A Woman's Worth, by Elaine Stedman
"And he who sat upon the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new.'"
And Paul states:
"Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old has passed away, behold the new has come. All this is from God..."
As in the beginning, God brings order out of chaos, gives beauty
for ashes, frees us for creative adventure.
Who is your first-love?
the one who makes you feel really honestly you,
with whom time spent is quality time,
who brings to your life renewal and dimension,
beauty and wholeness
who recognizes the uniqueness of your potential
and fully respects your humanity
who is willing to share your joys and distresses
and forgive your failures
with undaunted acceptance
whose love holds you captive, yet sets you free
who would die for you or live for you,
and who evokes the same response from you
who thus teaches you to love and to be loved.
Is anything less than this really love?
Is there really anything more
than Agape Himself?
Who alone has earned the right to be our
First-love!
In the first chapter of Genesis our mutual identity is defined.
Since God is both sovereign and immutable, I believe it is not
only possible but necessary to see the harmony in his creative
intent in both chapters two and three. When God's prescribed order
seems dysfunctional, it is never due to a flaw in his design,
but to our faulty understanding and consequent misuse of his workmanship.
Cultural conditioning includes both cumulative error and a racial
memory of God's directive for our humanity and our sexuality.
Our minds and hearts are cluttered with inherited and personally
acquired debris. The integrity of God's character and of the Scriptures
themselves assures to us the only source of pure truth. It is
appropriate to approach the Scriptures with awe and humility,
so that our "faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but
in the power of God" (1 Corinthians 2:5).
I believe the order in which the creation story is told is significant
in delineating the difference between identity and function; that
is, it seems evident that Chapter One is the summary of our human
identity, while Chapters two and three detail our sexual function.
The dignity and precision of these passages must not be questioned.
As I once heard Dr. Arthur Custance remark, "This is a child's
story only if a child is reading it." We will want childlike
faith in the God who made us, and a mature understanding of his
intent, both of which are gifts of his Spirit.
We will first need to observe, as does the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians
11:8, that man was created before woman. And now we must ask ourselves
some serious questions. I believe they are questions which need
to be considered individually, as men and as women, and corporately,
as society in general and the church specifically.
Unique to our humanity is our need to worship, which is designed
to be directed to God. When it is misdirected, to ourselves or
another human, we involve ourselves with feelings of superiority
and inferiority (whereas prior to the fall, the original pair
might be said to have a "simplex"!) In their original,
sinless state, the first man and woman were unthreatened by the
order of their creation. There was harmony, openness, and unbroken
fellowship between them and with God. This was to last as long
as the order of worship was not violated.
Women react defensively to the order of creation because men,
acting out of self-worship, have assumed that priority means preeminence.
This is threatening to a woman who has a self-worship program
of her own. We will need to examine together the reasons for our
emotional responses to the sequence in creation.
There exists a need to consider the related issue of the Creator's
prerogative, to ask ourselves the penetrating questions: Am I
willing to allow God to be God? Do I really believe that God made
me to be loved and to be loving? Do I view the sequence of creation
as a threat to human equality? Am I committed to finding God's
intention, setting aside personal and social prejudices, believing
that the will of God is good and acceptable and perfect? Do I
understand that deteriorated relationships are not a result of
God's design, but a result of mankind's refusal to follow that
design?
I believe the order of creation for man and woman suggests God's
intended order of government for the family unit, and that this
order has extended implications in the church and society as a
whole. This is clearly evidenced in the contemporary fragmentation
and confusion.
The freedom to make choices is a basic element of our humanity,
this element affects all of our relationships. It also involves
an individual responsibility for the implications of choices we
make. In the ultimate, however, God himself assumes the responsibility
for our choices, both individually and for all humanity. The cross
of Christ is proof that God has taken on himself the ultimate
responsibility for our malignant choices.
Implicit in every social structure is the need for both the individual
freedom to choose and to assume responsibility for the results
of choosing. The essential difference between anarchy and government
is that in the latter responsibility for certain corporate choices
is sustained by a select few. This necessitates trust, and a willingness
to relinquish some amount of personal autonomy. Here again we
find the conflict of interest, the inferiority-superiority struggle,
the power plays, the identity crises, and always for the same
reason: the misdirected use of the freedom to choose--focused
on self-centered interests rather than the common good. Or, to
put it the other way, self-worship rather than God-worship, since
he is the one who can best determine and define the common good.
On the whole, society recognizes the necessity for government
in every social unit, as an arbiter of choices and a focus for
responsibility. The teaching of the Apostle Paul is that "there
is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been
instituted by God" (Romans 13:1). I believe Genesis 1-3 records
the earliest governmental forms instituted by God, defining the
basic principles for all authority structure.
This authority structure begins with God who creates and orders
his creation. Man and woman, as spiritual beings, are equally
responsible to God. It might be seen as an isosceles triangle,
with God at the apex. Our equality as persons established in Genesis,
chapter one, is reaffirmed in chapter two, where we see that God
formed each as a unique creation, giving each time to relate to
him alone. Adam was anesthetized during Eve's creation!
And to make certain that Adam would understand the equal status
of the woman, God gave him the demanding task of naming the beasts
and birds. This necessitated a complete familiarity with the character
of these creatures. What an ingenious method for distinguishing
his own humanity and establishing his need for a suitable counterpart,
"a helper fit for him." A helper sharing his bone and
his flesh, and above all the image of God!
Clearly, Adam recognized his dependence upon the Lord God, who
had given him life and everything needed to sustain it. God had
put him in the garden, in Eden, and there had planted for him
"every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food,
the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil" (Genesis 2:8, 9). In denying
him access to the latter, God was providing him opportunity to
validate his humanity by freely choosing to submit to God's authority.
Adam owed his life and sustenance to God's initiative and design,
and God gave him the purpose for which to live. He was to cultivate,
possess and enjoy the resources which God had provided, expressing
in his activity the character of God. He was a man under orders.
He was also a man on whom God had lavished tender, loving care,
a man designed to be, under God, the head of the race.
But there was no counterpart to his humanity, no complement to
his maleness. There was no one with whom he could interact, with
whom he could express the potential godlikeness for which he had
been created.
Then the Lord God said:
"It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him"(Genesis 2:18).
In Hebrews 13:6 we are told:
"We can confidently say, 'The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid.'"
By what strange twist of perspective can women on one hand joyfully
claim the Lord as our helper and disclaim as though it were a
dishonor her position of helper to man? I think we do have here
a case of cultural conditioning! Ought we not rather be awed that
God has chosen for us to relate to man in the same way he does?
I suggest this is a test of a godly versus worldly perspective
of the woman's function. It also tests whether we function as
God's woman, secure in our spiritual identity, or in dependence
upon human approval.
Following each stage of creation we read "and God saw that
it was good." Everything but Adam was in its own way appropriate
to God's workmanship. But man was made in God's image, and God
is a union of three Persons in One.
"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Genesis 1:26).
It was God's plan to reveal himself to his creation through relationships!
God was initiating a family, named Man (note, this is the name
God gave us, Genesis 5:2). It was "not good" that man
should be alone because God's will, by which "good"
is defined, could not be consummated without the woman. And, to
state it tirelessly, God's will was to express his character through
the male-female humanity, to whom he gave authority to have dominion
over the earth and every living thing on the earth and to be fruitful
and multiply, filling and subduing the earth. Multiplied relationships,
expanded opportunity for adventure and loving conquest of a richly
endowed environment!
This is the context in which God sets in complement the headship
responsibility of the male and the sensitive-support responsibility
of the female. Each is supportive of the other in a unique way.
The man takes the governmental responsibility ("the buck
stops on his desk"), the woman supports him, with wisdom
and trust. Or, as the Apostle Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 11:11,12:
"Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God."
It is not, then, a matter of comparing "rights," but
of seeing the privilege and responsibility of functioning in the
uniqueness of our individuality according to God's design. Outside
of this design we all are misfits.
Genesis 2:22-25 records the first union of a man and woman in
a marriage ceremony performed by God. Suppose it could be said
of every marriage, "the Lord God...made...a woman and brought
her to the man!" Suppose the prerequisite to marriage were
a woman made whole and beautiful by her encounter with the living
God, led by him to a man "under orders" and equipped
for life because of his communion with his Creator! It would have
a profound effect upon the joy and spiritual equality of that
union. And I dare say it would challenge considerably the common
mode of courtship which we as a society have taught our young.
Well might such a man respond to such a woman with the words of
Adam, "This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh."
(One student of Hebrew tells me the words "at last"
are the equivalent to the modern term, "Wow".) The equality
of such a God-ordained union would form the prospectus for a three-dimensional
unity which would glorify the God who united them. The isosceles
triangle is completed in the union of man and woman equal in identity,
complementary in function, in harmony with one another because
God is preeminent in their lives.
Interestingly, to this point the words "Adam" and "man"
are used interchangeably, taken from the Hebrew root which simply
refers to the earth from which the man was created, a common non-specific
reference to a man. In verses 23 and 24 the Hebrew idiom changes
to indicate a special nobility, power of will, individuality,
the name "Ish" of which the feminine "Ishah"
is the diminutive. And so "God saw everything that he had
made, and behold, it was very good!"
In his article, "The Suicide of the Sexes," George Gilder
describes what he refers to as "a man's predicament"
from his earliest years to manhood, affirming his sexuality first
through his mother, then his father, to then become, without the
"civilizing effect" of marriage and family, predatory
in sexual exploits and economics. Can it be that God anticipated
the problem in the "simple" solution of Genesis 2: 24:
"Therefore, a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh"?
Therefore, supported by this new "thou" relationship,
with new validation and strength for his personal authority, the
man leaves his old authority structure, his old system for social
security, to establish a stronger union in which his headship
is affirmed in the context of spiritual equality.
They were both naked, and were not ashamed They had both self-awareness
and other-awareness, but without self-centeredness The crux of
their commitment was God himself, and in the pristine beauty of
that three-fold relationship they were secure, unthreatened and
unthreatening. Having studied neither Freud nor Skinner, they
knew who they were and why they were there. God had taught them
their life philosophy and given them their life-message. He synthesized
their psycho-sexual behavior and harmonized their polarities.
There were no hidden subtleties or programmed strategies, no vying
for rights or dominance, because God was the resolution to their
identity, the motivation for their function "for such a harmony
could not exist, except they all consented to some one end"
(George Macdonald in Phantastes).
A transparent, open, and guileless relationship was the result
of their submission to God's loving authority, under which they
were totally free to be fully human. There was neither exploitation
nor intimidation in the God-ordained authority structure: God,
the First Cause, to whom each was individually responsible--the
man for loving headship, the woman for supportive submission.
Man, to convey the glory of God to woman, woman to display the
glory of God for man.
Thus marriage, instituted by God from creation, becomes the spool
from which is woven the fabric of all relationships. From it we
are to learn the principal examples of unity, fidelity, commitment,
authority, submission, and love as an expression of worship to
God. Marriage is not the end in itself, but a means by which we
demonstrate the strong and tender love of the Creator-God, a God
fiercely jealous for the true good which brings delight and fulfillment
to every facet of our humanity. A God of law and order by which
he channels to us "the sweet air blowing from the land of
righteousness," in whose garden we may freely eat of every
tree that delights and satisfies our deepest needs.
In marriage we are to see God relating to his people, Christ relating
to his church, and in it all how humanity functions in terms of
the indwelling life of Jesus Christ, who is the express image
of the Father. In this way marriage sets the principles, the pattern,
for all human relationships, for in them all we relate as sexual
beings, according to our God-assigned function.