit for him.” In English, the word helper sounds demeaning, like a low wage earner who washes the dishes. The Hebrew, however, has no such negative connotation. It is ezer. It cannot imply inferiority, as feminists argue, since God himself is called our ezer. The concept is to supply what is lacking—to be the perfect partner for Adam that none of the animals could be. Her partnership was necessary to complete him. “Fit for him” or “matching him” could also be translated “corresponding to” him. Eve is the only creature that is made from another creature. Since she is made FROM Adam and FOR Adam, her natural orientation is her husband.
B. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh (vs 21-24).
Eve’s created body, her relational orientation, her co-calling to be fruitful and fill the earth, and the one-flesh union of her marriage to Adam point to Eve’s design as a nurturer. This is explicitly pointed out in Genesis 3:20: The man called his wife’s name, Eve, because she was the mother of all living. “Eve” sounds like Hebrew for life-giver and resembles the word for living. The woman’s physical body gives clues to femininity. She is designed to receive her husband and surround him with love. Her breasts are made to nurture, and her life-giving womb nourishes and surrounds her developing child. These reflect the call of femininity to provide life-giving nurture. The love of a husband calls him to help his wife flourish by providing whatever she needs from the garden. A woman’s love is giving herself—surrounding loved ones with her personal attention and care.
The extension of herself as a woman is her home. Proverbs 31 makes it clear that women are gifted with awesome capacities for home management. This calling is NOT demeaning. THE HOME IS WHERE THE NEXT GENERATION IS SHAPED. What calling could be more important? Neither does the Bible’s high esteem for a woman’s role of homemaker devalue the economic contributions she makes. In Proverbs 31:16, we read, She considers a field and buys it, vs 18, She perceives that her merchandise is profitable, 24, She makes linen garments and sells them; she delivers sashes to the merchant. There is no indication that her economic productivity for the family is any less important than her husband’s. The fact is that the dichotomy of the workplace and home is a modern phenomenon. In ancient times, the home WAS the workplace. The Industrial Revolution has taken work outside the home and now couples must make decisions about how they work as a team to fulfill the cultural mandate remembering these two principles. 1) They want Eve to fully develop her potential, 2) Eve’s strongest calling is to her home.
C. Genesis 2 tells us Eve is created to be the queen of creation, not its king.
- As the Apostle Paul would later point out, the order of creation matters. Adam and Eve are partners who fulfill the creation mandate together as equal partners. But Adam was NOT Created FOR Eve to be her suitable helper; Eve was created FOR Adam to be his assistant. From the beginning of creation, husbands have been assigned the leadership role in their marriages, their homes, and their churches.
- This creation design is further communicated to us in verse 23 above, when Adam names Eve, “She shall be called woman for she was taken out of man.” Contextually and culturally naming was a mark of authority.
So, what is the point to this worldview picture of womanhood on a men’s podcast? It is HOPE. It is my hope that with this biblical understanding, you will invite your wife to help you impact the rising generation of young women in your life with the glory of biblical womanhood in such a way that they whole-heartedly embrace this call from Jani Ortlund, the author of Fearlessly Feminine:
Rejoice in your femininity. God made you a woman. He delights in your womanhood. Bask in the certainty that your femininity is beautiful to God. That which makes you different from men in this world is a God-given gift, precious in His sight. Women have already proven that they can go anywhere men can go: space, politics, war, the boardroom. Use your femininity to go where men cannot go. Where is it that God is calling you to be fearlessly feminine? What is it that God created you for, in all your delightful femininity? What is he asking of you as a woman? Where does he want your feminine touch to bring strength and dignity and beauty and peace?....As Christian women, as Christian wives, as Christian mothers, as Christian grandmothers and Aunts, as Christian employers and employees, we have the responsibility to show the next generation a clear picture of what it means to be fearlessly feminine. The image has almost faded….
Refuting the 18 False Narratives that Began This Episode
1. Your wonderful yearning to nurture other humans is God-given. Pursue it. 2. Observing differences in boys and girls is wise; they are created to be different. 3. You have nothing to do to prove your immeasurable worth as a young woman; you are created in God’s image! 4. Recognizing that males are motivated to protect others is wise. 5. Never worry about having to prove your independence. God created humans to need each other and marriage for interdependence. 6. Sin has corrupted every good thing God has designed, including marriage; male leadership in the home and church is good’s perfect design. 7. Submission does not mean inferiority. Jesus was fully equal to God the Father as the second Person of the Trinity, but he submitted to the Father’s will to accomplish our salvation. 8-9. Satan attacked Eve by making her doubt God’s word, so arguments to undermine what Scripture says have been being made since the beginning of time. Sound biblical principles of interpretation lead to the conclusion that all through the Bible, complementarianism is taught. 10. The leadership role of Adam is clearly part of God’s creation design. 11. Believing in role differences in marriage is not being an extremist—every culture in history has believed on role distinctions. The extremist view is the one that tries to deny what history, biology, and the social science prove. Men and women are different. 12. Although role differences can be over-emphasized, the callings and responsibilities of Christian men and women are different. 13. Christians don’t deny physical reality, including the high estrogen in women and testosterone in men. 14. Generalizations are not inherently evil; they are the way we think. It is called inductive reasoning, reasoning from the specifics to the general. 15. Motherhood is a precious calling in the sight of God. 16. Research proves that kids need both a mom and a dad. 17. God is way too creative to create girls alike. Your departure from your stereotype of femininity is perfect because you were perfectly designed by God for good works. 18. Male-female romantic and sexual attraction are wonderful, powerful, and designed to be fully expressed only in the life-long covenant commitment of marriage.
For Further Prayerful Thought:
- What are the unbiblical statements that you hear about gender differences and gender roles?
- How would you prove to a young Christian that the biblical view of womanhood is that she is equal to a man in worth and dignity, despite being called to different roles?
- What aspect of true femininity as described in Genesis 2 do you think is being lost today?
