Transcript
At the level of the heart, men and women are the same. We all have very similar heart struggles. We lose our way in the same way. We worship wrong things in the same way. We all need to be rescued from ourselves. We all need growth and character. But then you would ask, "Well, then what does the Bible say about how men and women are different?"
What the Bible Says About Gender
Well, this is a big controversial topic, but I'm willing to talk about it. It would be wrong to say that the Bible has nothing to say about gender. Clearly, part of God's creative wisdom is to design gender, that there is not just male or not just female, but God made man and woman. They're complementary, but they're different. So you can't deny gender. You can't go for this androgynous blending of gender that is so much the rage in our culture. On the other hand, we do not want to define gender in such a way that's rooted in a particular cultural moment.
Like for a man, it means a deep voice and big muscles and a certain way of walking and being athletic. And for a woman, it means you have to love pink and flowers and cook a lot because those definitions of gender do not arise out of scripture.
Actually, the Bible doesn't have a whole lot to say about what a man looks like, what a woman looks like. Oh yes, it talks about modesty. It talks about roles, but those are really different topics. And so, God has given us latitude. I should never try to look like the gender that I am not because that's cursing the choice the Creator has made. It's an act of rebellion. I should never wish that I could be that other gender. But the range of what a man looks like is just multifaceted and multi-varied. The range of what a woman looks like is multifaceted and multi-varied.
Here's the struggle with the issue of manhood and womanhood. It's very hard for us not to make the scripture say less than it does, and it's very hard for us not to make the scripture say more than it does. In the middle is where scripture wants us to be. We emphasize the things that God emphasizes and we rest.
