Proclaimer Blog
Diversity and Equality and the Fall
There’s a profound thing going on in Genesis 1.27. When God makes mankind, male and female he creates a kind of divine paradox with both equality (both made equally in the image of God) and diversity (male and female he created them). The Fall, at one level, corrupts this paradox. As the wife desires her husband she craves equality over diversity. As the husband rules over his wife he craves diversity at the expense of equality. It’s no wonder that in our broken world, people try to address this Curse (even if they don’t know it’s called that). At one level, many of the wrong views we see in terms of the roles of men and women are a descending spiral of correction – the more men rule or dominate women in sin, the more a woman wants to stress equality to undo the effects.
The Bible Christian, it seems to me, has to work hard to recreate what God has made good. This is a tricky job. In times past, Christians have (wrongly) taken an easier route of misogyny or feminism as correctives. As is often the way, the godly and biblical path is harder and more challenging, but – by definition – more beautiful. It’s worth time, effort, pain and stretch to see God’s pattern and work, under him, for its restoration.