Fight Like A Girl, Pt. 2

(If you missed Part 1, click here)

Doctrine – God Wants Masculine Men and Feminine Women

(And that actually means something, rather than just meaning anything we feel like it means.)

1. The Evidence of Nature

Before we look at the way things actually are in the real world, it is important to establish the principle that things are the way they are because God made them that way, and that He made them that way because that’s how He wanted them to be. In other words, nature manifests not only reality but also morality. It reflects God’s character. (Rom. 1, Ps. 19)

This isn’t to say that nature is a clear rule of morality in any way. We must go back to God’s Word as our standard of right and wrong. However, nature does show us how God designed things to work. So the things we are about to look at are not accidental, and they are not hindrances to be surmounted- they are beautiful realities that God designed into this world because that’s how He wanted this world to be.

With that established, let’s look at nature for a bit.

“The aggressive fight-or-flight reaction is more dominant in men, while women predominantly adopt a less aggressive tend-and-befriend response,” Dr. Joohyung Lee, from the Prince Henry’s Institute in Melbourne, said in a press release published on ScienceDaily. So while men favor punching or running away, women are more likely to try to diffuse a situation and seek out social support. The Huffington Post

Seeking social support yo.

This is not surprising from a complementarian worldview. If God designed men to be the defenders of the family, it would make sense that they would be more aggressive, equipped both to fight and to flee depending on which is the most tactically advantageous at the time. This doesn’t mean that there is never an appropriate time for women to fight, of course; interestingly, even the legendary mama-bear instinct fits perfectly into this paradigm; the idea would be that if somehow you manage to get past the strong, tactical, courageous and aggressive men of the community, the emotion-driven ferocity of the wives and mothers may just make you wish you hadn’t.

But back to the stats.

WOMEN ARE SHORTER, about 9% on average. MALE BONES ARE BIGGER AND STRONGER, in both size and density. Peak male bone mass is around 50% more than women’s, and women lose bone faster as we age. Hand grip is one of the most widely-used markers for strength. The strongest 10% of females can only beat the bottom 10% of men! [M]en have 66% more upper-body muscle than women, and 50% more lower-body muscle. MUSCLES OF THE [female] REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM. You don’t see much about them in the fitness blogs, do you?! These incredible organs are lined with muscles so powerful that they can squeeze a baby out, and so elastic that they can stretch to accommodate the baby & placenta, etc, while holding them safe – and then return to shape. WOMEN’S [ligaments] ARE THINNER AND SOFTER than men’s – apart from around our reproductive organs, where they can be phenomenally strong and elastic. At puberty our ligaments become “lax” compared to men’s. This would seem to be a hormonal effect designed to facilitate separation of the pelvic bones for childbirth – pity it weakens all of the ligaments all of the time, as our “laxity” causes joint instability. It’s responsible for a high number of sporting injuries. EYESIGHT: Women’s colour perception and peripheral vision are better than men’s. Men do better on long distance focus. These may be … for childcare and hunting, respectively. Fair Play for Women

Recent microscopic analysis shows that the retinas of male and female eyes are quite different. Females have a much higher concentration of P-cells (responsible for colors and textures). Males have many more M-cells (responsible for tracking movement). Think about it this way: P-cells (denser in females) answer the question, “What is it?” M-cells (denser in males) answer the question, “Where is it going?” This phenomenon is also well illustrated (pardon the pun) when comparing boys’ and girls’ artwork. Typically, boys like to draw action—shooting rockets, guns, bullets, chasing—and they prefer to use colors such as black, grey, silver, and blue. Girls will more often use warm colors such as red, green, beige, and brown (and more of them) to draw pictures of people, pets, or landscapes with trees, flowers and houses. In short (and generally speaking, of course): girls draw nouns, boys draw verbs. weteachwelearn.org

The physical discrepancy is illustrated every year at our church Family Camp. The foot race, first of all, attracts far more males than females- I’d estimate about 75% of the participation is male. And the entire top tier of finishers, by far, are always men and boys.

Go to your average physical-labor job site and observe the discrepancy between male and female workers. From my experience, the workforce in such areas is nearly always 100% male.

All this leads to the question that I was once asked in the context of one of these discussions about the physical dominance of males: “So… what are women good at?”

The answer is obvious. Women are designed to create and nurture life. And they are amazing at it. Their entire anatomy is structured around growing, birthing, and sustaining babies. Their mental giftings for multitasking and even seeing things with more peripheral vision and in more color equip them to handle a house full of kids while cooking and decorating the house and keeping the family business or the household finances running. Their psychological predisposition towards emotion and social interaction is perfectly suited to the tasks of wife and motherhood- comforting their children, encouraging their husband, etc.

One of the above referenced websites, “Fair Play for Women,” said this:

This is a spectacular testament to the all-round power & awesomeness of women … and of men. When we work as a team, we’re unstoppable… Blokes aren’t built to grow live human beings out of their own body tissues, recover almost immediately and spend the next year feeding said infant with their own bodily fluid. They’re male. Women are definitely weak when judged against male bone & muscle performance – but you try judging males against the female performance. It is strange that we’ve defined physical strength & weakness in terms of what men’s bodies can do … but that’s patriarchy, I guess! Fair Play for Women

The great irony here is the concluding condemnation of patriarchy. Patriarchy- at least defined Biblically as a societal structure of loving, sacrificial male headship- is a complementarian worldview. The whole point is that men and women are different- and that that is a good thing! (Eph. 5)

It is modernism, it is feminism, it is Marxism that insists on pitting women against men. It is SJW leftism that clamors about glass ceilings and pay gaps and lack of “representation.” But what is this about? Judging the success of women against- and by the standards of- the success of men.

God created Adam to tend the garden, and He created Eve to help him do it. Adam didn’t need a carbon copy of himself. He needed someone who was different. He didn’t need someone who could do the work he could already do. He needed someone who could do the work he couldn’t. These physical differences are not setbacks to be overcome. They are gifts to be enjoyed.

Look, y’all, I’ve seen my wife go through labor. It’s incredible. I watch her love my kids. I feel the comfort of her compassion when I’m sick or tired. She was made for this- to help me raise my kids- to enable me to focus on the work that God has called me to do outside the home because I know that she’s back there making sure it all keeps going. The only reason that we as a culture see this as misogynistic is because we have systemically undervalued the tasks that God created women to fulfill.

Look at the skilled trades. When was the last time you saw a female plumber or mechanic? They exist, I’m sure, but they are as rare as hen’s teeth. Indeed, throughout history, the best and most famous in every professional field have always been males. Artists, composers, authors, psychologists, politicians, generals, bakers, tailors, scientists, inventors, architects- you name it- the ones you will find in your history books are predominantly male.

Why? Because society has held women down and prevented them from expressing their gifts? Perhaps in some cases, but not generally.

Because women are simply less talented or capable? Certainly not! While the question of inherent talents of males as opposed to females would be an interesting one to explore (and I would not be surprised to find results along the lines of the rest of our discussion here), there is no reason to say that in the vast majority of non-physical trades women are incapable of achieving great results.

No, the discrepancy arises from design. Men are designed to pursue one- or perhaps a few- vocations over the course of a lifetime and to become truly excellent at it. Women are designed to be multitaskers. Generally speaking, women end up living the mom life. This means they do a little cooking, some cleaning, a touch of accounting, a lot of counseling, secretarial work, and the list goes on. Their primary vocation usually, at some point in their lives, becomes wife- and mother-hood. That vocation has a bunch of “jobs” hidden inside of it.

(This isn’t to say that men who are husbands and fathers do not have a primary duty at home- they do, and their responsibilities there are primary. However, there is a difference in the created design for their daily domain- the field rather than the family room.)

Our culture has a problem with this because we see what the men do as being better. But is it really better? Is it really better to be a critically-acclaimed chef who fills the newspapers with your recipes than to be a child-approved chef who fills your home with the fragrances of love and lasagna? Is it really better to win a “teacher of the year” award than to be the teacher, every year, of your own children? Is it really better to be remembered by the next generation than it is to be daily, intimately shaping it? Is it really better to be admired by millions who don’t really know you than to be adored by a few who do?

No. No, it’s not better. What’s more, it is a simple, natural reality.

So why do we think it’s better? As always, at root, it’s a matter of rebellion against God’s design. But to narrow it down, I have a sneaking suspicion that it has to do with two things: the desire for self-definition and the resistance to any kind of inescapable authority structure.

Our culture today refuses to be bound by God’s reality, and making simple observations about the world as it is qualifies as hate speech. If scientific research points out that a certain race or sex has more or less of X attribute or skill, we have to bury that research, because it oppresses whoever is perceived as getting the short end of the stick. But this is silly. If reality says that certain groups have certain talents… who cares? That doesn’t mean they are more or less human.

It’s not bigotry to recognize reality. It is bigotry to be afraid of it. Because in fearing reality we are no longer finding our identity- black, white, male, female- as being rooted in our inherent value as humans made in God’s Image. We are finding our worth in our externals, and we are pursuing the elimination of external differences to achieve “equality”- instead of recognizing that we all have inherent equality before God and one another, even if your average black guy can jump higher than I can.

As a culture we refuse to be bound by “stereotypes,” and by “stereotypes” we mean axioms as unshakeable as “what goes up must come down.” Yet we leap glibly off of rooftops and gasp in shock when we find ourselves in the Emergency Room. Despite our protests, 2+2 is still 4, sunlight is still bright, and men and women are still different. The participation trophies are the real bigotry, because they feed the lie that unless we all have the same results, we are not equal.

“Patriarchy” is the inescapable outflow of natural reality. Men are wired and built to dominate. They will do so well or they will do so badly, but they will inescapably lead society- even by their abdication. When good men step up to the plate, societies rise. When bad men take the wheel, societies corrupt. When men as a whole simply abandon their responsibilities, societies collapse.

But we refuse to accept that authority is not the same as superiority. To be in charge must be to be better. And thus anybody who isn’t in charge is oppressed. So when we hear “male leadership” it sounds an awful lot like “oppressed women.” And while the two can go together- and it’s terrible when they do- they are not the same thing.

As a society, we are telling women that fulfillment for them lies not in womanhood, but in equality. Again, womanhood is equal to manhood in value, but different in function, and to blur that line is to call women to live life according to a certain paradigm- an unnatural one. And that is what we do when we tell women that they must find their purpose outside the home, that they need to go have a career and make some (usually male) CEO wealthy, or else they are an oppressed victim of the patriarchy.

This will lead to discontentment for women, as they leave what God created them to be for a diabolical feminist mess of pottage. (Gen. 1)

It will lead to disadvantage for women as they are moved from a complimentary relationship to men into a competitive relationship with men, who are naturally more aggressive. More men making more money is what we would expect to see, regardless of misogynistic bias. Men are simply temperamentally different from women in a way that is a distinct advantage in competitive scenarios.

It will also lead to the abuse of women. Since men are inherently physically stronger, a society that does not teach and call men to be protective of the weak will be a society in which women are taken advantage of. It’s hard to call men to step up as protectors while simultaneously denying that women need protection.

These hellish lies are dangerous to both the souls and the bodies of those they ensnare.

A couple of necessary clarifications:

1. I know there are exceptions. There are some women who could bench-press a Humvee with one arm. But we’re looking at the principles of created order- and, more importantly, we’re going to look at God’s Word- to tell us what should be. The truth of a natural principle is not upended by the occasional exception; the Truth of God’s Word has no exception to it at all.

2. As mentioned above, I am not saying that women cannot or should not ever use violence. The Bible gives us examples of women who did use violence, but they are never in the context of professional combativeness- in both cases I’m thinking of, they are women who used homemaking implements in a moment of necessity or opportunity to get the job done. (Judg. 4:21, 9:53)

3. By emphasizing the need for men to protect women I am in no way saying that women should be unprepared and helpless damsels in distress; I am a huge fan of self-defense classes for women, firearms training for women, etc. But getting my wife some martial arts training and a pocket pistol for shopping day is a far cry from sending her out to investigate when things go bump in the night. If someone messes with her when she’s alone, I want her to be able to handle them decisively. But if I’m there, I don’t want her to have to handle them at all- and furthermore, Christianity leads to a society where even women who are not with a husband or father or brother are still protected by all the God fearing men of the community. (Deut. 22:27)

2. The Evidence of Scripture

Appeals to nature can only go so far. If we are really wanting to know what God thinks, then we ultimately must turn to His Word for the- well, the final word on the matter. (2 Tim. 3:16)

The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man [a warrior-man’s gear], neither shall a [valiant] man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God. Deut. 22:5, KJV

If this ain’t that then I don’t know what is.

I am indebted for the following observations, as well as other thoughts in this post, to the folks at “It’s Good To Be a Man,” whose podcast and content I have greatly enjoyed and would recommend, although I do not agree with everything that they say- or the way they say everything they say.

In Deuteronomy 22:5, we have a straightforward prohibition against cross-dressing. And I would like to briefly point out that it is very interesting that while it is still easy for men to dress up as women if they want to, there is comparatively little clothing which is culturally reserved as “masculine.”

A look at the Hebrew of this passage is interesting. The words used for “man” and “that which pertaineth unto” have a connotation that is more than just “men’s clothing.” The word for “man” used here is not the standard, generic Hebrew word for “human male,” but rather the word for “valiant man,” or “warrior.” Not that it couldn’t be used of a person generically, but it is interesting that the text does not use the word that corresponds 1-to-1 with the word for “woman,” which is the generic Hebrew word.

The word for “that which pertaineth” is not “clothing,” as in many modern translations, but more correctly “apparatus,” or perhaps “gear.”

My point? If “man’s gear” doesn’t refer to the tools of war, what could it possibly refer to? And if women dressed up in camo and combat boots doesn’t violate this principle, what would?

Note the strength of the language here. This is an abomination to God. Do we feel what He feels?

In light of all this, this is why I bemoan things like the recent transition for Supergirl from a skirt to pants. It’s not because I think it’s a sin for women to wear pants. It’s not because the skirt was more modest- I wouldn’t know, I don’t watch the show. It’s not because now, all of a sudden, she’s doing a man’s job- she already was. It’s simply because it’s another step away from distinction.

And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it… And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. Genesis 2:15, 20

In the positive, we see the pattern (again I’m indebted to the above podcasters for this insightful analysis) of “made from, brought to, commanded”- Adam is made from the earth, brought to the earth, and commanded to tend the earth. Eve is made from Adam, brought to Adam, and commanded to help Adam. The creation pattern is clear- though I am being highly simplistic for the sake of brevity- that men were designed to deal with stuff, while women were designed to deal with people.

And I don’t mean “deal with” in the “pin their arm to the wall with your high-heel” sort of way.

Women are naturally designed to comfort, care for, and reconcile. They are calibrated for relationships and family management. Men are wired to conquer- whether in combat or in construction. We are made to work, to be the breadwinner, to protect and provide. That this is true was clear enough from looking at the natural realities- but why this is true is clarified when we look to God’s Word.

A few more clarifications are necessary.

1. I’m not saying women can’t ever have a job, make money, or provide for their household, especially in situations where there is no male provider. I’m saying that the role of provider falls primarily to the man; men are designed and called to tend the garden, women are designed and called to keep the home. (1 Tim. 5:9, Pr. 31, Tit. 2:3-5)

2. I’m also not saying men can’t or shouldn’t do “woman’s work” around the house. On the contrary, the leader is the one who serves. If our definition of patriarchy does not include helping with the dishes then we are doing something very wrong. (Luke 22:26)

What does all of this have to do with the LGBT revolution that we started out discussing?

Namely this- that our culture is waging all-out war on the very idea of gender. God tells us in His Word and shows us through nature that He has distinct purposes in mind for men and women. Our culture denies that the terms “man” and “woman” even mean anything anymore.

But how does that descent into insanity begin? Like any other time we leave a path, it only takes one step at a time, and it matters not if our steps are a hundred steps behind the California legislature- if we are walking down the same path, we will eventually arrive at the same destination.

Even if we don’t ever go that far, the little compromises prevent us from presenting a clear alternative to the androgynous world around us. God’s design for the sexes, when lived out wholeheartedly and with joy, is as irresistible as the fragrance of a rose or the sweetness of honey. But when we fudge on that- when we resist transgenderism but don’t make a fuss about women in combat or pastoral leadership- when we condemn the sexual revolution but don’t present strong masculinity and beautiful femininity as an alternative- we are telling the world that their ideology is broken down on the side of the highway, while our engine makes ticking and thumping sounds if we ever take it past 20.

There’s a difference between being right and actually having a car people want to get into.

And that’s why I’m beating what may seem like a thoroughly dead horse. This is perhaps the most threatened area of Biblical doctrine- and even of simple reality- in America today. In response to all of this cultural confusion, we need men and women to rise up, to return to the old paths, and to boldly and unashamedly be what God created them to be.

What, exactly, is that? Going beyond the negative, what does the Bible say that manhood and womanhood should look like? That’s going to be our topic in a future post.

But whatever it is, however it looks, one thing is for sure. It’s gonna take fighters. Warriors of a spiritual sort who will stand on the truth of Scripture and not bend to the pressures of the blogosphere.

Men who are going to answer this call are going to have to stand strong against condemnation and slander from the world around.

And any woman who wants to live a life of Godly femininity in today’s America- well, she will have to be ready to fight like a girl.

#GabrielHudelson #Complementarianism #Supergirl #Manhood #Christian #Womanhood #AQuietPlace