The Order of Creation

Our understanding of humanities responsibilities in life are shown in how God created the world.

Women are not a different species. Men and women need to be viewed as humans first, who are consequently ALSO created as male and female like the rest of creation. As humans we were created last. God created in an order that what went before supported what came after. Sun, moon, stars all supported the life cycles on the earth. Earth and water were created to bring food to the creatures that came after. Animals were created to give humanity something to extend guardianship, care and compassion to, as well as entertainment. How boring a world without the myriad of different creatures we have. And last humanity was created to 1) be benefitted and supported by all that went before, and 2) as the last created to extend guardianship to all that went before. That is the true order of creation.

The concept that because woman was created after the man, then she is somehow relegated to subjection, is pure eisigesis and conjecture. It is not in the creation account.

What is in the creation account is that unlike all the other creatures, God took special care in how He went about creating humanity. He purposely created first the man alone, so that the man could learn that aloneness was not good and that he needed a companion, a ‘help’ for his aloneness. When the man realized that he was alone unlike all the other creatures, THAT is when God proceeded to take from the side of the human, flesh and bone, and from that foundation formed a woman to be his perfect counterpart, a help for his aloneness.

ROLES AND COMPLEMENTARITY

Complementarity is not ONLY about women being primarily nurturers and men being primarily providers, although most Christians agree those are accurate facts. To be complementary means forming a complement, completing each other. The concept and word was born in 1590-1600. Although I believe that when Paul said for husband to view wife as “body of” and for wife to view husband as “head of”, he was mirroring the two being complementary to each other and together forming a complete whole. The meaning of complementary is not directed at any specific particulars.

So, ”complementarity without hierarchy” is in fact staying within the correct realm of the actual meaning of complementary. As such there is no requirement for hierarchy in being complementary. If pressed I believe that egals are perhaps being more complementatry than those Christian who coined the term complementarian some 10 or so years ago. While Complementarian evolved in meaning to limit the women to roles in which they complemented men in certain ways and freed men to be everything else (thus complentarity is achieved by restricting one group to promote the freedoms of the other group), I don’t really see that as real complementarity.

Some non-egals argue that egals say there are no differences in how men and women are to relate to each other. They claim the goal is to be symmetric. They then conclude that If there aren’t any differences in gender roles or in how men and women are to relate to each other, then egals are assuming no differences between genders.

Egals don’t say that there are no differences in how men and women relate to each other. There are no required differences in addition to natural differences. Because individuals are so different it is not displaying God’s unconditional love toward others to require them to fit your picture of acceptable roles for men and women in life. All men are not lovers of blue ‘things’. All women are not lovers of ‘pink’ things. This should give you some small clue that we do not in any way preach symmetry. To tell all women to be the same and all men to be the same as is preached by some hierarchalists is far more symmetric.

There are many activities associated with gender. But there are few inherent activities associated with gender. Childbirth is an activity that is inherently a woman’s activity, in the same way that inseminating a woman is inherently a man’s activity. An inherent activity is one that the opposite gender is not capable of performing at all.
Roles of many sorts are not an issue of inherent abilities but are man made organization of activities that groups of people decide that certain groups of people should do. The concept of ‘roles’ came in about 1600 in France and referred to an actors part in a play. It is not a Biblical concept that I have found.

RECIPES FOR THIS, RECIPES FOR THAT, AND MORE RECIPES.....


Recipes are good to get a gist of how to balance things. Recipes are nice because one does not have to think. But if what you are using the recipe for is important, then it’s best to just allow the recipe to give you a general direction and to put brain in gear to hammer out the details for yourself. Any really good recipe is made to be adjustable. Any really good recipe is open to improvement.

Notice how God does not give us detailed recipes but more like some fixed details yet mostly general directions in which details can be filled in by us. The OT which was a schoolmaster while Israel was growing, was a bit more detailed. And that is because we were less mature as a species. They didn’t graduate until Christ came and offered an invitation into the next school, maturity, by His death and resurrection. Many have chosen to skip “maturity” and just hoof it in life where they were without Christ, without God, without the instruction and equipping of the Holy Spirit. We who are Christians are in the real school of life, to gain maturity (we are to all grow into the fullness of the man Christ Jesus) by drawing close to God and yielding to both His written Word and the living instruction of the Holy Spirit.

Regarding recipes (rigid roles) for marriage, In my view, a Christian couple should peruse the recipe’s that are floating around these days too numerous to mention. Then they can take what seems good and toss the rest as they adjust the recipe to fit their needs. Then with the help of God they can yield to the Holy Spirit to help them mature into one new entity, a mature union of two living harmoniously as if they were really one.

That’s my 2 cents