The Deception of Gender Equality
Jessalyn Hutto
When Richard and I were engaged I made it my mission to figure out exactly what a “wife” was supposed to look like. I had many godly women and many awesome resources to guide me, but honestly the most radical teaching that I studied during that time was from the book of Genesis. Yes, there are more explicit texts (e.g. Titus 2) and yes, there are more descriptive texts (e.g. Proverbs 31), but it was in the very first book of the Bible, in the very first couple of chapters that I found my purpose as a wife clearly and beautifully described:
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27 ESV)
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him… So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2:18, 21-24 ESV)
Why was this so revolutionary to me? After all this is probably one of the best known passages of scripture! Well, like I said, for a long time I had been able to watch and learn from a host of godly wives and I had been able to read great resources that showed me how to be a Christian wife, but the problem was I had never truly understood the why behind the how. In a certain sense I understood that this was simply a matter of obedience to the Lord (he commands me to be submissive to my husband, so I must be submissive to my husband). After all, the key to a happy, successful, and fulfilling marriage is to obey the Lord in all areas of your relationship simply because he knows what he is talking about!...
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