St John's Parish Church, Lindow http://www.saint-johns.org.uk

Christianity Speaks Today

Week 5: Men and women – is the Bible sexist?

A schoolgirl was once asked to write an essay on why women outnumbered men in the world. ‘God made Adam first,’ she wrote. ‘When he had finished, he looked at him and said to himself, "Well, I think I could do better than that if I tried again." So then he made Eve. And God liked Eve so much better than Adam that he has been making more women than men ever since.’

I like that story. Not because I agree with it or because I support the self-confident feminism that lies behind it, but because it is so refreshing in contrast to much of the male chauvinism that has characterised human history. There can be no doubt that in all sorts of cultures and in many periods of history women have been despised, demeaned and oppressed by men. They have often been used as play things, sex objects, and ‘slaves’ of oppressive and power hungry fanatical husbands. Seen as only useful for the kitchen or for the baby it has often been the case that women’s gifts have not been valued and they themselves have been treated with utter contempt.

In past history the Greek philosopher Plato, who believed that the soul was imprisoned in the body and was released only to be reincarnated, suggested that a bad man’s fate would be reincarnation as a woman. Aristotle faired no better; he regarded a female as a kind of mutilated male. He wrote ‘ Females are imperfect males, accidentally produced by the father’s inadequacy or by the malign influence of a moist south wind.’

In more recent times there is the story of Charlotte McNeilly. In 1877 she attempted to gain a divorce from her husband of twenty-six years. She recounted in detail the violence her husband had committed; he had threatened to murder her, chased her with a meat fork, left her body bruised black by kicks, nearly choked her, and pushed a stick down her child’s throat. She had evidence of her husband’s adultery, too. She had tried to earn her own living apart from him but he had confiscated her earnings, which under law he was entitled to do. Her petition for divorce was unsuccessful; the judge was unconvinced she had established her case, and it was dismissed with costs.

Now I’m sure her story was not unique. Throughout history male chauvinism has been rife. Women have been treated unfairly and they have been oppressed by male domination. That is a fact! However, in more recent years, women have begun to fight back. In response to the countless years of male oppression the feminist movement began to take shape. Through the writings of people such as Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer the battle plans for women’s liberation started to take shape.

Now of course we have no time this evening to look at the vast myriad of Feminist thought out there (although let me recommend The Essence of Feminism, by Kirsten Birkett, as a good introduction to the subject for those who are interested in finding out a little bit more) but regardless of whether we have read it all, or whether we understand it, or even agree with it, the fact that such a vast quantity of material exists surely suggests that males and females are not treating each other as they should.

And so we come to our question tonight: what role has the Bible had on the way men and women have treated each other? Is it sexist? Is it oppressive? Is it to blame? Does it teach the equality of the sexes or does it merely provide men with the divine evidence they need for their chauvinistic way of life? Well I’m not sure what you think the answers to those questions are but I wonder if I can tentatively ask you to keep an open mind as we study what the Bible actually teaches. It can be so easy to from judgements based on past experience or past tradition but yet fail to take into account the real teaching of the Bible. Now as we’ve said before proof-texting is a very dangerous exercise and so tonight instead of looking for that one verse that will either prove or disprove what we’ve always believed I want us to look at the whole of the Bible story. I want us to look again at some of the overarching principles of the Scriptures and perhaps even discover afresh what is the real stuff of our humanity. Now to help us do this I’ve got four questions for us to answer:

Genesis chapter 2 is the creation story retold for a second time. The opening two chapters of the Bible do not contradict each other, rather they complement each other. It’s rather like the author of Genesis has repositioned his camera at the start of chapter 2 and is now retelling the same creation story from a different perspective.

In chapter 2, instead of the big picture, we are now zoomed in for a close up, the camera is now focused on the creation of humanity. We are told in verse 15 that God put the man he had previously created in the Garden of Eden. After a few instructions about what the man should be doing and what he should not be doing we reach verse 18, which should come as a big shock to us. We read there that God said "It is not good for the man to be alone." Now having just read Genesis chapter 1 the phrase "it is not good" should leap out of the page and grab our attention. It is the first ‘not good’ in the whole Bible! You’ll remember that in Genesis chapter 1 God says the phrase "it is good" five times and "it is very good" once (1:10;12;18;21;25;31). So to read that something is not good should make us sit up and pay attention.

The thing that is not good is that the man is all alone and so God decides he will make a helper suitable for him. Did you notice the word "suitable"? Man must have a partner who is his equal. That’s one of the main reasons the animals are paraded before him. Imagine the scene. Adam the Zoologist! God brings all the animals before him one by one, all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. And what does Adam do? Well he names them. That’s a giraffe he says. There’s an elephant. What a superb looking antelope. What a field day he must have had (pardon the pun). And yet after naming all the animals what does Adam now realise, verse 20, there was no suitable helper for him. The animals were not his equal therefore a special creation was needed. We read about that in verse 21. The Lord God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep and while he was sleeping he took part of the man’s side and formed a companion for him, the first woman ever to have been created. Well as the Lord brings her to the man, Adam cannot contain his joy and so bursts into song and declares "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman for she was taken out of man." At last a suitable helper has been found for the man, a woman has been created who is equal in status with him.

I love what the old commentator Matthew Henry says about the creation of Eve: she was "not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved."

But although equal man and woman were not created the same. God did not decide to create Steve, another male, but in his infinite wisdom created Eve as a partner for Adam. Someone who was equal with him but different from him. Without affecting the equality in any way the Bible affirms that men and women are not the same. Interestingly it doesn’t spell out in any great detail what those differences are but nonetheless God deliberately chose to make male and female differently.

One of the current debates of our time is whether we are what we are by nature or by nurture. Whether our genes determine our behaviour or whether our lifestyle in the present has been determined by our upbringing in the past. Many feminists would say that the differences we see between the sexes have only been established by social pressures but there are many others who take the opposite view, that there are inherent differences between male and female. Perhaps both are right in some way.

I’ve just finished reading a book called ‘Why men don’t listen & women can’t read maps’ where on the very first page the authors state their case. They say that "the fundamental problem here is simple: men and women are different. Not better or worse – just different. Scientists, anthropologists and sociobiologists have known this for years, but they have also been painfully aware that to express this knowledge publicly in such a politically correct world could turn them into social pariahs. Society today is determined to believe that men and women possess exactly the same skills, aptitudes and potentials – just as science, ironically, is beginning to prove they are completely different." For them we are who we are by nature and not by nurture. They state later on in the book that "we are who we are because of hormones. We are all the result of our chemistry … Nature verses nurture? It’s a done deal. Nature had the headstart from the very beginning." Now I think much of their generalisations are naïve and frankly some of their reasoning leaves a lot to be desired but at least they remind us that male and female are not the same. Equal, yes, but different.

Of course I think we are on shaky ground when we try and list all the differences between men and women, some may be inherent, although I’m sure many have just been culturally determined. And in all honestly I don’t think we need to list all the differences to understand the main point of this Biblical teaching. Why did God create the woman? Because it was not good for the man to be alone. That’s the main point of the passage! It is not good for the man to be independent but it is good for the man to be interdependent.

Anne Atkins makes a good point in her book ‘Split Image’ where she says "we need one another. A singer and an accompanist need each other far more than two pianists do; a socket and a plug are far more use than two plugs or two sockets. We will probably never know all the differences. We do not need to. Their relevance is this: God made us different to complement each other."

By creation men and women were designed in such a way to relate to one another. Their equality was not defined by what they could do or by how much money they could earn but by the very nature of their creation. They were created differently but equal! Now if we take these truths on board we will be reluctant to endorse any way of thinking or any way of life that negates our equality as people or our differences or our need for interdependence. For example, when we look at feminism we must applaud the noble effort to create equality between the sexes but surely we must be concerned with a philosophy which often ignores our differences and which thrives on independence. As Kirsten Birkett says in her book, ‘The Essence of Feminism’, "feminism cannot succeed in creating the equality and harmony between men and women it desires because it is based on falsehoods …Its unyielding emphasis on personal autonomy, at virtually nay cost, is destructive to all but the most powerful who end up at the top." Or as she later puts it "feminism is a selfish movement …It does not bring freedom and fulfilment for women, and it will not right injustices. Many of us in this world rightly feel anger and sorrow at the terrible lives women all over the world can face; poverty and starvation in some places, violence and abuse almost everywhere. The answer is not to become more selfish. That can only make injustice worse.

So from the very beginning of the Bible we can affirm three things about men and women:

• Equality
• Difference
• Interdependence

However, the idyllic world of the Garden of Eden is no longer where we find ourselves. We live instead in a world tarnished and distorted by the Fall, in a world still suffering from the consequences of Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God’s rule. Now we see one of those consequences in Gen 3:16, where God says to the woman "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." Do you see what’s happened? The relationship between men and women has been distorted by the Fall. The woman would suffer in relation to her husband. She would desire to take his place and to control him (see similar use of ‘desire’ in Genesis 4:7) and in response he would domineer over her. At that moment the battle of the sexes became a reality. Now we must take this teaching into account as we relate to one another. You see our inherent sinfulness will lead us to act in a way that is contrary to God’s creation plans. Domination and selfishness are the result of the Fall, not of Creation. And so as Christians seeking to be restored from our fallen state we must resist the temptation to live as we ought not to live.

Perhaps men especially need to be aware of this, domination is not your Christian calling. Rather you are called to be transformed into the likeness of Christ, to gradually restore your fallen image to what it was always intended to be like.

Galatians 3:28 is often a verse that is quoted out of context in the debate about the roles of men and women. Let us be clear that this verse does not mean that Jews and Greeks lost their physical differences, or their cultural distinctives, for they still spoke, dressed and ate differently; nor does it mean that slaves and free people lost their social differences, for most slaves remained slaves and free people free; and so in the same way it does not mean that men lost their maleness and women their femaleness. No the context is not one of who we are as people but how we are regarded when we stand before God. Because we are ‘in Christ’ and enjoy a common relationship to him, racial, national, social and sexual distinctions are irrelevant. Those who by faith are in Christ (Gal 3:26) are equally accepted, equally God’s children, without any distinction, discrimination or favouritism according to race, sex or class. So as far as salvation is concerned before God and in Christ ‘there is neither male nor female’. We are all equal!

Paul often gets a bad press among modern women. He is commonly described as the ultimate in male misogynist thought, the ultimate male chauvinist. I sometimes hear people trying to make excuses for him, saying things like ‘well he was just a man of his day wasn’t he?’ ‘He must have been blinkered by his own culture’ ‘They were all like that then weren’t they?’ And so on and so on. With that mindset Paul’s views are soon discarded as irrelevant to us, the culture card is played and Paul’s statements about men and women are send off the field of discussion. But is this the right way to read Paul? Surely not! What a dangerous way to read any part of the Scriptures! No, before playing the culture card it is essential to listen first to what is actually being said and also to why it is being said. Take, for example, what Paul says in Ephesians 5:22-33 (It must be said that this is a Christian ideal but it should be something that husbands and wives strife toward).

• A word to wives (verses 22-24) – SUBMISSION

Wives are asked to submit to their husbands as they would submit to Christ. Paul states clearly that the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. The relationship between Christ and his church is to be modelled in Christian marriage.

What might this submission mean? Anne Atkins suggests that "the Christian way of submission is to give up all thought of self altogether, to put aside any devices one might use for one’s own profit, and to put one’s entire life at someone else’s disposal." Submission is far more all-embracing than mere obedience. Obedience simply means doing what you are told regardless of whether you want to or not. Whereas Christian submission is to be willing, joyful and cheerful, like our trust in the Lord.

• A word to husbands (verses 25-33) – SACRIFICE

Notice first how much more Paul has to say to the husbands than the wives. The weight of Pauline teaching is directed against them. Before a husband worries about whether his wife is living up to her half of the bargain he has much to do himself. Verse 25 "husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word." The husband is to sacrifice everything for the good of his wife, just as Christ gave up everything for his beloved church. Think about the life of Jesus. Everything he did on earth was for us. Every mile he travelled, every breath he drew, every word he spoke was to serve his church. He put us first in everything and this is the kind of sacrifice a husband is called to make for his wife. It is quite staggering!

I wonder which role you would rather have? This is the ultimate in mutual interdependence. Each person looking to the interest’s of the other person. Which wife would not want to submit to a husband who was prepared to sacrifice anything for her and who lived with her interests as his chief concern? Can this really be culture bound teaching? It cannot be! Here are glorious universal truths for all time! Yes this is a Christian ideal but what a pattern to aim at. Now if Paul can say this here perhaps we need to listen again to the rest of his teaching on the roles of men and women. It seems to me that he is not the male chauvinist that many think him to be.

Summary

• In the past men have certainly oppressed women
• But how do we know how men and women should relate?
• What is the real stuff of our humanity?
• Men and women were created:
• Equal
• Different
• Interdependent
• But the Fall distorted those relationships
• In Christ we are all equal before God
• Paul can teach us glorious truths about how we should relate to one another
• So is the Bible sexist? Yes and no. The sexes are different but equal!

We said at the very beginning of the course that by its end we would not have all the answers. Instead our aim was to start thinking in a Christian way. Now that is certainly not a five week endeavour but is something we will be doing until the day we die. So my hope is that as the weeks and months go past we will keep those four Biblical principles in view: Creation, Fall, Redemption and Consummation. Let’s learn them and let’s start to use them as we think about the contemporary issues of our world. As Paul says in Romans 12:2 "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will."

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