God made men and God made women. God made men distinct from women and women distinct from men. God made men and women equal in worth and value while also making them distinct in some purpose and function. It’s all obvious stuff, this—obvious matters of differences between the sexes.
Yet a core conceit at the heart of this difference is that men tend to believe they are superior to women while women tend to believe they are superior to men. Or to perhaps frame it a little more pointedly, men tend to believe the qualities of masculinity are superior to the qualities of femininity while women tend to believe the qualities of femininity are superior to the qualities of masculinity. Though we know God created us to live in complementarity, we tend to live in opposition.
This being the case, much of the strife between men and women, often seen most visibly in the relationship of a husband and wife, is related to a husband believing his wife should behave a bit more like a man while his wife believes her husband should behave a bit more like a woman. Both believe this would be for the best.
As an example, consider the way a mother relates to her child and the way a father does. When that child trips and gets a little scrape on his knee, a mother may feel tremendous compassion and want to carefully tend to the wound. A father may pick him up, put him back on his feet, and say, “You’re okay! Walk it off!” This can introduce tension between them since each can consider their response objectively right and the other’s objectively wrong. But probably it simply reflects masculinity and femininity—maternal nurture and paternal toughness. If that’s the case, wouldn’t this be a feature of God’s distinction to be embraced rather than a bug to be resented?
Or consider the classic critique of the way a man so often springs into action or at least quickly posits a solution when his wife describes a problem. Yet in his wife’s mind, she may not be asking him to solve her problem but rather listen to her heart. She wants to be heard more than she wants the situation to be fixed. Again, shouldn’t we see both desires as God-given and worthy of celebrating rather than allowing them to become a source of frustration or superiority? Shouldn’t they lead us to marvel at the way we are intricately and wonderfully (and complementarily) made rather than wish for total conformity?
I’m sure we could multiply examples in the home, the church, and broader society. The point, though, would stand—that men are often frustrated by the intractable ways in which women are not like men, and women are often frustrated by the ways in which men and are not like women. Yet there is a trick to it, I’m convinced. Were we to get what we want in our worst moments, we would despise it. A man may think he wants his wife to be more masculine but he would dislike her if she actually was. A woman may be convinced her husband would be easier to love if he was more feminine, but she would not respect him if he was.
As always, we do best to accept God’s design and to embrace it with confidence rather than reject it with frustration. As Christians, we speak often of the reality and the goodness of God’s design. We believe this in theory. But the differences between men and women—differences that were deliberately designed by God—allow us to practice what we say we believe. For the fact is that God has created men and women to be complementary instead of identical—to be gloriously and wondrously distinct.
