In our culture today – we almost universally accept that the answer to this question is a very obvious “Yes! Of course women are morally and spiritually superior to men. That is just plain fact.”
THE EVIDENCE IN FAVOR:
- boys get in trouble a whole lot more in school than girls do
- girls have higher grades in school than boys on average
- there are MANY more men in prison than women
- men commit the vast majority of violent crimes
- there are many more women in church than men in many places, and more women are willing to take on leadership/volunteer/teaching roles in church than men today
- dads are by far, are the ones who are the “deadbeats” in the court systems
- the majority of people with porn addictions are men – (although the women are gaining fast on this one)
And, of course, women are portrayed in the media as being much more competent and intelligent than men are today.
FEMINISM
I read the book, Radical Womanhood, by Carolyn McCulley. She was an adamant feminist who studied women’s studies in college and later came to Christ. I believe this book is a MUST READ for Christian women today. She traces the history of the feminist movement from it’s earliest beginnings in the 1700s through the 1st, 2nd and 3rd wave (which is present day). She also gives some of the biographical information and the personal theology of the leading women of the feminist movement as well as background on their own marriages/relationships.
Feminism looked at the world and saw the atrocities that some men were committing against women and identified that:
Men are the problem. Men are evil.
Women are good. Women being in charge is the answer to the world’s problems.
Among other things, the first and second waves of feminism taught that:
- God is whoever you want “her” to be.
- The God of the Bible was made up by “evil men”.
- You are a goddess.
- The Bible has no authority because it was “written by men” and “men are evil.”
- The authorities God has established in His Word have no authority.
- We can decide for ourselves what is right or wrong. Existentialism – “Truth that is true for me”
- We can redefine masculinity, femininity, marriage and family however we would like to.
- Men and women are the same emotionally, mentally and spiritually.
- Marriage oppresses women.
- Motherhood oppresses women. Children are a burden
- Men oppress women.
- The Bible oppresses women.
- Church oppresses women.
- Women need to have a career to be truly fulfilled as a person.
- Marriage is “just a piece of paper.”
Feminism – at its core, was born as a heresy of scripture and blasphemy of God. Feminism has done some things that have benefited the condition and treatment of women, to be sure. But it is time for us to carefully examine the origins, tenets and goals of this philosophy that we have unquestioningly embraced in the church today.
THE TRUTH OF GOD’S WORD
The Bible is the only source of unchanging truth. It is time to examine the beliefs of our ungodly, worldly culture against the absolute truth of the Word of God. It is time to trash any ungodly ideas from our culture and embrace only God’s truth.
Feminism says, “Men are evil.” We certainly see empirical evidence for that statement.
But is it the whole truth?
God created men and women to be image bearers of God. We were created in a state of perfection in Genesis 2. We are of equal value and dignity before God (Galatians 3:28)
But then sin (evil) entered the picture.
According to the One, holy and perfect God of the universe:
There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
All have turned away, they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good. not even one…
All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Romans 3: 10-12, 23
We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags. Isaiah 64:6 (literally, “filthy, bloody menstrual rags”)
According to God, from His righteous and just perspective – ALL people are wretched sinners in desperate need of the blood of Jesus to cover our sin. I cannot find a verse in scripture that elevates women as spiritually or morally superior to men in God’s eyes. Jesus repeatedly calls all people “evil” throughout the gospels. We have a very sinful nature, inherited from Adam and Eve. We are slaves to sin, according to Romans 6:16. We are on equally spiritually evil ground as men and women in the sight of God. We are incapable of doing anything good in God’s sight on our own, because – apart from Christ – we are spiritually dead.
The truth is that there are plenty of negative statistics about women and how we sin and fall short of God’s glory, too – if we are willing to look at ourselves.
Jesus answered. “No one is good–except God alone.Luke 18:19b
Arguing about whether men or women are spiritually/morally superior to each other – is kind of like arguing about which corpse in the funeral home “looks more alive.” What does it matter??? They are all dead.
FROM CAROLYN MCCULLEY in RADICAL WOMANHOOD:
Women do have a problem. But it’s not men. It’s sin. Sin warps everything, including the good that God has designed in being a man or a woman. Women sin against men and men sin against women, and everyone sins against God and falls short of His standard of holiness and perfection. Sin is the reason men have oppressed women and women have usurped men. Sin is the reason for the jealousy, selfish ambition, disorder, and every vile practice that characterizes false wisdom. Sin is the reason we need a Savior….
The glorious hope we have is that Christ came to rescue us from this spiral of sin and sinful response. Only the gospel can accurately diagnose the issues on both sides and offer both the good news of forgiveness for our sins and the restoration of our relationship first with God and then with each other.
This is true liberation for women… and men.
THE NEXT POST (6-12-13):
I will show you how God blew the lid off of my idea that I was a good person when He opened my eyes to my MOUNTAIN of sin. I didn’t just have a speck or a 2 by 4 of sin in my eye. I had a MOUNTAIN with an entire forest. I am truly – the chief of sinners. There is no sinner who is farther away from God than I was. There is no one who needed Christ more desperately than me.
How to Have a Relationship with Christ and find Forgiveness, Healing, Hope and Heaven
SERMONS ON THIS TOPIC AND SALVATION AND MANY MORE:
www.desiringgod.org John Piper
www.radical.net David Platt