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Does Paul Really Think Women are Gossips and Busybodies?
In his first letter to Timothy, Paul told his protégé, “As I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith (1 Tim. 1:3, NASB, emphasis mine). English-speaking evangelicals are three to four times more likely than the population at large to use male wording when the original author had “people” in mind. And 1 Timothy 1:3 is an example of an instance in which it hurts us to do so.…
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Child Marriage and the Christian
About one in every three girls worldwide becomes a bride before the end of her seventeenth year, and one girl in nine marries before age fifteen.[1] Many countries have passed laws outlawing child marriages, but often communities ignore the law. Child marriages disrupt education, limit girls’ economic potential, and correlate with high levels of sexual abuse and violence. Early marriage is also associated with increased rates of maternal and infant mortality. All of this perpetuates the cycle of poverty, reinforcing it, and making it hard to escape, and ultimately contributing to regional instability. And that’s where we come in. Christians can do much to change attitudes and practices at a…
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“Act Like Men”: What Does Paul Mean?
A few weeks ago I received an announcement that an organization committed to teaching what the Bible says about being masculine and feminine had published an updated guide available for free. Because the history of ideas about gender, especially within Christendom, is one of my fields of academic study, I eagerly downloaded and began reading. But only a few pages into chapter one, “Being a Man and Acting Like It,” an alarm went off. Here’s what I read: “Paul writes to the leaders in the church at Corinth, ‘Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love’ (1…
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When “He” Also Means “She”
One night I was reading the Bible to my daughter. As I read an applicational verse from an older translation that began, “The men who…,” I noticed she tuned me out. Knowing the author intended to include both males and females, I re-read the verse to her as “The person who…” She sat up straight up in bed and exclaimed, “Finally! Something to me!” I explained to her, as I had done previously, that “he” or “his” can refer to male and female (which is actually sort of confusing gender-wise), and she insisted, “I know….” Yet despite what she knew, she perceived the author as excluding her. Recently, a godly…
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On Gender and Refusing to Disclose It
There was a storm of controversy recently over a Toronto couple’s announcement that they were not disclosing the sex of their now 4-month-old baby. They “believe they are giving their children the freedom to choose who they want to be, unconstrained by social norms about males and females.” Not only are they raising their child Storm to be genderless, but they decided not to tell the world—and the world did not like that one bit. The mother, Kathy Witterick, writes, “When the baby comes out, even the people who love you the most and know you so intimately, the first question they ask is, ‘Is it a girl or a…
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The Gender Spectrum
When I use the term “gender spectrum,” you might think in terms of masculinity on one end and femininity on the other. We hear men being prompted to “get in touch with your feminine side.” (For some reason, women never seem to be exhorted to “get in touch with your masculine side.” Huh.) But I don’t think that’s the way it works. In Genesis 1, we are told that “God created them male and female” (Gen. 1:27). I think, rather, that there is one spectrum of masculinity and another spectrum of femininity. I also think that God is the one who chooses where on the spectrum babies are born, according…