Mum: I’m sorry you’ve heard people say that. Because it’s totally wrong to think that one gender is better than another. I wouldn’t swap any of you boys for a girl!

F: That’s just because you have us now!

M: True, but also as a Christian I really believe that God creates each person intentionally as they are being made in the womb. And God knows what he’s doing! I trust that he has given our family exactly who he intended. And what’s best for our family.

F: What do you mean ‘what’s best for our family’?

M: Well, God’s made each person and each family special and unique. No two families are the same. Some have children who are all boys, some have all girls, some have a mix. And part of his wonderful plan for us is to have all sorts of different families for people to grow up in.

F: But did you ever want a girl?

M: If I’m honest, yes I did always want both boys and girls. But when each of you came along I knew that you were a precious gift from God. I had actually prayed and asked God for a daughter and clearly his answer to that prayer for me has been no. But part of following and trusting him means that even when I can’t understand why, I can trust that God knows what’s best. He heard my prayer and his answer was no.

F: Sometimes you say no to me and I wish the answer was yes.

M: That’s right.

F: And I feel sad.

M: Yes, I think it’s totally ok to feel sad. But do you know, not long after we had finished having all you kids I once met someone who had all boys. She was so bitter about the fact that God hadn’t given her a daughter, that it was robbing her of the joy that she had in her sons. I never wanted to be like that.

F: What do you mean it robbed her joy?

M: Well, can you remember seeing that cute toddler the other day at the shops who had a lollipop in each of her hands as she sat in the trolley? But she saw their older sister having a different flavour lollipop and so she threw a tantrum.

F: Yep, it was kind of funny cos she had her own lollipops.

M: Exactly! But by focussing on her sister’s lollipop and how much she wanted it, she lost sight of the lollipop she already had. Focussing on what you don’t have, robs you of the joy in what you already do have.

F: Hmm..so you’re saying she should have been thankful for what she had?

M: Absolutely. But sometimes that doesn’t come easy, so I need to keep reminding myself from God’s Word that he’s been so good and generous to me. Like James 1:17, which tells us every good gift comes from God. The more I keep coming back to Bible verses like that, the easier I find it to remember to be thankful, and not be robbed of my joy in the wonderful gifts God’s given me…like you!

F: Ohh…mum!

Dan & Chrissie Wu live in Newtown with their three boys Liam, Archie and Harry. Dan lectures in Old Testament at Moore College, and Chrissie is a part time Primary School teacher. In their spare time, they love outdoor activities like beach holidays, hikes and bushwalks, and trying to take their very lazy dog Banjo for walks.

Johnny: Well mum, we were just talking about how God created the world.

Mum: Yes…

Johnny: And, well, women were made second, and God calls them helpers, so they are not as good as boys.

Mum: Hmmmm…

Johnny: And…well you were made out of a man’s rib, and that’s pretty gross.

Mum: I see what you mean there! It could be pretty gross. Tell me Johnny, are you the eldest child in our family?

Johnny: Mum! You know I’m not. Harry is the oldest, then me and then Lucy.

Mum: Well, you were made second. Does that mean you are second best? Is Harry better than you? Do we love Harry the most because he came first?

Johnny: No! You love us the same amount. Sometimes I even think you love Lucy the most, and she’s last!

Mum: You’re right. We love you all – it doesn’t matter whether you came first, second or third, you are still all our children, and we love you all. It is the same for God. Just because he made women second, doesn’t mean he loves them less, or that we are less important. We are just second.

What is interesting is that, in Genesis 1, when the Bible talks about the creating that God did every day it says that God sees that it was good. God likes what he made. But in chapter 2 of Genesis, when he explains more the story of Adam and Eve, God makes the man, and sees that it is not good for him to be alone. 

Imagine the great parade of animals that might have gone past Adam, with him naming all the animals. God was showing Adam that no animal was fit to be his helper. Finally, God puts Adam to sleep, and as you said, here is the gross part, takes one of Adam’s ribs and makes a woman to be with the man. But actually that’s not gross at all - it’s really pretty amazing. God is showing us how closely connected the man and the woman are. They are not like animals, but they are like each other. 

God talks about the creation of men and women, being very good. The man was alone, and it was not good. He needed someone to work alongside him, and God created the woman and it is very good. Adam and Eve needed to be a team. God didn’t make one better than the other, they were designed to be together. We need both.

Beth is married to Chris, and together they have 8 children ranging in age from 26 to 10. She has spent most of her life in the west of Sydney - mainly the inner west, where she grew up and worked in ministry with her husband, before they moved together to minister in the greater west! As well as partnering with her husband at Grace West Anglican, Beth works as a primary music teacher and is passionate about teaching kids about Jesus.

Lucy: My friend says girls can do anything boys can do and I agree. There is no difference between boys and girls, we are both as good as each other. 

Mum: I think you need to think about that for a second. Are you exactly the same as a boy?

Lucy: Well sure, boys have a penis and girls have a vagina - but apart from that, we’re pretty much the same. We are all humans. We both can think and reason, we are different from the other plants and animals. So surely that makes us the same as boys.

Mum: Let’s start with that basic biology - boys have a penis, girls have a vagina. That is not the same! We are biologically different. Boys are often taller and stronger. But they can’t have the babies - only females can do that, and that exact difference helps explain the difference between males and females. 

We need to work together - a female needs a male to have a baby. But the female carries the baby and the male cannot. We have equal parts in it, but we are not the same. We have a different role but we are still all humans. We complement each other. 

Lucy: Oh you mean we say nice things about each other - we’re supportive? 

Mum: Well actually there are two different words which sound the same but mean something pretty different. 

Compl-i-ment - this one means saying something nice about someone else - what I think about you! “You’re looking pretty good today” or "Wow you’re clever!” They are some examples.

Compl-e-ment - this word is more connected to the word complete - it means working together to show the finished idea/picture

Lucy: That just seems confusing having two words that are so similar.

Mum: Let me try to explain it a different way…think about bacon and eggs for breakfast. They are yummy on their own, but they work really well together to make the other complete. Or how about pencil and paper…What can you do with a pencil only? You can use it as a bookmark, you can try to write with it on the ground or surfaces, you can use it to tap and drum or make sounds with. What can you do with a piece of paper by itself? 

Lucy: You can make paper airplanes! 

Mum: And?

Lucy: You can scrunch it in a ball, you can fold it to make things - like origami boxes and creatures, you can make a fan

Mum: So you can do lots of cool things with each item all on their own. But when you use them together they work in the way that they are designed. The pencil is best used to create images and texts, and the best way for the pencil’s creativity to be seen is by using the paper. They have different roles and functions but they work well together. They compl-e-ment each other. Now imagine and you are the pencil and Johnny is the paper. You are both really important, you can both do lots of fun stuff, you even can do some of the same things, but you work best together. You compl-e-ment each other. 

The Bible talks about men and women in the same way. We are all people created by God. He loves us all and he sent his son to die for us all. In the Bible, in the book of Galatians it says,

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

We are all important to God, he loves us all no matter what our role in society, and no matter whether we are male or female. 

And at the same time, in the Bible, God shows us that we are not the same. In Genesis, the very first book in the Bible, when God talks about how he made the world, it says three things:

1. We are made male and female. Genesis 1:27 says, 

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

It is really clear, people are made in God’s image, and part of that is that we are male and female, we are made different, and even in our differences we are both in the image of God, and God says it is very good.

2. We are given a task together, which is to have a family, and be in charge of the rest of creation. Let’s look at Genesis 1: 28,

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.

Be fruitful and increase, that means have children, and then subdue the earth. That means we are to manage everything in the world, the rest of creation. And most important of all is that we do it together. 

3. God made everything good, but he made the man first and it wasn’t good for him to be alone. Genesis 2, helps us understand more of God’s creation. In Genesis 2:18 it says,
The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper corresponding to him.”

So after looking at all the other creatures that he had made, God saw that there was nothing in creation that was right for the man and so he created the woman out of the man, to be a helper that was equal to him and like him, but different to him. That is women are created just right to compl-e-ment men. Men could not do what God wanted on their own and so God created women. We are to work together as part of God’s creation. We are to compl-e-ment each other. We need each other.

Lucy: Hang on! Girls are meant to be helpers!?! That doesn’t sound like we are equal at all. That sounds like we are less important than boys. I am not sure I like that.

Mum: I don’t like the sound of that either, Lucy! It sounds pretty tricky doesn’t it? But the thing to remember is that A helper is still equal to the other person. If you could see that Johnny was having trouble drawing a horse for his school project, and because you’re such a good artist you gave him some help – would that mean you were more important than him? No! It just means that one person can’t do everything on their own, and they often need someone else to jump in and ‘give them a hand’.

I’m sure at school your teacher often helps you. That means she is your helper. And in the Bible, do you know who is described as ‘the helper’ most of the time? It’s God. He has to help us because we can’t do everything for ourselves.

But whether one person is ‘the helper’, and the other person is the one being helped, we are still equally valuable people. But the number one thing to remember is that we are all made in the image of God and we are all one in Christ Jesus. God loves us all, Jesus came to die for us all, so we can all be in a relationship with God, whether we are male or female. But we are not all the same - we are equally loved, and also different. Like the paper and pencil - males and females are not the same, they can do different things but we work best together. We compl-e-ment each other.

Beth is married to Chris, and together they have 8 children ranging in age from 26 to 10. She has spent most of her life in the west of Sydney - mainly the inner west, where she grew up and worked in ministry with her husband, before they moved together to minister in the greater west! As well as partnering with her husband at Grace West Anglican, Beth works as a primary music teacher and is passionate about teaching kids about Jesus.

Safe was never a word I used to describe my life growing up. It didn’t even occur to me that my home was safe. It just was. It was so normal to me to feel safe that I thought everybody’s home was like that. It wasn’t until I spent time in the home of my friends that I learnt the feeling of fear in relation to a father. I realised that a big reason my home was safe was because my dad displayed gentle strength. I think that is the best way to describe it; Strength used to serve, not to be served.

A gentle dad means you don’t need to be afraid when you have made a mistake. There is no anxiety in your child’s mind, worrying about ‘how dad will react’. The gentle dad doesn’t get angry over small things. He doesn’t rub your nose in your mistakes. A gentle dad holds his children accountable for their actions and disciplines appropriately. But there is never any fear, instead a trust that it is for their own good.

The gentle dad is dependable. He is there to help if needed; school projects, church events, or a late night pick up from a party. I never had to worry that my dad wouldn’t be there if I needed him; I could trust in him. The gentle dad doesn’t complain, but might still show up in his embarrassing paint-stained flannel shirt and track pants.

My gentle dad understood what it meant to raise girls. He took the time to listen. He did that well. He gave wide margins for creativity and personal growth; Blue pancakes, satay chicken lasagne, Ethiopian stew; he ate them all. In a desperate need to create and make something beautiful, I painted the door of his garage in an underwater scene, complete with fish and seaweed. My contribution was valued; He’s kept it that way for 25 years. When I dyed my hair purple, he smiled and said it looked great. He knew the place of true beauty and was concerned more about my inside heart than my outside appearance.

A gentle dad isn’t a pushover. He is steadfast in his values. To get our first driving lesson we had to sit through his lecture on how the car engine worked, and learn how to change a tyre. Dad was determined to raise smart, strong women who could handle themselves in a crisis. He also paid for the yearly NRMA roadside assistance policy, because he was also realistic about our willingness to change a tyre on the side of the road, despite his best efforts in teaching us.

The gentle dad is the spiritual leader of the home. He perseveres with morning devotions through the eye rolls, the loud sighs, the distractions. He was willing to lead us in the best way, not just the easiest way. He is faithful in showing up for church every week, praying for his family, and giving generously to the work of the gospel, both here and overseas. He leads by doing; setting the example for us to follow. He reflects the gentle, fatherly love and care of our heavenly father.

A wonderful blessing about growing up with a gentle dad, is that almost instinctively as an adult I have surrounded myself with other strong men who display gentleness. My husband, my boss, my church minister; They are incredibly strong men, yet they choose to be gentle. Secure in Christ and in themselves, they can celebrate my wins, encourage me in my weaknesses and help pick up the pieces of my failures. I’m not afraid of being trampled in their ambition, or of being left behind in insignificance. My role is valued and my voice is heard.

It takes incredible strength to be gentle. Through the power of the Holy Spirt, gentleness can grow as a fruit of a life lived in Christ. When faithful love and strength are used to care and serve, there is true safety. Gentleness is power that protects. It’s everything that our heavenly father is. It’s the way my dad chooses to live. One of my favourite psalms says

“The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.” (Psalm 103 v. 8)

That’s a great description of gentleness. I understand what that feels like to experience, because I got to experience it growing up with my dad. I grieve with those who didn’t grow up with a gentle dad. If that is you, what your earthly fathers lacked, may it be yours in abundance through your heavenly Father. Our God is the perfect father, who is loving and gentle and kind. We are all blessed when men choose to follow in his ways.

So, thanks to all the gentle dads. Thanks for being safe. Thanks for showing us a part of what our heavenly father is like. Happy Father’s Day. Our prayer for you is ‘that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God.’ (Phil 1:9-11)

Clare grew up on the NSW south coast before moving to Sydney to work as a nurse. She is married to Stan and they have two children. Together they spent eight years working in the Middle East with CMS. They now attend St. Mark’s Anglican Church in Pennant Hills. Clare enjoys mentoring younger Christian women and reading the Bible with new believers.

One of the tools that Suellen devised to tackle this unease was to hold a number of Women’s Focus Groups - just to see where the women were at, spiritually, and to pull women together after this period of disconnection. So, over two weeks in June, 2022, she gathered women together in small groups.

Amongst the questions that she asked were: do you feel valued as a woman at OEC; and do you see yourself working with the men in our church for the Kingdom of God?

A very small proportion of women responded that they felt that women were not respected at OEC because women were not permitted to preach; the largest proportion had no real issues to report. But there was a significant group that reported confusion and a lack of clarity about the roles and responsibilities of women at OEC. This was particularly from younger women, and those who had joined OEC from other churches who had different ways of doing things.

For example questions like, “Why don’t women preach or lead services at OEC?” ; or “Can women lead a mixed Bible study here?” could elicit 10 different answers depending on who answered them!

Suellen went back to the position paper titled Men, Women and Ministry at OEC written within the first year of the church being planted… 28 years ago!

The paper was very comprehensive in its theological and Biblical parameters but offered virtually no guidelines or principles on how complementarianism worked itself out in the ministries on the ground.

It was at this point that Suellen encountered two resources that would eventually shape her next move.

The first was Embracing Complementarianism by Graham Beynon and Jane Tooher (see the review here). The book is not a comprehensive treatment of the Biblical and theological issues around the men/women question (although they are well-canvassed), but rather a call to think through those principles and how to put them into practice. It is an immensely practical book with lots of examples of how different churches have given expression to these principles. One of the Appendices (No 4) outlines some ways that a church eldership could go about canvassing the views of their women and then writing a position paper on ministry that was Biblical, practical, positive and clear.

The second was a paper written by The Village Church in Texas, found here. Called The Role of Women at Village Church it seemed to do what Beynon and Tooher were recommending - ie taking Biblical convictions and attempting to turn them into positive, practical ministry expectations that fitted their church.

With the support of Ed Springer, her Senior Minister, Suellen purchased 14 copies of Embracing Complementarianism - one for each of the 6 staff, the 5 Overseers and the 3 members of the Women’s Ministry Team. As well, the ministry wives borrowed their husbands’ copies of the book and read it together. Initial discussions involved the Women’s Ministry Team and then discussions were held at the staff meeting level.

In December, Suellen spoke at the Overseers meeting, presenting a report from the Women’s Ministry Team. It included reflections of women’s ministry at OEC, feedback from the focus groups and a request for the Overseers to update and clarify complementarian ministry at OEC.

“We think there is a place for an update to the ‘Men, Women and Ministry’ paper… a paper that begins with what we are convicted of from God’s word, clarifies our practices at OEC, and that helps us as a church to press on together in kingdom work.”

As well as the Beynon/Tooher book, she had previously given each of the Overseers a copy of the Village Church position paper, both of which they had read and appreciated.

The Overseers were very receptive and committed to working with the women and men of OEC to improve the clarity on how we make disciples of Jesus in Orange and beyond together. Suellen was keen to assure them the Women’s Ministry Team was not in an urgent hurry; that the process was worth doing well; and there was a need for it to be carefully considered, and distributed for consultation and feedback before the position paper was finalised.

The thing that I noticed as I listened to Suellen was that her own approach to addressing the needs of the women was a demonstration of complementarian ministry. She used the gifts God has given her to think about the ministry God has given her (and other women) and then worked alongside the male leadership, recognising their particular responsibilities, to find a way forward to serve the church better.

This process is now under way! May the final result be a great resource to other churches. Could your church do something similar?

Lesley Ramsay has been in local church ministry with her husband, Jim, for 47 years. After university she trained as a teacher and then raised four children. Over the past 30 years she has worked as a Bible teacher and evangelist across Australia and overseas. She has written and edited several books and training packages that are sold and used internationally. She now works at Moore College in Sydney, in pastoral care to the students. To relax, she enjoys a good coffee and a good book and hanging out with her grandchildren.

We have been pleased to review one of her books before (you can read it here). And so it was with some anticipation I read her latest book,  The Lies We Are Told, The Truth We Must Hold. Overall, I was not disappointed, but I have a caveat which I will come to at the end.

James is clear about her intentions: “This book is intended as a simple primer, a ‘road map’ of some of the complex worldview issues that challenge Bible-believing Christians today” (10). Her thesis is that the options of “silence, acquiescence, and/or celebration buys into lies and ignores the truth… The only solid basis for defending human dignity and achieving justice is a biblical worldview” (22–23).

Part One, titled The Lies We Are Told, is a truly insightful journey through the history of ideas that have shaped our current secular worldviews… ideas such as: there is no God, no absolute morality, no universal truth, no universal humanity. Clearly James is an astute historian, as she wheels out philosophers, academics, psychiatrists, brutal national leaders (mainly from the 19th and 20th centuries) and exposes the ‘bitter fruit’ of their bad ideas.

If you feel like you know little about history or the philosophy of ideas that have shaped our world, this book will fill in all the gaps. Each sub-section in each chapter is short enough to get a grasp of the big idea and the identities that formulated and advanced it. At the same time, James is exposing the tragic legacies of those ideas for us in the 21st century. This is where James is at her best.

I found her recounting of the results of the evil ideologies of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse-Tung and others particularly chilling. We tend to forget how vile Marxism was and is. For those who have not been exposed to much history at school, this book would be a great portal into how this worldview (where humans have no inherent dignity) emerged.

Part Two sets out the Biblical worldview which is, according to the chapter headings, the foundation of truth, freedom, dignity, and human flourishing. This is an orthodox, evangelical God-as-Creator treatment - a wonderful counterbalance to the ‘lies’. 

Overall, the book is a masterful treatment of the way that sin has corrupted the way we see our world.

My caveat is there were times when I felt that James was making broad sweeping claims that were not nuanced.

For example, capitalism is portrayed as the only economic system worthy of Christian support. She quotes Chad Hovind, the American author of a book called Godonomics:

After [Adam Smith’s] book. ‘Wealth of Nations’ was published and its principles took hold, wages quadrupled in the next 50 years, and then quadrupled again over the next 50 years. Every society that has leaned into free enterprise has prospered and benefited the poor and needy. Profits are good. They are not a four-letter word. They are the incentive for work.’(p236)

Wayne Grudem and B Asmus in The Poverty of Nations says:

The creation mandate indicates that God’s design for humanity is not just for us to survive, but to flourish on earth. (p235)

Socialism, as distinct from Marxism, on the other hand, is presented as having no value or saving graces at all.

True, James does make the comment that we live in a sinful, corrupted world where no economic or political system will function perfectly, but ‘capitalism has been better for the poor than either socialism or traditional pre-industrial economies.’ (p236), and there is no further treatment of those ‘sins’ of capitalism. 

I think this approach fails to recognise that the historical disenchantment with capitalism (demonstrated by profiteering, price-gouging, exploitation of labour) inevitably gave rise to the secular worldview of ‘Destroy Capitalism, Embrace Communism’ that she so rightly condemns. This calls for a more nuanced discussion of where some aspects of socialism get it right (e.g. safety nets for the poor, allowing labour to organise itself against exploitation, regulations on the owners of capital to protect the environment, amongst others).  The book runs the risk of deterring the more skeptical reader because of the lack of nuance.

This is evident again in James’ treatment of racism and Critical Race Theory (CRT), which clearly has deep anti-Biblical constructs. But the CRT label seems to be applied to anyone who has a concern about racism and its effects on certain people. 

But we need to draw a distinction between racism, which is always to be opposed, and the idea of ‘systemic racism’, as promoted by CRT. (p139)

Later she declares that ‘The Bible consistently teaches the unity of the human race…. There are no ‘absolute’ identities of ‘black’ and ‘white’. (p 212)

This is true but do we need to do more to confront the reality of racism?   As I listen to my black Christian brothers and sisters around the world, particularly in the USA, there is a real problem with skin colour on the ground! The Black Lives Matter protests across America in 2020 are rightly to be condemned (and James describes the evils of BLM over 2 pages - pp153-154) but the catalyst for those protests, the death of George Floyd, is dismissed in one line (p153). We need to have a greater understanding of, and empathy for, the experiences of the victims of racism, not just tell them that what they are feeling is linked to a worldview that is a lie.

Do I think the book is worth reading? Yes. You will get a greater understanding of the sweep of ideas that have come down to us from history, and how they are opposed to God’s good purposes for us. But do read it with an eye that allows for some shade. The problems of the world are rarely simple. 

Lesley Ramsayhas been in local church ministry with her husband, Jim, for 47 years. After university she trained as a teacher and then raised four children. Over the past 30 years she has worked as a Bible teacher and evangelist across Australia and overseas. She has written and edited several books and training packages that are sold and used internationally. She now works at Moore College in Sydney, in pastoral care to the students. To relax, she enjoys a good coffee and a good book and hanging out with her grandchildren.

Sharon James has given us a pithy, well-written book comparing the Christian world view with others. We could all read it with profit, but it is essentially written for students. Not all will agree with her stand on some topics, but there is much to engage, inform and prepare students for the challenges which face them.

Sophie, a 16-year-old school student has made the following points,

 “I liked reading this book and found it very helpful. Christian young people could really benefit from it. Here is my list of positive comments:

•  It sets up the basics before going into the depth and explanation of worldview which I feel is really helpful.

• The explanations are written in a really easy to understand manner.

• The topics brought up in the book are very current and relatable.

• It uses lots of good Bible passages and excerpts to explain the points.

• I like the summaries and reflection questions at the end of each chapter.

• It also explains the different applications of the Bible passages in modern circumstances.

• I like the real-life stories embedded into the book that help set up what each chapter is about.

• It describes both Christian and non-Christian worldviews in a really helpful way for the modern society we live in.

I would recommend that both younger and older people would really benefit from reading this book”.

Graham Beynon (Minister of Grace Church, Cambridge and director of Independent Ministry Training at Oakhill Theological College, London) and Jane Tooher (Director of the Priscilla and Aquila Centre and lecturer in Ministry and Church History at Moore Theological College) have produced a wise and irenic work drawing on their combined ministry experience. Immediately the force of the book’s message is displayed in this partnership of authors.  

The difficulty of the subject is addressed immediately in the opening chapter, chief among them being that no one enters the conversation “cold,” as everyone has a history (11). But the authors challenge the reader to consider the matter in view of the teaching God has given in his word, willing to embrace the message as good, even when there may have been bad experiences or challenges in the past. Some of the concerns people have with complementarianism today are addressed honestly before a principled approach is outlined.  

Rather than summarizing the sequenced argument of the book, I plan to identify the key strengths of the work which I believe make this book so important for Christians today. First, the book is balanced. It doesn’t shy away from differing points of view but instead seeks to treat them fairly. For example, in a section on the battle of the sexes, the authors address the historic and contemporary problems associated with male dominance and what has recently been labelled “toxic masculinity.” They are honest about the asymmetry of the problem, as men have historically held positions of power. But they are also careful to note the ways that women also can be toxic in their relationships. So, the authors conclude, “it is sin which is toxic, not gender” (25). This conclusion marks the balanced nature with which the authors navigate complex issues theologically. As a result, there is the avoidance of finger-pointing, and an invitation for all to consider matters for their own pursuit of godliness.  

Second, the authors provide wise counsel. They avoid the temptation of assuming that theological convictions lead to a “one-size fits all” practice. Instead, they helpfully demonstrate different ways that truth has been applied in a variety of contexts. They are cautious to communicate certainty where there are valid interpretive differences. Rather, they provide counsel for why they believe some positions to be more faithful than others and how these interpretations may lead to best practices.  

Third, on such a contentious matter the authors are far more generous than some may expect. The sort of ministry practice advocated for is not restricted to 1950s caricatures of gender roles. Rather, the authors show how there is not a single sphere of ministry that isn’t impacted by biblical complementarity. So, while they contend that eldership is restricted to men, they encourage eldership to receive counsel from women. Likewise, while preaching may be restricted to men (as an “elder” type task), they encourage both input preparation and feedback from women. At each turn, the authors break from conventional rigidity in their application and instead encourage principled creativity, delivering many practical examples.  

Fourth, the book is immensely practical. Drawing from their decades of combined ministry experience, the authors helpfully imagine how the truths they explore might be applied in various contexts. Further to these suggested applications, there are helpful tips on how these practices might be cultivated in church life. So, in the penultimate chapter readers are guided through how convictions can be identified amongst church leadership and then mapped onto every sphere of church life. Then in the final chapter, readers are given advice about how to implement their convictions, beginning with leadership and working through strategic involvement of the body of believers, with a strong encouragement towards clear communication (including listening!). This practical advice is further served by Appendix 4, which helps church leaders to write a position paper on the biblical foundations for the ministries of men and women. 

Finally, the book is honest. Partnership in a book project and partnership between men and women doesn’t proceed on perfect agreement on every point (e.g., men and women leading services, 124). Beynon and Tooher are honest about their points of difference regarding implementation, without compromising the fundamental principles they agree upon. By offering these glimpses into a dialogue about difference, readers are provided with an example of how to genuinely work together in ministry. Furthermore, the authors are honest about genuine mistakes they have made along the way (e.g., 46-47, 102, 138). This sort of sharing about differences and even mistakes along the way encourages the activism the authors want their readers to pursue – hard work that they believe is worth it.  

As I read this book, I found myself reflecting on the various ministries I have served in over the past few decades. I praised God for the wonderful contribution of women partnering with me in gospel work. But I was also challenged to do better, identifying many times and many ways I could have considered and appreciated the contribution of women more. I found myself joyfully desiring more opportunities for a better partnership, a richer depiction of the fellowship that God has granted to us in the gospel. In this way, I believe the authors’ hope for the book was realised. They have given me, and other readers, an invitation to marvel at, experience, and embrace the complementarity of men and women as a good gift God has given to his people. I hope many will take and read this book, and that all our churches will be better for it.  

Review by Chase Kuhn.

Published with permission of Moore College.

The Rev Dr Chase Kuhn is Christian Doctrine and Ethics Director, Centre for Christian Living at Moore Theological College, Sydney.

Prior to coming to Moore in 2016 he served on the staff of St Thomas’ Church North Sydney. After growing up in Southern California Rev Dr Kuhn studied theology at California Baptist University, then Beeson Divinity School in Alabama, and finally travelled to Australia to complete a PhD through the University of Western Sydney on the doctrine of the church in the writings of Donald Robinson and Broughton Knox.

Put the Bible at the centre of your home life – the Bible read and the Bible lived out.

It gives our children a different story from that of the world.

1. We need to Teach the Word -  We know that in God’s Word we find out who God is and what he is like, the way he has chosen to make himself known. We see how he works in the lives of people, how he saves us and how we become his children. So we need to read the Bible as a family. Some of you will find they can do that most days but maybe you find reading it together once a week is the best option. Make going to a church which teaches the Bible, every Sunday  a priority and as children get older encourage personal Bible reading as a habit.

2. Live the Word - We are saved by grace and receive the gift of forgiveness through the death and resurrection of Jesus and are able to repent by the power of the Holy Spirit. This makes Christian family life different. We can admit we’re not perfect, even as parents and say we’re sorry. Sometimes we do expect more from our children than we do from ourselves.

3. Apply the Word - to yourselves constantly, to children aptly.  Are we ‘quick to listen and slow to speak.’ James 1:19.  In 2 Timothy 3:16 Paul reminds Timothy to continue in what he has learned since childhood  which are able to make him wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. But then he goes on to say that all Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that we may thoroughly equipped for every good work. As parents we are to continue being shaped by God’s Word.

But the Bible is a big book, and all this could become routine and boring. Have you got any tips for putting it at the centre of home life successfully?

Over the years with our five children we tried different methods, often depending on the age they had reached. Some ideas worked better than others. Simply reading the scriptures at the dinner table worked well and sometimes led to discussions. We didn’t get to that stage till our eldest was at University. At that stage our youngest, the twins, were 8, and as well my father in law was living with us.

Prior to that, at one stage when we had our first two, we read a Bible story first thing in the morning in bed. Later it used to follow story time at night. Mind you, no matter when Bible reading and prayer was, that was often when the phone rang, someone had to go to the bathroom or an argument broke out!

Variety in teaching is the key. Be prepared to change and make sure there’s involvement. Here are some ideas:

Be realistic

Turn off the screens

Don’t let it become boring.

Remember the ages and age range of your children.

Have variety for interest’s sake  - memory verses, read a Christian book, use different versions of kids’ Bibles

Try teaching Biblical truths through using a Catechism - ‘The New City Catechism’ by Tim and Kathy Keller has lots of ideas including songs.

Keep it short

Don’t give up – it’s OK to start again

Don’t be legalistic

Make it fun…mind you, it can’t always be.

Meet the Sunday School teachers – invite them for a meal.

Create habits - it is worth the time even in the busyness of life.

Encourage interacting in Bible time - questions sometimes by you, sometimes the children can ask the questions.

Does all this have any affect?

One of the things that has surprised me as a parent is how my children have remembered things which I thought had gone in one ear and out the other. Family prayers were often interrupted by those constant distractions, but God in kindness has used those times to help build a foundation for them in their adult lives which they are passing onto their children. Even those who caused us deep grief have remembered. I am so thankful for their Sunday School teachers, Youth group leaders, Christian studies at school and Scripture when they were young.

And I am thankful especially for my Sunday School teachers, Youth group leaders and teachers who taught me to know and apply God’s word. The Bible verses that are deep in my heart are those I learnt at Sunday School.

The other thing we need to do is to teach children how to pray and that prayer is normal and natural. I suggest that at the end of each session with the Bible story, you invite one or more of the children to speak to God. We chose a different topic for each day such as Church (including Sunday School), school, friends, Missionaries, godparents/god children (we prayed for our godchildren and they prayed for their godparents, neighbours and of course family.) We found that children do this naturally, although rarely at any length as long as they hear us doing it naturally.

If you would like some further TIPS, Sandy Galea’s website Kidswise is very helpful.

Christine Jensen has had many opportunities to encourage women in their love and knowledge of God as she served with her husband, Peter, at Moore College and in leadership in the Sydney Anglican Diocese. She enjoys teaching the Bible to women of all ages. She was a primary school teacher and then completed her ThL at Moore College. Her family, with 23 grandchildren at last count, gives her a wonderful opportunity to share her great love of children’s literature.

“With no faith, religion or spiritual practice, I believe in love, hope, truth and my fellow humans. I’m driven by wonder, joy, curiosity, knowledge, wisdom. I believe in equality. Of opportunity of education, of access to water, food, shelter. I believe in human rights, the rule of law, voting, reason and respect.

I like reason, science, information. Honesty and trust are good things to strive for….. I hate injustice, bullying, greed and tyranny.”[1] 

Bravo, James! I’m so glad he believes and loves all those things. But I wonder whether he, and many others, have ever stopped to reflect on how and why they came by such values? He explicitly says “faith, religion or spiritual practice” have played no part in the formation of his much-lauded moral principles. Have they just been plucked from our superior, Western-educated liberal minds that have thrown up more wars in the last century than any previous century?

If you have ever wondered how you could dialogue with the James Valentines of this world, then Glen Scrivener’s masterful book, The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality will be a valuable weapon in your arsenal.

This is the contention of the book: “…if you’re a Westerner - whether you’ve stepped foot inside a church or not, whether you’ve clapped eyes on a Bible or not, whether you consider yourself an atheist, pagan or Jedi Knight - you are a goldfish, and Christianity is the water in which you swim.” (p11)

Why a goldfish? Because a goldfish sees what’s in the water around it, it shapes everything it does, but it doesn’t SEE the water. Like goldfish (and James Valentine), we see the good things we value in our culture, like equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment and freedom, but don’t recognise the ideas and values that gave rise to them. We take them for granted, and they are just… well… the air we breathe.

As a (very) former history teacher, I am constantly saddened and perplexed that denizens of the 21st century have no clue whatsoever of the values and practices of the ancient world of the 1st century and of the legacy of the Christian revolution at that time.

Scrivener takes us on a journey from the ancient world to our modern one, or as he puts it - from Genesis to George Floyd - showing us how Jesus has shaped our modern world - its ideals, its values, its moral principles.

The core of the book are seven chapters that focus on the seven values that are core to the modern outlook: Equality, Compassion, Consent, Enlightenment, Science, Freedom and Progress.

I want to take his chapter on consent to illustrate his thesis.

It begins with the story of Rachel Denhollander (herself a Christian) addressing the trial of serial sexual predator, Dr Larry Nasser (of USA Gymnastics team infamy) who sexually abused at least 265 girls under his care. She draws attention to a very significant question, “How much is a little girl worth?” Her answer? These victims are worth everything.

But as Scrivener points out, if you asked a 1st century Roman that question the answer might range between nothing to the cost of  a loaf of bread.[2]  A freeborn Roman man believed that he had an unquestioned right to the bodies of lower-status women, children, prostitutes and slaves. What we today call ‘abuse’ was, to his thinking, the obvious use for sex. The status of your partner - not their consent, or gender, or their age - was what mattered.[3]

So how did we get from the Roman mindset to the question at the Nasser trial? The answer? The sexual revolution.

But not, as you might think, the sexual revolution of the 1960s; rather it was the cataclysmic upheaval of sexual values and mores that began with the incarnation of Jesus.

Throughout this superb little chapter, Scrivener posits that Jesus’ teaching: imposed restrictions on men in the way they used their sexual dominance; raised the intensity of the significance of sex on a human level; announced the death of casual sex and easy divorce; afforded our human bodies great dignity because they are in-dwelt by God; and stipulated mutual consent between a man and a woman within marriage.

The final plank in Scriveners hypothesis about this sexual transformation that has reverberated down the centuries is our attitude towards children.

“In the ancient world sex with boys and girls was not merely tolerated; it was celebrated by writers like Juvenal, Petronius, Horace, Strato, Lucian and Philostratus. The word they used was pederasty: love of children. Christians were uniformly disgusted by the practice and called it by a different name - paidophthoros: destruction of children. What the classical world called love, Christians called abuse… In the reign of the Christian emperor, Justinian (527-565), pederasty was outlawed… Here church and state - preaching and legislation - worked together as a one-two punch against the sexualisation of children.”[4]

And it is here that Scrivener returns to Rachel Denhollander as she faces her abuser across the courtroom. She tells him that what he did was evil and wicked - and she knows that because a straight line exists. We know ‘crooked’ because ‘straight’ exists. We know evil because goodness exists. We know abuse is abuse because the air we have been breathing for the last 2000 years tells us that our bodies should be treated with dignity, that sex is sacred, that children are valuable, and that the powerful should not exploit the weak and vulnerable.

When we contemplate Denhollander’s question, and the guttural “Everything!” rises up within us, that’s your Christianity talking.

I highly recommend this book - it’s easy to read, it’s replete with contemporary allusions, it’s well foot-noted for those of us who like to chase up references. And he has written it for believers and unbelievers alike - so it’s an easy and thoughtful gift for our goldfish friends who can’t see the water they are swimming in.

[1] SMH July 9, 2022

[2] Scrivener, p82-3

[3] Scivener, p84

[4] Scrivener, p97

Lesley Ramsayhas been in local church ministry with her husband, Jim, for 47 years. After university she trained as a teacher and then raised four children. Over the past 30 years she has worked as a Bible teacher and evangelist across Australia and overseas. She has written and edited several books and training packages that are sold and used internationally. She now works at Moore College in Sydney, in pastoral care to the students. To relax, she enjoys a good coffee and a good book and hanging out with her grandchildren.

In the last two articles we have explored 1) Why women are so confused regarding their identity, and 2) How the creation narrative in Genesis 1-3 gives us many formative clues regarding the God-given identity of women.

As we turn to the New Testament we clearly see how Jesus’ death and resurrection transforms gender and the world.

God’s answer to the problem of sin is the cross. Jesus’ death reverses the consequences of sin and breaks the power of sin. God sends His Son to pay the price for sin that is demanded by a holy God, to take our judgement for us. He redeems a people for Himself by buying them back with the blood of His Son, gives them His Spirit, then declares He wants His redeemed people to live according to the design He originally made for humanity back in Genesis 1 and 2. We still live in a fallen, sin-riddled Genesis 3 world. We still live with the effects of sin and disease and death and poor male-female relationships, but Jesus’ death and the gift of His Spirit has made it possible for us to live His way again. Men and women who are ‘in Christ’ are to live out Genesis 1-2 relationships in a Genesis 3 world that has been redeemed.

Following is a brief overview to get us started. We intend to follow this up in later months with more rigorous and detailed explanations of the New Testament passages introduced here.

If you wish to investigate further before then, we recommend God’s Good Design 2nd Edition by Claire Smith (Matthias Media 2019)

1. Jesus’ attitude to women

When Jesus comes we begin to see the original design for women lived out in His life.

In Jesus’ day, women were regarded as second-class citizens, but Jesus radically overturns that view. To Him women were fellow human beings, He addressed them directly, He spoke kindly and thoughtfully to them, He chastised men for their sin of lust which saw women as objects, not people. He allowed for divorce – because of the sinfulness of men. He ministered to them, encouraged them to learn and participate in His life and ministry, and accorded them the privilege of being the first witnesses to His resurrection.

Therefore, He considered them absolutely equal in worth and dignity, but they were also different in the responsibilities given to them. Even though the women travelled with Jesus, He called into his band of leadership (apostles) only men. Many counter that that is a natural response of a 1st century Jewish rabbi: it would have been unthinkable to have women in that position of leadership. Yet Jesus challenged cultural conventions and social mores at every point in His life and ministry: he overturned conventions against Gentiles, Samaritans, tax collectors, prostitutes and adulterers. He was fearless. But He did not challenge the principle that men and women were different. Nowhere does Jesus subscribe to the view that women were identical to men. At the point where He knows that the pattern for leadership in the new society and the Church is being laid down, He chose only men.

2. Jesus’ Apostles Teaching on Being a Woman of God

Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, taught His apostles to further instruct His people about relationships and how to live in God’s world.

Unsurprisingly, there is the emphasis again on the equality of men and women. In Galatians 3:28 Paul points out that our gender has no bearing on our spiritual standing before God and our access to God in Christ. There is absolutely no distinction at this point, but that does not mean that our responsibilities as men and women are abolished, any more than our responsibilities as citizens or children are abolished. This passage talks about access to God not responsibilities. However, our responsibilities within the family and the church are profoundly impacted by our gender.

A. Living as single women

Our culture says - get married if you (can) wish; if not, have sexually intimate relationships - it doesn’t matter. Sometimes our Christian culture treats marriage as the best/default state and that singleness is a problem… the solution is to get married.

But the Bible has a radically different view. Singleness is a good gift from God (1 Corinthians 7:6-8), which showcases the gospel in a unique way: when a woman (or man) is contentedly single they are declaring that their ultimate identity is in Christ. She may, or may not, continue to have deep relationships with her birth family; but will certainly be drawn into a new family within her church (Matthew 12:48-50).

And as the single woman interacts with the men around her (father, brothers, workplace colleagues, acquaintances, brothers in Christ at church), she will uphold and maintain her dignity as an equally-created one with much to offer. At the same time, she will act in a way that encourages those men to grow to mature manhood, taking responsibility where it is needed. She will not view men as ‘the other’ or the enemy or be in competition with them.

B. Living as married women

There are a number of places in the New Testament where wives are addressed (Ephesians 5:22-33, Colossians 3:18-19, 1 Peter 3:1-7), but from the Ephesians and 1 Peter passages it is clear that:

         a) There continues to be equality and difference within marriage: Peter says, “Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.” (1 Peter 3:7)

Equality - both heirs of eternal life; yet difference - a husband is to recognise his wife’s physical and hormonal differences which make her vulnerable, and not exploit them or her!

         b) Marriage is the model for the relationship between Jesus and the church (Ephesians 5:24-25). Therefore we can’t interfere with it, or say that this is just for 1st Century women.

         c) Wives are called on to submit to their husbands (i.e. voluntarily put herself under her husband’s leadership/headship) in the same way that they submit to Christ. A wife’s submission is not just a social constraint, the way that our pre-feminist culture has said women are to respond, it is part of her submission to Christ, part and parcel of the way that she serves the Lord Jesus.

         d) But it is not a domineering abusive relationship. On the contrary it is a beautiful pattern modelled on Jesus and us, his body, his church. The pattern is one where the husband will give himself, and love and die for his wife in the same way that Jesus loves and dies for his people. The wife will then submit to her husband (I recognise this is an emotive, contentious issue for women, and we have hardly scratched the surface here. Can I encourage you to shelve your questions and possibly your outrage till we come back to submission in a future article?)

         e) Paul really understands the differences between men and women when he says in Ephesians 5:33, “However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”

Love and security are generally what a woman craves, while a man longs for respect.

C. Being women in church

When it comes to membership and ministry in local congregations, we need to revisit the principle we encountered in Genesis 1 and 2 (Paper No 2 - Women With Clarity): Equality (Genesis 1) and difference (Genesis 2) combine together to give us the concept of complementarity: two equal persons or groups of people working together for a common purpose, where one is under the leadership or authority of another.         

         a) Headship (leadership and authority) stems from creation, and is reaffirmed in Ephesians as the model for husbands and wives. Then when God’s family gathers together for church, the pattern that God establishes is that a faithful man steps up and leads the church. I Timothy 3:12 &15

“A deacon must be faithful to his wife and must manage his children and his household well…..

….you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household”

         b) There is an expectation from the New Testament that all of God’s people, men and women, will minister the Word of God to others. God gifts us for ministry and the full range of gifts available for men is available for women, (Romans 12:4-8). Women are equal in giftedness, capacity and responsibility to exercise ministry. Some, both men and women will be set apart for full-time ministry of the Word, but we are all privileged and responsible to share God’s word with our world. Within those expectations of ministry for all, there is also the presumption that men will head or lead congregations in particular ways.

         c) In 1 Corinthians 11:3-16, Paul is at pains to explain that our God-given differences ought to be seen in the way we minister, the way we operate, the way we behave in church. Some of the Corinthian women appeared to be drawing attention to their newfound status in the Christian community by praying and prophesying with their heads uncovered. Participating verbally was not in question; it was the way they did it that was. In that 1st century culture, women wore head coverings and men did not. Paul is saying: let your gender differences in church be seen in your attitudes and behaviour.

         d) Part of the responsibility of the head or leader of a gathered ‘household of God’ or congregation is to teach the Bible to the family. So 1 Timothy 2:11-12 tells us that:

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.

This is quite a confronting passage isn’t it? Our feminine hackles rise and we are offended. But there are some important principles to see here.

• In 1st century culture, women were not expected to learn - that was the domain of men. Paul is saying the opposite - women should learn. In this, they are no different to men.

• Learning in quietness and submission - learning anything can only take place when we place ourselves in a position of listening to and genuinely seeking to understand the subject matter and recognising and respecting the authority of the teacher. This doesn’t mean we won’t ask questions to clarify and resolve issues, but it will be done in a considerate way. Again this is no different for men. It’s just that in church, the teaching responsibility falls to one of the men - as head of God’s family gathered in God’s household.

• It would be nonsensical, in the place of God’s gathered family, for a woman to take up authority and a teaching role - hence Paul’s direction in the verse above.

• As you read further on in this chapter Paul gives a number of reasons for his instructions - and it’s interesting that they relate back to Genesis 1-3. A common way to dismiss the meaning and impact of this part of 1 Timothy 2 is to claim that it was a cultural issue, applying only to the 1st century. But Paul’s use of Genesis 1-3 clearly signifies that it is not a specific cultural issue here but a ‘for-all-time’ creation mandate.

This has been a very brief overview and may have raised more questions than it has answered. We hope you will find other articles to read on these New Testament passages that will further clarify your understanding. A good place to start would be on Lionel Windsor’s blog on Ephesians

  http://www.lionelwindsor.net/publications/lift-your-eyes/

Lesley Ramsayhas been in local church ministry with her husband, Jim, for 47 years. After university she trained as a teacher and then raised four children. Over the past 30 years she has worked as a Bible teacher and evangelist across Australia and overseas. She has written and edited several books and training packages that are sold and used internationally. She now works at Moore College in Sydney, in pastoral care to the students. To relax, she enjoys a good coffee and a good book and hanging out with her grandchildren.

In the first article, we explored why there is so much confusion amongst women as they contemplate questions like: Who am I?, Why am I here?, What is my purpose?

We saw that God, as our Creator, has the right to define and determine who we are.  So we must turn to the Scriptures, God’s word to find answers. We are to put ourselves under the authority of the Scriptures, so that when our culture clashes with what the Bible says we will allow the Bible to have priority.  That’s difficult considering our ideologically driven feminist culture, but we must let the Bible critique our culture, not the other way around.

We begin where God starts... at Genesis. What we notice in these first chapters of the Bible is a God who is powerful, magnificent, but also personal.

In Chapter 1 we get a bird’s eye view of creation. We see it all in its vast array. The earth is formless and empty and the mighty creator shapes it and fills it. He is powerful because He only has to speak a word, and creation springs into being.  He is not a chaotic God - He loves order and design. God is sovereign and exists separately from His creation- He rules as King and Lord over it.

26Then God said, “Let Us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

27So God created mankind in His own image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.

28God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

You will notice that a climax has been reached here in these verses (1:26-28) with the creation of humanity. God makes mankind in His image - not that we look like God, but rather that we are meant to be like Him, reflecting His character. Mankind is to rule the creation as His representatives: wisely, kindly, taking care of it.

Also note mankind is made in two types or sexes, male and female, but we are not told how they differ from each other. It is saying that there is a unity here - one species (humanity) coming in two types, male and female. Somehow they are going to relate to each other, because the God who created them can be seen in relationship within the Godhead, “Let Us make man in Our image”[1] Here there is one God and three persons, and one species and two sexes. How will they be different? How will they relate? We are not told until the next chapter.

What is clear is how equivalent they are: both are made in God’s image, both are blessed equally, both are to be fruitful and both are to rule. One word at this point sums up the relationship between male and female - equal!

And in v31 God looks at all that he has made and declares that it is ‘very good’! The picture is one of perfection, goodness and abundance.

In Chapter 2, the author of Genesis focusses on the middle of the sixth day - when humanity is created. We get to see it in more detail and from a different perspective.

4This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

5Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, 6but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. 7Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. 8Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there He put the man He had formed. 9The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

…….

15The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

18The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

19Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, He took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib He had taken out of the man, and He brought her to the man.

23The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called ‘woman,’

for she was taken out of man.”

24That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Before I make any observations about this passage it would be more productive and beneficial if you could think about the passage for yourself. I want you to see that the Scriptures are really quite clear here. So, look for the answers to these questions:

1)    How is man created and what responsibilities is he given?

2)    What prohibition is given to him?

3)    Why is the woman created?

4)    What word (or words) would you use to describe the fundamental relationship between the male and female from Chapter 2?

Some observations from the passage

• The man was created from dust and God breathes life into him (v7). He is created first - the firstborn of created humans. And that he is created from the dust. He is connected to the ground, he has special responsibility to work the ground and he returns to it when he dies.

• God puts him in the Garden with responsibility to work the garden, and to take care of it (v8, 15), and later to name the animals (v19-20).

• He is also given the responsibility of the only prohibition in the Garden - not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (v17).

• The woman is created, according to the text (v18), because the man is alone. This is the first sign that something is not right in the Garden of Eden. Up till now, everything has been good, good, very good. Now something is not good!

• Notice the text does not say that the man is lonely. How could he be lonely when he walked and talked with the God of the Universe? God relates to him in a personal way. But God’s verdict on the man’s situation is that something is missing.

• After parading all the animals before the man (now given the name, Adam), the writer says there is still no answer to the ‘alone’ problem (v20)

• God wants to provide a ‘suitable helper’ for Adam - and thus the woman is created from his physical body (v21-22).

• She is like him but not the same. God could have made another creature from the dust (just like him) but He doesn’t. He creates in a different way: by taking part of Adam. God did not provide someone identical (another man), nor something completely alien to him (an animal)…. but someone who came out of him, who complements him, who is suitable just for him. The word ‘suitable’ means matches up to him, not a copy.

• The word ‘helper’ may have unhelpful connotations for some people (that is, of someone who is a lesser being who just ‘helps out’ the more important person). But God is called our helper 15 times of the 18 times the word ‘helper’ is found in the OT (e.g. Psalm 115:3-9, Psalm 121:1-2), because we can’t exist without him. A helper assists another when they can’t do it all on their own. If God is a helper, then it cannot be an inferior responsibility.

• Appropriate words to describe the relationship between the man and the woman in these verses could well be: different; distinct; contrasting.

Bringing it together

So as we bring the two chapters together with the broad sweep of chapter 1, and the more minute detail of chapter 2, we get a picture of what I am going to call ‘equal but different’ of the relationship between men and women. There is equality of creation, blessing, the command to rule, and bearing God’s image. There is difference in: the order the two are made (man first, woman second); the way they are made (man from the dust, woman from the man); the reason made (woman made to be companion/helper for man); and the responsibilities given (man to work and take care of the Garden and to see that the prohibition is maintained, woman to be his companion and helper).

Equality (chapter 1) and difference (chapter 2) combine together to give us the concept here of complementarity: two equal persons or groups of people working together for a common purpose, where one is under the leadership or authority of another. This will be important as we come to Genesis 3.

In Chapter 3, we see God’s beautiful design for his creation get trashed!

1Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

2The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ”

4“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5“For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

6When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

8Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

10He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

11And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

12The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

13Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

……..

16To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;

with painful labor you will give birth to children.

Your desire will be for your husband,

and he will rule over you.”

17To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;

through painful toil you will eat food from it

all the days of your life.

18It will produce thorns and thistles for you,

and you will eat the plants of the field.

19By the sweat of your brow

you will eat your food

until you return to the ground,

since from it you were taken;

for dust you are

and to dust you will return.”

Again, you will benefit by looking at the passage for yourself.

1) Why do you think the serpent goes to the woman and not to the man?

2) In v 6 when the woman takes the fruit to eat, where is the man? Can you see any problems here?

3) Who does God talk to in v9? Why do you think this is so?

4) How does God’s punishment of sin differ for the man and the woman?

5) Who is charged with the responsibility for the first sin in Romans 5:12? Why?

Some observations from the passage

• Adam has been given the prohibition about the tree and the responsibility to see it carried out. The serpent bypasses Adam - the one directly responsible - and goes to Eve who should have followed Adam’s leading. The serpent no doubt wants to overturn God’s good order in the relationship.

• In v6, as Eve and the serpent converse, and then the fruit is picked and eaten, Adam is standing right next to his wife. Yet he is silent. His responsibility was to speak up and lead Eve to honour and obey God’s directions. But he ‘wimps’ out, follows Eve and eats the fruit - that is a problem!

• In v9, as the couple realise their sin and shame, God comes and speaks to Adam, not Eve. Why? Because God holds him responsible, not Eve. He was given the responsibility of seeing the prohibition maintained. Adam is punished “because (he) listened to (his) wife” (v17).

• God’s punishment for Adam and Eve differ according to their different responsibilities. Adam will have difficulty in his work in the Garden; Eve will have difficulty in child-bearing. Both will suffer disruption in their relationships: the woman will want to control her husband (v16 the meaning of ‘desire’ is to control or master) but in the end he will rule over her - often in an unloving, domineering way. Remember, this is a curse for disobedience, NOT God’s loving design for relationships.

• In Romans 5:12, Adam is held responsible for the entrance of sin into the world. Why not Eve? Both sinned, but they sinned differently. Adam is the one in the frame because he was created first, then given the prohibition, and then charged with the responsibility of leading Eve in the right direction. He failed in that responsibility of headship.

Bringing it together

Genesis 3 has reinforced the idea of equal but different. Differences continue to be seen in our world today. Women often want to take control; men back away and are often silent (the manner of rebellion). Men still find work hard; long hours and periods of unemployment impact them greatly. Women still have trouble and pain in childbirth and still suffer in their relationships with men - domestic abuse, violence, marital tension, adultery and divorce (the consequences of rebellion).

The struggle for control and power between the sexes today is a direct consequence of Genesis 3.

This is the world under the curse; we live in a Genesis 3 world. This is not God’s design for men and women. Remember Genesis 2 is the ‘very good’ state of affairs; God’s ideal where women and men live well together. The man lovingly ‘heads’ the relationship, she gladly comes alongside and ‘helps’. There is no tension, no arguing and no abuse. But it has been corrupted by sin, and this produces the problems in relationships and this is ‘not good’.

Summing up

We have looked fairly intensely at the first 3 chapters of the Bible to give us a sense of how God determines our identity as women. Genesis 1-2 sketches for us a humanity in two equal genders with different origins and responsibilities, but who relate to each other with love, trust and respect. There is no embarrassment, no shame, no abuse, no arguing, no domineering - it was very good. This was God’s good design for his world.

But Genesis 3 has left us with a bleak picture, because of the effects of sin. The problem, according to feminism, is men! The solution therefore is for women to break free, stand independently, and determine their own identity and future.

But God’s answer to the problem of sin is the cross. Jesus’ death reverses the consequences of sin and breaks the power of sin. He sends his Son to pay the price for sin that is demanded by a holy God, to take our judgement for us. He redeems a people for himself by buying them back with the blood of His son and gives them His Spirit.  Then He declares He wants His redeemed people to live according to the design He originally made for humanity back in Genesis 1 and 2. We still live in a fallen, sin-riddled Genesis 3 world. We still live with the effects of sin and disease and death and poor male-female relationships, but Jesus’ death and the gift of His Spirit has made it possible for us to live His way again.

The next article will look closely at how the various New Testament passages detail how we can live Genesis 1-2 relationships in a Genesis 3, but redeemed, world!

[1]In the NT we know this as the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit).

Lesley Ramsayhas been in local church ministry with her husband, Jim, for 47 years. After university she trained as a teacher and then raised four children. Over the past 30 years she has worked as a Bible teacher and evangelist across Australia and overseas. She has written and edited several books and training packages that are sold and used internationally. She now works at Moore College in Sydney, in pastoral care to the students. To relax, she enjoys a good coffee and a good book and hanging out with her grandchildren.

Some of the biggest questions you can ever ask yourself  as a human on this planet are: who am I? why am I here? what is my purpose?

We ask those questions because we are human, and we ask them as women. And how we answer them determines how we live our lives, how we see ourselves, how we relate to each other, how we treat each other, and above all, how we respond to God.

Let me begin with two affirmations: 1) that we were created for God, for God’s  glory - created to bring glory to God; and 2) that it is only as we live as God intended that we are truly free. 

So the questions we need to ask ourselves are: what do we learn about who God is? what do we learn about ourselves, as humans and as women? what do we learn about how God wants us to live in His world?

I want to begin a series of posts on living as God’s woman in God’s world with this first one about confusion.

Lots of confusion

Imagine your 8-year-old daughter, or niece, or granddaughter asks you, “What does it mean for me to grow up as a woman, and not a man?”

How would you answer that question? Because if you don’t answer it, then that 8-year-old will find an answer, any answer or several answers all around her.

Some that she might pick up are:

•  To be a woman is to provide men with sex when they want it;

•  To be a woman is to make the most of my body to be sexually attractive to men;

• To be a woman is to break free from the chains of child rearing and homemaking and have an independent career;

• To be a woman is to be able to choose to be and do whatever I want to be;

• To be a woman is to make fun of men - that they are immature and lazy;

• To be a woman is to be a second-class citizen who is only good for raising children and keeping a good house.

And this 8-year-old would be confused, because they would be receiving competing answers. Do we have no answers for our 8-year old’s question because we women are confused about what it means to be a woman?

This confusion of who we are as women is a result of mostly of an enormous social upheaval called feminism. It has affected all of us – it is in the air we breathe. We might say “not me”, but unless you have been living in a vacuum all your life, you will have been influenced.

A quick journey through feminism

The first wave of feminism began in the 1830s in the USA, spread to Europe and ended in the vote for women around the 1920s. There was much wrong with the way women were treated.

In 1877, Charlotte Elizabeth McNeilly 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 (the child later died). She had evidence of her husbands 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.[1]

We don't want to go back to this world - the systemic inequality was horrific. Affirming the inherent dignity and equality of women was a great achievement of the first wave of feminism.

The second wave was much more significant and far reaching in its effects. There are 3 key authors who are worthy of attention

A Frenchwoman by the name of Simone de Beauvoir wrote The Second Sex in 1949. It has been acclaimed as one of the most important works ever written to further our understanding of women. But it was really only a reflection of her childhood and the tortured relationship she had, particularly with her mother. It should be classed as imaginative psychology, rather than a scientific treatise. De Beauvoir’s view is that all stages of a woman’s life (childhood/ girlhood/ marriage/ motherhood/ old age) are all uniformly awful. Eg,

“Marriage is obscene in principle.”[2]

“Menopause is mutilation, the fatal touch of death.”[3]

What was her cure for this terrible tragedy called womanhood?

Firstly, she was against marriage “Individuals are not to be blamed for the failure of marriage; it is the institution itself, perverted as it has been from the start.”[4]

Secondly, women needed economic independence: to be able to follow careers of their own and independently support themselves.

Thirdly, the ideal society was “where women would be reared and trained exactly like men…woman was to be obliged to provide herself with other ways of earning a living apart from marriage”[5]

In 1963 The Feminine Mystique burst into the American consciousness. According to Betty Friedan, the problem with American society was that women had been duped into believing that their fulfilment and identity as women could be found in being mainly wife and mother.

 She ran the equivalent of ‘focus groups’ in many women’s groups across the nation and found a sense of incompleteness, emptiness, tiredness and simmering anger for no apparent reason. Her answer? Get out of the home and go back to work. Work had to be part of her life-plan; she had to have a career. Volunteer work not enough. It had to be challenging and paid! The only way for a woman to find herself and know herself as a person was to engage in creative work of her own.

Then in 1970, a young Australian called Germaine Greer attacked The Feminine Mystique. In her book, The Female Eunuch, she claimed that a woman couldn’t combine marriage and fulfilment: woman had to have an overriding responsibility to herself. Her message to women was to do whatever they felt like, throw off any arrangement they felt constricting, including husband and children. They must be free to choose.

The third wave (from the 1990s to the present) has many strands. We are seeing the effects in society and culture now: to be truly equal, gender must be minimised. There is no longer male and female - there is only a gender continuum. Previously, our gender identity and sexuality have been shaped by society and we need to reconstruct it to freely express who we are.

A real problem but a bad solution

It is important to acknowledge that many of the problems where feminists have shone a torch, were real:

*as a whole, women were 2nd-class citizens;

*many men did dominate women in marriage leading to harsh abuse;

*there was inequality of pay, working conditions, and legal rights;

*the portrayal of women as sex objects in pornography, etc.

For those of us here in Australia who have lived through the turmoil of another change of Prime Minister and the surrounding circumstances, we have heard of  the alleged bullying and bias against our female parliamentarians. And we rightly judge that we still have a long way to go!

So, yes, some of the results of feminist activism have been very helpful.

But the analysis of the problem – that all women’s problems are the result of men’s power over women (known as patriarchy) - is a wrong analysis and produces the wrong answer.

The feminists’ answer is: destroy men’s domination over women; establish the independence of the woman; liberate women to be able to choose who they are and what they will be. An American feminist theologian, Mary Daley said, “To exist humanly is to name self, the world and God”.

But the real problem for women is not domination by men; it is the power of sin in this world. Sin is the big problem of women AND men.

What is it that Adam and Eve said to God? We will be autonomous and independent, we will decide right and wrong, we will determine how we want to live and what we do or don’t do. That is called self-determinism! We humans have taken the right to choose for ourselves, to name ourselves, the world and God!

But as Creator, God has the right to determine who we are as women. He has the right to define us. As Christians, we have given up the right to define ourselves as women. We must allow God to do that.

So our question is: what does it mean to be Gods woman? How does God’s woman live in God’s world? To find that answer we have to go to the Scriptures and that takes us to the next post.

[1] Marylin Lake, Getting Equal: The History of Australian Feminism, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1999, pp. 2-3

[2] Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, Penguin Books NSW 1972, trans H M Parshley (first published in French 1949), p463

[3] Ibid., p587

[4] Ibid., p497

[5] Ibid., p733

Lesley Ramsayhas been in local church ministry with her husband, Jim, for 47 years. After university she trained as a teacher and then raised four children. Over the past 30 years she has worked as a Bible teacher and evangelist across Australia and overseas. She has written and edited several books and training packages that are sold and used internationally. She now works at Moore College in Sydney, in pastoral care to the students. To relax, she enjoys a good coffee and a good book and hanging out with her grandchildren.

The world and authority

Increasingly “authority” has become a bad word in our society. It conjures up an image of domination and oppression. As our society becomes increasingly polarised to see people as victim or oppressor, we want to favour the oppressed and condemn the oppressor. Subconsciously authority becomes the identifier of the oppressor and inherently wrong.

In contrast, our culture also idolises the powerful and sees authority as desirable. The rich, the famous, the talented, the influencer, those in high powered jobs or positions of authority are seen as the elite and we aspire to be like them.

In the first, authority is negative as it is viewed as oppression. In the second, authority is positive as an attractive form of power. Both views of authority are very different to the model of authority that we see in the Bible.

The Bible and authority

God is the ultimate authority. He made the world and everything in it and so rules the world. Because he made mankind in his image, we rule the creation (Genesis 1:28) under his authority, but the problem is that our rule is now flawed due to sin. The instances of human authority that are damaging to the world, to society and to individuals are due to this flaw. When anyone uses authority to be abusive,  authority itself is not the problem – it’s a problem of a sinful heart.

But authority is still a good thing. God gives it to us to exercise (Romans 13:1-2), for the good of his creation (Hebrews 13:17) and eventually we’ll give an account to Him as to how we’ve used it. Delegated authority comes to governing authorities (1 Peter 2:14, Romans 13:4); to congregational leaders (James 3:1, Hebrews 13:17); and to parents (Colossians 3:20-21). In each of these examples it is not absolute power and is exercised in specific contexts and situations. For example, a father has authority over his child, but not authority over all children.

Jesus and authority

Jesus gives us the perfect model of authority that is not damaged by sin.

The Garden of Gethsemane is a good snapshot of Jesus submitting to authority. Firstly, Jesus willingly submitted to the authority of his father, “Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:36). Secondly, he placed himself under the authority of the Jewish leaders who arrested him, and later the Roman officials who crucified him. He did this for the purpose of saving us and he entrusted himself to the one who has ultimate authority (1 Peter 2:23, 24). Even though Jesus was the creator of the world and could have called on a legion of angels to rescue him, he chose to willingly submit to authority.

We can also see that when Jesus exercises authority, he is completely counter cultural.

42 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:42-45

Jesus showed this sacrificial use of authority when he washed his disciples’ feet. John 13:3 describes Jesus’ absolute authority, “the Father had given all things into his hands”, and in the next verse he “laid aside his outer garments…and began to wash the disciples’ feet”. This is authority that is used to serve.

Those who are in authority are to serve. This is the opposite of the worldly view of authority where those in authority expect those under them to serve them. Jesus’ view of authority comes with a responsibility to lovingly serve. It involves giving of yourself for the benefit of another.

Equality and Authority

So, can you have equality with authority? With a worldly view of authority, no, because the one in authority is greater than those in submission. But, with God’s view of authority, yes, because the one in authority serves those in submission. It is a beautiful, mutually compatible role of equal people expressing loving authority and willing submission.

As authority is given by God for a purpose, one may be in authority in one context, and in a different context in submission. This does not undermine their equality. For example, a police officer sitting in church is under the authority of the minister. But when the police officer is on duty and pulls over the same minister for speeding, the police officer is in authority. Their equality as people is not limited by either expression of authority.

Equality and the Trinity

The Trinity is the most perfect expression of this equality with authority. Father, Son and Spirit are all equally God. However, within the Trinity there is an order of authority. The Father sends the Son (John 3:16). The Son obeys the Father (Mark 14:36). The Father and the Son give the Spirit (John 14:16, 16:7). The Son glorifies the Father (John 14:13). The Spirit glorifies the Father and the Son (John 16:14). The Father is in authority over the Son and the Spirit, and the Son is in authority over the Spirit.

If the ultimate authority, God the Father, Son and Spirit, can have equality with authority, it is a model that we can too. Granted, our sin damages our expression of authority, but that is not a reason to throw out the Biblical model.

Equality, authority, men and women

So how do these ideas of equality with an order of authority impact our relationships between men and women?

Do all men have authority over all women? No! Authority is expressed in a relational context for a purpose. My husband has authority over me to love me and care for me. My minister has authority over me to teach me. My friend sitting beside me in church does not have authority over me, and I may even have authority over him if we are working together on a church gardening project that I’m responsible for.

Does the authority of my husband or my minister mean that we are not equal? No! We are equal in bearing the image of God. We are equal in worth and dignity and equally need to be treated with respect. The authority that my husband and my minister have is a responsibility for them to self-sacrificially serve me for my good, and the good of the whole body of Christ. Authority is not a badge of power and greater importance. It is a responsibility to be a humble servant.

Let us all, men and women, work together to delight in living out God’s good order of authority with equality.

Sarah Sholl, with her husband Peter and 3 daughters, spent 12 years in Mexico with CMS. Her great delight in those years was reading the Bible with women, talking about Jesus and seeing women grow in their understanding of grace, and training Bible study leaders.

Before that she was doing much the same as a minister’s wife in Sydney.  Now a member of Summer Hill Church, she continues to read the Bible with women, mostly CMS missionaries on home assignment.

God’s Better Solutions

God is the solution both to the problems identified by feminism and those caused by it.

From the opening chapters of the Bible, God gives us five foundational truths about women and men, and how to live together well, to his glory.

1. God made all humanity in his image

(Genesis 1:26–27; 9:6; James 3:9).

No matter our race, sex, age, ethnicity, ability, intelligence, health, wealth, whatever: all people are made in the image of God, by God. We are equally made in his image, equally blessed by him, loved by him, and created for him to rule his world as his representatives (Genesis 1:28).

Surely one of the gravest evils of feminism is its refusal to acknowledge this in its embrace of abortion.[1] Millions of lives have been ended when they have just begun. And as a consequence, millions of women (and men) have burdened consciences and abortion grief. No doubt, this includes some reading this post (if that’s you, please click here and here for help).

Everything hangs on this: all humans are made in God’s image.

2. God made men and women different.

(Genesis 1–2)

Being made in God’s image means we’re equal but it doesn’t mean we’re the same. There are differences revealed in our bodies and expressed in our lives. We’re male or female, men or women, sons or daughters, and potentially husbands or wives, and fathers or mothers.

3. Man and woman both sinned.

(Genesis 3)

Both Adam and Eve ate the fruit. Both rejected God’s rule and word. They might have sinned differently in that first instance, but they both sinned. They both were seduced by the lies that God was unjustly withholding something good from them, and that his word is not true and good. And we are all seduced by those same lies too.

4. Sin made men and women combatants.

One of the first consequences of that first act of rebellion is that the beautiful harmony between the sexes that God designed was lost, and we became rivals and opponents not partners.

This means none of us can appreciate how good the relationship between the sexes was meant to be because we can only look at it through sin-coloured glasses. We simply can’t know how it worked before Genesis 3. But we know only too well what it’s been like ever since then; how wrong it can go. At its best, it’s this reality feminism is responding to.

And, of course, these two facts—that we’re sinners hardwired to reject the goodness and authority of God’s word, and that we can’t read its teaching without reading it through our own experience—mean that apart from the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, the worldviews of either feminism or chauvinism will sit more easily with us than God’s word.

And mercifully, that brings us to the fact that …

5. God’s mercy extends equally to women and men

… We see it first in Genesis 3, where God calls to the woman and the man, speaks with them, judges them, and shows them mercy by clothing them, blessing them with children, and shutting them out of the garden lest as sinners they eat from the tree of life, and live forever in their fallen state.

And even more wonderfully he sends us a Saviour. His glorious Son. The friend of sinners.

Women and men are equal in creation, and we are equal in salvation: equally fallen and sinful, equally under God’s wrath and judgement, equally offered the free gift of eternal life, equally adopted into God’s family through faith in the same saviour, equally given his Holy Spirit to renew and transform us.

There is no two-tiered status to salvation: as Paul puts it “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, nor is there male and female but [we] are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).

And yet we’re not sexless, genderless beings. We’re still women and men and the gender-based roles and responsibilities affirmed in Scripture are still relevant for us today.

Biblical Gender vs Cultural Stereotypes

But we have to be careful how we understand these differences. We can easily read in things that come from our culture and not from Scripture. You know the stereotypes: girls like pink and boys like dirt; men like football, women like cooking: women are emotional, men are emotionally-challenged.

The Bible has very little to say by way of gender stereotypes. It has a lot to say about godliness, but there are many different examples of faithful manhood and womanhood. And that’s what we should expect.

And the New Testament tells us there are two spheres where the sex/gender-based differences from Genesis apply: within marriage; and in the church.

1. Gender Difference in Marriage

Within marriage, a husband is sacrificially to lead his wife, to protect her, gently care for her, love her as he loves himself (Eph 5:25–33; Col 3:19; 1 Peter 3:7).

And a wife is to submit herself to her husband’s loving headship or leadership: to respect him, trust herself to him, honour him, and allow him to provide leadership for them and their family (Eph 5:21–33; Col 3:18; Titus 2:3–5; 1 Peter 3:1–6).

Submission isn’t forced on her. She volunteers it—not because she’s weak or incapable or, even worse, because she is afraid—but because God made marriage a partnership of equals where husbands and wives have different roles, and marriage works best, and honours God most when it has this shape.

It’s the picture of a dance: equal partners working together, in different roles, for the same purpose, and for their mutual joy.

And remarkably this pattern of human marriage is modelled on the glorious marriage of Christ and the church (Eph 5:21–33). And if the rest of the Bible hasn’t convinced us, this alone tells us that any use of force, intimidation, violence or exploitation within marriage is absolutely contrary to God’s will. It has no place among God’s people.

So if domestic abuse is found among God’s people (which tragically it is), and if it is mishandled in churches (which can happen), that’s not because God’s word is inadequate or his pattern for marriage is at fault. It is because, as God’s people, we have failed to know and obey his word.

That is why, as Christians, we can be glad of recent efforts to bring domestic violence into public consciousness and to address it, both in society and the church, and if it took feminism to make that happen, then praise God he used it that way.

2. Gender Difference in the Household of God

Not surprisingly, given the unity of God’s creation and salvation purposes, human marriage isn’t the only place where our gender differences are to be worked out. The other place is the household of God, the church (1 Cor. 11:3–16; 14:26–40; 1 Tim. 2:1–15; 3:1–7).

When we come together God wants us to express our gender differences: not to blur, obscure or ignore them. We are to express them in ways that make sense in our culture (see discussion on this here).

Also there are some ministries that are the responsibility of men, and not women, namely, the authoritative ministry of teaching and leading the whole church family (but, please notice, not all men—only those suitably gifted and qualified, and duly appointed by the church).

That’s not because women aren’t capable or gifted. God’s word is clear that women are equal recipients of the Holy Spirit, and likewise gifted, equipped, competent, and used by him. Rather it is because God, who gives the gifts, wants us to use them in ways that uphold and express the sex/gender differences he created.

This is why a church that doesn’t encourage, equip and enable the ministry of women, including public ministry roles of praying and prophesying,[2] is failing the whole church, and quenching the work of the Spirit.

The Question of Identity

I began talking about questions of identity. That’s often the rub for Christians, especially Christian women. Am I a feminist? Can I be if I’m a Christian?

I suspect that what a lot of Christians mean when they say they’re feminists is that they are pro-women, or more accurately, they are against a list of things that represent gender-based inequality and injustice: against the gender pay gap, against gender bias, against the lack of women in corporate, civil, and government leadership roles, against sexual harassment and violence against women. They just want women to get a fair go; to be treated with dignity and honour, to be valued and heard, to level the playing field.

And these are good things. But God got there first. In fact, they are only good because they accord with his holiness, his justice, and his vision for human good. And if we, as Christians, needed feminism to awaken us to injustice and deprivation we should have already seen and corrected, then the fault lies with us. It’s not that Christianity needs to be supplemented by feminism. We just needed to be more thoroughgoingly Christian.

So I’m content to say, I’m a Christian, not a Christian feminist, or a feminist Christian. Just a Christian—a woman who is in Christ, with Christ, and for Christ. He is my identity, and I expect to spend the rest of my earthly life growing in my grasp of the wonder of that.

[1] I realise some groups label themselves ‘pro-life feminists’, but the eventual exclusion from the Women’s March in Washington DC in 2017 of one such group suggests they are not accepted by mainstream feminists, and illustrates one of the problems of accepting the ‘feminist’ label. See https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/1/22/14335292/womens-march-washington-abortion-pro-life-feminists accessed 28 March 2018.

[2] You can find a brief explanation of what ‘prophesying’ means here.

This article is reproduced with permission from The Gospel Coalition.

Claire Smith is married to Rob, and attends St Andrew’s Anglican Cathedral Sydney. They have a married son. She is a women’s Bible teacher, and the author of God’s Good Design: What the Bible really says about Men and Women (Matthias Media, 2012), and contributor to the ESV Women’s Devotional Bible (Crossway, 2014) and Word-filled Women’s Ministry: Loving and Serving the Church (eds. Gloria Furman and Kathleen Nielson, Crossway, 2015). Claire serves on TGCA editorial panel, working to develop women writers and content.

And one of the labels people are obsessing over is whether or not to be a feminist.

Answering this question in 2016 on ABC’s Q&A , Michaelia Cash, then Government Minister for Women said she didn’t call herself a feminist and didn’t think it was necessary for her to do her job well, whereas Labor Senator Penny Wong, said she does call herself a feminist because it associates her “with a set of political beliefs that she believes passionately in”, and that if someone said to her that they’re not a feminist, she’d ask them, ‘What’s your problem?’”

Many Christian women (and men) are wrestling with the same questions. Are we feminists? Can we be? Do we need to be?

The Question of Definition

And that’s where we run into our first question: Which feminism are we talking about? It’s had several waves, and keeps evolving, and even fragmenting.

So, which feminism do we mean?

Broadly speaking …

First wave feminism sought equality with men in society: things like the vote, access to education, and legal rights like owning property and bank accounts.

Second wave feminism broadened the equality agenda to the home and gender roles and relationships. It was fuelled by the introduction of the contraceptive pill, the sexual revolution, and access to so-called safe abortion.[2] ‘Women’s liberation’ gave way to ‘feminism’ and the celebration, and social and economic empowerment of women. Think of Helen Reddy’s song ‘I am woman hear me roar’ (if you’re old enough to remember).

It’s hard to sum up third wave feminism: there’s the ‘raunch culture’ and sexual empowerment à la Miley Cyrus’ ‘wrecking ball’ music video—but there’s also a focus on women of colour, lesbians, bi’s, trans women, and other minorities, increasingly, seen through the compounding effect of belonging to several minority groups at once, in what’s called intersectionality (like being female and black and immigrant and gay), and where the interpretative grid is about privilege and power.

The common threads in third wave, it seems to me, are a focus on each woman’s individual choice and subjective experience, and (at the same time) a collective view of women as an oppressed disempowered underclass, with men as their privileged oppressors, in particular, white, western, middle-aged, middle-class, heterosexual, ‘cisgendered’ men.

Now, growing out of that essentially Marxist paradigm, there’s fourth wave feminism—seen in the #MeToo and Time’sUp movements—which uses the internet to campaign for safety for women from sexual harassment and violence (especially on uni campuses and social media), and other emblematic issues such as domestic violence, and female genital mutilation.

As with third wave, fourth wave feminism is not just about women, sexism and misogyny, but about minorities, racism, homophobia and transphobia—and that has sparked something of a turf war amongst feminists since many of the old guard don’t think trans women (who are biologically male) are women at all, and so on it goes.

So, when we ask what we’re to make of feminism as Christians, the first question is ‘Which feminism?’—because even the leading secular voices agree, there’s no one answer.[3]

Now maybe all we mean is the bare-bones-dictionary definition Emma Watson used in her HeforShe speech at the UN: “the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities: the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes”.[4]

But what are these ‘rights’? Watson’s speech hinted at her support of abortion, which she’s openly stated elsewhere,[5] so this bare-bones definition is not as straight-forward as it seems. Again, it depends who’s using it and what they mean by it.

Should We Join the Movement?

The second question is whether we need to associate with the movement if we agree with only some of its beliefs. Is the feminist label something we should take for ourselves?

I don’t think so.

Let me be clear. I don’t think feminism (taking all the different expressions as one) is all bad, and I do think some of the inequalities it has sought to address were and are real.

Gender-based inequality (e.g., in regard to safety, justice, healthcare, education, employment) is wrong, as are all beliefs and structures that treat some people better than others: race-based inequality, faith-based inequality, wealth-based inequality, just to name a few.

Moreover, feminism has delivered things we can be thankful for: women can now vote, own property, have bank accounts, have full access to education, sit at board tables, run for parliament. Rape in marriage is rightly now a criminal offence, violence against women is a community concern, fathers are expected to spend more time with their children, and men can shop and cook dinner without having their manhood questioned.

These are all good things, but not only feminism could have brought them about—and it’s not clear that it did so in the best way.

Different Foundations

Part of the problem is that feminism, even the bare-bones definition, is built on an inadequate notion of ‘equality’ and on questionable assumptions of what’s ‘right and good’.

It’s all very well to say that women and men should be equal, but equal in what? And why? And why is this good? And who will be the judge of when we get there?

Feminism only gives us half the picture. It’s not a complete worldview or belief system, and what beliefs it has, often (but not always) are in direct opposition to God’s word (think of abortion,[6] or the idea that gender is just a social construct).

Feminism has only done good where its concerns align with God’s will. That’s because only God determines what is good and right. This is why feminism has sometimes been a tool in his hands to promote justice and peace, and the common good for all (not just women). He has used it, just as he uses other aspects of human endeavour: democracy, science and medicine, industrialisation, and free market economies, and much more.

But these are not absolute goods, and can all be used in ways that are not good at all. As Jesus says, “No one is good except God alone” ― everything else can only be good to the extent it agrees with him.

Feminism then is not the enemy, but it’s not a friend either. As Christians we believe in and live by something more true and infinitely better, the good word of our good God, and which does not agree at all points with feminism.

In my next post we will spend some time looking at some key aspects of what the Bible has to say about our existence as women and men and think about how that can help us think about feminism.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/magazine/the-year-we-obsessed-over-identity.html?_r=0 Accessed 14 July 2016

[2] I’ve said ‘so-called’ because while it may be safe for the mother, it is not for the unborn.

[3] Cf. http://diglib.bis.uni-oldenburg.de/pub/unireden/ur97/kap1.pdf Accessed 10 September 2018.

[4] https://www.thoughtco.com/transcript-of-emma-watsons-speech-on-gender-equality-3026200 Accessed 3 September 2018.

[5] https://twitter.com/emmawatson/status/822756607553601536?lang=en Accessed 3 September 2018.

[6] I realise some groups label themselves ‘pro-life feminists’, but the eventual exclusion from the Women’s March in Washington DC in 2017 of one such group suggests they are not accepted by mainstream feminists, and illustrates one of the problems of accepting the ‘feminist’ label. See https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/1/22/14335292/womens-march-washington-abortion-pro-life-feminists accessed 28 March 2018.

This article is reproduced with permission from The Gospel Coalition.

Claire Smith is married to Rob, and attends St Andrew’s Anglican Cathedral Sydney. They have a married son. She is a women’s Bible teacher, and the author of God’s Good Design: What the Bible really says about Men and Women (Matthias Media, 2012), and contributor to the ESV Women’s Devotional Bible (Crossway, 2014) and Word-filled Women’s Ministry: Loving and Serving the Church (eds. Gloria Furman and Kathleen Nielson, Crossway, 2015). Claire serves on TGCA editorial panel, working to develop women writers and content.

The name which we gave to our network/organisation - Equal but Different - was a deliberate one. The problems around gender in our world have grown out of emphasising one sex whilst downplaying the other.

Since Genesis 3 and the curse for mankind that followed Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God, difference has been accentuated. Men, on the whole, have domineered and commanded women because they were more powerful: women were different to them and definitely not possessing equality. The death and resurrection of Jesus turned that notion upside down.[1] Yes, men and women were different but they were also equal - made in the image of God, just like men were, equal in worth, value and dignity.

Sadly, the suppression of a woman’s equality in our broken world prevailed. But, since the explosion of the feminist doctrine onto world history, equality now trumps difference! Women certainly needed a redressing of that cursed imbalance… but the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction, that women are once more in a precarious position.

We (Sarah Sholl who will write Part 2 of this post, and I) want to begin a conversation about why equality without difference is dangerous for women. It is a tale of two equalities: cultural equality and Biblical equality.

Limitations?

Culturally defined gender equality[2] is when people of both sexes have equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities, with no limitations placed on them because of their sex. To not accept unqualified equality for women today is branded as unjust, oppressive and unfair. Equality will be seen to be a reality when there is justice and freedom from oppression; when no limitations are placed on women; when women have the opportunity to be whoever they want or choose to be.

The problem is we cannot choose who or what we want to be or do. Our identity as creatures means we have limitations. Our lives are not write-your-own-adventures. I may deeply desire to be a world class ballerina, but I have physical limitations that preclude that option. To be exhorted on a school speech day that you can smash through your limitations and be whatever you want, is cruel for the young starry-eyed graduate.

Differences

Along with our limitations there is also the reality of the differences between men and women - again designed by the Creator. Generally men are taller and stronger than women (although in any gathering the tallest, or strongest person may be a woman). Hormonally, there are huge differences: men produce 20 times more testosterone than women do. One effect of this is that they are more likely to be highly competitive, single-minded and risk-takers. It plays a role in aggressive behaviour (which can lead to violence) and the development of the muscular system in the male body.[3]

On the other hand, oestrogen plays an important role in developing the reproductive organs of a female body. No matter how much a man desires equality with a woman to be able to conceive, gestate, give birth to and suckle a baby, he cannot!

Feminism tells us that the differences between men and women need to be ‘levelled’ out, insisting that women are only valuable if they act just like men.

 Basis of equality

The inconvenient truth in our culture is that equality is not something we fight to make our own, because God has already given it to us. This is the second equality. The basis of this equality is not what we can do, or what we can aspire to be. Rather it is God’s gift to us because he made us bearers of his image. We already have it.

A cursory glance at the animal kingdom demonstrates that there is no striving for equality in that domain… might is right! It is the survival of the fittest. Take God out of the picture and there is no equality between the sexes in the human race either… the man (the stronger) would always win!

Neither can the basis of equality be ability for that has unintended consequences. If a woman says that she deserves equality because she is just as, say, intellectually accomplished as the man she compares herself to, what does that say about the intellectually disabled person? Are they not equal?

In God’s world, society or culture cannot grant women equality, nor can equality be won by women. It is already conferred on us by God. But men need to acknowledge that reality for it to thrive, and women need to acknowledge that equality with difference is God’s good design for his image-bearing creatures.

But know this as well: we who know this good God as our Father should call abusive men to account and continue to pursue justice and freedom for vulnerable women (eg abused women, economic prostitutes and slaves) precisely because they are equal image-bearers to the men who oppress them.

Two equalities, two ways to live. The first looks attractive, but in the end traps women in a cycle of fierce competition with men and denies her any distinctiveness for her sex. The second IS attractive, precisely because it comes as a gift from God and frees women to love and serve in an interdependent community of men and women.

[1] The perennial problems  between men and women are a consequence of sin. Jesus death dealt with the problem of sin and God calls us to live under the new covenant of two genders who are equal image bearers, but with distinctive responsibilities.

[2] I am indebted to a talk by Andrew Heard for stimulating my thinking here. https://evchurch.info/media/5bac4

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693622/

Lesley Ramsayhas been in local church ministry with her husband, Jim, for 47 years. After university she trained as a teacher and then raised four children. Over the past 30 years she has worked as a Bible teacher and evangelist across Australia and overseas. She has written and edited several books and training packages that are sold and used internationally. She now works at Moore College in Sydney, in pastoral care to the students. To relax, she enjoys a good coffee and a good book and hanging out with her grandchildren.

1. There’s a phrase that changes my perspective on this love story significantly.

“In the days when the judges ruled…” (Ruth 1:1)

I did not read through all of Judges as a child, although I knew of Samson, Ehud, Deborah. I had never heard the final horrific chapters of Judges.  I did not understand that the book was about the nation of Israel declining into the sinful patterns of the nations around them. I had not heard the final section’s repeated refrain “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25; 17:6; 18:1; 19:1). 

Ultimately, I hadn’t placed the book of Ruth, and the actions of the characters in Ruth within the time they lived. I was the poorer in understanding for it. I would now suggest that to understand Ruth, one should first read Judges. When you start Ruth with a background of Judges, there are answers to questions.

Judges is a significantly longer book than Ruth, so for the sake of the length of this article, I am going to briefly focus on the two sections of Judges that I think specifically shed some light on Ruth: chapter 3[1] and 19-20[2].

When I have read the book of Ruth with other women, there has been a persisting question over whether Elimelech did the right thing moving to Moab with his family.

“In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.” (Ruth 1:1)

I don’t know if this was during the events of Judges 3 or not, but having read the chapter, I suspect as readers we should be calling out ‘no, don’t go there!’.  In Judges 3, King Eglon of Moab defeated and ruled over Israel for 18 years. Moab is no friend of Israelites and it is not a good thing for this man and his family to move there for however long he’s planning to be there. He’s moving into enemy territory. Whether it was enemy territory then or not, having read Judges, those alarm bells should be ringing in our heads when reading the beginning of Ruth. ‘Not Moab, don’t go there.’ And in case you missed it, Ruth’s author reinforces the move “They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there.” (Ruth 1:2). In the time of the Judges, this is not an advisable move.

You may be mentally arguing with me, saying ‘But there was a famine in the land. They had to do something. They might have been starving to death.’ And I would say, yes I agree. This was a serious time. But, in the book of Judges, and in many books in the Old Testament, a famine in the land may be a sign of God’s judgement on the people. If there is a famine in Israel, but not in Moab, which is geographically quite close, doesn’t that concern you even a little?  Rather than move to enemy territory, perhaps the answer was to call out to God, like one of the themes of Judges in that repetitive cycle of sin, judgement, repentance, rescue (judge), sin (judge has died), judgement, repentance, rescue, sin, judgement, repentance, rescue. Moving away from the promised land is not ever the antidote to hardship in the time of the Judges. It is always calling out to God in repentance.

But then we also have the sad irony of the name of the man. Elimelech. A man whose very name means ‘My God is king’. During a time when the writer of Judges reminds us more than once ‘In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.’ Elimelech should have cried out to the one who was truly king in Israel, but instead he abandoned the meaning of his own name and did what he saw fit in his own eyes. And he ended up dying in that foreign land, followed ten years later by his two, married to Moabite women, sons.  Block argues that “the theme of the book [Judges] is the Canaanization of Israelite society during the period of settlement”[3], and in the beginning of Ruth we have a miniature picture of a family in all appearances becoming Moabite, assimilating with a people group that they should not be assimilating with or seeking a treaty of friendship with. (Deut 23:3-6)

2. The important ending that changes perspective.

“Now these are the generations of Perez:

Perez fathered Hezron,

Hezron fathered Ram,

Ram fathered Amminadab, 

Amminadab fathered Nahshon,

Nahshon fathered Salmon,

Salmon fathered Boaz,

Boaz fathered Obed,

Obed fathered Jesse,

and Jesse fathered David.”  (Ruth 4:18-22)

Without the ‘surprise reveal’ at the end of the book of Ruth, we might leave it as a lovely love story about Boaz and Ruth. Yet, this ending makes the story so much more significant. Sometimes, we can lose the ‘wow factor’ when we’re too familiar with Bible verses. Here’s the ‘wow factor’ ending. It turns out that this story, about these amazing, Godly characters, Ruth and Boaz, are King David’s great grandparents! God blessed them is such a huge way, much bigger than merely providing an heir for Mahlon’s land.[4]

 One of the big themes of the book of Ruth is God’s provision. In the book the author describes the LORD as intervening explicitly in two verses, providing food and family:

“Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food.”  (Ruth 1:6)

And

“So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife. And he went into her, and the Lord gave her conception, and she bore a son.” (Ruth 4:13)

In each case, the book of Ruth continues to show how much more abundant God’s provision is in these two areas of food and family.  In Ruth 1:4-5 we learn that Naomi is left without food and without family, apart from two foreign daughters-in-law.  By the end of the book of Ruth, Naomi’s future food and shelter are sorted because Boaz has agreed to take care of Naomi and Ruth, and her arms a filled with a new baby. As the women of the village say:

“Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age, for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.” (Ruth 4:14-15)

And the story could be finished there. God’s incredibly abundant provision for Naomi’s needs is shown.   But then, even in the next verse, we read that this child, Obed, is the grandfather of the greatest King in the Old Testament! This is the eye-popping moment of the book.

3. Now combine my first two points and look at the main characters in the book of Ruth.

When we read the final, awful, chapters of the book of Judges, we read what the common Israelites lived like. They are confused in their understanding of God, (eg. Judges 17), they are depraved, at civil war, and oddly enough, the little town of Bethlehem gets quite a mention[5]. There are no likeable people in this final section of the book of Judges.

Against this backdrop, compare Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz.

Some people may question Naomi’s faith because of her bitterness in Ruth 1, but throughout the book she calls on the name of the LORD regularly.  In Ruth 1:8, Naomi prays for God’s hesed[6] to be shown to Ruth and Orpah. She uses the word that encapsulates one of the biggest themes of the book. In Ruth 2:20, Naomi recognises God’s hesed, in the amount of food Ruth has brought back from Boaz’s fields.

Ruth is a foreigner, a Moabite. And in case we ever forget, the author of Ruth writes it repeatedly throughout the book. Yet, her big speech in Ruth 1:16-17 is astounding, especially when compared to the backdrop of the final chapters of Judges.

“For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”  (Ruth 1:16-17)

Ruth calls on the name of the LORD, and she declares that she follows him. She works long hours in Boaz’s fields, to provide food for herself and her mother-in-law, and remarkably the characteristic of God, ‘hesed’ that is so big a theme of the book, is used to describe her actions in Ruth 3:10. This is a far cry from the times in which she lives. She is not a woman of her home or her times. One might even argue that although the book of Judges contains the ‘Canaanization of Israel’, we see in the book of Ruth, the ‘Israelization of a Gentile’.

And then we turn to Boaz. He cares for the foreigner and his distant relative by marriage, he is a man of his word and integrity. When we read of the truly disgusting way the women are treated at the end Judges, Boaz by comparison is phenomenal. He did not take advantage of Ruth on the threshing floor and he also protected her reputation. (Ruth 3:14). At great cost to himself, he took on a woman whose first son would carry on her first husband’s name, and he took on her mother-in-law and provided generously for both of them. He was considerate, not wanting Ruth to feel awkward in the fields, (Ruth 2:15), and throughout the book, Boaz calls on the name of the LORD and refers to the LORD.

And this Boaz and Ruth are ancestors of King David. These characters that know God’s ‘hesed’ and display it by their actions, are ancestors to the king who mentioned God’s ‘hesed’ more than any other author in the Old Testament, in the Psalms. And this couple who gave of themselves, one as a kinsman-redeemer, are, through David, ancestors of the ultimate example of God’s hesed, the greatest of all kings, Jesus.

The loveliest of love stories? The book of Ruth, when we dig a little deeper into it, pushes us towards our redeemer, as we see the ‘Canaanization’ of the world around us, and as we read of the one who stands out above all others, who is the very expression of God’s love. Although Ruth is really a part of the greatest love story ever, an early chapter in the story yet to unfold, even without knowing the ultimate ending, I’d say the book of Ruth is at least in the top five best love stories.

[1] Although nobody knows for sure when in the age of the Judges the events of Ruth took place, it is most commonly believed to be during this time.

[2] The events of these chapters are recorded at the end of the book for thematic purposes, but most likely happened much earlier in the chronology of the events.

[3]Daniel Block, The New American Commentary Vol 6, Judges, Ruth, p.58.

[4] Ruth 4:10

[5] Interestingly Gibeah, Saul’s hometown is central to the last chapters of Judges as well. We have an embryonic David vs Saul origin story.

[6] A hard word to define in English. Block writes: “…all the positive attributes of God - love, mercy, grace, kindness, goodness, benevolence, loyalty, covenant faithfulness; in short, that quality that moves a person to act for the benefit of another without respect to the advantage it might bring to the one who expresses it.” Daniel Block, The New American Commentary Vol 6, Judges, Ruth, p.605.

Ruth Barry was raised in a loving Christian home and doesn’t remember the time she became a Christian, because she has always known that her sins were forgiven through Jesus’ death on the cross. She is married to Andrew who is the senior minister at Menai Anglican Church. They have six children, five living with them, and one now safe in the arms of Jesus. Ruth enjoys writing, reading, chatting, music and word puzzles. She is always on the lookout for fun, cheap, stay-at-home date night ideas. She is thankful and often speaks about God’s continuing kindness in holding her family through easy and hard times.

Ruth writes from time to time on her husband’s blog The Bible A to Z.

Of all the words in the Bible, this may be one of the least popular. After all, our cultural moment is not one that values a posture of submission to authorities. On the contrary, our world insists we should challenge and critique those over us.

The classic bumper sticker captures it well: “Question Authority.”

And if submission is already an unpopular concept, it only grows more unpopular in verses like Ephesians 5:22: “Wives submit to your husbands as unto the Lord.” Indeed, this passage (and its counterpart in 1 Pet. 3:1) has been ground zero in the submission wars, both in our churches and the broader culture.

But letting these verses take center stage can give the mistaken impression that the Bible teaches that only women submit. In reality, Scripture has a more comprehensive view.

Everybody Submits to Somebody

The Bible is clear that everybody submits to somebody. Men and women are called to submit to the government (Rom. 13:1), children are called to submit to parents (Eph. 6:1), church members are called to submit to elders (Heb. 13:7), servants are called to submit to masters (1 Pet. 1:18), and on it goes.

Of course, the ultimate demonstration that submission is a good and biblical virtue is that it was practiced by our Lord himself. Christ, in his earthly ministry, submitted himself to the Father (John 4:34; 5:3). His submission was so complete that he was “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8).

Here’s the point: submission is not a female virtue; it’s a Christian virtue.

Perhaps, then, we need to recalibrate the way we think about—and talk about—submission in the church. Rather than repeatedly focusing on just one example (Eph. 5:22), we need to call all Christians to submit to whatever authorities are over them.

And if men are to be the leaders in the church and the home—a point often made in discussions about submission—then they ought to lead by example. Christian men should be a model of submission to whatever authorities they are under.

Men, Do You Submit?

Here are some diagnostic questions for men:

• Men, do you show a submissive spirit to your employer? Or do you grumble, complain, and undermine your boss’s authority?

• Men, do you submit to your church leaders? Or are you a member who regularly kicks against accountability and oversight?

• Men, if you are a pastor or elder, do you submit to your fellow elders? Do you show a spirit of submission to your denominational body? When that body asks you to do something, do you comply or push against it?

• Men, do you respect the governing authorities God has placed over you, regardless of their political affiliation or your opinion of their policies? Or do you mock and deride those authorities?

One can imagine how difficult (not to mention discouraging) it might be for women who are repeatedly called to submit to see their husbands and church leaders refuse to submit to the authorities over them. By contrast, how encouraging it is for women to see that they are being asked to do something which their leaders willingly and cheerfully do first.

Submission Before a Watching World

But Christian submission is not just an issue in the church; it also affects the way we relate to the broader culture. Do we practice what we preach before a watching world?

When Christians flout government directives, one might understand why the watching culture begins to scratch its head in confusion. Haven’t Christians complained the loudest about how we are living in an anti-authority age? Haven’t Christians lamented our world’s lack of submission to authority?

And yet, it’s often those very same Christians who seem unwilling to submit when faced with a government rule they disagree with.

Now, to be clear, submission does not mean we blindly follow all government directives (or the directives of other authorities for that matter). Submission does not require us to obey someone if they ask us to sin (in such cases we have an obligation not to submit) or obey laws that force us to dishonor God (Dan. 3:18). And submission does not mean we are unable to work for a change in our situation (e.g., we can submit to the government while seeking to change its laws).

But just as wives are called to submit to imperfect husbands, citizens are called to submit to an imperfect government. And men should be leading the way in doing so.

Submission Will Change You

When men take the lead in practicing submission, here’s something we will discover: submission is hard. It’s a substantive and weighty act of self-denial. It can feel like death, even though we know it’s the path to life.

Firsthand knowledge of the difficulty of submission will, in turn, give us greater understanding and compassion for those under our leadership. We will not be able to talk of submission in a light and trivial manner, as if there’s no cost. We can be the gentle leader we are called to be, because we understand the weightiness of submission from practicing it ourselves.

Even more, learning the difficulty of submission will give all of us a renewed sense of gratitude for what Jesus suffered on our behalf. While in tears and agony, he asked his Father, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” And yet he uttered these stunning words of self-denial: “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:42).

So, when we as Christians—both male and female—deny ourselves and submit ourselves to those in authority over us, we are doing something distinctively Christlike. Whenever we say, “Not as I will, but as you will,” we are acting like Jesus.

This article is reproduced with permission from The Gospel Coalition.

Michael J. Kruger is president of Reformed Theological Seminary’s Charlotte, North Carolina, campus, where he also serves as professor of New Testament. He served as president of the Evangelical Theological Society in 2019. He is the author of Surviving Religion 101 (Crossway, 2021) and Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church (IVP Academic, 2018). He blogs regularly at Canon Fodder.