“Male and female created He them…” (Gen. 1:27)

For far too long, people have assigned value to other humans based on gender. This value assignment has resulted in a world-wide patriarchy, which, although filtered differently through different cultures, serves to demean and disempower people based on their gender. Many endeavor to utilize the Word of God to prove their positions. These people “do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.” (Matt. 22:29) Our American culture contains many variations resulting from this patriarchy. One end of the spectrum denies female worth even as it attempts to worship God. The other end of the spectrum denies God as it attempts to champion gender equality. Meanwhile, families are fractured, marriages fail at a crescendoing rate and everywhere are hurting people. In all such variations, God’s Will and power and love are diluted and misunderstood and downright ignored. Even among Christians, there is a major schism over female equality.

God is no respecter of persons. (Acts 10:34) There is no need or place for power hierarchy in human relationship, for we are all “one in Christ Jesus”. (Gal. 3:28) While there are different roles for men and women and children and husbands and wives and masters and servants spelled out in the Word, the currency and determinants of these interactions are of loving service, not of power application. Natural man does not understand this system, (1Cor. 2:14) and unschooled Christians need discipling to grow into understanding.

God has given us a love-based system of human relationship. The fallen world wants to re-assign these relationships into systems of power. We assist in this counterfeit when we are ignorant, unstudied, prideful and unwilling to see the error.

One of the greatest of these errors is cultural and individual gender contempt, otherwise known as patriarchy or misogyny. No human relationship can be Godly when it is founded upon any assumption of female inequality.