Equality does not Equal Sameness

Preaching from the book of Ruth this month and yesterday’s message on chapter 2 put me right in the middle of much of what we have talked about in Men’s Fraternity.  There is a real need today for Authentic/Real/Godly Men.  We live in a culture that is becoming increasingly feminized and one that wants to pretend there is no difference between men and women.  The battle for equality has become a movement toward sameness.  That is, men and women are the same, interchangeable parts.  This movement denies the creation narrative and denies what we know intrinsically about life.  We are not the same.  We are created to be different.  We have different bodies, different personalities and different roles as defined by God.

The worst part of the movement to sameness is that it robs men of what makes them men and it robs women of what makes them women.  The effort to make us all the same has not aided society, it has robbed us of the very differences that make us each so special.

Sameness is why some think it a good idea to put women on the front lines in war.  This idea robs men of the privilege of being the protector of women.  Protection is a God given role to men.  And for the life of me I can’t understand what is so demeaning about wanting to protect a woman from the horrors of war.  It is not devaluing a woman to deny her this burden.  Rather, by protection her I am showing that I value her greatly.  Isn’t that what I do to the things I value, I protect them?

Sameness is at the core of the heterosexual support for the gay “marriage” movement.  It follows naturally that I have to believe that if we are all the same then it does not matter if a man and a woman, two men or two women marry.  The tragic result of this has been the devaluing of what God has to say about manhood and womanhood.  The Genesis narrative now holds no sway because it is looked at as antiquated, out of date.

The same view of Genesis is held by many Christians who hold to the sameness view when the talk about marriage between a a man and a woman.  They say we are all equal (which means to them “the same”) and so a marriage is a partnership between two people under the direction of God.  These believers put forth the concept of eternal compromise between husband and wife as the highest value, equality as the measure of success in a marriage, and partnership as the main description of marriage.  It doesn’t take a genius to see how these terms have now become popular among those who advocate gay “marriage” and those who see no sense in marriage, preferring to live together without marriage often using the term “partner.”

Biblical marriage is described as a man and a woman entering into a covenant with one another desiring to be obedient to the Lord while maintaining fidelity to the roles given to the husband and wife by God.  The main goal of this marriage is oneness, where the husband takes leadership by loving and serving his wife as Christ did the church and the wife willingly submits to her husband “as to the Lord” (Eph 5:22).  Recognizing our differences isn’t demeaning to one or the other, it is honoring to see that God has given us certain gifts that are required to enjoy the full beauty of life.