Is Women's Day Commemorating a Pathology?

It was a bit coincidental coming across this old video this Women's Day. It just got me thinking...was fighting for equal opportunities for women (the right to vote, to equal wages, to equal education, and to equal career opportunities) against God's design for womanhood? I know I've heard of at least one Christian leader, who, upon being asked his opinion of women's right to vote, asserted that women would not be given the right to vote in an ideal world. At the same time, popular pastors such as Mark Driscoll boldy accuse men: “If your wife is working, you are a selfish bastard. How dare you make her shoulder her half of the curse and part of yours as well!”


There does seem to be an evangelical trend toward the disenfranchisement of women in certain realms other than the church and family.

This past Sunday at church we watched Lesson 8 of the Truth Project in which Dr. Tackett explains that we can find, within the institutions of home, the church, and in the believers individual relationship within the Trinity, (The indwelling Holy Spirit sweeps us into the mysterious Trinitarian relationship), the Divine Imprint of God. (The "imprint" is the reflection of the intra-Trinitarian order of relationship.) 
But marriage and church are but two spheres; there are other spheres, such as community, state, etc. And as Dr. Tackett warns us in Lesson 8 of the Truth Project, we must be careful not to "blur the spheres" by applying the unique and particular social laws of one realm to another realm (e.g.taking the social laws of home and church, and applying them to the sphere of labour). And it would appear that this is what John Piper appears to be doing here.


Where John Piper, I think, is going wrong is how he coming to his understanding of the meaning of manhood and womanhood. He believes that true manhood and womanhood can only be discovered by definitive roles in distinction to one another. (e.g. intrinsic to masculinity is leadership, and intrinsic to femininity is submission.)  In his book A Vision of Biblical Complementary Manhood and Womanhood Defined According to the Bible, he cites Corinthians 11:3-16 (especially vv. 8-9, 14); Ephesians 5:21-33 (especially vv. 31-32); and 1 Timothy 2:11-14 (especially vv. 13-14), as proof of this ontological subordination of women in the Bible, but he is doing precisely what Dr.Tackett has called, "blurring the spheres."

Each one of these texts Piper invokes are dealing with the specific relationship of a husbands and a wife in marriage (the family), and structure within the church (?). He may be correct in noting that "the foundation of this differentiation [as expressed in the aforementioned passages] is traced back to the way things were in Eden before sin warped our relationships. Differentiated roles were corrupted, not created, by the fall. They were created by God." But what he is neglecting to address here is that back in Eden, Adam and Eve were not merely man and woman, they were husband and wife. Husbands and wives were ordered these ways because the institution of marriage is a parable of Christ and the Church (His bride), and a reflection of the intra-Trinitarian relationship. This applies to but two spheres as far as I can tell. But looking at the structure God has designed for marriage and the church is not proof that it is God's will for us to carry the laws and order from within a marriage and apply them to every other sphere.

The role of submission of the "woman" (note: in the Greek it could mean either 'women' or 'wives')  is based on origin, yes. In 1 Corinthians 11 we are told that a "woman" must have her head covered because woman came from man. Ephesians 5 expounds further on what this "headship" means, qualifying it as "the source" of woman. This is definitely in keeping with the creation of woman in Genesis. Adam, speaking of his new wife, 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." But why - why was woman taken out of man? Jesus tells us quite clearly, in conjunction to the declaration of the first newly-wed husband, Adam, in Genesis: "therefore (because woman was taken out of man)  a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." Clearly headship and submission exist for one purpose: oneness. Woman was taken from man with the express purpose of becoming one with man. The two now work together as one agent. But in the larger economy, these particular role distinctions for men and women do not exist. Unless it is also the role of women to become one with all men, this role of submission to a "head" only pertains to the relationship in marriage wherein "the two become one." In fact, Ephesians 5 makes it clear that women are only to submit to their "own husbands."

(In light of this, I'm not quite sure what to make of the seeming transference of female subordination in the realm of marriage into the realm of church - I suppose if, within the already complete reflection of the Trinity  in the sphere of the church, women are still subordinate, one might rightfully wonder what's going on...

THE TRINITY
1.Father 2. Son 3. Holy Spirit

THE FAMILY
1. Husbands 2. Wives 3. Children

THE CHURCH
1. Christ 2. Leaders 3. Flock...and women

If there were consistency, this pattern of female subordination would extend itself to all other spheres too, would it not? So I guess now I am questioning whether or not women ought to be subordinate in the church and I suppose my next task, now that I've discovered there are no loopholes to slip out of the subordination of women in the realm of marriage, is to delve into matters of the church. But that is for a later time.)

The point is, I see no evidence anywhere in the Bible that suggests that men and women in general must adhere to this structure - or even that it would be a healthy thing if they were to. There is no place on earth, nor has there ever been, that you can honestly call a healthy culture in which women are altogether disenfranchised and not permitted to take an active leadership role. And this would be contradicting the Bible, which gives us at least a few examples of godly women in leadership positions who were blessed by God.

What is going on here? I think I am beginning to understand.

 John Piper asserts:

"He (God) designed our differences and they are profound. They are not mere physiological prerequisites for sexual union. They go to the root of our personhood."

And I agree with this. However, he does not leave it there. He adds:

"The tendency today is to stress the equality of men and women by minimizing the unique significance of our maleness or femaleness."

While I do not think we should be trying to minimize the unique significance of our maleness or femaleness, I don't think that taking the opposite extreme - constructing our own artificial "unique significance" through man-made role distinctions, and then in some strange attempt to prove sexual significance by emphasizing those distinctions - is what God had in mind. Nor do I think that the significance of maleness and femaleness can be found in terms of roles. It is my belief that sexual identity cannot be found in "a role." 

Granted, God seems to have designated a particular law or order withing a certain social sphere - I am not arguing with that - but this does not assume that our very identity is grounded within a law or order found in any one particular social sphere. It must be rooted in something deeper than that, otherwise, when a man is under the authority of a female police officer, or a female probation officer, or a female judge, etc., he becomes less a man. No doubt the reason why John Piper is even the least bit uncomfortable in his masculinity when he is taking a back seat to a female bus driver. But this is foolishness.

Where then is our identity found?

As I understand it, manhood/womanhood is built right into us - it is an intrinsic part of who we are as opposed to a role that we play. It is rooted in God, and God alone. (God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Genesis 1:27) ).  

As John Piper states himself:

"...Paul Jewett, in his very insightful book, Man as Male and Female, argues persuasively that maleness and femaleness are essential, not peripheral, to our personhood: Sexuality permeates one’s individual being to its very depth; it conditions every facet of one’s life as a person. As the self is always aware of itself as an ‘I,’ so this ‘I’ is always aware of itself as himself or herself. Our self-knowledge is indissolubly bound up not simply with our human being but with our sexual being. At the human level there is no ‘I and thou’ per se, but only the ‘I’ who is male or female confronting the ‘thou,’ the ‘other,’ who is also male or female.]"

And I couldn't agree more!


When a man is at home looking after the children and a woman is at work, it does not in any way make him less of a man or her less of a woman.
Men, by virtue of being men, reflect something of God's heart in a way that women cannot; likewise, women, by virtue of being women, reflect something of God's heart in a way that men cannot. Our identity is found in the divine image-bearing qualities that are intrinsic to our personhood. And there cannot be a gender-neutral person, only male people and female people.

This belief that manhood and womanhood are grounded in changing, artificial roles, however legitimate they may be in certain contexts, might be the reason some Christian men like Mark Driscoll are so insecure in their own manhood. They feel they have to bolster their sense of masculinity by belittling femininity, and, by extension, homosexuals (because they are not "masculine" enough.) Because they are under the impression that the measure of masculinity is the extent to which one has been divorced from femininity (the more unfeminine you behave, the more masculine you are) instead of in their essence as men made made in God's image, they are very conscious about putting as much distance as possible between masculinity and femininity. Hence, Driscoll's problem with the "chickified" church and his demand for "manly" music. Having to participate in these "feminine" things threaten their security in their masculinity and therefore, their identity. The only problem is, acting less like a woman isn't the equivalent of acting like a man. One can act less like a woman, for example, by acting like a pig.

The unfortunate truth is, this belief is not just unfortunate for these men, but outright dangerous. It can only damage the relationships between men and women. It can easily be misconstrued to mean that women are not the image of God, but the derivative image, existing solely to "help" the man instead of being equal counterparts, helping one another side by side toward a common goal. It can easily perpetuate the already-existing evils that target women with impunity all around the globe.

That said, I appreciate how John Piper is very clear that he would not have his understanding of manhood and womanhood forced on everyone, and I do admire his desire to be consistent.