BP 127
Today we’re here to dive into the differences between men and women and how they dance together. First, here are a few quotes by people related to some of those differences, earthy though they may be. Do you think they are correct?
Women are inclined to regret the sex they had, and men the sex they didn’t.
—Christian Rudder
When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country.
—Elayne Boosler
Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
—Henry Louis Mencken
To rightly understand men and women, we must begin with God and His word, and not because we should. Never that. Simply said, it is wise to begin with God since He is the source of all truth. Otherwise, we are left to rely on the fallen human mind.
In the Beginning God
Romans 1 describes how we as fallen humans distort God in several ways: we actively suppress the truth about God, we deny His existence, and we exchange Him for idols. If our perceptions of reality are built on our inherent ungodliness and unrighteousness instead of God’s truth, all we think and experience about God will be distorted. Romans tells us that our thinking is futile, and our hearts are darkened. Strong words.
Writing about the importance of beginning with God, A.W. Tozer tells us that “what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” I might tweak Tozer’s statement a bit to say, how we think about, know personally, and experience God in our hearts is the most important thing about us. It is not just our minds that must be engaged about God, but our hearts, our love, our emotions must be engaged with Him.
Here we find ourselves back at that old truth: I may be a nut, but at least I’m screwed onto the right bolt (God).
Our fallen selves (nuts) will certainly distort the truth about God, self, and others. We are spiritually blind to God’s truth so how can we begin to see it at all? We are rebels so how would we even want to see and embrace God’s truth? As Romans 8 tells us, we are hostile to God.
But when we come into a right relationship with God—screwed onto the bolt, Jesus, the One who grounds everything in the universe to truth–then we are given the mind of Christ and new hearts and new eyes so we can determine what is true and right in this world.
C.S. Lewis was getting at this same truth when he wrote, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” Lewis was telling us that when we know God and have Jesus’ mind and the Holy Spirit living in our hearts, then we see everything else in this universe clearly. Maybe not perfectly yet, but rightly.
To believe in Jesus in our minds and to love Him in our hearts is so important because He gives us eyes to see Him, others, and ourselves rightly, healthily, lovingly, beautifully.
So, then, how we view God and relate to Him is the starting point—even about how we view and relate to the opposite gender. Romans 1 not only describes how fallen humans distort their relationship with God but also how they distort relationships with other humans even to the point of idolatry and practicing sinful sexual interactions with other men and women.
In this same vein of starting with God’s truth, Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:33, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” We must begin by seeking God first and then everything else will follow.
If we seek God first, what does He tell us about how to have a healthy relationship with Him as well as with others? A clear answer is found in Mark 12:28ff: “And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he [Jesus] answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
These words from Jesus are amazing because they tell us that following God is not about being religious or trying to be good or simply thinking right thoughts about God. No, faith in God is about two things in the end: experiencing His love for us and then loving Him back in response to His love flowing toward us out of His amazing grace and mercy. And then secondly, loving our own selves with the love with which He loves us and subsequently passing on that same love to those around us.
We can only love to the degree that we have been loved by God (and allowed ourselves to be loved). We will only love others and ourselves if we have first experienced His love for us.
What We See if We Begin with God
We arrive at an important truth here: If we begin with God, His word, and His love for us, we encounter human exceptionalism. Men and women are exceptional, distinct from the rest of creation, higher than the animals. As Scripture says, we are created in His image. Unique above the rest of creation, we carry the imago dei within us. And if we are Christians, we are indwelt by God Himself in the person of the Holy Spirit. God lives in earthen vessels, in jars of clay! (2 Corinthians 4:7)
If we begin with God’s word, we also see the truth of the “binary” in this universe as opposed to the “non-binary”. We see this binary theme everywhere in the Bible: God and His creation. Humans and animals. Night and day. Light and darkness. Good and evil. Heaven and hell. Life and death. Male and Female.
If we begin with God’s truth, we more readily identify the lies of darkness. Satan wants to undo the binary in God’s universe. He fights to convince us that everything in this world is the same, bereft of God-created distinctions that include right and wrong. Some of these lies are:
There is no God—a lie seen in atheism.
Humans are animals—a lie witnessed in godless evolution where there is no image of God in men and women. Humans are mere accidents in this closed space-time continuum.
Human convenience and selfishness euphemistically labeled as “rights” blurs the distinction between life and death—as witnessed in abortion.
Isaiah 5:20-21: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!” There is no distinction between good and evil. It’s your truth v. my truth. It’s all about relativism.
There is no heaven and hell. John Lennon expresses this belief in his song, Imagine, from 1971:
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today… Aha-ah…
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace… You…
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
These lyrics flow out of a non-binary view of the universe where there is a oneness that erases good and evil, heaven and hell.
Finally, there is no distinction between male and female. God’s truth about the binary of men and women is exchanged for human passions around homosexuality, queer theory, transgenderism, and subjectively choosing one’s gender instead of embracing who God has made you to be. Some individuals argue for the androgyny of all people v. distinctly male and female genders.
So, if the world around us exchanges God’s truth with atheism, evolution, abortion, relativism, and gender choices that defy science and biology, we most certainly will struggle to love and respect the other gender. All of these beliefs relative to humanity communicate, at their core, that the opposite gender is here by accident and so can be used and abused for one’s own selfish pleasure or gain.
A word to the wise here: Know the fallen world you were born into! You may remember the lesson about the frog that is placed into boiling water and the frog that is placed into room temperature water. The first will immediately know something is wrong with its environment and jump out. The second frog, placed in room temperature water that is heated slowly to boiling, will remain in the water and be cooked to death.
Similar to the frog, do you realize that you were born into a cultural pot of water that has slowly been changing? Day by day, the world you swim in has been increasingly forsaking the truth about He who is the Living Water and steadily replacing it with the arsenic of Romans 1: ungodliness and unrighteousness. Most of you don’t see that half of what you believe (even subconsciously–or mainly subconsciously) is the fallen world’s version of truth, or worse—lies and darkness from hell itself.
When God is removed from a culture, marginalized, announced to be dead as Nietzsche and others have claimed, then divine revelation is rejected and there is no plumb line, no absolute truth, no wisdom above that of fallen human opinion. At this point in a culture, things get crazy and scary. Everyone does what is right in their own eyes. Whatever human group is in power gets to define morality.
Do you see that this very dynamic is being lived out in our current culture?
What Genesis Tells Us About Men and Women
Genesis 1-3 tells us that there is a God who created everything, and that man and woman were created by Him. We read in this account of The Beginning that we humans are created unique, distinct from the animals. (Reject the phrase “human animal” for I believe that most of those who use it desire to erase human exceptionalism and make men and women mere siblings of primates.) We were created good, and we were made to bear the divine image.
But then the tragic Fall of humankind from God’s original perfect state happened. This terrible Fall led to rebellion against God, choosing sin to be the master over us, and an behavioral change from loving others to using others—even killing them. Cain is a good example of these three consequences of the Fall. God warned Cain, “Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”
Shortly afterwards, ignoring God’s words, Cain killed his brother.
In Genesis 1-3, we see the divine plan for the relationship between a man and a woman at creation and then after the Fall.
Pre-Fall, Eve’s role was to be man’s helper, his “ezer”, who would be fit for him—unlike all the animals he had just finished naming. Adam’s role was to relate to the woman as his helper, “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Together, they were to become “one flesh”. What a beautifully close team God had created: the binary relationship that would be the foundation of human relating—emotional and sexual–and the source of children to populate the earth.
But then the terrible disobedience came and everything that had been created good in humanity became evil, deceitful, and opposed to God. Now strangers to God’s love, alienated and separated from the Creator, the woman and the man began relating to one another differently, sinfully. Fallen humanity had come under the judgment of the holy and righteous God.
When God pronounces judgment on Eve for her sin of disobedience, idolatry, and rebellion, He says, “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you” (Genesis 3:16 ESV). Or as the NLT translates it, “You will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.”
It is clear, then, that the curse that fell on men and women involved ongoing conflict between the two. Instead of the harmony, loving care, and automatic oneness that had previously reigned in the Garden between the two genders, now there will be strife between male and female, a power struggle, a selfish fight for power and their own pleasure. The woman (Hebrew, ishah) in her fallen state will desire to rule over her man (Hebrew, ish), to control him, but his desire will be to rule over her.
No wonder marriage is an impossible relationship. Without the love of Jesus to transform our fundamental disposition as fallen creatures from conflict to peaceful servanthood, we will blow up our marriages.
As a psychologist who has worked with many struggling marriages, I have often witnessed this “post Fall” conflict between a man and a woman. In fact, when I have counseled non-believers who are married, I have often experienced a lack of hope—an absence of traction for forward movement–because the woman wants what she wants, and the man wants what he wants. Missing is the sacrificial, covenantal love that exists in the hearts of Christians who have the God of the universe living within them, the loving God who brings His agape love.
Fortunately, when we believe in Jesus and we become new creations, we not only are filled with the Holy Spirit, but we also are given God’s Road Map for our lives so we do not have to guess about what is true about God and humans. We also have available to us His word to teach us how to love the opposite gender. This power and truth typically make all the difference in marital counseling situations.
In the New Testament, specifically chapter 5 of Ephesians, we encounter the biblical relationship that ensues between men and women when they believe in Jesus. First, men and women mutually submit to one another “out of reverence to Christ.” Second, a wife submits to her husband’s authority and respects him since he is the head as Christ is the head of the church. Third, a man unconditionally and sacrificially loves his wife as Christ loved the church even to the point of giving his life for her.
Here we witness the “one flesh” experience between a man and a woman who find their identity in the person of Jesus, who now obey God instead of rebelling against Him and His loving authority.
Following are some bullet points that relate to this topic of how men and women need to love and serve one another not just in marriage but as single people as well.
Truths About Men and Women
- Every man and woman is created by God and will live forever. Treat them as the designed beings that they are.
- A woman is hard-wired to be loved, remembered, and seen.
- A man is hard-wired to be respected and admired.
- Every man and woman—even if they are a new creation in Christ—still has the old self within otherwise known as “the flesh.” A civil war rages inside every human between this old self and the new self (the spirit). See Galatians 5.
- If a woman in any given moment chooses the flesh (often when she feels unloved and used or just because her fallen self is capable of it), she will desire to control the man, make him who she wants him to be. Often with this fleshly control comes anger, bitterness, criticism, and even contempt for the man. Extreme feminism flows out of this fleshly reaction if it is practiced for years. At this point, a spirit of submission and helping is not present. Respecting the man has been supplanted, in the worst scenario, by a desire to castrate the man emotionally, to annihilate him in a type of homicidal act. Relentless nagging may be present as a revenge for rejection.
- If a man in any given moment chooses a fleshly reaction (often when he feels disrespected and criticized or just because his fallen self is capable of it), he will desire to rule over the woman. Often with this fleshly power reaction comes domination or its opposite–withdrawal, stonewalling, passive disengagement, and choosing something over the woman such as pornography, workaholism, sports, alcohol, or affairs. Both are methods of control, just different types. Passive disengagement will communicate that the woman means nothing to the man. It is a unique type of torture. At this point, a spirit of love is not present. Leading in kindness and love has been supplanted by a selfishness that uses the woman, abandons her, or rejects her for something else. This selfishness kills the spirit of the woman. Choosing something else over the woman may be present as a revenge for disrespect.
- Remember that there are two types of love. The first says, “I love you for what you do for me and is mercenary and selfish. The second type says, “I love you for who God made you to be and I will love and serve you because Jesus did that for me.”
- Pornography can be very powerful for men because they feel wanted and even respected when they view an image of a woman staring at them with desirous eyes. In pornography, the woman is there for him, and he does not even have to be in an emotional relationship with her. Intimacy comes through sexual arousal, not through loving from the heart. Nothing is required of the man. Thus, pornography is utter selfishness.
- Romantic stories in movies and books can be a venue in which the woman feels ideally remembered, seen, and loved. Romantic stories can generate dopamine hits not dissimilar to pornography. Being enamored of these tales to the point of choosing them over the man in your life is tantamount to an affair.
- Men can place too much emphasis on the physical beauty of a woman and declare, “It was love at first sight.” Loving a woman for her beauty is like loving yourself because you are physically strong. Both beauty and strength will fade, and your love will be betrayed for its shallowness.
- Women can place too much importance on being number one to the man and declare, “My knight in shining armor has come for me.” If he fails to deliver on his idealization of her, she will make him feel what she feels—devalued.
- Putting the man or woman before God instead of being loved and satisfied in God first results in impossible expectations and is a type of idolatry. The end result will be disastrous.
- Some women are looking for the man to love them as their father should have and some men are looking for the woman to take care of them as their mother should have. Placing these heavy expectations on the other gender in the wrong generation is a recipe for disappointment, hurt, and anger.
- Related to the previous point, transference can easily occur in a male-female relationship where wounds and rejections from relationships in the past can be paid forward to the man or woman in the present time.
- Projection easily occurs in the relationship between a man and a woman where undesirable faults in oneself can be projected into the other person and then criticized and judged in them.
- Some women have a special power through the charisma of physical attraction. They know that they possess this power and may use it to draw men into their orbit to satisfy their need to be worshiped. Be careful, men, for the seductive power of such a woman.
- Some men have a special power through the charisma of physical strength. They know that they possess this power and may use it to draw women into their orbit to satisfy their hunger. Be careful, women, not to be wooed by mere physical attraction.
- Men and women, though alike in some ways, can be very different. Women often desire affection, family commitment, transparency, and conversation while men desire sexual intimacy, an attractive spouse, admiration, and someone to do stuff with.
- Singleness is a gift God has given some (1 Corinthians 7:7). You may not be called to marriage but to special friendships with the opposite sex. Keep moving toward the other gender and God will reveal His plan for your future.
- Avoid deep emotional attachments with unbelievers.
- Seek Him first, and He will take care of the rest.
So, here is the truth to be embraced as you move toward the opposite gender: Know God and His love for you, first. You will internalize His love for you and respond to His amazing love by loving Him. Then and only then, will you love others as they were created to be loved—with the love of God that abides in you.
The rest will be history. His-Story for your joy and His glory.
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers or sisters, you did it to me’” ~ Matthew 25:34ff
“And I find something more bitter than death: the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her” ~ Ecclesiastes 7: 26
“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” ~ 2 Timothy 3:1ff
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” ~ John 13:34ff