by John C. Rankin (excerpted from sundry writings)

   God is the author of the power to give, and he demonstrates it to man and woman as his image-bearers. The image of God involves many aspects, and is summed up in imitating God’s power to give. This is why we are made male and female – to give to and receive from each other in a God-ordained equality and complementarity.

   Genesis 1:26-28 reads:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our own image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

   When God creates “man,” the Hebrew word is adam, from whence Adam derives his name. In the Hebrew, adam is pronounced with a spirantized or softened “d” that sounds like a “dth” or even a “th,” thus making it sound like “adtham” or “atham” with the emphasis on the second syllable. The word adam does not mean “male” (like ish or zakar), but it is the principal word for “mankind” or “humankind” – specifically including both male and female, and/or in plural reference.

   Thus, adam is gender inclusive, and its use throughout the Hebrew Bible in the generic sense means that mankind includes both male and female. Adam takes on the name of adam as a personal name representative of humanity, representative of the unity God has designed for male and female as equal image-bearers of God.

   Genesis 5:1b-2 makes this explicit:

   When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them “man.”

   He called them adam. Thus, the biblical language is poignantly specific from the outset in a) demonstrating the equality of man and woman, that together they equal “man,” and b) that the use of the male pronoun when referring to “man” or “mankind” is inclusive of both male and female.

   This leads us to consider the use of the male pronoun, the “he” of God, or better yet, the “he” of Adam. In Genesis 1:27 we see the use of three pronouns in parallel equality at the end of each line:

      his own image = him = them.

   We also see the defining parallelism of nouns for these pronouns earlier in each line:

      man = the image of God = male and female.

   These parallelisms were obvious to the Hebrew hearer and reader, and Genesis 5:2 reiterates the same prosaic clarity – that male and female are “man.”

   God the Father is above male and female, for both male and female are equally derived from his character, and he is at peace with himself in triune community (rooted in the nature of God in Genesis, then becoming explicit in the New Testament). He is neither male nor female in the human sexual sense, in terms of a singular sexual identity. God applies female metaphors to himself in Scripture at certain points, but God is called “Father” (cf. the language of Deuteronomy 32:6; and especially of Jesus’s use of “Father” for God) and always uses the masculine pronoun, never is called “Mother” and never is described with female pronouns. God is “he” and not “she.”

   So whereas the Hebrew Bible is unique in describing men and women as equally sharing the image of God, the description of God is in masculine terms. The masculine “man” is the designated term to include man and woman, as opposed to the feminine “woman” being the designated term. This is due to the simplicity of the power to give, and accordingly, the important question to ask is not why God is called “he,” but why Adam is called “he.” Or in other words, the “he” of God is not a designation of being male, rather the “he” of Adam is a designation of the power to give as initially received from God.

   Human sexuality at its deepest core is designed to be the epitome of where the power to give is expressed in human community, and designed for the covenant of one man and one woman in marriage. If we make the mistake of looking at God through the prism of broken human sexuality, then we can end up making him a “male.” This is what pagan religions do with male gods and female goddesses.

   Adam as male derives the nature of his “he” from God, and not the other way around. God the Father employs all his power in the power to give, to bless and benefit us who are made in his image. And within the trinity, we see the dynamics of this relationship as based on giving and receiving. God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are consistently giving honor to each other, and receiving it from each other, in their unified nature and mission. This is why, as we will see, Genesis 2:24 says a man will leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife and the two of them shall become one flesh. The two – male and female – become one, because of the prior reality of God in whom the three are one; and because the image of God requires both male and female in order to reflect the nature of the triune God where unity and diversity exist together in unity, where diversity is in service to unity. This unity and diversity represented in the two becoming one in marriage reflects the unity and diversity within the triune God. True diversity in service to unity is rooted in man and woman in marriage as the purpose for the image of God.

   Human nature is necessarily not atomistic (that is, a stand alone unit,) rather it is plural in man and woman. Human sexuality is derivative of God’s nature, and that nature is the power to give. In order to give, we must have someone to whom to give. And in order to receive, someone must give to us. And the act of giving is based on a need to give – namely, as Jesus said, it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35).  This does not mitigate receiving, but it shows that unless the act of giving has an object for its giving, it is aborted. In this regard, God’s nature within himself is to give and receive – this is the nature of love. The apostle John says that God is love, and this is ethically what is being referenced. We love, he tells us, because God first loved us (1 John 4:7-12). And God’s love is first expressed in the power to give and receive within the triune community, before Adam and Eve are made in his image. Within the triune community, God gives his Son to us for the sake of our salvation (John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave…”).

   This introduces us to the three basic choices in human history for the concept of God, and thus the basis to deal with the issue of the one and the many, and how the many get along as one in the social order. This is the goal of e pluribus unum: “Out of the many – one.”

   First, at one end of the spectrum is Islam, where Allah is understood as a monad, a singular deity “with no companions,” and in language that is distinctively male. As a monad, Allah conceptually stands alone before the creation of the universe, of the angels, of man. Islam is post-biblical. It claims to be based on the history of Adam and Eve, but replaces Yahweh Elohim with a different creator. As a monad before creation, to whom did Allah relate? To whom did Allah have the possibility to give, if there was none but him? Allah is singular, but he is not family and community at the same time. Thus, how could Allah intrinsically reflect the power to give unless there was someone to whom to give? Did he need to create the angels and man in order to exercise the power to give? Allah is thus unity without diversity. This definition of deity and society, if followed consistently, leads to a political demand for unity that can easily stifle diversity. Historically, Islam arose in the context of Mohammad’s desire to unify warring Arabian tribes, and he succeeded, but at the price of a demanded conformity.

   Second, at the other end of the spectrum is Hindu religion (here and subsequently in reference to the post-Jain polytheistic definition of and western use of the term Hinduism). It has over one million named gods and goddesses, if not many more, depending on how you name and define them – but no social unity. It has some basic concepts relating to karma, dharma and the reincarnation cycle, but its historical social structure based on the caste system is utter warfare between the classes. It is polytheistic, where the power to take operates between the gods and goddesses, not the power to give. It has three major gods – Brahman, Vishnu and Shiva, and Shiva has his female consort Kale, but they are separate entities, with no integral unity. Hindu religion is non-biblical. Thus, it is the opposite of Islam in that it has diversity but no unity.

   At the radical core is the third choice – the trinitarian God of the Bible, in whom is rooted the power to give and receive in the divine community, from whom a social unity follows in the human community. Muslim and Hindu people strive, as image-bearers of God, and like all of us, for the balance of unity and diversity, for the power to give and receive. But the only theological reality and prescription for true and attainable unity is found in the triune God revealed in the Bible.

   In the biblical creation, God the Father initiates the power to give as he makes man and woman to receive such giving, and this reflects the dependent and needful nature of the human soul. Receiving cannot happen without the prior reality of giving, thus God is the initiator of all giving. The “he” of God is best understood as reflecting this ethical dimension, and not to be seen as restricted to a human limitation of the male pronoun. Adam takes on the designation of “he” because he is the first human to receive from God, and thus empowered to be the first human to pass on the power to give. In the finitude of human nature, in order to catalyze the cycle of giving and receiving, God first demonstrates his giving to the one who would receive it, and that such a one would then naturally give to another. Giving and receiving is the true nature of all relationships as ordained by God, and in the sexual intimacy of marriage, it reaches its zenith, its most beautiful and complete nature.

   This is the line of thinking I was briefly sharing with Patricia Ireland at Smith College in 1994. The subject at that moment was the nature of marriage, and she responded quite positively when I addressed the ethics of the power to give. And thus, I made my observation for the first time: “There are two choices in life. Either give and it shall be given, or take before you are taken.”

   We see that Adam received the “he” in his maleness because God designed him to also give to his wife. Or to put it another way, whoever was made first was by definition male when male is understood in terms of the “he” of God’s initiation of the power to give in the order of creation, and not in terms of the “he” of male chauvinisms which do not originate until the reversal. 

Male and Female as the Image of God: The Specifics

   In Genesis 1:27 we see the “he” language in the context of the grand design of creation, as theological purpose is outlined. In Genesis 2:18-25, we are introduced to the specifics of the creation of Eve:

The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

   As God completed the stages of the creative progress defined by the “days of creation” (a topic I address elsewhere in grasping the Framework structure of Genesis 1), we see the idea repeated, “And God saw that it was good.” Then on the sixth day, when man and woman are created, they are his goal, the crown of creation, and then the text says, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

   Thus, when we read in Genesis 2 that God declares something as “not good,” we face a powerful disjunctive. How can something be “not good” in the order of creation? The answer is straightforward.

   In Genesis 1, we have the grand design of creation where Elohim is the Hebrew name used for God as Creator. Elohim is the name of the Creator who in his essence is greater than the concept of number. Then we have a theological statement that man and woman are made in his image.

   In Genesis 2, Yahweh is the Hebrew name used for the covenant making God who gives Adam the initial commands and promises of the creation covenant. Yahweh is the name of the Creator who in his essence is greater than the concepts of space and time.

   Thus, Yahweh Elohim (the “LORD God” in Genesis 2:4 in the NIV) is he who is greater than space, time and number, whose power is unlimited, whose nature is good, and whose power is the power to give. In other words, Genesis 2 describes the specifics of how God made man and woman on the sixth day, whereas Genesis 1:26-28 gives the theological statement and purpose as to why he created mankind.

   Accordingly, in Genesis 2:18-25 we have the specifics of how and why the woman was made. God has already made Adam out of the dust, breathed the breath of life into him, and gave him the commandment of freedom (which we will examine in chapter three). The adam of Genesis 2:7 is not referring to an androgynous creature, in the sense that adam here could be seen as being male and female in one nature and body. We know this because of the subsequent text that treats adam as the proper name for the first male, Adam, one in need of his female complement.

   Part of Adam’s freedom was his authority over the created order as Yahweh’s vassal – the “why” of Adam’s existence. So there Adam stood – naked, innocent and free in the presence of his Creator. Yet something was missing. Adam needed a “helper suitable for him.” The Hebrew term for “helper” is ezer, and it has no sense of subordination whatsoever. In fact, whereas it refers to the act of giving assistance, it is more often used to specify the one who gives the help – to the power to give which equals God’s nature and human nature in God’s image. Its most frequent use in the Hebrew Scriptures is in reference to God himself as the divine helper, and here Eve reflects the image of God as she comes to help Adam. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is also called the “helper.” Thus, ezer is a word for moral and relational equality, based on a mutual power to give and receive.

   In other words, Adam by himself does not fully bear the image of God. We already know this by the text in Genesis 1:27, where the language of mankind and its inclusiveness of male and female is descriptive of the image of God. Here in Genesis 2, we see God demonstrating to Adam his need for a helper. Yahweh declares it is not good for the man to be alone, and then it seems that the subject changes. God brings him the various creatures in order for Adam to give them names.

   I remember reading this text many years ago as a young Christian. I thought, “What does the naming of the animals have to do with addressing Adam’s loneliness?” I believe the answer has to do with God demonstrating to Adam the power to give, and how first we must receive from God’s hand in order to give to others. We give to others out of the same power, where the act of giving is intrinsically satisfying. In other words, we need to give – we need someone to whom to give, otherwise giving is not possible, and receiving is out of the question. The need to give and receive is provided for within the trinity, and here God walks Adam through the steps of recognizing that as an image-bearer he too was designed to give and receive.

   Now that Adam has received, he is equipped to give, and at the same time he is not complete without someone to whom to give, someone who is his equal. He can give back to God, but as a creature, not an equal. He cannot give to an animal and receive back with reciprocity, for he is not an animal. He needs a helper so he can exercise the power to give, so that the reciprocity in giving returns to him. His helper cannot be his mirror image – another man. He needs an equal who is also a complement, where between the two they complete each other; they add unique dimensions the other does not possess.

   He needs a woman. Adam needs Eve to give to and receive from in order for the image of God to be complete. He is made for communication, to share with an equal, to not be lonely. And giving must be initiated. Giving begets giving; but if taking is the initiative, then taking begets taking. The former is the prescription for peace. The latter is the prescription for war, as we shall see in the legacy of Abraham and Sarah’s broken marriage covenant.

   In the Garden, God initiated the power to give, and Adam needs to do the same in order to reflect his image as a male, to reflect the “he.” Then Eve as a female receives, and is thus empowered to give and receive. The cycle of giving and receiving is catalyzed and either party can initiate the act of giving any time henceforth.

   The Garden of Eden and all creation were before him, and Adam was given the power to name the creatures – the power to affirm the goodness of God’s created order. This naming process was an initial exercise of his status as God’s image-bearer. As Yahweh created, now Adam was given the privilege to be procreative in the fullest sense of the term (to procreate is not only to have children, it is to be creative in all contexts with the resources God gave us in creation). God is the Creator, and Adam is now called to be the procreator. But his procreation is limited when his only relationship here is with the animals. Procreation comes as the gift of the Creator, the Father of us all. God as Creator and Father necessarily leads to the God → life → choice → sex order of creation.

   I like to look at it this way. Adam is alone and he is given the initial power to exercise the image of God by giving names to the animals. The giving of names is creative, and as ancient near eastern culture reveals, the power to give a name was the power either to bless or curse. And in the order of creation only blessings are possible. Adam is also a mathematical genius of sorts – since sin has not yet entered his world, he has full fellowship with God as his tutor, to learn whatever he desires. As he names the animals, he enters what must have been a lengthy process where his creativity is employed, and where he also discovers first hand the difference between man and animal. He does not smell like them, look like them, he notices the animals are in twos, he is in ones, he is lonely, and he does not want to mate with any of them.

   God teaches Adam in this exercise that:

he is made in God’s image;

animals are not;

he is not an animal; and

his image-bearing status is not complete without a helper “suitable for him.”

   Most powerfully, I believe that God needed to demonstrate to Adam, “You are not it.” Adam alone is not the complete bearer of God’s image, and he is in need of his equal who will complete him, and whom he will complete. Therefore, all power that Adam will exercise toward Eve is designed to be the power to give, and not the power to take. And apart from woman, he is unable to give in a way that completely fulfills the image of God.

   In my post-graduate Th.M. degree in ethics and public policy at Harvard Divinity School, I focused on feminist ethics in part of my studies and double thesis. Among my classmates were many pagan feminists and other skeptics of a biblical worldview, and their instinct was that the Bible was the source for male chauvinism. Whereas it is quite otherwise, such feminists have often argued that Genesis 2:18-25 treats women as second-class, or even as an afterthought. This is due to a myopic reading of the text – one where post-biblical and current assumptions are brought to bear on the story. For example, as noted above, and among those who do not know the biblical language and context, the idea of “helper” is viewed as subordinate and not equal.

   Such pagan feminists have challenged the Genesis text, saying that since Eve is created last, she is therefore an inferior afterthought in the minds of the male chauvinists who are said to have written the story that assumes a male god. The idea of the Bible being written by men is enough for these pagan feminists to distrust it. Again, this reading of the text is a foreign concept of chronology and moral order – that somehow the first is best, and the last is least.

   But the whole thrust of Genesis 1 is that God starts with the most remote and inanimate portion of the universe, then systematically orders everything as he moves up to more and more complex life forms in the end, and when all is done, and when the habitat is prepared for the crown of his creation, God makes man and woman. But man is not fully male without woman, nor is woman fully female without man. As well, in the order of creation, Yahweh is always aiming at completion, thus with the passing days of creation, he repeatedly states it is “good” as completion is achieved. With Adam in Genesis 2, Yahweh says it is “not good” for him to be alone – goodness is not achieved until the image of God is complete, until woman is made. Woman completes what lacks in man, so that together they equal mankind. Or to put it another way, in a light-hearted response to the pagan feminist critique, God “saves the best for last.”

   Another place for challenge revolves around the idea that the woman was made from one of Adam’s “ribs.” Thus, since woman is made from man, it is argued that she must be subordinate and of less worth in the eyes of the biblical writer. However, the language is otherwise. It can be looked at this way: If we had the choice, which would we prefer – to be made from human flesh and bone, or to be made from a pile of dirt? After all, Eve is made from human tissue, and Adam comes directly from the dust. But to make any such comparison, whether in jest or in competitive fury, misses the mark.

   The Hebrew word translated as “rib” is tselah, which literally means “an aspect of the personality.” “Rib” is an accurate word for “an aspect” of Adam’s person in physical terms. Eve is made from Adam to indicate her union with him, her complementary equality, with no view to a divisive understanding of woman at war with man that later comes with the fallout of human sin. Whether in the case of Yahweh forming Adam out of the dust, or of Yahweh forming Eve out of her husband’s body, in both cases it involves Yahweh’s direct creative action.

   Genesis 1:27 identifies their theological union as co-image bearers, and Genesis 2 identifies their physical union as it shows us the order in which they were created to serve the initiative and reciprocity of the power to give. Genesis 2:7 gives us the explicit language of God breathing the breath of life into Adam, and whereas 2:21-22 does not explicitly say that of Eve, it is implicitly required by the structure of the text, and given the unit of man and woman in their creation in 1:26-28, the same is necessarily assumed. Eve is an image-bearer, a needed helper for her otherwise incomplete husband, formed by God’s direct work, and presented to Adam as a living breathing person. God breathed of his Spirit directly into Eve as he did with Adam. Also, the only difference between the dust of the ground and one of Adam’s ribs is that of molecular organization. Men and women are both made from the same stuff of the universe, and we are distinguished from the rest of creation by the image of God breathed into us.

   When Adam awakes from his sleep and views Eve, we have the first poem in human history. Adam sees his helper, his complement, his equal. And as some like to say, a rough paraphrase of this poem is “Wow!” Adam has just named the animals, and in the process realizes that he is uniquely an image-bearer of God – and that all other creatures are not. The image of God within him – with the gifts of creativity, intelligence, choice, aesthetics and dexterity – needs an equal and complementary partner with whom he also shares these gifts.

Inclusive Spheres of Rule

   In the Genesis 1:26-28 passage, Adam and Eve are called to “rule over” the work of creation together, under God and for their joy. In the words “fill and subdue,” we see a phrase that defines the inclusive spheres of rule for Adam and Eve. By “inclusive” I mean that God gives to Adam and Eve unique dimensions not replicated in each other, so that true complementarity is possible. By the same token, there is much overlap in gifts and nature between the man and woman, so that the spheres of rule are not “exclusive” domains. Men and women are both human, men and women are different, and men and women need each other for a shared humanity. This balance is uniquely provided for in the biblical language; it is the balance of the power to give, to receive what is given, and to give in return.

   “Filling and subduing” the earth refers to the dimensions of procreation and to the cultivating of the Garden of Eden to enjoy its fruit, and hence, to cultivate the planet. (Or to put it another way, why did God make mountains and snow? To go skiing with our children, and repose in ski lodges.)  An inclusive and mutually submissive reality can be seen by comparing the muscular strengths between man and woman. The woman’s greatest strength is in her cervical and thigh muscles, and that strength is taxed most in pregnancy and childbirth. The man’s greatest strength is in his shoulders and biceps, and this strength is taxed most in heavy labor such as moving boulders. A man cannot give birth or natural succor to a child, and a woman cannot, on average, lift nearly as much weight as can a man. But a man can rock an infant to sleep and he can change diapers – as a man. And a woman can do hard and diligent physical labor – as a woman. The distinctives remain.

   Do we view these differences in a competitive fashion or do we celebrate the mutual complementarity? Here again, the biblical language, as shaped by context, is instructive. In Genesis 2:7, when God “formed” the man from the dust, the verb employed is yetzer. The idea reflects Yahweh as the divine Potter, forming Adam literally from the clay, the red earth, or from the raw materials as it were. In Genesis 2:22, when Yahweh “made” the woman from the man’s substance, the verb employed is banah. Its usual sense is translated as “to build,” and contextually the building process here does not begin with the raw materials, but it begins with the formed substance already in place. A suitable analogy is to compare the outward building of a house, beginning with the hewing of the lumber from the trees – in the forming of Adam; with the inner finishing of the house, as with beautification details such as furnishings and artwork – in the forming of Eve.

   The word for the human soul (“being” as translated in the NIV) in Genesis 2:7 is nephesh. It means that human nature is by definition needful of God’s original and continued provisions. His breath provided Adam with his original breath. Also, it means that the human body is a good gift, meant to live forever. Thus, human strength starts with the power to receive and be needful of God’s power to give.

   In reflecting on the strength of human nature in the needfulness of nephesh, we see the mutual dependency as designed by God. In the order of creation, it is the strength of the man to do the heavy labor, to work as the provider who builds the house and shelters his family from climatic extremes. In the order of creation, it is the strength of the woman in pregnancy, childbirth and succor to build the family that lives in the house. These are inclusive spheres of rule – to “fill and subdue” is a whole unit that requires a whole marriage unit to accomplish it. And when these spheres are honored, all subsequent blessings come. Men work inside the home and women work outside the home in many overlapping functions, but according to their God-given natures, not in contrast to them. (Now, this is a description of the order of creation, before the entry of human sin, and hence the question of those men and women are single, which raises important questions for another context). 

Right Half and Left Half Sides of the Brain 

   In the 1980s, research confirmed important biological differences between men and women in their thinking processes. Against certain assumptions of the egalitarianism of the 1970s, Harvard psychologist Carol Gilligan published her influential work in 1982, In a Different Voice. It changed the feminist movement with her clinical observations that women think differently than men, and accordingly, models for healthy psychologies cannot be made to apply to girls if the only studies were done on boys – as the reigning psychological paradigm of Lawrence Kohlberg then assumed. Gilligan, despite some good analysis, and in view of Kohlberg’s imbalance, said that the problem “… all goes back, of course, to Adam and Eve – a story which shows, among other things, that if you make a woman out of a man, you are bound to get into trouble. In the life cycle, as in the Garden of Eden, the woman has become the deviant” (p. 6).

   Gilligan’s comment about the nature of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden is unfortunately the norm among so many scholars. Such an assumption then influences those who read these scholars, and this translates into the influencing of the cultural elite – those in syncretistic churches, in the government, education, media, business, science and the arts. And the cultural elite determines so much of what assumptions are filtered for the rest of society to hear, and thus public perception and public policy are affected – many times against the better instincts and common sense of the population at large. Somewhere in her training, Gilligan accepted an item of biblical eisegesis. (Eisegesis refers to placing something into the source, pretending it was there all along, then discovering it later; it is the opposite of exegesis, which refers to discovering what is truly in the source to begin with). That is, this reflects some woman’s interpretation of the text that came not from an understanding of the Bible on its own terms, but from refracting the Bible through the myopia of sin and brokenness. And the chief sin here is that of male chauvinism, where too many girls grew up not seeing the power to give in their father or father-figure, and thus they could not see the power to give in God the Father, and in the biblical witness.

   Research began to conclude in the mid-1980s that around the sixth month in utero, the female fetus continues to receive the washing of a certain hormone over both sides of the brain, whereas the male fetus does not. This discontinuation for the unborn boy allows the right and left sides of his brain to develop distinctly from the point forward, and to operate more independently of each other.

   The left side of the brain is the locus for analytical, task-oriented, goal-setting and abstract thoughts. The right side is the locus for relational, emotive and nurturing thoughts. Men and women have both, but this reality of the intrauterine hormonal washing causes significant and necessary distinction. For the man, it enables him to put aside the emotive aspects for a given time in order to concentrate on performing and completing a task. This is necessary for Adam’s inclusive sphere to provide for Eve as a husband and a father to their children. For the woman, she is free from the goal-oriented tasks for the needful season in order to concentrate on the quality of nurturing relationships. This is necessary for Eve’s inclusive sphere to provide for Adam as a wife and as a mother to their children. A similar balance between female verbal skills and male spatial thinking reinforces this reality from another angle.

   These brain studies confirm what the order of creation assumes, and it is the reversal that subsequently broke the trust of the power to give between man and woman. A woman’s “intuition” is in fact a more interactive thinking pattern, involving more consistent communication between both sides of the brain.

   I remember in the spring of 1978 when my wife Nancy and I drove from Pittsburgh to the North Shore of Boston to visit Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. As I calculated the 625 or so miles of the trip, I thought in terms of what speed we would average, over what roads, what mileage the Honda Civic would yield, how much it would cost including the tolls on the Mass Pike, where to stop for food and gas (one stop off the I-84 Port Jervis exit was my intent), how long to visit with my father in West Hartford, Connecticut, to calculate the ETA (estimated time of arrival) in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, and to calculate the return trip likewise in order to arrive back at my job on schedule and on budget (sounds like a left-brained male).

   On the other hand, Nancy, then several months pregnant with our first child, was thinking in terms of the Poconos, through which we would travel, along with the many bathroom stops required for the comfort of a pregnant woman. She thought in terms of what nice restaurant we could dine at (nix the fast food), and even if we would make it a two-day trip instead of one, and thus, what nice hotel we could find, again, in the Poconos. I think we compromised the timetable and pace, and spent the night in West Hartford (did I really compromise though?).

   Not that men do not think about relationships, or that women do not think about goals. Rather, men think of relationships through the prism of goal-oriented thinking, and how the successful pursuit of those goals will provide the time and material well being desired for good relationships. And women think of goal-oriented concerns through the prism of relationships necessary in the process of attaining a goal.

   Another way to sum up this balance is to say that the man naturally leads in task-orientation, and the woman naturally leads in relationship building. A mutual submission to this reality leads to healthy marriages and a healthy society. A mutual submission to the power to give.

   Following my 1994 “give and it shall be given, or take before you are taken” observation at Smith College with Patricia Ireland, I continued and said that there are only three possibilities in human relationships, symbolized in three different types of marriage:

      100-0;

      50-50; or

      100-100. 

   In the 100-0 option, male chauvinism is operative (though female chauvinism can also happen as with Jezebel). Here the man demands 100 percent and gives nothing. This can also be described as “take before you are taken.”

   The 50-50 option can be described as “egalitarian,” and is distinguished philosophically from “equality.” In the philosophy of an egalitarian view, the equality of the sexes is defined by an appeal to “sameness.” A woman can do anything a man can do, it is said. Accordingly, male and female roles in marriage are said to be interchangeable (apart from the inescapable reality of pregnancy, giving birth and natural succor).

   In the “ideal” egalitarian marriage, each partner pursues career goals, careers defined not by service to the home as in a healthy marriage, but careers, which if push comes to shove, take precedence over the home. Thus, cooking and housework is split evenly if they cannot afford a cook or a maid. If and when they have children, maternity leave applies to the man as well as the woman, and they share 50-50 the work of child rearing. With or without daycare or a nanny, the husband is expected to make the same “sacrifice” of time away from his career, as does his wife. Such a sameness as a definition for equality is thus supposed to remove culturally impose role distinctions between male and female – and lead to a blissful equality of men, women and children, and set the stage for achievement of world peace. This ideology is fully the case in philosophical egalitarianism, and it is very much the product of a certain upper-middle and upper class ideal.

   However, as the research makes clear, egalitarianism is not only a myth, but also a destroyer of families and children. As many feminists have complained, when they entered such a 50-50 bargain, they discovered that their workloads greatly increased, and their husband’s workload remained roughly constant. As women they were willing to pursue a career outside the home, but men were as a rule unwilling to share the domestic work anymore than was otherwise the case. It led to a warfare between one 50 and the other 50. Namely, 50-50 by definition is a taking proposition, with each party having made an idol of career outside of God and family. By putting such an idol ahead of relationship, each party clamored to protect his or her 50 percent. In other words, the arrangement was based on the “right to take” the 50 percent that belonged to him or her, and if one spouse took 51 percent, there was war. The opposite of the power to give.

   There is great freedom in a healthy marriage in terms of how income producing work and management of the home are shared, but only when the complementary nature of men and women is affirmed, not when the distinctions are blurred. The irony is that the 50-50 proposition is no different than the 100-0 option. It too is take before you are taken.

   The Hebrew word for peace is shalom, which first of all refers to integrity and wholeness. The only prescription for social peace is the original one of 100-100 in the Garden of Eden. This is the power to give and it shall be given, where Yahweh Elohim gave 100 percent of his divine best to the human Adam, Adam received the 100 percent, gave 100 percent of his human best to Eve, she received his 100 percent, and returned 100 percent of her best to Adam; then they together, in the integrity and wholeness as husband and wife, gave their 100 percent best in worship to Yahweh Elohim.

   This power to give can be seen in the apostle Paul’s language concerning mutual submission in marriage (Ephesians 5:21ff). Wives are to submit to husbands on the one hand, and husbands are to submit their lives as did Christ did on the cross on the other hand, which equals a submission to the wife as the nature of leadership rooted in the power to give. Unfortunately, submission is oftentimes a dirty word for people who have been abused by a forced submission rooted in male chauvinism.

   The word in the Greek for “submit” is hupotasso, which means “to place oneself under.” People do not want to put themselves under others who will violate them, to be subject to the power to be taken. We all love backrubs, and are lousy at giving ourselves a backrub. The intrinsic nature of a backrub is “to place oneself under” in order to be blessed by another. This is a classic example of the power to give, and only possible as rooted in trust.

   Hence, two choices – give and it shall be given, or take before you are taken. I asked Patricia Ireland if she knows of any better arrangement for marriage or the human community. Neither of us can improve upon this arrangement.

Calvin and Hobbes

   This issue of giving and taking is reflected in the classic contrast between Swiss theologian John Calvin (1509-1564), and British philosopher and atheist, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). In other words, it comes down to Calvin and Hobbes (my all-time favorite comic strip, which was a hall of mirrors and role reversal play on the issues address by the real Calvin and Hobbes).

   Hobbes takes as his starting point the reversal, the selfish side of human nature, believing that if there is not a “Leviathan” or monster government to force people away from each other’s throats, society would crumble. Any theoretical democratic process is not possible apart from this top-down force.

   Calvin, on the other hand and prior to Hobbes, places faith in the image of God as the origin of human nature, in the order of creation – pointing out that society and government cannot exist apart from the qualities of trust. For example, when we buy fish, we automatically trust that it has not been laced with arsenic. If a certain fish market advertised that only “about one in a thousand filets” sold there had toxic amounts of arsenic, what would become of its business? In a thousand ways we give trust in all our relationships, from intimate to casual to distant. We trust, as we drive 60 mph along a country road, that the trucker coming at the same speed the opposite way does not have the sudden urge to cross the center line. We can come a few feet from death a thousand times every day, all because we trust the broken remains of God’s image in others – that they too seek peace, order, stability and hope, to live, to love, to laugh and to learn, without malice toward us. Where there is the slightest concern about distrust, we lock our homes and cars or protect ourselves in other ways. If distrust in the social order ever disrupts enough of our daily routines, political anarchy can result, and the invitation for a totalitarian resolution of the anarchy follows (e.g., the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror and Napoleon Bonaparte in succession). Unless distrust is tethered by biblical ethics in culture, like cancer it can metastasize.

   Calvin knew that unless there are those who initiate the giving and nurturing processes, and unless we can trust others to be giving and honorable, then no social order is possible. The quintessential examples are the trust between husband and wife, and the bond of trust between mother and newborn child. Apart from such giving in the family, then in the neighborhood, local community and on outward, there can be no government. How can a Hobbesian government exist unless there is the element of trust within society to begin with, unless the social compact necessary to form the government is already in place? This is why Hobbesian thought ultimately leads to political tyranny, no matter how well it is dressed up. Unless trust is formed at the most basic of human relationships, there is no foundation for the larger society. Unless the husband is nurturing his wife, she is handicapped in nurturing their children.

   We can sum it up in two opposing questions:

1. Is it the nuclear family that defines the government? or
2. Is it the Leviathan government that defines the family?

   The former is biblical (e.g., Samuel as judge), and the latter is pagan (e.g., Saul as king in imitation of surrounding nations). The former is a biblical and Calvinist bottom-up organization of society based on the power to give, of giving and receiving trust, and where government serves the natural family as the primary social unit. The latter is a secular and Hobbesian top-down organization of society based on the power to take before being taken, and where the family is enslaved to the macro-government that is seen as the primary social unit. When examined, it is noticeable that many people who favor expanded top-down government seek out the government as an ersatz family or daddy, oftentimes making up for a deficit in true family units. And most people who favor a limited federal government place more trust in natural family units.

   There is irony at play here. Many people think of John Calvin in terms of his emphasis on the “total depravity” of mankind, and think of Thomas Hobbes as a forerunner of democracy. In truth, the opposite is the case with respect to the origins of our democratic and constitutional republic. Calvin’s language is descriptive of human sin, but based on the prior and subsequent understandings of creation and redemption. By starting with the order of creation, Calvin is able to catalyze the trust and power to give in the social order that is still more powerful than the distrust and power to take of the reversal (cf. Luke 11:13 when Jesus says, “if you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children …?”).

   Calvin has assumptions in place that put greater confidence in the nephesh of the image of God, in the need for trust, nurture and giving. Such a basis in the image of God gives sober understanding of the sin nature, and therefore the need for checks and balances in constitutional law. Hobbes, having no faith in God or in the order of creation and the image of God, becomes existentially enmeshed in a sin nature he theologically denies. His concept of social order predates the Marxist rights theory that says you must take what you can take to get any rights, and take them from those who oppress you. A prescription for war, sexism, class envy and racial tensions. Calvin reflects the unalienable rights given by the Creator – give and it shall be given. It is a prescription for social order, prosperity and peace insofar as attainable this side of the resurrection.

   The 100-0 and 50-50 marriage equations are Hobbesian in nature. Only a 100-100 relationship where both parties give 100 percent to each other, with no strings attached, as Calvin recognizes, meets the biblical norm. In view of sinful nature, it is easy to see how the initiative of taking is universal. Thus, a reaction to a reaction only begets further reactive taking, rooted in distrust. We need to be proactive, returning to the image of God and the origins of the power to give in the biblical order of creation, and grasp its trajectory as fulfilled in the order of redemption. 

The Babylonian Genesis

   In contrast to the biblical Genesis, all pagan origin stories assume the original presence of destruction, and the nature of the human race is a by-product of totally or partially capricious gods, goddesses or spirits. The power to take is assumed from the outset, and it precedes and defines all.

   As an example, among scholars who are skeptical toward the Bible, the most revered of these stories is the Babylonian Genesis (or Enuma Elish). Set forth as the best academic basis to challenge the historical trustworthiness of the Bible, the Babylonian Genesis cannot compare with the three key components of the biblical order of creation. We defined them accordingly:

• Yahweh Elohim (the Hebrew for the LORD God) is the eternal and good Creator;
• The creation is ordered and good.
• Man and woman are the crown of God’s good creation and made free.

   In contrast, the three key components of the Babylonian Genesis are these:

• Marduk (the chief Babylonian deity) is finite and destructive;
• The creation is rootless, chaotic and evil;
• Man and woman are a by-product intended for slavery.

   The Babylonian Genesis starts with the assumption of a pantheon of time-bound, sexually promiscuous and pre-existent gods and goddesses, engaged in an intramural and an internecine war. A second-level deity at the outset, Marduk, creates the universe by killing the chief goddess Tiamat, and dissecting her body – splitting it open like a mussel shell, making the heavens with one half of her carcass, and the earth with the other half. He then made the defeated gods of Tiamat’s army into slaves, but they complained about this status. In response, Marduk killed his chief remaining opponent Kingu, severed his arteries, and from his blood Marduk created mankind to serve as slaves to the defeated pantheon.

   Here we see the assumption of destruction. Mankind has to serve as slaves for the whims and caprice of defeated gods and goddesses, revealing a remarkably low view of man and woman. The Babylonians thought they were bound by the positions of the sun, moon, planets and stars as gods (astrology) in mundane and important decisions, and thus bound to try and wrest favors from their fatalisms (sorcery), and at the extreme in many related religions, to make human sacrifice to placate the gods – all in an attempt to survive in a hostile universe.

   But they also chose this worldview. Is our worth as human beings elevated or trashed by such a view? Do we take joy in a myth that the heavens and earth were made out of a dissected and bleeding carcass of a slaughtered goddess, and that we were made to be slaves to the gods, out of the blood of another dead god? This is Babylon’s height.

   In Babylonian religion, it starts with the assumption of destruction, then interjects a hope (of carving out survival) that is destined to disappoint, and it concludes with destruction remaining in its dualistic continuity. In other words, the reversal of the biblical Genesis:

      destruction → disappointing hope → return to destruction; v.

      creation → sin → redemption. 

   But, by definition, how can destruction precede creation? Destruction can only destroy what has already been created. The Babylonian “genesis” is a reversal of reality. As well, in the sexual promiscuities and murders of the Babylonian pantheon, we see another reversal of the order of creation:

      sex → choice → life → God; v.

      God → life → choice → sex. 

   All pagan origin texts address the four all-defining subjects of God ÷ life ÷ choice ÷ sex, only with different definitions and in comport with the reversal order.

   An interesting aside in this myth is when Marduk dissects Tiamat’s body. The text reads:

      The lord rested, examining her dead body,

      To divide the abortion (and) to create ingenious things (therewith).

      He split her open like a mussel (?) into two parts;

      Half of her he set in place and formed the sky (therewith) as a roof ….

      (Tablet IV, lines 135-138, translation of Alexander Heidel). 

   The word “abortion,” an act of intrinsic destruction (from the Latin ab + oriri, “to stop from rising,” “to cut off from being born”), was used to describe Tiamat’s corpse. In other words, abortion was viewed as parallel to the corpse of one killed by an act of aggression, and as a means to create the universe. This is the Babylonian Genesis versus only Genesis of the Hebrew Bible.

   All cultures eventually trace back to Genesis. To Adam’s lineage at the first, then through Noah’s lineage. As peoples migrated away from Eden, then away from earliest Mesopotamia, they gradually mixed mythologies in with dimming recollections of God’s revelation to Adam about creation. Their oral traditions and written texts reflected a confusion of creation with destruction, despite their best hopes, since it was the only experience they could judge by. And in a sinful world, with no faithful record of the order of creation at hand, destruction takes over – the power to take before being taken. 

Fatherhood and the Power to Give

   Around 1994, I met with a minister who was deeply involved in inner-city ministry. He asked me why I focus so much of my attention on “sexual politics.” By this he was referring to my concerns for supporting covenantal marriage in the face of debates over human abortion, homosexuality and cognate issues. He said he thought that issues of drive-by shootings, drugs, poverty and crime were more important concerns. So I asked him if he were familiar with the then recent studies that show some 70-90 percent of men in prison, for crimes against persons or property, were raised functionally, if not completely, without a father or father figure. He said yes. I then briefly itemized my belief that it is sexual promiscuity, especially in terms of the fatherlessness it produces, which lies at the core of the social evils he is rightly concerned about. That the core of any stable social order resides in the elevation of faithful marriage, and thus “sexual politics” must be addressed first.

   Here is the reality: It is the male chauvinism of such sexual irresponsibility that leaves pregnant women and mothers of newborns to fend for themselves – and if the child is not aborted in the womb, he or she is aborted in the power for healthy life choices by the crippling absence of fatherhood.

   Fatherless boys thus seek ersatz “families” in the inner cities, which outsiders call “gangs.” Without the socializing influence of present and loving fathers, they seek identity with other fatherless boys; and in the ghettos with limited employment opportunities, they easily fall into drug use, then drug selling; and then to protect their “gang” and drug-selling turfs, they buy guns, shoot each other, kill and maim innocent bystanders in drive-by shootings, and thus contribute to social chaos and multiple human misery. The misery they were given by sexually promiscuous and absent fathers is what they export at large to the culture around them. And the fatherless girls become sexual adjuncts and toys of the male “gang” members, and/or become prostitutes to support their drug habits. Thus, many die young, forsaken and miserable. And most of this evil can be directly traced back to sexual infidelities, especially in terms of male chauvinisms. It traces back to the reversal order of sex → choice → life →/God. Another way of putting it is to say that the greatest social evils we know can be traced to the chosen absence of the biological father – a willful rejection of the power to give on his part.

   As I made this argument, I asked the minister (whose theology and politics differed from mine at important junctures): Does abortion-on-demand, the potential legalization of homosexual marriage (and its pre-cognates), laws such as no-fault divorce, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) strengthen or weaken the marriage covenant and family? (AFDC is where, at the time, women and especially teenage girls who would take advantage of it, could get more money from the government to live on if they had children out of wedlock, than if they were married.) Is not the violence in the ghettos traced to a sexually promiscuous male chauvinism in particular? Do not “sexual politics” address the core of this issue? And if we want to address social and racial justice, is not the honoring of the marriage covenant the linchpin? He did not disagree.

   In a nutshell, men have a unique point of initiative in the power to give and it shall be given, or the power to take before you are taken. 

The Results of Abram Sleeping With Hagar

   In Genesis 12-22, the story line highlights the broken marriage covenant between Abram and Sarai (later renamed Abraham and Sarah), It has led to the greatest of social evils and war in history. It was a unique and unchosen, yet chosen failure of the power to give in fatherhood.

   Abram had been called by Yahweh out of his pagan Babylonian roots to worship the true God. He said yes, but he had yet to overcome some pagan assumptions. He had been promised by Yahweh that even in his and Sarai’s old age, they would bear a son, and through Abram’s lineage, all the nations of the world would be blessed.

   However, Sarai lost patience for the promise to be fulfilled, so she suggested to Abram that he sleep with her Egyptian maidservant Hagar, to “build a family through her” (16:2). Abram foolishly agreed to the idea. This was the power to take from a powerless woman, not the power to give as Yahweh first gives. Sarai sought to fulfill Yahweh’s promise by means of human flesh, not by the power of the Spirit. Hagar thus became the first surrogate mother in history, with a rented womb as it were. She was reified, that is, reduced to the status of mere property. For Hagar would not even be allowed, like a pagan concubine, to raise her own child. Rather, Sarai was going to take the child from birth, and Hagar would never hold or breastfeed her very son.

   Thus, Hagar despised Sarai when she realized how she was being used. Sarai despised her in return, and the war between the women began. Abram, because he was compromised by sleeping with both women, was impotent to resolve the conflict. He loved his wife, and had erroneously sought to please her intent to build a family through Hagar. But the child Ishmael was also his son, and he loved his son. But because of the war between the women, he was never able to raise Ishmael himself. Sarai made sure of that.

   Yet Abraham so loved his son Ishmael that he wanted Yahweh to bless him, and was willing to forego having another son provided for by the power of the Spirit. But Yahweh knew that the human flesh cannot accomplish God’s will, and that brokenness had been sewn into Ishmael’s soul due to the broken marriage covenant and the war between the women.

   Ishmael was to turn out as “a wild donkey of a man,” always living “in hostility toward all his brothers” (16:12). This was due to being the quintessential fatherless boy, raised only by Hagar, knowing who his father was, but not understanding why his father was not there for him. It ripped Abraham’s soul apart, and he desperately wanted to be his present and loving father. He was not choosing to absent himself from Ishmael’s life, but due to his prior choice to sleep with Hagar, he now had no choice in the matter if he wanted to love and be faithful to Sarah. Oh, the many piercing dilemmas that broken sexuality visits on our common humanity. Break the covenant of marriage, and we break the original provision for the power to give.

   So Isaac was born to Abraham and Sarah. But the rejected Ishmael hated Isaac as a usurper of their father’s love and blessings from the beginning. The war continued between their descendants, that is, the Arabs who come from Ishmael, and the Jews who come from Isaac. The war continues to this day in the Middle East with international consequences, and it is a war that will not be fully resolved until Armageddon.

   In other words, the source for the power to give is in the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman for one lifetime. Any brokenness of this covenant will lead to the power to take. One look at the hostility of the Arabs toward the Jews today shows the 4000 years of this history still unfolding.

   Only a redemption of the power to give can rescue the Arab and Jews alike, and that power to give is supremely fulfilled on a Roman cross, and the resurrection that followed. The lineage of Jesus traces back to Abraham, and in him all nations will be blessed. 

Male Chauvinism and Human Abortion

   Back to the forum at Smith College with Patricia Ireland in 1994. The topic that evening was feminism and the Bible, but Patricia raised the question of abortion. In response, I spoke of human abortion and its male chauvinistic realities.

   Namely, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, research arm of Planned Parenthood (owner of the largest chain of abortion centers in the nation) has consistently shown that 82 percent of women who have abortions are unmarried. For the remaining 18 percent, I noted a generalization of what I then knew. But since then, I have itemized more specific data collected at Crisis Pregnancy Centers across the nation. They note that of the remaining 18 percent who are married, three-quarters of these women are pregnant through adultery. And of the remaining one-quarter of the 18 percent, most husbands are on their way out the door. In other words, abortions overwhelmingly come from broken relationships where the power to give and receive is not honored by men.

   Almost never does a healthily married couple choose to abort their child unless they believe (wrongly or rightly) that there is serious life or health threats to the mother and/or child. Women get pregnant, and men don’t. Sex outside the covenant promises of marriage permit male chauvinism to flourish in its opposition to the power to give.

   At the end of the audience participation time a woman challenged me on how I could respect women’s dignity while opposing abortion. We were running out of time, and I only had a few seconds to give answer. So I said: “I think that if had the time to address the abortion issue straight ahead, you would find that I would argue that abortion rips off women as much as it rips off the unborn, and allows male chauvinists to run free.” Before I completed this final clause, the auditorium of some 500 people broke into enthusiastic and sustained applause (with one loud “boo” in its midst). I was astonished, and there I sat, there Patricia Ireland sat and there the Dean of Students, as moderator, sat.

   This was not supposed to happen. There I was – a white heterosexual male, an evangelical pro-life minister. Six strikes against me on a “politically correct” campus, Smith College no less. The applause did not come because I was necessarily smart or nice, but because the image of God had been touched in these women, and because I as a man made myself accountable to the power to give. They know the male chauvinistic component of most abortion decisions, from direct personal experience, or through the testimony of women friends. And perhaps for the first time they heard a man diagnose it. I was not there passing judgment on women, but as a man I was submitting my gender to judgment first.

   Several years later, I referenced this audience response in a conversation with Patricia. She answered by saying that I had the audience stacked with my supporters. Now, in truth, perhaps 60-80 people there were known to be biblically rooted Christians, with the rest being students, faculty or members of the Northampton community. I told Patricia that if I could stack a forum sponsored by Smith College with my supporters, I could also elect virtually all of the U.S. Congress. My power was not in political organization, but in the biblical pillar of the power to give.

   If men were to exercise the power to give a) in chastity before marriage, b) fidelity within, and c) the embrace of fatherhood, the debate over “abortion rights” would be nearly non-existent, restricted essentially to exceptional or hard cases. Most women would carry their child to term, joyfully, if the father were honestly involved, and best yet, as a husband who seeks to model the power to give. There are exceptions, but ones that only prove a larger true generalization. 

Homosexuality and The Power to Take Before You are Taken

   In the debate over homosexuality and same-sex marriage in the United States, we face the most stringent challenge yet to the intrinsic and universal goodness of man and women in marriage. There is one basic reality underlying this debate – namely, homosexual relationships are by definition incapable of diversity because they are monolithic. Two men in homosexual relationship necessarily reject women in intimate union, and thus they are without complementarity. Two lesbians likewise reject men. The equality and complementarity of man and woman in marriage is the basis for trust and the power to give and receive, and necessary for true diversity in service to unity. Homosexuality is a different reality. There is no sexual complementarity to begin with, thus the power to give as biblically defined has no place of origin.

   We cannot honestly address this issue without honoring the image of God in homosexual persons, and in exercising the power to give. At Harvard in 1988, I was taking a course in feminist ethics. About two weeks into the term, three women classmates approached me as I was sitting in the cafeteria. One of them introduced herself and her two friends as they pulled up chairs, and she said, “You know John, for an evangelical, you’re a nice guy.”

   She continued, and introduced a topic de nova, out of the blue. She noted that the three of them were lesbian, and that every lesbian they knew had been the victim of “physical, sexual and/or emotional abuse” by some man in her early years. This is anecdotal testimony and not a statistical attempt to describe the experiences of all lesbians (that would be unfair, as many would testify otherwise, including male homosexuals). But these women were in the middle of a large and international nexus of lesbians in the university rich Boston area. In only a minority of instances is the biological father implicated in the abuse. Rather it is a step-father, live-in boyfriend of the mother, some extended family member, or some other man with access to the household who is the usual perpetrator (apart from those who are violated by other teenagers as teenagers). In other words, it is usually the result of the chosen absence of the biological father; the absence of the one who was supposed to love, cherish and protect them in the unique power to give of godly fatherhood.

   I remember praying in my spirit as I heard these words, “Dear God above, has the church ever heard this? Or do we merely pass judgment on those who are homosexual and move on?” It was dramatic new information for someone like me who had little experience with professing homosexuals to date. I thought to myself, “These are women for whom Christ died, to offer them the gift of eternal life. How well are we in the church communicating such Good News?”

   This is also true for boys who grow up in the chosen absence of the biological father. Indeed, it is such male chauvinism that violates boys and girls, and breaks their trust in the possibility of a healthy marriage, and thus, such dysfunction leads to their heterosexual promiscuity as well as homosexuality when they grow up. If men were to exercise the power to give a) in chastity before marriage, b) fidelity within, and c) the embrace of fatherhood, the debate over homosexuality would be nearly non-existent.

   In February, 2004, I addressed another forum at Smith College, with some 500 people, over 300 of whom were avowed lesbians, on the topic: “Is Same-Sex Marriage Good for the Nation?” My guest, Amy Hunt, was a board member of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus.

   One student, a member of the Smith Christian Fellowship, sat among some twenty avowed lesbians as the forum began (all fellow classmates she knew). They were chortling about how I was going to be chewed up and made ready for shark bait, and they were ready for it. But as the forum progressed, they started to complain about me: “He’s being too gracious…”

   During the forum itself, I made three observations among others. First, I told the student body, and others in attendance, that I wanted them all to succeed in attaining the fruit of God’s image – peace, order, stability and hope; to live, to laugh, to love and to learn. The question is how we best achieve these goals, whether on God’s terms, or on our own broken terms. The power to give.

   Second, I stated that I did not want one inch of greater liberty to speak what I believe, than the liberty I first commend to those who disagree with me. The Golden Rule in political context, the power to give. And third, I stated that if any homosexual person there happened to be facing danger, and I were in position to intervene to protect his or her life, I would do so instinctively. The power to give as Christ has given to us on the cross.

   During the question and answer period, one lesbian activist, and one male homosexual activist, both said remarkably similar words – that my opposition to same-sex marriage was “doing violence” to them. I then asked, “Do you mean that I am doing violence to you because I disagree with you?” I could have reversed the moment and said, “Does it mean that you are doing violence to me if you disagree with me?” I did not, and had I done so, I could have lost the moment, and forfeited the ethics of the Gospel which is to love those who consider themselves our enemies and not to accuse them. I could have forfeited the power to give and thus yielded to the power to take when taken.

   The fruit of the evening was that the anger level calmed down, opposition was self-muted considerably, thoughtfulness resulted for most in attendance, and the Gospel was tangibly advanced. The power to give versus the power to take.

   In a subsequent forum on the same topic in March of 2004, my guest was Arline Isaacson, co-chair of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus. Arline is the most effective lesbian activist and lobbyist in the state since 1989.

   We had addressed an earlier forum at Boston University in November, 2002. In her opening comments she stated that every other person she had debated on this subject palpably hated her, but not so that evening with me. In fact, toward the end of the evening, she looked at me, and speaking for her large homosexual contingency in the audience, she said, “We know that you love us.” Even in spite of how deeply she knew I disagreed with her. The power to give, even as pursued by fallible people like myself, is powerful.

   At the Harvard forum, near the end of the evening Arline said to me something like, “Why do you want to harm me and my family?” The context was that my opposition to same-sex marriage was necessarily seeking to harm her well-being, and the well-being of her two in vitro fertilized children, legally adopted by her partner. Now this type of challenge was uncharacteristic of Arline in our communications up to this point. So I was surprised.

   I answered as strongly as I ever have in any public setting. I said something like, “I am not harming you or your family. You chose your partner, and you chose to have your two in vitro fertilized children well before same-sex marriage was a possibility. The real harm is done by the male chauvinist who sold his sperm for fifty bucks, and doesn’t give a damn about his children.” Both Arline and the audience were silent in response. No chortling. I had spoken the truth (even though I guessed about the 50 bucks arrangement – common, but I did not know the specifics in Arline’s situation). I was seeking to point out the power to take versus the power to give.

   In the prior forum at Boston University, I asked Arline a personal question, with her permission in advance. “When your children are old enough, and ask who their father is, what will you say?” Arline said she would have to deal with that issue when it arises.

   The power to give comes from God the Father, and when true fatherhood is absent or poisoned in a child’s life, the power to give in human relationships is also poisoned. Thus a reactionary survival motif of take before you are taken is embraced, where most same-sex marriages are pursued by lesbians, and even among them, only a very small percentage. It is a dangerous social experiment poised to only add further fracture to already broken relationships, and the question is whether our response is a reactive taking proposition, or a redemptive embrace of the proactive power to give.

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