Sunday 01 • 20 • 19

Genesis chapter two. When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land and there was no man to work the ground and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living creature. 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 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 every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and while he slept, he 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, and 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." And the man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Would you pray with me? Father, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. You are our rock and our fortress and our Redeemer. We pray these things in the strong name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

So this is week number three in our series on gender and the gospel. And if you are just joining us and are kind of surprised to hear that, I'm not going to do all my caveats and all the stuff that I've done preliminary work on this. You can go back and check our website and catch up with us if you'd like to hear that. But I want to start here. It's been nearly twenty-five years since Saturday Night Live had a feature repeating skit called "It's Pat." Does anybody remember this? It's Pat featured this androgynous person who the running gag of the skit was you could never tell—nobody could tell what Pat was. And so that's how Pat talked, and there was always just this real awkwardness. Now this skit would never be made today. This is not politically correct anyway, and they would be crushed on Saturday Night Live for making this skit. But it's kind of instructive actually to look back at some of those because it highlights three things about gender.

One is that gender is pervasive. What's funny about "It's Pat" skits is that they all take place in relatively normal circumstances—like doctor's offices, or in elevators, or in the gym. They're all sort of everyday circumstances, and yet when the people around Pat are trying to figure out how to interact with Pat, everything seems to break down. It's confusing. Gender is pervasive in social interaction. It's everywhere we look.

Second, gender is instructive. So again, with Pat, the skit communicates how quickly that basic human interactions can grind to a halt when we don't know what to call someone. And so always people in the skit are trying to play word games or kind of corner Pat into giving some kind of clues as to what is Pat? And Pat is like this escape artist and always gets out of the trap. And then finally, it shows us how gender is so hard to talk about. Have you noticed that gender is really hard to talk about?

In fact, in the "It's Pat" skits again, everybody but Pat seems blissfully unaware of how awkward it is for everyone else. And while everybody else is struggling, Pat is just fine. And I think gender is really hard for us to talk about for a good reason. Now, if you listen to news media, if you listen to our culture at large, you can feel that tension even in reporting, even in how this is discussed by mainline news media outlets who have very different views on gender than the Bible. But even so, it's awkward. And I think that's for a reason.

Biblically, we can answer this. One of the reasons that gender is so hard to talk about is God is so hard to talk about. We're beings made in God's image. We are incredibly complex. If you've ever been in any relationship with any other person, you know that. Human beings are incredibly complex. Gender is hard to talk about because God is hard to talk about. That's why we stumble over this.

This morning, as we look at Genesis chapter two, it helps us understand how gender functions in relationships. I want to go with a very simple outline, but I want to encourage you to take notes this morning—not because I have spellbinding talk in front of us, but because I want you to think about questions. I want you to interact. In this whole series, we're asking you to think and engage and really wrestle with us together as a community. So I'm going to ask you to take notes, even write down questions or objections in your bulletin.

I'm going to talk on these four ideas: equality, asymmetry, unity, and diversity. Equality, asymmetry, unity, and diversity.

Equality in Scripture

Let's start here. Now I think the Bible gets a really bad rap on gender. The Bible historically is easy for people to pick at on gender. For example, there's a book by Anita Diamant called The Red Tent. It came out about ten, fifteen years ago. The storyline is about how the matriarchs of the Bible were incredibly oppressed people—how they were put down. This is a highly patriarchal book, and those women were oppressed, and the only way they escaped their oppression was secretly embracing Canaanite mystery religions, namely Baal and Asherah. That's a popular storyline, and it plays really well to modern audiences, and yet it misses something really critical. Because I wonder how much Anita Diamant did her studies on what life was really like for women in Canaanite mystery religions like Asherah and Baal. I wonder how life-affirming she would feel it would be to be a temple prostitute or have to take part in child sacrifice—regular aspects of the surrounding cultures all around Israel in the second millennium BC. That was very common. And she ignores one particular statement that we just camped on the last two Sundays from Genesis one twenty-seven.

Let us make man in our image and likeness, male and female, He created them. — Genesis 1:27

It's a statement of surprising, countercultural equality in the second millennium BC. This is very different from everything that you read in any surrounding culture. And this is stated and restated and redone over and over in the Old Testament.

In Genesis chapter one, we get this statement of incredible equality. Both men and women made in God's image. It's in Genesis five. We read this last week—both men and women created in God's image. In the book of Job, the oldest written book in the Old Testament, written at the time of the patriarchs, there are little details that are kind of interesting. Job leaves all of his inheritance to both his daughters and his sons equally. That is unheard of in ancient Near Eastern literature. There is nothing like that. Job leaves without making a distinction for gender, leaves inheritance to his sons and daughters equally.

In Exodus chapter 20, in Deuteronomy chapter five—the two versions of the 10 Commandments—the longest commandment on Sabbath includes this provision. It commands households to make sure that slaves and children and sojourners among them obeyed the Sabbath and did no work. One of the things though that's missing from that list is wives. Now, that is not because the women were supposed to be working. It's because the men and the women in the household—the husband and the wife—were equally charged with making sure the household practiced Sabbath, not just the guy.

Besides one—explicit affirmation of men and women both equally made in God's image—besides two—countercultural practices in the Old Testament that affirm equality—there are, number three, all these powerful portrayals of women in spirituality and exercising their faith. These are littered throughout the Old Testament and New Testament. I'm just going to run through a list and I'm going to lean hard on the women part of this because I don't think we need help seeing that guys participated in some of these things. I have Scripture references. So if you want to arm wrestle me after the service, I could take you down.

Here they go:

• Women pray to God. Their prayers are heard and answered and preserved.
• Women receive appearances from God.
• Female servants are equally valued under the law as male servants, as are women in general.
• Women are healed.
• Women bring sacrifices.
• Women become Nazirites and take vows.
• Women parent children with equal standing and honor as their husbands.
• Women are educated by a rabbi.
• Women receive salvation, are equally clothed in Christ.
• Women participate in Jesus' ministry.
• One woman in the Bible is referred to as a disciple of Jesus.
• Women serve as Jesus' parable illustrations—uniformly good illustrations, I might add.

Women are prophetesses receiving and delivering divine revelation. Women receive God's gifts in worship. Women serve in public worship. Women serve as the first witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus. Women are vital in ministry in the church called fellow workers. Let me push on this a little bit more. Women receive the same Holy Spirit as men, the same spiritual gifts as men. Jesus clearly welcomed women into his ministry, blessed the women who sat at his feet, anointed him for burial, and understood his identity in ministry. In fact, what's fascinating is over and over, the guys in the gospels don't get it and the women do uniformly. Again, Jesus's relationship with women was countercultural.

But what about Paul? I mean, Paul, another one, man, he gets a bad rap, tire tracks on that guy's back because we throw him under the bus. But he gets a bad rap with women, but he greets them in his letters as fellow workers. He compares himself to a nursing mother in First Thessalonians two, and he writes the signature statement on equality of men and women before God in Galatians three twenty eight.

Here in Christ, there's neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither slave nor free, there's neither male nor female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. — Galatians 3:28

That is an incredible statement of equality. So let's not beat up Paul too bad. He got some stuff right. So you could say then that the Bible has feminist themes, especially if you're talking about really first wave feminism, the 1960s and 70s, which rightly said women are equal. Not third wave feminism that's come out recently, which is postmodern and can't even call rape a bad thing, because it's all about power dynamics. It has no definition of good or evil.

But Rutgers professor Gary Rinsberg observes:

Open your Bible at random and you'll notice something striking. Female characters abound, and it's not simply a lot of women, it's a lot of strong women. These are women who are the antithesis of what we might expect from a patriarchal society. They are not passive, demure, timid and submissive, but active, bold, fearless and assertive. They are not what you would expect based on contemporaneous Near Eastern literature in which women generally do not play leading roles in the narrative.

You see? Equal image bearers, man and woman. And yet, that's not the end. The Bible goes on to assert something else about men and women in Genesis chapter two that's very striking and a little uncomfortable for us. Genesis goes on to show us equal but not equivalent, not interchangeable parts, not exactly the same.

Equal But Not Interchangeable

So we read two sections here from Genesis two, five through eight. Genesis two is sort of a second creation story drills down to like ground level. Genesis one is like 30,000 feet. Genesis two is on the ground. And Genesis two, five through eight details the creation of the first male, the first man. And then Genesis two eighteen through 25 details the creation of the first woman. And those two separate stories show us there's something different going on. There's something different. These are not interchangeable. They are like but unlike. Equal but not interchangeable.

Do you know what symmetry is? Symmetry is when you cut out a heart, right? You fold the paper in half and you cut around the outline and then you unfold it and the two sides are exactly the same. We like symmetry. Symmetry is pleasing to the eye and it looks good. But asymmetry is when you cut out a shape, they're not exactly the same. And we don't know what to do with this. We don't know what to do with this.

Here's what we read in verse 18, that there's something incomplete in God's creation after Adam. There's a problem in the garden. First problem, right? It's Adam's alone, and God says it's not good for him to be alone. And yet God's way he resolves that is not by making another of the same kind. It's not like Adam and his other buddy Adam, buddy Adam, right? He makes a different one that's similar but different. One that's more like asymmetrical, like but unlike, equal but not exactly interchangeable. Asymmetrical.

Now, I want you to think about this. In January in The United States, we saw the highest number of women ever elected to law as lawmakers being sworn in. And it has a cause for celebration. And I want you to hear me say, that's a real big cause for celebration. But here's the question, do we know why? Do we know why that's a cause for celebration? I'm not so sure we do.

There was an article that came out in 2013 by a journalist for The New York Times named Maureen Dowd. She wrote an article where she was critiquing during the Obama years the lack of women in higher office in our country. And the title of the article was "We Offer More Than Ankles, Boys." And what's interesting as you read through her article, is that her main argument is fairness.

Like, it needs to be equal, men and women in high office because it needs to be fair. Now that's not a bad argument. But she doesn't—there's something missing from that. She doesn't go on to say, "Well, here's what women uniquely bring to high office. There are traits, there are aspects of what they see and how they approach life that are needed in high office." And she doesn't do any of that. And why doesn't she do that? Because she's smart. Because she knows if I outline any ways that I say these women have these particular things that they're bringing to high office, my article is going to get shot full of holes. Because what you hear in the media is men and women are practically interchangeable. We're exactly the same.

Well, let's think about that a bit. If men and women are exactly the same, why does it matter that we would need women in high office? I mean, it's almost as ridiculous as saying we need to make sure there are as many brunettes as blondes in high office. Nobody thinks that, right? We're not looking at it that way. And yet, it's hard to articulate in the national media anything beyond fairness as a reason for this. Because we've got to hold on to the idea that men and women are interchangeable, exactly the same. And when we do, we miss something big. We miss something very important.

We have an answer from Scripture to that. We actually have an answer that's more compelling that says, yes, this is cause for celebration because there are unique things that those women are bringing to high office, and that is what we're celebrating. Instead, the Bible offers us something that is really worth holding on to. Now, this is where, before I tell you what that is, this is where everybody falls in the deep hole. And I'm going to be careful in this series to walk very carefully around the deep hole. Because the deep hole that everybody falls into is in making a statement of qualities that are particular or typing the male gender versus the female gender—typing men versus women.

What happens is there's usually this "Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus" essential qualities list—a list of essential qualities. We say, "This is what makes a man," and over here, "This is what makes a woman." But the essential traits I've found always fall short. And it falls short for two reasons. One I'll get to now, one I'll get to in the last point.

First, here's one of the reasons that the essentials list of what makes a man, what makes a woman doesn't work: the Bible never does it. The Bible never distills masculinity down to these traits, femininity down to these traits. There's no distinction of spiritual gifts by gender. It doesn't call men to be more masculine. It doesn't call women to be more feminine. It never says, "Be masculine. This is what this means. Be feminine. This is what this means." The Bible says men are more gifted and better at leadership, so that's why they're in these roles. Women are better at hospitality, so they make the brownies. You can laugh, okay? I'm trying to be light with something that's hard, right?

And here's the thing: if the Bible doesn't do it, we shouldn't either. I find though, if we're going to do that—if you're going to try to make a list of essential qualities, if you're going to say, "This is what makes a man, this is what makes a woman," here's what it really has to be. It has to be qualities and traits that are timeless, that work in every culture, every time, every place.

And what I find, and I'm going to drop some names, what I find among John Eldredge (the Wild at Heart guy), what I find among Mark Driscoll, what I find among lots of well-meaning Bible teachers and Christian leaders, is they come up with surprising characteristics that reflect their own culture and preferences. So what you get in a lot of cases in American culture is what feels like John Wayne combined with John the Baptist. Or you get a combo tray of the mom from Leave It to Beaver with Mary the mother of Jesus. And you know what, it just falls flat. It doesn't work.

Because it's got to work. I think about a woman living in Nepal reading Wild at Heart. What? You know, a first century Palestinian Jewish convert to Christianity listening to Mark Driscoll. God, what are we talking about? These things have to be true. If we're going to do this, it has to work in all cultures, all times, and all places. Otherwise we're not being faithful to Scripture, because Scripture speaks with the purity of the gospel over and over to all people in all times and all places. We have to be careful of that.

So if the Bible doesn't do it, we shouldn't either. Rather, the Bible doesn't define gender essentialist traits, but rather holds these things up—holds up men and women as different and unified in relationship. It calls us to relationship.

Not essentialist characteristics, but dynamic actions, gender specialties if you will, roles that we assume, actions that we do. That's what's pictured here in Genesis two. The man is incomplete. He needs a helper. Together, where they are different and yet unified, in that unity they are on mission. They are called together into God's calling for both of them to image him in the world, and it's in relationship.

This is what I'm going to beat over and over with you the next couple weeks: genders are for relationship. Gender is a gift. It's a specialty built on top of the platform of our biology. Remember me saying this two weeks ago? It's built on the platform of our biology. It's not the same. It's related to it. It's not the same. And it's meant for us in relationship to fulfill our calling. That's what it's for.

Why Relationships Matter

Can I tell you this? Do you know what an incredible thing it is to be a Christian? There are so many reasons it's an incredible thing to be a follower, a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. And one of the ones I want to highlight this morning is that we have an answer to something that no one else has an answer to: Why should we be in relationships? Why do we have relationships?

Now, there are people who would never agree with most anything that I preach from this book. And yet, if you press them hard, I'm like, what's the most valuable thing in your life? They may like their car, but it's not their car. They may like their clothes, it's not their clothes. They may like their house, it's not their house. There are all these things which we value. But at the end of the day, what do they say? It's those people. It's that group of friends. It's my parents. It's my children. It's my spouse. It's relationships that we value more than anything else.

And Christians alone have a reason for why that is. If you ask a materialist atheist, a Buddhist, a Muslim, an agnostic, why do we have relationships? Ultimately, they can't answer the question. There is no social evolutionary purpose to having relationships. It really doesn't move forward the human species in any way. But it's an amazing thing to be a Christian because this book tells us about a God who's in relationship and therefore creates us for relationship with him and with one another.

Relationships are designed by God and they're hardwired into you. Gender is given as a gift to facilitate relationships. It's one of the things to enhance our relationships on mission for God.

Gender as Function, Not Essence

Let me show this to you. You're like, that's a fine thing to say. Where do I get this? This is in so many passages. Let's start here in Genesis, the creation story. Genesis two and onward tells us this.

Karl Barth, not a guy I normally quote a lot from this pulpit, says: "God is in relationship, so too is the man created by Him." This explains why the Bible's gender-specific passages always concern the practice of individuals in relationship, not essential qualities.

For example, in 1 Corinthians eleven, one of the hardest texts in the New Testament—we're going to cover it in three weeks—it says:

Nevertheless, in the Lord, woman is not independent of man, nor man of woman. — 1 Corinthians 11

Genders are for relationships. In Ephesians chapter five, which is the signature passage on marriage in the New Testament, a very full explanation of marriage, it doesn't point to what a woman is or what a man is. It points to what a man does and a woman does. It's about function. Gender is more about what we do than who we are. It's not an essentialist list of traits. And it is only in relationship that we really see gender played out. And not just in marriage. We're going to talk about this in the church as well in four weeks when we get to the context.

Gender-Specific Groups

This also explains why we have an affinity for gender-specific groups. Why is it that going on a guy's weekend or a girl's night out, there's something about that that makes you feel sane? You're around other people of your same gender and you're like, all those weirdos are not here. And I feel understood in ways that maybe I don't feel in some of my primary relationships. Why is that?

I think that has to do more with the absence of the other than the presence of the same. It has more to do with the absence of the opposite sex than the presence of the same. There's something about being in those environments that makes men feel masculine on a men's-only weekend, you know, and women feel more feminine on girls' night out in some ways, and we feel understood. And yet, that's not the model for the church, the family, or society. Those are places where we may feel known, and they may enhance our ability to step back into those relationships, but that's not God's model.

Gender is for relationship.

Gender is not something we are so much as something we do. We exercise. We live into. Woman is not without man. Man is not without woman. Gender is for the other gender. This explains why Christians find less agreement about these silly lists of what makes a man, what makes a woman, and more agreement about what we're called to do together.

Gender is about other giving sacrifice, leadership and love. More on that in two weeks, I promise. Just can't do it all today.

The Problem with Gender Essentialism

The second problem with the gender essentialist lists that we come up with is we end up destroying this diversity that God enjoys across creating two equal but asymmetrical gender bearers, gender image bearers.

When we look at male and female, the physical differences we find show a great deal of similarity and non-discrete differences. Besides genitalia, sex-specific traits are actually not that reliably specific. They're definitely there statistically, but the distributions between the two overlap.

There's a study done by two psychology professors, Janet Hyde and Nita McKinley of University of Wisconsin Madison. They do meta research on gender and its expression, the differences between men and women in development, and they try to factor in deviations for bias, sample size, and changing social attitudes. This is what they found.

Women tend to be better at verbal fluency, but not always. Men tend to be better at visualizing a three-dimensional object in their head and turning it around, but not always. Girls are usually better at a younger age at recognizing emotion in another person's face, but not always. Boys on average perform better at math in school, but there are plenty of exceptions to this.

You can see this in every sort of female-male difference from skin thickness to sleepwalking. Some sex differences are quite real, but there's so much overlap.

The Overlap of the Genders

Let's talk about average height between men and women. The average height for a man is five foot ten inches—seventy inches. The average height for a woman is five foot four inches, which is sixty-four inches.

The difference, though distinct, is quite small, and it really depends on how you look at the data. Those who want to emphasize the equality of the genders would say, "See, men and women are about the same. They're all between five and six feet tall." And those who want to emphasize the difference would say, "See, men are always taller. They're definitely different."

Both are right in a sense because they're looking at data that overlaps. To say that men tend to be taller can be shown to be not always the case. There's going to be a guy who's four foot ten. And to say women tend to be shorter can always be disproven. There's going to be a woman who's seven feet tall.

What we find is while there are some differences, there's a lot of overlap in the genders. This is why the novelist Dorothy Sayers used to challenge our language. She used to say, "You know, opposite sex doesn't really capture what the Bible says about the genders. Maybe it shouldn't be the opposite sex, but the neighboring sex. You know, like but unlike, close by, similar and yet asymmetric."

I appreciate that. I love that. Opposite sex doesn't include the sense of Genesis two—the overlap of the genders, the diversity, the wide array of different types of men and different types of women is something we encounter and is really important that we understand and actually hold on to in the church for three reasons.

First, the overlap in the genders makes communication and connection possible between us. Second, the overlap in the genders displays God's love of variety. And third, the overlap in the genders makes room for the exceptional among us.

The overlap in the genders makes connection possible. God wanted men and women to be able to relate to each other. So there's overlap. There are similarities. There are points of connection. If it really were opposite sexes, it wouldn't be men from Mars, women from Venus. It'd be like men are from Mars, women are from MAC six forty-seven JD, the furthest known galaxy. And we experience bafflement now at one another. There are times you're like, "You're crazy! I don't understand."

And yet there's points of connection because there's overlap, and that's purposeful. The second thing, the overlap in the genders displays God's love of variety. God just seems so tickled about the variety of men and women in this world. A woman who excels in mixed martial arts is not less of a woman. A man with an eye for decorating is not less of a man, and it is essential for the Church of Jesus Christ to recognize this.

A woman who loves fixing engines, a guy who's fixing dinner, nothing wrong with that. Those are not messed up. Your little girls who like wrestling, and your boys who like unicorns. Nothing wrong with that. God is a god of incredible, creative variety.

You see this in all that he's made. I mean, think about flowers and the diversity of flowers. Why didn't God just make four flowers? There are so many species of flowers and there's no real evolutionary purpose for them. God seems like, I love making all kinds of flowers. Or ants. If I were God, I would have made one ant. We only need one kind, the six-legged creature who eats your food. Do you know how many species of ants there are in the world? 12,000. So if God can show that much delight and variety among ants, I think that He can delight in all kinds of men and all kinds of women. Why should we expect anything different?

The overlap in the genders directs us how to include the exceptional person among us. We need to spread this word: equal, asymmetrical, unity and diversity. And for this reason, the overlap is not a threat. We can embrace the exceptional young person. And actually, for the church's benefit, we really need to.

So we find a woman who loves rugby and video games. We should happily watch to see how femininity is expressed in her life. We find a guy who loves show tunes and drives by landmarks and not maps. We should hold our breath to see how masculinity is expressed in him.

Gender essentialism inevitably cuts people out from the body of Christ that are part of the way God designed them and loves them and made them and enjoys them. So look, can you tell your kids this? Can you tell your children this? You're a boy and God made you like that and he loves you like that. You're a girl and if you like fixing engines, God loves that about you.

I think about how much damage has been done in the church trying to make people fit because we can't handle the diversity of the beauty of what God made. And what He has pronounced good, we pronounce bad. How much could be undone? I shudder to think of how much damage is done, and I hope that a lot can be undone by employing this.

I've been thinking about Peter Pan all week. J. M. Barrie's creation, the Neverland story, Peter Pan. He's a boy who is never going to grow up, and he can fly, and he wears green. One of my favorite parts of Peter Pan is thinking about how Peter Pan crows. He goes up to the top of the masthead of Captain Hook's ship. He expresses this incredible joy and delight, like, I'm alive. This is me. And I think that you have something to crow about this morning, to boast in, to delight in.

A Word for Men and Women

Men here this morning, you're men. Man, that is amazing. You are made in God's image. He delights in you. He made you as you are, and the way that you are made is something He takes great pleasure in. You don't need to be women. You're men. Something you should crow about.

Women, I mean, wow. That's what Adam said in Genesis 2. He breaks into a poem. He breaks into a poem and the Jeff Radford translation of that is, wow.

Wow. — Genesis 2

Women, you are made in God's image. It is an incredible thing to be a woman. You do not need to be a man. You are delighted upon by the God of the universe who made you in His image and likeness, and made you just the way you are and says that is good.

See, today, no voice in our culture is going to join in and say, yeah, equal, asymmetrical, unity, diversity. Nobody's going to say that's crazy. And yet, it is such a gift to be you today. Men and women, boys and girls, you have something to shout out about today. You have something to boast in, to enjoy. Your heavenly father is very fond of you.

In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen. Amen. Let's celebrate our God who loves.