Gender Matters
One of Satan’s favorite lies is promoting the notion that the differences between male and female are merely biological.
“You will want to control your husband, but he will dominate you” (Genesis 3:16). This is a fair translation of the underlying concepts in the Hebrew original. The impulse for a woman to take control is as old as the Fall. We see it showing up in many ancient heathen idolatries, but in the West today the particular flavor comes from Germanic pagan mythology. Despite the male ability to dominate when it suits him, he remains too lazy to take up the shepherd’s staff. This sets up a never-ending conflict.
Women are not wired for external guard duty against the Devil. He gifts of spiritual management are internal, nurturing those still developing in whatever way they are yet immature. There is surely an overlap, but recognition and enforcement of boundaries is the male domain. Women have their own very powerful capabilities of squelching evil, but if we let women carry the burden of fighting all demons, we will be in very big trouble. Adam was derelict in doing that with Eve.
Males and females are not interchangeable. They cannot play the same role in the household and cannot do the various chores with equal facility. They cannot play the same roles in society and should never be expected to get interchangeable results. Our current social mythology upholds a collection of false dichotomies and Satan is laughing.
The Spirit of God mitigates the curse in Genesis 3, but Satan does all he can to keep us under its full authority. You can come back into the Garden of Eden in a sense if you are willing to be cleansed by the flaming sword of God’s revelation. The first step was that two shall become one flesh. That’s more than simply copulation or even setting up housekeeping together. It’s a full union of purpose and identity. It’s not a question of full surrender of each into the other, but a role-based surrender that makes peace with God’s revelation.
Each brings to the marriage strengths and weaknesses characteristic of their gender. Questions of taste and intelligence are immaterial to the point here. Men are flexible on certain things because it’s the place where women need to choose, and vice versa. There are variations but the only place where a woman can morally exercise strength is against folks outside the household and with her children. The man should be a threat to anyone who transgresses his mission calling. He is her mission or she has no business marrying. She does no shaping and fixing of his flaws unless she understands how a woman accomplishes such things. Whatever she does must build him up, not tear him down. He holds the final say in all things because his is the guard against moral threats, not so he can indulge his whims.
There are plenty of other sources covering all the mechanics, but the point is that Western society is about as perverted as it gets on the issues of sexual identity and romance. The most asinine thing anyone can do is marry outside their own religion, in the sense of letting their fleshly inclinations and human resources lead in the choice. If a Christian builds a bond with someone who isn’t a believer, he or she has surrendered the biggest part of life to Satan. It matters little what the other professes with their mouth if nothing in their behavior backs it up with a powerful moral inclination. We rightly despair of things going well by marrying anyone who has not abandoned Western moral mythology in favor of what the Bible actually teaches.
There is a broad moral principle at work here. Abraham refused the gift of the burial cave from Ephron because it would place Abraham under feudal obligation to acknowledge Ephron’s Hittite gods. The Mosaic Covenant forbade a marriage bond with anyone who didn’t embrace the covenant. The business of not eating with Gentiles was not rudeness and was no conflict with the command to feed the hungry, but it was to avoid non-kosher food and to avoid a meal in the name of pagan gods. Further, sharing food was tantamount to declaring a peace treaty. It makes a lot of difference who takes the role of sponsor, or if it is ceremonially equal. It could not be a simple social occasion when sponsored by someone outside the covenant. This was moderated for any Gentile who embraced the Covenant of Noah, of course. Solomon learned the hard way with a huge investment loss when he went into business with Hiram of Tyre – you cannot bind yourself in a covenant, implicit or otherwise, to someone if it means moral entanglements. This is what Paul meant by warning we should not be unequally yoked with non-believers in marriage. That was one implication of the wider warning from God.
However, we often find ourselves called by Christ after a human marriage. Sometimes we discover our spouse was terribly phony, or worse, totally self-deceived. Moses granted divorce on terms far stricter than was common in other ancient nations. Jesus explained even that wasn’t really a high enough standard, and the Apostles confirmed it. But the New Testament isn’t about laws on human terms, but moral principles that transcend human intelligence. Divorce is not forbidden in all cases, but approaching the question from any part of a Western background guarantees a sinful answer. The question comes down to what God requires of you personally in your situation.
Human desire is a flimsy basis for choosing a life partner or leaving one, but Satan trembles when people choose on the basis of moral wisdom.
