In the United States, the month of June has developed into a month to celebrate sexuality. Petra Church also celebrates God’s design for gender and sexuality. What a wonderful gift God has given us. With something so precious, powerful, and personal as our gender and sexuality, it’s important to listen to our compassionate Father’s instructions that protect us and channel these passions in healthy ways.
We’ve addressed the issue of gender extensively in other blogs: The Beginning of Gender and Loving Trans* People. We’ve also offered a two-hour lecture on Transgenderism that you might find helpful. Today, we’ll be scratching the surface of gender roles within the church community.
What’s God-made, and What’s Man-made?
Clearly, God made two distinct sexes, male and female. Both carry the imprint of his image (Genesis 1:26; Genesis 5:1-2) and are of equal value. Maleness is not superior to femaleness, as the ancient Greeks and Romans believed, for example. In regards to salvation, Galatians 3:28 says, “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male nor female.” Ethnic, biological, and social distinctions continue to exist, but they do not determine our value. The president of Gordon-Conwell Seminary writes, “Gender roles are cultural, but the gospel always brings a degree of freedom to women in cultures where women are oppressed. Expressed differently: When the gospel enters into any culture, it moves that culture toward greater grace, wholeness, and flourishing for all people.” You can read the entire interview here.
Clearly, there is a deep biological divide between male and female, and yet, it is my belief that the Christian church has contributed, in some degree, to gender confusion by creating gender expectations that are cultural and not biblical.
When we make rigid assumptions about what men or women can “do,” or “the characteristics they should display,” or “how they should act,” we stifle the diversity and uniqueness God has created people with. When communities falsely define gender based on cultural realities instead of biological realities, men and women are left feeling wrongly categorized by human definitions. That labeling creates misunderstanding and rebellion. If you read the literature, much of the transgender movement isn’t a wholesale denial of male-female biology; it’s a rebellion against human-constructed expectations.
When we tell men, “real men should act like this…” and then we falsely define it in a way the Bible never does—That’s a problem! When real men “swing axes, throw footballs, guzzle pine tar, or earn six figures,” then that leaves the other 93% of us men wondering if we’re a real man. Sensitivity, artistry, nurture, and empathy, for example, are human characteristics, not exclusively female characteristics. The Bible calls all of us to imitate a creative God who is described as “gracious and compassionate.” Just because you can’t throw a football over the moon or you cry during the Great British Baking Show doesn’t mean you aren’t a real man.
Strength, protection, and provision are not exclusive to the “male” club either. Some of the strongest, most resilient leaders I know are women! Being feminine doesn’t always mean loving Pinterest, decorating, baking, or gossiping about small-town rumors. That leaves the rest of the women wondering if they really “fit in” because they are athletic, or love hiking, or love leading an efficient business meeting. If you’re a woman and you feel yourself ready to give a “Friday Night Smack-Down” on some local bully—hey, thanks for having a heart of justice.
Don’t confuse human cultural expectations with God’s biological differences.
People have a complicated relationship with gender expectations—I’m not convinced God does. God loves both genders and created them co-equal and coheirs of his promises. Rib of rib. Eye to eye. Compatible, yet oddly diverse, even from one person—and one couple—to the next.
Our complicated relationship with gender started all the way back in the Garden of Eden when unity with God was disrupted. In that moment the community of husband and wife disintegrated into domination, blame, and mistrust. It’s a long and sordid tale. Yet, Jesus came to restore the original design that was lost in the garden. In virtually every way, Jesus interacted with women and men exactly the same. When we look at Genesis 1:26-28, we see male and female given the same mandate together, without hierarchy or gender roles. Both men and women, with a wide range of personality differences, are released to present God’s image to his creation and to one another. God is the Good Gardener of the earth, the Servant King, and the Good Shepherd—so mirror his image. Men and women are both endowed with the leadership, personality, diversity, relational capacity, and spiritual authority to be God’s Vice Regents to his creation.
The New Testament Scriptures
The question the church has to answer is: what do we do with the scriptures that plainly discriminate between female and male roles in the church? Answering that requires the long and careful study of history, biblical texts, and author’s intent. It also requires humility and willingness to change our assumptions. I’m cautioning for a more gracious and flexible set of gender expectations that are more affirming and less restricting.
Somehow, we know that when Paul writes, “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says,” he clearly can’t mean all women everywhere, all the time, right? Paul was addressing a specific situation. Indeed, Paul gets to the point in the very next verse. The women were being highly disruptive with their newly liberated Christian freedoms by constantly talking and interrupting the service. So Paul helps correct them, “If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home” (1 Corinthians 14:34).
Yet many interpreters abandon the very principle of honoring the context they just used in 1 Corinthians 14 when discussing women’s roles or leadership within the house-church movement in 1 Timothy 2:12, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.” Does that now mean Paul doesn’t permit any women anywhere at any time to teach or have authority over men? Or was Paul again addressing another specific situation where particular women needed to be educated first and grown in the faith before they could be released into mature leadership? Paul was writing letters to help shepherd specific church communities into maturing in the gospel faith. It requires nuance and guiding principles for us to interpret these sacred texts consistently and correctly.
The Judeo-Christian witness through scriptures has always depicted a God who comes to us and meets us where we are. He puts our skin on. He stoops down to our level and works within our laws and customs. Some existing laws he modifies and some he throws out. When God met Abraham, God didn’t speak to him in Mandarin; he spoke in Hebrew. He didn’t speak in modern mathematical theorems. He spoke in ancient Mesopotamian language and pictures.
This same incarnational faith was interacting with a hyper-masculine Roman culture. The Apostle Paul’s Greek-speaking house churches walked in a lot of false assumptions about genders. He had to address some, modify others, and leave others for a later time. He had to focus on what was really important for the spread of Jesus’ saving grace and what could continue to be developed and adapted in time. Paul was working within a cultural framework, but he was moving towards redemption and greater grace.
The Modern Assault
Nowadays, some of our conservative church communities, in an effort to defend the value of gender differences against the secular assault, have grown into a habit of skipping right over all of the scriptural context and rigidly imposing these two-thousand-year-old restrictions on women. These commands were meant for a very specific historical audience. I’m suggesting that in Western churches, we not grow hasty in responding to the gender and sexuality avalanche and add our own false assumptions to the debate. The church has made its own mistakes in devaluing people and people groups and falsely defining gender according to cultural standards. The questions we must answer are: In our biological differences, what is God’s timeless design? And, what are specific sensitivities to gender that God permits but also transforms towards greater grace?
God has created men and women with a wide range of personality types, leadership capacities, and skills. We should celebrate that. Different cultures have different sensitivities towards modesty, gender roles, and even expectations of what is “acceptable” for women or men. These things change. God doesn’t transform cultures all at once. He conforms us into the image of his holy love—one step at a time. He shapes our habits and thinking. Each individual and each culture is on a path that is unique. God’s knack for nestling the gospel into imperfect human structures is what makes him gracious and wise.
Within what it means to be male or female, let’s honor the uniqueness of expressions and personality types.
Tags: man, gender, woman, female, male, unique, biology, assumptions, man-made, trans, god's image
