A woman is different from a man. That reality, obvious to any kindergartner, is being contested in today’s West, a challenge that derives not from reason, logic, or science, but is the fruit of a worldview. And it will be successfully repudiated only at the level of worldview. That is, the worldview of the Bible. Stay with me.

Let’s start with a foundational observation from Jonathan Edwards, colonial-era pastor, third president of Princeton, and considered America’s premier theologian. Edwards remarks on the purpose of the creation itself. What did God have in mind when He created the world?

The creation of the world seems to have been especially for this end, that the eternal son of God might obtain a spouse, towards whom he might fully exercise the infinite benevolence of his nature, and to whom he might, as it were, open and pour forth all that immense fountain of condescension, love, and grace that was in his heart, and that in this way God might be glorified.[1]

God made the world to provide a bride for His son! (You could even infer that the woman God gave Adam is a type of the bride He is planning for his Son … but that’s another blog post.) Here’s a related truth from Pastor John Piper: “All things exist to demonstrate something about God’s infinite perfection.”

What does the human picture?

In making these observations, Edwards and Piper are drawing on passages that indicate the link between the creation and God’s revelation of His character, passages like these.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.  Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. (Psalm 19:1-4 ESV)

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.  For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. (Romans 1:19-20 ESV)

The psalmist asserts that God’s glory is seen in the skies. The apostle affirms that God has made Himself plainly known to humans. The invisible is made visible in the creation. That begs a question: what “things that have been made” allow us to “clearly perceive” God’s “invisible attributes”? Too many to enumerate here, but certainly, and especially, humans. If God put in the skies that which communicates something about His nature, He did it much more when he made the human.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Gen 1:26-27 ESV)

Why the woman?

God made women and men different, created them “male and female.” In Genesis 2, the writer elaborates on this distinction.

So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

“This at last is of my bones

 and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man.”

From the very beginning, women were different from men. God did not create Adam and Eve in a single blow, but in two very different actions separated by some measure of time and certainly by method. Adam was formed from the dust, Eve from Adam’s side. (You could even argue that the woman was the final act in God’s original creation of the universe, and thus the masterpiece, the final, crowning touch. … but that’s another blog post.)

So, to go back to Piper’s quote above, here’s a reasonable extrapolation: God made the woman to demonstrate something of His infinite perfection.[2] That simple, ten-word sentence carries profound implications.

Transgender is not normal

In the West we are witnessing attempts to redefine, or abolish entirely, the meaning of human sexuality. Such distortions of God’s good gift are driven by postmodernism, rooted in Darwinism, which insists that the universe came about by meaningless chemical activity. That premise rules out design, intention, or purpose. We are left to our own imaginations about the meaning of male and female. And, as Paul writes in Romans 1:18ff, the imaginations of man run rampantly toward idolatry and paganism.

The lies of postmodernists notwithstanding, males and females are different in ways obvious to any objective observer. Nevertheless, in recent decades some have attempted to deny the reality of male and female. As Owen Strachan recently put it, “We can’t even cheer today for men’s sports and women’s sports: women’s soccer has a man presenting himself as a woman, as does women’s weightlifting. In 2021, the ‘women’ we’re watching aren’t, in different cases, even women.”

Again, at issue here is a worldview matter. Atheism must regard these differences as accidental (the result of chance), incidental (mere physiology), and superficial (without any reference to transcendence). But because a Designer is in the picture, the differences are actually transcendental. Not to mention, delightful.

Let’s don’t be fooled into normalizing transgender confusion. Let’s don’t yield to a lie that represents a rebellion against God. Let’s recognize and honor what God did when he made woman.

• Darrow Miller

[1] Jonathan Edwards quoted in Gentle and Lowly, page 206. Edwards touches on a fascinating link between the creation and marriage.

[2] Maybe this lies behind something the Apostle Paul says in his teaching regarding head coverings in the church: “For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.” (1Co 11:7 ESV) It’s easy to misread that. God is not saying that women do not bring glory to Him. On the contrary, He is elevating her as the crowning glory of the man who is God’s glory. Any happily married husband will readily testify that his wife is his glory.

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