The continued push for equality between the sexes has been a disaster—not because equality is a bad thing, but because it is a good thing, and good things only come from God.
Like the movie Thelma and Louise, feminism has been a tragedy in three acts. Abuse of women led to recklessness, then to further abuse, and now, despite continued calls to turn around, third wave feminism, as a vehicle of liberation, has shifted gears and is driving off a cliff.
But why is there a cliff at all? It is because escape is not a solution when there is nowhere to escape to. Freedom from reality is not really freedom, and a feminism that disregards God’s design for men and women is not reality.
Real-life evidence comes, strangely, from the failed UK reality TV show Eden. In an experimental attempt to create a new utopia, the participants were left to fend for themselves for a year in remote countryside. But instead of proving that the differences between the sexes are the result of nurture, not nature, the differences quickly reasserted themselves. The men became lazy brutes, the women were treated as maids and sex objects, and the show was cancelled.
While it is easy for men to demonize feminism because of what it has now become, the independence for women that it achieved means that there is no going back. However, the agenda will accelerate into oblivion unless the Church can offer a better destination. Providing that “Promised Land” is, ironically and inescapably, the job of men.
Dominion, not domination
That land is not the men’s rights movement which formed to protect men from being abused by women who now have the law on their side. Instead of a light filling the earth with abundance, the “Manosphere”—like the Death Star—is a pale moon in a distant orbit with a chip on its shoulder, circling society like a pirate ship. Since the battle between the sexes is actually a troubled marriage, ongoing conflict makes everyone a loser.
Men exploited women, now women exploit men. Men respond by inventing new ways to exploit women. This is not the joint dominion promised by God, but domination, grappling for authority instead of receiving it as a natural outcome of humble obedience. Priesthood always precedes true kingdom. In agricultural terms, it is the choice between seizing land in impatience or learning to farm it until you inherit it in due course.
As a response to feminism, “men’s rights” boils down to Adam snatching Eve’s half-eaten fruit. Like feminism, the men’s rights movement desires what is good but is disqualified by its method (2 Timothy 2:5). It simply entrenches the conflict and makes things worse.
Intimidation is the death of intimacy. Theft is the death of grace. Men calculate and women manipulate, demanding from the other what can only be obtained as a gift. And as soon as it is seized, it becomes a worthless counterfeit. What was intended to be a spring of intoxicating joy becomes a toxic, deadly leak.
To preserve what was intended to be sacrificed is to kill it. He who would save his masculinity will lose it. She who would be delivered from masculinity will be made more vulnerable to it.
God made a world in which equality can never be taken but only bestowed. I know a married couple who have lost all reason. He goes out of his way to love and spoil her, far beyond what she could ever possibly deserve, and she respects and honors him far beyond what he could ever possibly deserve. It is almost comical. Neither of them seems to realize how insane they are.
The source of all inequality in the world, and its remedy, are found in the relationship between the Father and the Son by the Spirit. For Adam, Jesus, and by extension Eve and the Church, equality in any sphere is not something to be grasped but received (Philippians 2:6-8). The forbidden fruit always comes to us freely from God’s hand when we are ready to freely give.
The abolition of Adam
Satan’s offer to the Woman was intended to trap the Man that they might both be cut off by God.
Feminism delivered women from bad men by emancipating them from womanhood. But being free of the chains of nature makes women something unnatural, something sexless. As a result, feminism also “desexed” men.
The masculization of women not only emasculates men, it also feminizes the world and alienates men from it. Increasingly, we are a society of male and female eunuchs. What we have stolen from each other has turned to ashes in our mouths.
Feminization has brought a creeping sterility to Western culture, a barrenness that is not limited to birth rates. Gone is the support of the local community that mothers build and sustain. The workforce shrinks as the population ages. It gains the women now but loses many future generations, which
neuters the economy.
“Equality can never be
taken but only bestowed.”
The world needs masculinity. Adam was designed to make both Eve and the world (the womb and the land) fruitful. But males displaced by feminism and alienated from the world resort to the virtual masculinity of pornography and video games.
The ones who stay in the real world fetishize masculinity and settle for cosplay. A beard, tattoos, smoking, masculine dress, or outdoor pursuits can be little more than a disguise. Self-conscious masculinity is little more than anti-drag. It looks into the mirror for validation instead of into the Word of God. When it comes to the hearts of men, God judges the book and then designs the cover. Ask Adam. His use of externals—a cloak of dead leaves to hide the absence of fruit—was the sort of hypocrisy that is now described as “virtue signaling.”
The outgrowth of husbandry—the fruit of a life given to being food and shelter for others as a tree of righteousness—brings forth manly attributes naturally. These masculine ideals are not merely skin-deep. That is why the words “virtue” and “virility” begin with vir, the Latin word for “man.” It is not masculinity that is toxic but the lack of virtue.
A man’s world
The Spirit of God harmonizes things that were set at odds by sin (truth and love, man and woman, priesthood and kingdom), but the world fights disharmony by homogenizing things, that is, stripping everything of whatever makes it unique. The “solution” to gender inequality is thus an attempt to desex the entire culture.
But men are still men, and women are still women. The gifts of God can never be revoked. The Man’s headship can be abused but never abolished, and his responsibility for the Woman can be shirked but never evaded. The only real alternative to patriarchy (“father rule”) is “patrianarchy,” the fatherless world of abandoned, vulnerable women and delinquent children that we have unwittingly enabled.
A man does not merely have a mission, he is a mission. His life itself is a tour of duty. Born as a drawn bow, his God-given potency can bring life or death, and this energy causes tension. But since there is no safety from evil without masculine virtue, classifying it as a threat to safety is a deadly mistake.
A man’s identity is indivisible from his purpose, which is why the pent-up, puffed up potency of men’s rights without reference to God is ultimately impotent.
In contrast, a Christian man, whether single or married, is never without purpose. The single life is priestly and the married life is priest-kingly. In either case, and in any domain or pursuit, submission to heaven as a son of God brings dominion of the earth as a father to people.
We are to be passive before heaven that we might be active upon the earth. We see this one-and-many in Jesus’ ministry of prayerful solitude before He preached in public. A godly man mediates between heaven and earth. His strength, like his mission, comes from above.
In its attempt to deal with rogue males, however, the Church has made the same mistake as the world, confusing passivity with godliness. By divorcing Jesus’ priestly ministry from His subsequent enthronement as king, the Church has beaten men into submission in the name of “servant-leadership.” Men are subjected to women as their servants rather than serving them as guardians. Under God and women, passive men receive conflicting orders and inevitably end up disobeying God. While the Woman’s miraculous intuition was given to complement the Man’s logic (the feminine gift is connection), the Man represents God to her.
And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you…” (Genesis 3:17)
True servant-leadership is priest-kingdom. Jesus now possesses all authority because priestly humility qualified Him for kingly rule. A priestly man is not a butler but a guardian. He has the authority required in order to serve, but it is still authority. Moses, the meekest man who ever lived, was no pushover.
Our rights as heirs will always entail priestly responsibilities.
A fixation with rights turns everyone into an accuser and results in discord. A focus on responsibilities, however, makes us advocates and harmonizes the world as God designed.
The Bible is the problem
The sexual hierarchy established in Genesis 2 was not, as some claim, a result of sin. Yet, like the firmament in Genesis 1, it is indeed a tension that aches for resolution, a temporary, dividing veil that was made to be torn.
“The Bible itself thus
presents us with an
unsolvable puzzle.”
The conservatives rightly argue that the entire Bible presents male headship as the norm. The progressives rightly argue that the Bible itself demonstrates a gradual shift towards equality between the sexes. As in a domestic dispute, both parties have legitimate grievances, and both are able to justify their positions from the Word of God.
So, the Bible itself presents us with a contradiction, an unsolvable puzzle. Is there a solution that takes both male headship and female equality in its stride without violating either one? Most certainly, and it is the key to God’s purpose in history. The union of the Man and the Woman pictures the ultimate union of heaven and earth.
What God made is good but He intends to make it great. He is not saving us from history but using it to prepare us for glory.
Just as bearing fruit requires strong branches, so carrying the weight of kingdom calls for the development of broad shoulders (Isaiah 9:6; Hebrews 2:10). God allowed Adam and Eve to be tempted in the Garden for the same reason that Israel was tempted in the wilderness—to prepare them to rule the Land.
The call to priest-kingdom is thus a call to “grow up.” But we are not to take shortcuts as Adam did. As “trees of righteousness,” our Father matures our faith slowly, preparing us for glory by getting us out of our comfort zones. This applies especially to men, those who protect and provide.
The layout of the Tabernacle, a tent of sacrifice, was not only “man-shaped” but shaped like a man on a cross. This was because a man is a house designed to be inhabited by God (John 1:14; 1 Corinthians 3:16-17).
The Man was created as a human tent but the Woman was built as a human city. Adam was cut so that God could construct his bride. This was involuntary. But he was then called to “empty himself” voluntarily as a safe space for his wife and children.
If Adam was a faithful priest, his house would become a kingdom. Adam would then speak as God’s legal representative—a prophet.
The roles of priest, king, and prophet also shaped the history of Israel. As a process of growth to maturity, they also explain the three waves of feminism, but, like the harlot in Revelation (first-century Jerusalem), this “city” is a counterfeit founded upon the lies of false prophets. The only true and lasting means of safety and freedom for women and children is a society of priest-kingly men like Jesus instead of selfish cowards like Judas or abusive usurpers like Herod.
The throne of Eve
In the Bible, there are kings and queens, and prophets and prophetesses, but there are no priestesses. This is because the empowerment of the Woman depends upon the prior faithfulness of the Man. Like the Man, the Woman was designed for glory, but she requires a godly enabler. This is biblical feminism.
Discernment requires “male” logic and “female” intuition, but in that order. Women are prone to striving for inclusion and connection at the expense of truth. Thus, if a woman takes the office of priest, she is sawing off the very branch upon which she sits in safety (Isaiah 47:7-9).
The Old Covenant priesthood was entirely male because the Sanctuary was not safe for the Woman. Likewise, Jesus’ twelve disciples were men, and the Last Supper was an “all male” table because the serpent had not yet been crushed by the Man. After the resurrection, the book of Acts repeatedly tells us that “both men and women” were included in this new priesthood of all believers.
We see the same progression in the Ten Commandments. In Exodus 20, the Woman is treated as a chattel, but in Deuteronomy 5 she is a co-ruler of households in the “resurrected” Israel.
The book of Esther tells a similar story. Like Eve, although married to the king, Queen Esther was little more than a possession until after the defeat of Haman.
Likewise, Revelation begins with “Adam” (Jesus as a Tabernacle) and ends with His “Eve” (a City). Once enthroned, the ascended Christ (as the Lamb-Lion, that is, the Priest-King) sent His Spirit to gather His Bride, the Church.
This “Woman” could not be deceived since her Adam was no longer the “Man of sin” who ruled the old Jerusalem (Matthew 24:24; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-4).
But only after the beast was defeated could the saints be enthroned with Jesus as Esther was enthroned with her king.
So, if Adam had been faithful, both he and Eve would have been robed in righteousness as co-rulers and joint-heirs.
Since God always works through a process of planting and harvest, sex roles, while distinct, are not static. As elements of our mission, they proceed from promise to fulfillment. God gives us a “firstfruits” taste of coming glories, a down payment of grapes or wine or even the Spirit of God, and prepares our shoulders for the glorious weight of wise government on His behalf.
So, the difference between secular feminism and biblical feminism is that feminism steals (or manufactures) what God has in store while biblical feminism receives it in God’s time.
Biblical feminism sees the Woman exalted to the status of co-ruler via the faithfulness of the exalted Man. Feminism seizes the throne, appoints self-interested male flatterers, and alienates those men who would truly protect the people.
The voice of the bride
A church governed by godly men will be filled with empowered women. Sadly, while progressives counterfeit the glorious end, conservatives are stuck at the beginning, defining the role of women in terms of what it is not.
If women must be silent in the church, why are there so many vociferous women in the Bible? The answer is that this is not a question of why but of where and when. The women at the tomb were commanded to speak, but it was a testimony about the resurrection of a Man. Their domain, as a response to the Word, was outside the Sanctuary, an image of the testimony of the Bride of Christ to the nations.
The light of the bridal city is the Lamb of God. Only a “lamb”—a self-sacrificial man in the Garden—is worthy to open the scroll, as a light to all men and women. A “priestess” removes the linch-pin decreed by God for the safety of the Sanctuary.
But if there are prophetesses, why can a woman not be a priest? The answer is that all roles are prophetic. The faithful priest will speak for God. The faithful king and queen will speak for God. The faithful prophet and prophetess will speak for God. The Bible is filled with wise, wily women, yet not a single one of them was a priest.
The “voice of the bride” in the Bible is always a response to the “male” Word, and most often it is a brutal song of vengeance and victory. Esther’s testimony led to the exposure of the “serpent” and the execution of his “seed.”
If Adam had testified against the devil, it is likely that Eve, full of righteous indignation, would have wisely advised him to crush its head. By God’s design, women are deep springs of love but also, if misled or betrayed, seething cauldrons of untold fury.
Every God-given role requires faithful speech as representatives of Christ. Since women perceive things that men do not, godly women have plenty to say to godly men as confidantes and advisors. But some women are also singled out by God with a gift of prophecy. The Word flows out of them as a spring of life. To be encouraged, edified, or rebuked by one of these ladies is to hear from God Himself. Yet not one of them would ever dare to darken a pulpit. The source of their glory is their submission. They are empowered because their deference to God’s way enables Him to bestow His power upon them.
Conclusion
At the core of the debate over equality between the sexes is our failure to understand that the good things we desire cannot be grasped but only given to us.
This is the very heart of the Bible. Jesus Himself was offered all the kingdoms of the world but would only receive them from the hand of His Father (Matthew 4:8-10).
The only way to receive good things is through patient faith and obedience—not because we are earning them but because we are being prepared to bear them.
This includes true and lasting equality between the sexes as co-rulers of the world under the heavenly kingship of Christ.
Until the Edenic lie of freedom-by-revolution is exposed in our culture, the Man and the Woman will continue to crush each other under foot. Let us pray.
IMAGE Lilian Broca www.lilianbroca.com Used with permission.
