At the core of masculinity is helping those around us flourish, i.e. reach their fullest potential. That is what Adam was place in the Garden to do. Today begins a three-week series about helping our daughters and granddaughters flourish. For the first three weeks of May, our topic is Raising Godly, Confident, Daughters and Granddaughters. This episode explains how to help them develop a biblical understanding, sometimes called a biblical worldview of womanhood. Helping her to build this perspective is absolutely vital for her to build confidence in the way she was created, and if called to be a wife, have marriage that honors Christ.
Today’s episode is about shedding any false stereotypes and helping our ladies build a biblical worldview about gender, becoming godly, confident women who understand and celebrate their femininity. We want them to confidently be able to answer the question, “What does it mean that God created them female?” Although daughters will fight tooth and nail (as they should) to defend the truth that girls are equal to boys, deep down those who are healthy don’t want to be like boys: they want to be what they were designed to be…women. They recognize intuitively that gender differences are not superficial, but deeply connected to their very sense of identity. Theologian Paul Jewett, reminds us:
Sexuality permeates one’s individual being to its very depth; it conditions every facet of one’s life as a person. As the self is always aware of itself as an ‘I,’ so this ‘I’ is always aware of itself as himself or herself. Our self-knowledge is indissolubly bound up not simply with our human being but with our sexual being (Man As Male and Female).
Our wives, daughters, and granddaughters need us to affirm God’s creation design of them. Beyond that, in a world where they continually interact with those who espouse other world views, be they feminists, traditionalists, egalitarianists, or LGBTQ advocates, we need to help our female loved ones understand, celebrate, and winsomely articulate the biblical worldview of womanhood. Before we look at the biblical view of gender, though, it is important to identify two mistakes to avoid in helping another develop a biblical worldview.
1. The first mistake to avoid is implying that their generation, i.e. modern secular culture represents the evil world to which Christians must not conform. Demonizing modern culture in general because many of its worldviews are unbiblical, profoundly misunderstands the biblical view of CULTURE. Because all humans are assigned the creation task to build culture, and all humans are made in God’s image, there is much in modern, “secular” culture that Christians should affirm. Besides farmers, truckers, and grocers whose work is used by God to provide our daily bread, art and music celebrate his creation and technology finds new ways to make life better. The secular world is also quite capable of identifying injustice and opposing it, way before Christians do.
It is true that William Wilberforce, who labored 24 years to abolish slavery in Britain and many of his followers were Christians. So were Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and many of her followers. But it is equally true than many non-Christians opposed the evil of chattel slavery before many Bible-believing Christians did. In our day, feminists, who sadly are mistaken in their egalitarian approach to marriage, have rightly seen the injustice of closing doors of opportunity to women and sounded the alarm about Christian women allowing themselves to be beaten by their husbands because of their mistaken understanding of the Biblical teaching to be submissive to their husbands. Feminists have also identified the hurtful way that churches almost always link femininity to marriage and the family, unfairly causing single women to feel like second class citizens. Although my denomination believes leadership responsibility in the home and church family is assigned to men, the culture’s focus on the injustice of denying women the opportunity to use their gifts is fomenting a welcome reexamination (in my view) of some of our traditions. Some would argue that this is a slippery slope, but the church must always examine its practices to see if they are based on Scripture or tradition.
A biblical worldview makes us unafraid to recognize truth, even though it is proclaimed by fallen worldviews. Instead, a biblical worldview recognizes the ring of truth in the injustices that others point out and the validity of their contribution to the culture, as those made in the image of God. Nancy Pearcey, in her book, Total Truth, explains how she learned this lesson at L’Abri in Switzerland.
I returned to L’Abri and discovered how liberating a worldview approach can be. There is no need to avoid the secular world and hide out behind an Evangelical subculture; instead, Christians can appreciate works of art and culture as products of human creativity expressing the image of God. On the other hand, there is no danger of being naïve or uncritical about false and dangerous messages imbedded in secular culture, because a worldview gives the conceptual tools needed to analyze and critique them.
2. The second way to fail when helping a daughter embrace a biblical worldview is to critique another’s unbiblical worldview without a heart of compassion for those misled by it. Pearcy points to the heart of her mentor, Francis Shaefer:
When expressing the pessimism and nihilism (belief that life is meaningless) expressed in so many movies, paintings, and popular songs, he demonstrated profound empathy for those actually living in such despair. “These works of art are expressions of men who are struggling with their appalling lostness,” he wrote. “Dare we laugh at such things? Dare we feel superior when we view their tortured expressions in art?” The men and women who produce these things “are dying while they live; yet where is our compassion for them” (Ibid).
As we seek a biblical worldview of gender, we do it with sorrow in our hearts for human sin, which has corrupted God’s design of humans as male and female. The Bible has been used as a weapon both to justify oppression and justify rebellion. So, let’s turn to a careful examination of the Bible’s teaching about gender so that we are equipped to winsomely guide our loved ones into spiritual health.
The first mention of gender in the Bible occurs with the very first mention of human beings. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them (Gen 1:27). This means that our femaleness or maleness is not incidental to our identity, but constitutes our very essence. Kathy Keller, co-author with Tim of The Meaning of Marriage, writes,
Every cell in our body is stamped as XX or XY. This means that I cannot understand myself if I ignore the way God designed me, or if I despise the gifts he may have given to help me fulfill my calling. If the postmodern view that gender is wholly a “social construct” were true, then we could follow whatever path seemed good to us. If our gender is at the heart of our nature, however, we risk losing a key part of ourselves if we abandon our distinctive male and female roles.
The biblical account shows that Adam and Eve were created with absolute equality. Both are made in the image of God, equally being given the mandate to exercise dominion over the earth. Men and women together, in harmony with one another, must carry out God’s mandate to build civilization and culture. Immediately after making us male and female, God tells us to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (Gen 1:28). Here, as his image bearers, we are to continue God’s action of creating. But obviously, this calling to create human life is something we can only carry out together! Neither sex has all that is needed. Only in complementary union can we do it. These verses describe the physical reality that points to their total complementarity—they have been designed to fit together perfectly!
Genesis 2 reveals more about Adam and Eve’s complementarity. When God sees Adam alone, a male without a female to complete him, God says, “It is not good.” The aloneness of Adam is the first thing in the universe that God finds imperfect.
No existing animal could complete Adam. So, we read I will make him a helper fit for him. In English, the word helper sounds demeaning, like a low-wage earner who sweeps the floors. The Hebrew, however, has no such negative connotation. The word translated “helper” is ezer, which cannot imply inferiority, since God Himself is called our ezer. The concept is to supply strength that is lacking. Ezer could be translated, suitable helper, necessary ally, or strong assistant. Although many of the interactions between male and female presume the context of marriage, I believe that this revelation of God’s purpose for creating Eve reveals a creation truth. Women are naturally better at partnering with others to accomplish a task than are men. A woman as a CEO in business or on a leadership team may be contributing her femininity to her business through her strength at building, or helping to build, a team.
“Fit for him” or “matching him” translates a Hebrew phrase that literally means “like opposite him.” Kathy Keller explains,
The entire narrative of Genesis 2, in which a piece of the man is removed to create the woman strongly implies that each is incomplete without the other. Male and female are “like opposite” to one another. They are like two pieces of a puzzle that fit together, because they are not exactly alike nor randomly different, but they are differentiated such that together they complete a complex whole. Each sex is gifted for different steps in the same Great Dance.
What a glorious picture! Yet, in our Western democracy, when Scripture applies these creation principles to the Christian home and the church, Paul’s teaching feels harsh, chauvinistic, and unfair:
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her….(Eph 5:22-25).
Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet (1 Tim 2:11-12).
It has been said that heresy is truth out of balance. Even with the explanation of the creation roots behind these commands, these will likely be rejected by many daughters and granddaughters unless they are taught in balance with the other biblical truths that constitute the worldview. Here are some of those truths.
- All Christians are commanded to be submissive to one another (deny themselves) in some way. Husbands are to deny themselves by laying down their lives for their wives, wives by yielding to their husband’s leadership.
- Headship taught by Paul has zero connotation of “lording over” others. Headship is modeled by Jesus in Phil 2:5-11. Though Jesus was equal with God, he emptied himself of his glory and took on the role of a slave. Jesus shed his divine privilege without becoming any less God, and he took on the most submissive role—that of a servant, putting his view of headship into practice by washing his disciple’s feet.
- Husbands as heads of their wives are therefore servant leaders; wives are to be strong helpers. Both make themselves slaves to the other, but in different roles. The example for both is Jesus.
- Godly manhood is defined in creation as a man giving himself up to cause those in the garden to flourish (avad) and be protected (shamar).
- Women in general are not commanded to be submissive to men in general; rather, Christian wives who say, “yes” to the husband’s promise to love them are choosing to respect his leadership in their home.
- Submission does not mean silently accepting a husband’s decision when she thinks it is wrong. To the contrary, loyalty to him means telling him when she thinks he is wrong, but in the end trusting God to work through her husband who is accountable to God and takes responsibility for the final decision.
- In the Church, which Paul calls the household of God, the same pattern of love and order is to be followed as the Christian home: men are to lead.
- The historical setting in which the women were told to be silent was the authoritative determination by the synagogue elders of the orthodoxy or heresy of a visiting rabbi’s teaching. That authoritative function of serving as an elder was assigned by Paul in the New Testament to men. Woman are welcome to use their gifts in any way that a non-ordained man can.
- In the two spheres where men are given leadership, the home and the church, they are accountable to the elders of the church for their behavior.
Questions for a Conversation with Daughters or Other Christian Girls/Women
1. What messages do you hear through the social media about womanhood?
2. What do you think the Bible teaches about the value of women?
3. What do you believe the Bible teaches about why Eve was created?
4. What do you think the Bible teaches about differences in roles between husbands and wives in marriage?
5. How would you defend from the Bible the truth that women are equal to men?
6. How does it make you feel when you read Ephesians 5:22 “Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.”
7. If the Bible’s teaching about something as profound as a wife’s role in marriage is not relevant to us because Paul was influenced by his culture, how do you know which other parts of the Bible are not true, because they were shaped by culture?
8. Since the Bible says that Jesus submitted to the Father’s will, do you believe Jesus (God the Son) is inferior to the Father?
9. Does the submission of a citizen to a police officer mean the citizen is inferior to the police officer or the submission of a church members to church elders mean they are inferior to the church leaders? If not, why do some people say that a wife submitting to her husband means saying she is inferior?
10. Do some of your friends scoff at the Biblical view of marriage roles? How does that make you feel?
For Further Prayerful Thought:
1. The best way to teach female loved ones the biblical worldview of gender is by exhibiting godly manhood. What are some places you can improve your commitment to helping others flourish?
2. What have been the objections you have heard to the biblical worldview of gender. Which parts of the biblical picture might they be missing?
