Talk to the most happily married couples or to the best
of friends and they will tell you that sometimes they do not “understand each
other,” “he does not listen to me,” or “I just do not understand her.”
If this sounds familiar do not fret as it is
to be expected and even normal. The female and male brain is different and the
two brains process information differently. The good news is that with some
conscious effort communication can be enhanced between the brains and
frustrations lowered.1
Many of the problems we face are
not problems between individual couples, but between men and women in general.
They are problems that arise because we are either too lazy or too selfish to
get to know our spouse well enough to understand how different from us they
really are!
Let us look at this article from a
Biblical perspective. Gender somehow
reflects something about God and His glory. A man reflects something about
God’s character that is different from a woman and vice versa. Let me start
with a question; “why do we struggle with
being men and women?”
God’s enemy is
Satan, and he wishes to destroy glory and since he can not destroy God, he
wishes to destroy the reflection of God, man and woman. Satan’s prime way of
attempting to destroy God’s glory and image in ‘man’ is to make it too frightening to be truly man or woman and to
offer ‘counterfeit’ routes to live
out our gender. What does it mean to be a male and female? What does it mean
that God made Adam and Eve to work together? How do we work together as
husbands and wives to fulfill the creation mandate to fulfill, subdue and rule
creation?
God created
Adam for relationship, and He mad a woman from the rib He had taken out of the
man, and brought it to the man; Gen: 2:18; 21-22. The force of the point here
is God, made another person who was neither his master nor his inferior, but
his equal. “Eve was not made out of his head to top him, not out of
his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him”
–Matthew Henry. God knew that without intimacy with an equal, Adam was
lonely, even with the creation and the Creator. God could have exclusively
filled Adam’s heart, but in His Divine brilliance, He did not do that! This was
staggering humility on God’s part to make ‘something’
that was not to be fully satisfied with the Creator and the creation and definitely
this is incomprehensible for us!
To understand
the uniqueness of males and females we have to ask 3 exegetical questions.
- Why did God make Adam first and give him the prohibition about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil before He created Eve?
- Why did God have Adam name the animals without Eve and realize in the process that Adam needs a helper suitable for him?
- Why did God bring different curses on man and woman?
Adam has more
of a direct role in subduing and bearing responsibility for the direction of
the Kingdom and this does not mean that Eve was not responsible for her sins,
and that she has no role in subduing and directing their activities in the
Garden. Adam was built with the physical and internal makeup to ‘enter, create, and shape form out of
chaos’. The curse given to Adam involved his work and all his shaping of
chaos would be fraught with futility. He would succeed but not without sweat,
blood and sorrow and even his success would be a trial. The curse was meant to punish and to provide
the humbling context for ‘Redemption’.
A woman’s role
as a helper does not mean that she is weaker or stronger. She is a ‘helper’ who is jointly to engage
creation and enter into relationship to bring glory to God. Her primary calling
is one of ‘warrior of relationship’
guardian of truth in relationship, and one who is made to uniquely reflect
God’s heart for relationship. The curse given to Eve involved relationships; and all her birthing of life would be laced
with pain and loneliness. This means that Eve would bring forth life with sweat,
blood and sorrow and she would be in conflict with her husband; Gen 3:16.
To extrapolate
it further, in her loneliness, the woman will desire to absorb, to swallow the
man to fill her emptiness, and he will fail her with base withdrawal or violent
assault….SAD! This readily seems to imply that Eve was created with the physical and internal makeup to receive,
gestate, and shape relationships out of the beauty of form. Here again the curse was meant to punish for
disobedience and to provide the humbling context for ‘Redemption’.
Sexually, a man
plants his seed, and a woman slowly incubates the mysterious union of egg and
sperm; and together they create a human being. A man is a planter, pursuer who
is to enter the world with a strength and courage that form a new being. This
tells us that human strength is an analogue of God’s love of order,
righteousness and wrath.
A woman is a nurturer, who brings creation to
life through the tender interconnectedness of her body and soul with the unborn
child. This tells us that human tenderness is an analogue of God’s love of
mystery, tenderness and mercy. A man courageously creates, and a woman
creatively shapes his creation into a lovely, relationally enhancing beauty!
One without the other is a grave-distortion- male moving to violence and female
gravitating to absorption. Order without mercy is authoritarian; mystery
without form is hedonism. In other words male and female operate in a precious
balance between life and death.
[What does love mean? Many people are surprised to learn there is not a single word for love in the Bible, there are TWO words! And only two words.
The Hebrew word for maleness love means: The "strong person in the home"
The Hebrew word for femaleness love means:The "strong person in the home, (with his) Person behold!"
Really folks, does this surprise you? A family home
with two sources of love. Both different. Yet complimentary. This the true
picture of LOVE in the Bible. We hear people speak of "agape" as some
kind of supreme godly love.
Yes, it is
important, but not complete. Agape is a Greek word translated from ahab, the
Hebrew word for maleness love. In the Bible, GOD is a FAMILY of members, each
with distinct and complimentary personalities of love expressed. May God bless
our relearning of His love.]2
Scientific studies indicate that
men are more perverse and violent than women. Sexual abusers are mostly men,
and mostly perpetrated by men. Women are most likely to be depressed and
struggle with bulimia and codependency. What does all these symptoms, point to?
Nothing but the emptiness and absorptive tendencies and even with the symptoms
of sin men and women differ greatly.
A strong husband will generally
draw forth the strong tenderness of his wife, and a tender wife will birth the
tender strength of her husband. This is suppose to be so, when husbands and
wives labor to grow into the likeness of God. They will equally grow and shape
the other, and as a result will fill the earth and subdue the earth to God’s character.
Together they bear a splendour that can not be found in either person alone.
Their relationship dispels loneliness and offers the one and only truly equal relationship
found on earth.
The splendour of maleness and the
beauty of femaleness are provided in Psalm 45. Gender is the revelation of God,
who is also protected by mystery, and they are created in the image of God. The
image of God is particularized into gender, and His character can not be
captured by His human image bearers. In other words, each gender typically
accentuates certain aspects of God’s character. God is King which highlights
strength, but also mother which emphasizes His compassion; Ps: 131; Isa: 66:13.
“As males and females we are significantly and intriguingly different….The
differences invite fascinating, unending exploration.”3
“We have a choice: We can either
delight in diversity or destroy distinctions.”4
Marriage is the first Divine
institution and God in His brilliance made it between a male and a female in
order to reveal and accentuate His character. Husband’s strength helps him resonate God’s
strong qualities, and he can help his wife understand that aspect of God more
clearly, even though he does it imperfectly. In a similar fashion, a woman’s
tenderness and compassion can increase her husband’s awareness of God’s mercy;
1 Pet: 3:1-2. We have an awesome God, great designer of the universe and
gender, made us male and female to have communion with Him, so we can try to
understand this unfathomable mystery of gender!
God is the author of relationship
and He in His brilliance made the gender, male and female, wired so different,
yet in His image to revel in His love. Nothing, absolutely nothing is more
important in this world than to have a beautiful relationship with the Living God, and to find our identity in Him
and through Him. I could never even imagine for a minute that the creation
of male and female were Divine comedy, but indeed it was Divine brilliance. It
is our lack of understanding in our fallenness we make gender as a Divine
comedy!
Notes:
by A Schaffer - Related articles
21 Oct 2008 – He and his colleagues sampled speech from male and female college students, who ...... translator of Dante's Divine Comedy from Italian into English verse. ... background with Lewis in terms of class and intellectual brilliance, ...
21 Oct 2008 – He and his colleagues sampled speech from male and female college students, who ...... translator of Dante's Divine Comedy from Italian into English verse. ... background with Lewis in terms of class and intellectual brilliance, ...
Strong's
Number or Single Word Search. Spiritual Springs: File z = 16. Hebrew, letters, love,
maleness, femaleness, ahab, ahabah, agape ... This is the Hebrew word for femaleness love. The
"strong... May God bless our
relearning of His love.
3, 4. Allender, Dan and Tremper Longman
III. Intimate Allies. Carol Stream , Illinois
Book References:
1. Thomas Garry. Sacred
Marriage: What if God designed Marriage More to Make us Holy than to make us
Happy. Toronto : Harper Collins Canada
2. Claire Smith. God’s Good Design, What The Bible Really
Says About Men and Women. Kingsford , Australia
3.
Allender, Dan and
Tremper Longman III. Intimate Allies.
Carol Stream , Illinois
Website Reference:
by A Schaffer - Related articles
21 Oct 2008 – He and his colleagues sampled speech from male and female college students, who ...... translator of Dante's Divine Comedy from Italian into English verse. ... background with Lewis in terms of class and intellectual brilliance, ...
21 Oct 2008 – He and his colleagues sampled speech from male and female college students, who ...... translator of Dante's Divine Comedy from Italian into English verse. ... background with Lewis in terms of class and intellectual brilliance, ...
Strong's
Number or Single Word Search. Spiritual Springs: File z = 16. Hebrew, letters, love,
maleness, femaleness, ahab, ahabah, agape ... This is the Hebrew word for femaleness love. The
"strong... May God bless our
relearning of His love.
