The Theology of Male and Female

Since so many proponents of gender inequality skip the basic components of God’s creation (Old and New), I’d like to give them a little biblical history lesson.

When God created the world, He created all (sexual) living things in twos (we know this from the story of The Flood (Gen.7:2, 9), when the world started all over again)…the only creature that wasn’t initially made in twos was human…

Now, ‘they’ (the theologians) tell us that Scripture keeps account for a specific purpose, although, we are often left to follow the biblical trails and connect the dots ourselves. So today, I’d like to argue for the trail that God created the first man by himself, in order to show the equality of male and female. Stick with me while I do that…

So, ‘they’ also tell us that God ordained the redemption of humanity even before Genesis 3 occurred, i.e., He knows our end from our beginning. So, it would be reasonable to argue that He also knows our ‘middle,’ that part that we are taught to refer to as the ‘body’ or the ‘conflict that needs resolution’ part of our composition papers. Right?

Assuming, we are all learned folks reading this, I’d say we all agree. Good. Let’s move on…

So, God knowing the day would come when His intention and design would be queried, allowed this little portion of creation to progress differently than the others…knowing that Genesis 3:16 would occur, He intentionally left clues all over the place that would help those who so desire, find His will for humanity, so He introduced a re-telling of the Genesis 1 story in Genesis 2.

So that in Genesis 2, we are told how we end up with human male and female –

• humanity was NOT complete with the human male alone (Gen.2:20c). Many adjectives (by male scholars, nonetheless) have been used to describe the ‘place, space, meaning, purpose’ of the first human woman. Adjectives such as ‘suitable,’ ‘comparable,’ ‘fit for,’ ‘matching,’ etc.
• a look at all these adjectives, reveal none signifies ‘less than.’ If anything, they all denote ‘equality.’ Equality of divine purpose and intent according to Genesis 1:26, “Let us make human…Let them rule…” (While we’re arguing otherwise, we might also want to argue about the ‘us’ in the ‘Let us’ and try to argue both their identity and worth! Have fun with that!)
• Whereas all other sexual mammals were initially created both male and female (again, The Flood), none was found ‘that was like Adam.’ That is until God made Eve out of Adam…This deserves pause…why didn’t God just make Eve out of the earth as He made Adam??? Well, logic suggests, so that there would be no room to suggest that Eve was ‘less than’ Adam in any way! No room to suggest that perhaps God used one quality of sand for Adam and another for Eve. No! Adam needed to see and know that ‘this human’ was like made out of the same cloth as he and there’s no better way to see that than to have her substance come from him! No wonder the Apostle Paul would later argue and urge men to love their wives as themselves as “no man ever hated his own body!” (Eph.5:29).

Let’s fast-forward this argument to Apostle Paul’s injunction for Christians not to be ‘unequally yoked with unbelievers’ (2 Cor. 6:14) which has been famously used to discourage marriage between believers and non-believers. What’s Paul talking about here, if not equality of spiritual substance and purpose? The inequality was not in their gender, but in their spiritual mettle! So why would we argue an inequality for male and female who are both saved by the Blood of the Lamb???

When Jesus argues against divorce, he argues against it with these words “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (Mk.10:9). What is Jesus talking about here if not the ‘joining together’ of the ‘dominion team,’ God’s representative team, which sinful hearts introduced inequality of worth and substance to (Matt.19:8), resulting in ‘rejection’ of worth and partnership and ultimately ‘divorce’ – the ‘putting away’ of what God so wisely put together in Genesis 1:26-28 and Genesis 2:18-25?

Why else does God hate divorce so much if not that it signifies the lack of mutuality of the sexes that He created and intended for humanity???

So, I could say more, which I will save for another day, but today, I’d like to stop here and call all proponents of gender inequality and all those who introduce hierarchy between men and women, to look at the theology of male and female from the Scriptures and not from sinful culture. There’s a reason these accounts are in the Scriptures.