Today’s post is a guest post by a single sister in Christ in her 30s. I so appreciate her willingness to share with us what God is showing her!
I have often heard of the battle of sexes. There are jokes, books, television shows, and frequent general conversations about this very topic. I am actually quite bothered by this.
I do not think men have it easier. I do not think women have it easier. Honestly, both genders have aspects that are really hard to deal with, without help from God. Sometimes we resent the opposite gender simply out of ignorance.
Ladies, have you ever stopped to truly think about the messages that we (collectively) have sent to men?
I will give you a couple of scenarios:
Jill goes to church and is walking in carrying a few bags. Matt and Mark see her come in and ask if she needs help. She thanks them and accepts the help. Mary walks over to Jill and asks why on earth she let men take her back to the 50s era, when men acted as if women are not capable of simple tasks. Jill assures Mary that while yes, she could have carried all of the stuff, it was nice to not have a large load trying to maneuver through doors and make sure her outfit doesn’t creep up, and that she is thankful they were willing to help her.
Rachel and Sarah are speaking with a group of men at church. John comments on how appreciates that Rachel is always dressed modestly and femininely. Rachel smiles warmly and thanks him sincerely for the compliment. The men walk off and Sarah says to Rachel, “Rach, I didn’t know you were in to John. Why haven’t you told me?” Rachel tells Sarah that she is not interested romantically in John. Sarah asked her why she was kind to John and not insulted, if she wasn’t interested. Rachel told her that genuinely appreciated being a blessing to her brothers in Christ by not showing off her body. Sarah became agitated and told her that she was a grown woman and could do whatever she wanted and that she was not responsible for how men reacted.
Femininity is a beautiful gift, but we (again, not all, speaking collectively) have manipulated and distorted it into something twisted. In the 1st scenario Mary is appalled that Jill would accept help from a man for a simple task. She assumed the men were trying to “keep her in her place”. The men were innocently concerned that she might be having trouble with her load. When did it become so offensive to help someone?
In the 2nd scenario Sarah is completely fine with Rachel “putting on an act” of sincerity over a compliment, since she wanted to be involved with John. Upon finding out that Rachel is not interested in John as a potential date, Sarah becomes furious that Rachel would agree with such a sexist mindset. So often, femininity is accepted when it benefits us, but offensive when it benefits our brothers.
Do we honestly not understand why our brothers have backed off?
If they offer to help with a large box, they are sexist because we can do it ourselves. If they do not offer to help with a large box, they are rude and inconsiderate. If they appreciate that you dress modestly and thank you, they are an uncivilized pig. But they are “just so welcome” if they are a potential love interest. If they don’t openly appreciate that you dress modestly, they must be worldly and putting on an act. I am not saying that our brothers have no faults. They are fallen, just as we are. I am not instructed to teach them.
We have done so much damage to our brothers over the years. I would be scared to death to speak to a lady, if I were a single man. We complain that they don’t act like men, but we are severely offended when they ask us to act like ladies. I was speaking to 2 of my male friends recently. I asked them both, how we as single ladies can bless them? Their answers shocked me.
- The first man said, “YOUR CLOTHES! I don’t think you ladies know just how much the right (wrong) clothes trigger sinful thoughts. We don’t actively seek lustful thoughts and it is such a blessing for a woman to dress modestly”. The other man agreed, and added “Yoga pants are hard on a brother.”
- The second man said, “Don’t assume that just because I believe in submission that I think you don’t have a valid opinion and that I think you are automatically always wrong because you are a woman”. He said that he values the opinion of quite a few women in his life, because he knows that godly women bring a softness and different perspective. He said that he loves discussing scripture with women and appreciates what we bring to the table.
I was astonished that such simple requests could be such a blessing. They didn’t ask we stand on one foot, sing Amazing Grace while drinking water, and do 20 backflips in a row. These 2 men (I realize they do not speak for all men) asked that we dress modestly and not make assumptions. Wow! I can definitely be guilty of making assumptions, if I am not careful. His statement was an eye opener for me. I know so many people speak about dressing modestly. It doesn’t hurt us to be mindful of our clothing. We are well aware of how our clothes hug our body. We view our outfits from every single angle. We do not dress immodestly innocently. We know what draws the eye to certain parts of our body.
I pray that we can be a blessing to our brothers and not see them as the enemy. How have you been a blessing to a brother in Christ?
seventiesjason
June 2, 2015
YES! Praise Christ for this great gift of gentle, practical discernment!
Peacefulwife
June 2, 2015
seventiesjason,
I love this post! How I pray it might bring some healing to a number of the male/female relationships in the Body of Christ.
seventiesjason
June 2, 2015
Look, I will be the first to admit that guys in the Body need to ‘step up’ with their sisters. I will be on the front lines of being that voice to help!
If we want a real ‘church family’ in our own places of worship; and with others who go to different churches we all are going to have to stop for a minute and look at what is wrong. If we all indeed want more marriage we have to look at how it got this way and then fix it in a Christ-like manner.
Just telling men to “man up” or “grow up” in The Body won’t work. Jesus corrected, but He also taught. We all have SO much to learn from each other. Women can help in their churches by prayer. Sisters remember; even though you may not be ‘interested’ in a brother for dating; realize that someday a fellow sister may be interested. Don’t be the woman that turned him off from dating; or be the person that made his own love grow cold.
Men, get in prayer. Now! Seek, and find men in your church that are mature in their prayer-life. Read your Bible. Don’t view your church attendance as just ‘something to do’ but as something that is lived with a solid, genuine intensity. Don’t be afraid to talk to women; but do it with a genuine love for a fellow believer. We cannot ‘wait’ anymore for more books, more sermons, or ‘new’ ideas. Christ gave the best example. Live it.
Remember this as well; people who indeed have the call to be ‘celibate’ and live a single life are not lepers. They are needed in the Body to demonstrate Holy living in this fashion to others who are indeed waiting, looking, and wanting marriage. They don’t need to be singled out; but their example is something to be looked at as a “gift” and “blessing” just like your gifts should be looked at. The celibate ones in your Rock need friendship and fellowship too 🙂
Remember if we are not “using” our gifts of the spirit; we are damaging the Body. All His gifts are important. All of them!
I really loved this post Peaceful. The time is NOW in our churches, and with fellow Believers to take this issue to the next level. I pray so hard for healing inside the Body concerning these issues. This post is a great start!
Praise Him!
Peacefulwife
June 2, 2015
SeventiesJason,
Thank you very much for sharing this. I do want to see what is wrong and I long for us all to look together to Christ. We all certainly need His healing touch, His eyes, His heart, His mind, and His Spirit to empower us to have His brand of love and unity in our assemblies of believers.
I agree that we need a lot more than criticism. It’s great to correctly identify the problem. That is a very important first step – but then let’s allow Christ to work in us and His Word to transform us and the way we interact with each other and let’s get rid of all of our worldly ways and thoughts and let’s build from Scratch on Christ and the Bible!
Yes! PRAYER! That is what we need – before God will send a mighty movement of His Spirit, He generally sends a mighty movement of fervent prayer among His people.
I long to see us all working together just like a human body does – each one carrying out his/her function – each contributing to the whole – each in harmony with the other – each connected to the Head – each accomplishing the purposes of God – each knowing Christ and shining brightly for Him by His power…
Amen!!!! I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work however God may call me to.
JC
June 5, 2015
Good going, Jason. All are one in Christ! 🙂
I have had some very rich interactions with sisters in Christ. It caught up to me in the last year, though, the nagging feeling of whether some of them actually cared about me though I am a man–just the nagging doubt that the unanswered anti-male situations in the culture cause in me.
If it was just “understood” in a setting that harm done to men was likewise considered intolerable rather than justified as feminism tries, I don’t think I’d feel such doubt. That’s why I’ve longed for years just to leave the country and head to the Eastern hemisphere somehow. I don’t know what the future will bring. I just did my thesis defense and my professors are absolutely profuse with their praise of my thesis project/research! (one is talking with me about getting a paper published about it at a conference next year). Life is having its share of transitions for me these days.
God has brought me a long way though and it’s also been healing to see more and more organizations calling a spade a spade with endless double-standards and analyzing the culture for men’s sake.
It’s been a rough, rough time. I’ve had to keep churches at a distance because every one of them has heavy doses of poison. I’ve had some great interactions with brothers and sisters in Christ on a more individual basis though. I’ve definitely learned a lot from other believers–though also deviated in ways that I think Scripture clearly have me to do.
April writes an awful lot of my kind of stuff. 😀
JC
June 5, 2015
Thank you for your consideration and your thoughts. I sincerely appreciate it. 🙂 MUCH appreciation to women who exercise this kind of consideration and empathy, and efforts to heal our society among believers. It does so much for me to see such words and activity from women.
I’m hoping to speak in support of this article, hoping that it is interpreted as said with love and appreciation.
This is the beginning of the kind of thinking that can turn a lot of things around. To be honest, I’m not concerned about the singles’ scene too much so I’m not thinking about it in those terms–for me to consider getting married, I’d have to start seeing the same level of responsiveness to men’s situations and problems as can be seen for women, such as: Men being helped to understand that certain ways of being treated are wrong and sinful.
Do you realize what it does to a person who isn’t even taught (somehow) to understand the wrongfulness of bad treatment he or she receives, let alone abandoned to suffer with it? I think this is something women take a lot for granted: how much do you see this done for men? Remember April’s story about Greg feeling like his problems were his own fault? Who is fixing this problem?
And we absolutely need to hear this from women. It has tremendous healing power, giving us what is missing. We see the winnowing fork taken to men left and right (“good men” vs “bad men” for how they treat women), and how else do you expect men not to consider women–collectively–as enemies, when the only vocal ones are hostile feminists or whorish types? Or when we continuously see women’s unfailing capacities to throw muscle into their own problems as women, happily seeing their problems declared from rooftops and met with pull-no-punches efforts from men and women both, but not aiming their energies in the same ways for men?
We need your examples of Godly femininity in our sight for the sake of healing, just like women have the extensive talks of how men should/shouldn’t treat women. We need to see that you are fundamentally capable of love.
Remember how Proverbs describes the “contentious woman”? How it’s better not to be married at all, let alone have your house burned down and get exiled to the desert for life, and how impossible she is for him to deal with?
But everything on the spectrum of aches and pains to the contentious woman to a man beaten with a baseball bat by their wives, there is nothing that remotely compares to what women have for support. And that says nothing about what happens to men after getting divorced. Men are finding out these kinds of things quickly, with their ugly anecdotes and stories finding one another and wondering why they felt like such isolated cases. I’ve been around some nice women (a few who’ve shown interest) who may even be solid marriage material for all I know–which I can’t, really. But until women–again, collectively–decide we’re worth the same amount of loving energy as themselves and help restore at least SOME sector of society to be properly responsive to men, I’m not going to find myself in a contract binding me to share a house and a bed to find out that harm done to me in that situation has a near-nonexistent response in Christianity.
Women make up the vast majority of the church-going (if not Christian) population. There is something seriously wrong about the “collective” lack of effort on the part of that majority demographic for the dwindling minority. I have to concur with someone else’s observation on the other page: at this church I visited since the beginning of the year, men are signing up to volunteer to help at women’s conferences in pretty major time commitments. There is NO such organized effort on the women’s part going in the other direction. What they have for men is that poisonous “man card” garbage with the “step up” ministry. From what I’ve heard, Jason’s experience is similar.
There is no way anyone can rightly expect men just to jump into any kind of “biblical gender roles” without major effort to heal, restore, and protect them. And it is simply not happening–not even from the camp that’s explicitly against evangelical feminism. Where’s the effort that says: “no kidding, men and masculinity are unmistakably under attack from feminism.” So men–and at the very least, masculinity–are explicitly under attack. And my so-called church family has nothing to say about this? It’s not organizing support, protection, ministry of “this treatment of you is wrong” with serious restoration, while it’s overflowing with that kind of thing for women? (Of course, women demand it for themselves and men need to be doing that too)
No, it’s just “men step up”–don’t be human beings, just perform. Do I sound angry? I have been, but God has been rushing to my side a lot lately to remind me of the judgment that awaits this cowardice. My anger could never generate a single degree of heat compared to the punishment God has in store for “Christians” who place burdens–even implicitly–on men while shying away from offering genuine support for what threatens them/us. It’s obvious that they know how to do it because it’s always pull-no-punches efforts for women. The reality is that they’re still afraid of women; it’s simple consumerism: a pastor can’t afford to say something that could get him fired by the crowd and they know what women in their audience won’t tolerate. It’s also what you can see in the book of Jeremiah: will you follow a false prophet who tells you what you want to hear, or a completely unpopular poor prophet who calls you to action?
Women can make all the difference. Prayer is a great start, but I need more than that to understand that I’m actually at home in one of these “churches.” If you think it’s too unsafe to get to close to men for whatever reason, there’s a lot women can do “from a distance.” Believe me, I sympathize with the obstacles that opposing feminism incurs incredible wrath.
I get that probably most women want to get to the matter of marriage, marriage, marriage. But consider, even to that end, the environment in which your future husband and (possibly) future sons have to live in. Won’t your husband be better able to meet your needs if he’s in an environment that is genuinely supportive of him? Don’t you want your son to be guarded in Christian subculture from the hostile forces aimed at him in the world?
I say this as a man who wants Christ. And if there’s anything I want on Earth while I’m on it, it’s getting the church back.
Allow me to speak from the heart just a little more: it is a downer to have to confront this. The fairy-tales don’t train us for situations like this, where men need more support from women and other women can be major threats and men are limited because of it–but so many men get that wake-up call in a big way. I love notions of heroism, but as my Bible trains me to do, I have limits of my strength to understand. Right now, I feel a little bit “homeless” as a believer but with a few much-valued brothers and sisters in Christ. I also love femininity and have sought to understand it and glorify it (distinguishing this from the worship of women). For the last decade I have thought: what if I could help women appreciate themselves? So much of that competitive attitude of feminism would disappear. I have loved getting to know women as well! And by that I mean personally: to see the personal struggles, the humanity, and look for that beautiful creature God made in every one. I have greatly appreciated seeing their point of view (that is, those of truly God-fearing women), and their very human struggles in their seeking out Christ and fulfillment as women–healing, self-improvement, and introspection. My kind of people all-around! 😀
I want to see men and women able to take care of one another in all capacities, be it marriages, parenting, but especially the body of Christ.
Much love!
JC
June 5, 2015
“So often, femininity is accepted when it benefits us, but offensive when it benefits our brothers.”
The founder of “A Voice for Men” told this story about a date he had at a restaurant, in which she went on for 45 minutes about how she didn’t need a man for anything.
At the end of the meal he asked for separate checks, which caused her to absolutely flip out.
jack
June 6, 2015
This is the nature of the modern Western female – she wishes to have simultaneous and conflicting positions.
She wants to claim independence and yet receive help. She wants to dress like a woman for hire, and yet have MOST men avert their eyes (except for the few men she is trying to entice).
A pastor recently commented that a spirit of Jezebel was at work in the US. I agree.
The real test for a woman is to she if she can identify any social obligations that women owe to men. Most women can recite a half hour’s worth of obligations men have toward women, but ask them what they owe in return and they get a blank look on their faces.
Modern society has turned us into consumers, and in specific, has turned men in a combination product/compliant desk.
Peacefulwife
June 6, 2015
Jack,
It is messed up. That is for sure. And I would imagine most men feel like they are walking through a minefield no matter what they do with women. I hate that!
I want to see men and women treating each other with honor and respect and seeking to do what is best for one another in God’s eyes.
JC
June 7, 2015
Developing empathy and compassion is so important–just apart from the whole dating scene.
I just have to jump through the hurdles over and over again–we all have faults, needing patience and grace.
The process of forgiveness goes from facing the wrong (the belief that harm done to oneself is very wrong), being unashamed of the hurt, and then that keeps us from passing on what we’ve received and showing grace to others.
I think that’s where it’s so easy to get stuck as a man: at those first steps. Forgiveness, acting in mercy and grace happens when I feel like I really can be the “bigger” person on the matter, which is pretty hard when you feel cornered.
I’m just understanding more and more what it means to be a man in today’s world and just seek out certain places. I just read another article from a woman (not a Christian) that just made me feel huge relief–women who have a sense of compassion for men hear no shortage of words about their feelings.
http://relatingtomen.com/blog/stop-man-hating-3-lessons-for-women-and-dating/
“Men talk to me constantly and they share with me their deepest concerns in life. If they aren’t talking to you, it’s because you aren’t listening for the right things.”
It can be just a release to see that kind of mothering care and empathy–never mind dating.
It’s just such a huge relief to see when women care. It just answers a lot of questions.
I really am grateful for women who have their eyes open for such things, happy to see them grow into themselves and just look very “set apart.”
To those ladies, thank you. 🙂
JC
June 17, 2015
The host/parasite portrayals of masculinity/femininity belittle us all. 😦
God didn’t make any mistakes when he built Adam a “suitable helper.” She wasn’t introduced to give him extra burden, but to carry his burdens with him. She’s so much better than that.
Proverbs 31 was a mother’s love to MEN to seek a woman who will actually work with/for a man.
And on the flipside, Proverbs 6:26: for by way of the harlot a man is brought to a loaf of bread.
It never ceases to amaze me how much love there is for men in Scripture compared to today–how much a man was considered worth protecting. Men were taught that we’re not performance objects, our dignity is worth preserving so as not to reduced to a meal ticket. If a wife is in our lives, she’s not deadweight to drag around out of painful obligation: she’s a benefit in every way!
“Strength and dignity are her clothing,” regarding the Proverbs 31 woman. She has the self-respect NOT to settle with being a burden to a man (however that’s in her capabilities) and is STRONG for that. She’s a respectable human being by any standard!
Peacefulwife
June 17, 2015
JC,
Love this. Yes, in Christ, we all have great worth and value. No one is to be despised, belittled, humiliated, or mistreated in God’s design for us as His people.
JC
June 24, 2015
I remembered an event around 8 years ago or so (on the “gender wars” subject) that I forget if I ever shared.
Many years ago I was playing video games when my cousin was watching. It was a one-on-one fighter (you play as martial artists fighting), and as usual it had a few female characters with the male characters. When I was picking one out, she said “pick a girl” and I obliged, so what followed of course was me playing as a female beating up male characters. Later on, I eventually picked a male character, and after a bunch of rounds with male characters, of course, I eventually had to fight a female character.
She objected: “what? You can’t hit a girl!”
I thought–woah! An eight-year-old girl, adopted and raised since infancy by a single Christian woman, already learned to think like that?!
That was really revealing and really stuck with me. It makes me wonder what/where it is exactly that teaches women from such a young age to think like that.
Of course this was the kind of thing I also contemplated regarding marriage, how a man would avoid living with a woman with that kind of attitude. Yikes!
It has been very encouraging to me, however, to see many women speak quite contrary to that thought pattern however. Many women are very vocally opposed to that sort of (commonplace) anti-men attitude. 🙂
Peacefulwife
June 27, 2015
JC,
So strange that it’s fine for a girl to fight guys.
I would prefer for no one to hit anyone myself. 🙂
JC
June 27, 2015
It’s normal for portrayals of women beating up men to be considered empowering to women in media, with the same sort of mind-set considering the reverse still an eternal no-no.
Like you say, some people will simply say “let’s not have anyone hit anyone.”
Peacefulwife
June 27, 2015
JC,
Maybe it is the mama in me. But I just don’t see the need for hitting.