The problem with gender stereotypes

and the aim of our being

This post is a “work-in-progress, please share your thoughts and concerns and feedback for everyone’s growth” kind of post. This sole post could be filled out to be a book, looking at psychology and studies, but I’m condensing it to address one thought: gender stereotypes have no place in our theology. 

I’m very slowly reading through Women and the Gender of God¹ She’s making the case that we can call God “Father,” but that does not make God male. In fact, orthodoxy insists that God is not male and that truth has implications for both women and men. 

In our attempts to differentiate between male and female, we typically go over the top.² This is now mostly a reaction against current culture. I understand the desire but reactionary theology rarely leads us where we want to go. This differentiation has been made throughout history, sometimes to denote women and women’s “things” as inferior or to critique how a male shows up in the world. Often it’s not enough to actually “be” a man. Something more is needed. That’s where I think we have problems. Frequently when we gather men in the church, we instruct them to be more of a man.³ Do these things. Like these things. As if they are not a man simply because they are a man. What we actually need is for those men to be more like Christ.

Once we move outside biology, where we can clearly define male and female,⁴ our attempts to say “men are like this” and “women are like this” generally fail. They are often cultural standards, or they are true for a majority, but not all, of men or women. Sometimes they are simply made up. Sometimes they are psychological studies which are great as long as they are done well, but harder to integrate into our study of Scripture. 

(One of my sons and I took a picture looking through a hole in a gigantic leaf we found while hiking.)

For instance, in chapter six of The Meaning of Marriage, Kathy Keller say men have a gift of or need for independence and women for interdependence. The problem is that I can find no backing for that in Scripture. Man was not good alone. Independence was the first problem in creation. God continually calls a people, Israel, not a person, in order to accomplish His work in the world. The New Testament calls us to belong to a body of others where each part is necessary, not a world where anyone, man or woman, stands alone, independent.⁵ I see no Scriptural command for independence for anyone; we are deeply connected to one another. Independence is an American value.

When we move gender stereotypes into theology, some people may feel affirmed. I am the right kind of man or the right kind of woman. But being a man or a woman is not evolved or assigned. It’s not something we get better at or that exists on a scale. It is given. Most of the trappings are just cultural assumptions. We may think we have made straight lines where there were blurry marking before, but, in fact, we may be obscuring the vision of those who don’t fit the stereotypes. 

I have male friends who have shared that they do not identify with the things they are told men are supposed to enjoy. They don’t want to eat steak or hunt or watch Nascar. Those men are still men. They aren’t lesser men. They aren’t beta men in an alpha world. At least not in the kingdom of God because those aren’t kingdom ethics. As a woman, I rarely resonate with the descriptions of women that are offered from church stages and books with flowers on the cover. This used to bother me until I discovered that those things are not what connects me with Jesus. He has never asked me to get my nails done.⁶

The Bible addresses men and women for sure. It talks about power dynamics in society; I still think the household codes in the Bible are revolutionary when compared to the household codes that existed in that time period. But Scripture pays little attention to being a better man or woman, or a certain kind of man or woman outside of one description: becoming like Christ. One of my favorite passages says “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness. (Ephesians 4:13, emphasis mine)

Once I pointed out to a pastor’s wife that the goal of every believer was becoming like Christ. That’s the aim that our whole lives are pointed out, whether we are male or female, whether we have high societal status or low, whatever our skin color or ethnicity. She was quite sure that obscured the lines between men and women and we couldn’t teach that. But what else is there to teach? Only things we have made up. 

Carolyn Custis James points out that Jesus “redefines what it means to be a man” in her amazing book Malestrom.⁷ Jesus’ example is what women follow as well. It’s possible that we will try so hard to describe and delineate male and female that Jesus will drop away from the whole conversation and we’ll forget what we were supposed to be doing as believers. 

Resources for more reading: 
Malestrom by Carolyn Custis James
Half the Church by Carolyn Custis James
Discovering Biblical Equality
I also want to read The Genesis of Gender but haven’t gotten to it yet. 

1. It’s very good. My reading time is just small currently.

2. Please note that I affirm and appreciate the differences between men and women. I do think the point of the Genesis 1-2 narratives is sameness, not difference however. I also reject the thought that the differences create a hierarchy.

3. Google this and some of it is absolute nonsense and some of it is what makes a decent person, male or female.

4. I recognize that intersex people exist and must have space in this conversation. It’s just not where this tiny writing is going.

5. I can see an argument being made for independence being a leaning of male sin and dependence of female sin based on Genesis 3 with interdependence is the goal, but that would need a lot more work to develop. Perhaps I should put that on my list of possible dissertation topics.

6. Absolutely no shade if you like getting your nails done.

7. It’s on page 143 but the whole chapter covers this topic.