Better Than Men

 

I don’t think I need to even try to convince you that women in general nowadays feel like they need to prove that they are better than men.  It seems like men throughout history and in the Bible have been seen by both secularists and many ignorant Christians as chauvinistic pigs that try to put down women and make them the inferior sex.

I won’t argue that throughout history and even today many men act like this.  They believe they are better and that women are just there to serve them.  They have perverted their position that God gave men of looking out for and caring for women, and have used it as power over women.  How this must grieve God’s heart to see one of His creation treating another so abominably.

However, many women now set out to show men that they are better.  Many have been taught in their homes that women don’t need men, because nothing good comes from men.  Look at how sitcoms usually portray husbands and men as the butt of every stupid joke.  Pretty much like Neanderthals that have an intelligent wife to parent them.

This viewpoint has so pervaded our culture that it has become another challenge to Christian women who want to follow God’s blueprint for our lives and marriages.  This may be something that you have to work through personally and can keep you in the workplace long after you feel the calling to stay home.  And even if you don’t feel this way, you have to combat it when you tell people that you are “letting” your husband be the breadwinner and that you are staying at home.

I challenge anyone that feels the need to prove they are better than men.  Take a look at Genesis 2:18-23: 

Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’ Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’

           
Some important concepts that come out of this passage that many people miss:

1.  We are not inferior.  God saw that no animal (an inferior species, who’s purpose ultimately comes to be a food and labor source) was a helper fit for man.

2.  Adam, remember, was made out of dust and created in the image of our God.  God then performed surgery on Adam to take a rib (already created) to create woman.  He could have just formed us out of dirt too.  As John MacArthur has written, “Adam was refined dirt, Eve was glorious refinement of humanity itself.  She was a special gift to Adam.  She was the necessary partner who finally made his existence complete and whose own existence finally signaled the completion of creation.  Eve, the only being ever directly created by God from the living tissue of another creature was indeed a singular marvel.”

3.  Yes, Eve was taken out of man.  This shows actually that they are one and the same creature, not a lesser creature that many try to purpose.

4.  Even the fact that the rib in particular was taken speaks to the role of women.  To quote Matthew Henry, “The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, not out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal to him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.”

5.  She was his helper or helpmate, not supervisor nor slave.

God took special care with all of his creation including making us women.  When I honor the role the Lord gave me, I honor God himself.  When I try to put myself above or below my husband, then I misrepresent God’s wonderful creation.  So don’t be afraid to stand up to all those who don’t understand.  We as Christians can count on the fact that we will be constantly misunderstood by the world, but that doesn’t give us an excuse to try to change God’s creation, nor go along with our society’s views of women.

through His grace alone!

Sarah