Yay. Men and women are different.

Cane Caldo is onto something here. The topic was how Driscoll was rolled — not for challenging men, being an oppressive elder (to them) but for hurting the feelings of the wimmin, because in our fallen society the currency that causes things to change is the offence of women. Which is true, and wrong. But in the comment section he says this.

I am a man, husband, and father. You are a woman, wife, and mother. Your growth as a godly woman is going to be different than mine; not even in a way that is different-yet-symmetrical, but just different. Though we are of a kind.

Your gentleness will be like leaves to a person in need of shade, but how will the leaves maintain shade if there is not a branch to hold them up? While a branch can block only a little heat, it must have the strength to uphold those who have strove for righteousness even to the point of making themselves unattractive to others lest they fall into sin, or tempt others.

We are broken if we cannot let women be women. There are things girls like to talk about, from clothes to babies, that bore the living … out of most men. We’d rather talk games, economics and science fiction in Casa Pukeko, for the geek is strong upon us. But we are, praise God, not like women, and we accept women are not like us. Paul told older women to correct younger women — call them on their errors, because they are girls and know how they react.

As my boy’s physics teacher ranted this week: She’d rather teach at an all boys school. If she is snarky there she will be hated for a week. If she say s the same thing at a girl’s school, she will be hated for life.

We all too often forget that we have a redeeming God.

Sometimes I hate it, even though I mostly get a pass because all my flesh and blood children are also my husband’s children. People still judge women more harshly then they do men on this this sort of thing. So I don’t hate it due to being harshly judged, because I’m not. I hate it because it reminds me to check my hind minded notions at the door. Some of us can never get comfortably smug in our perceived righteousness. We don’t and will never fit into that chair.

But there is a flip side to spectacular failure. It’s good to have my pride checked at the door, and it makes the success sweeter. To shatter statistical and conventional worldly wisdom as a direct result of faith that believing what God’s word said is true is a gratifying and praise worthy thing. To be respected based on what you built from the rubble rather constantly hammered over the fact that you caused much of the rubble in the first place is something that we are eternally grateful for.

That the joy we share and the light our family gives off by the grace of God is not discounted or snuffed out by the ashes of the past is more than we deserve and we know it. It’s more than any of us deserve.

Girls are different from boys. Men are different from women. That does not mean that we are superior before God, or that our natural rights are different. It does mean that the contracts we have, from marriage to employment, have to consider these things. We need to remember we are human. We have a biology: from leaving heavy lifting and tasks that are physically demanding to men (and compensating them accordingly) to allowing and encouraging women to be mothers — society used to adapt[1].

The false idea that equality of dignity must lead to equality of outcomes has been destructive. Let’s dump it, and respect each other’s differences.

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1. This is how to run a society that supports mothers. One I used to live in, before the neo-liberal economic and social justice revolutions, in concert, destroyed Old New Zealand.

• Have unionised shops, with apprenticeships, for the bulk of young men.
• Limit a mortgage payment to one third of the breadwinner’s take home pay.
• Have universal child health nurses (in NZ, Plunket nurses) teaching mothercraft and supporting young mothers with infants. In addition, rediscover the post natal ward and let women have up to two weeks there post birth to know their new infant and get some sleep.
• Restore the church and limit divorce by not having a benefit for solo parents, (there was one for widows, and a more generous one for war widows)
• Build simple homes, appropriate for the local climate.
• Support the churches, from prayers in parliament to overtly passing laws that reflect the teaching of the church.
• Expect immigrants to integrate.

If this does not come back, our society will destroy itself.