Male and Female:  Living in the image of God in Christian Marriage
 

At our mentor couple training in January, and perhaps in your small group meetings, we had some discussion about our consideration of the impact of gender roles in marriage.  This is quite a sensitive topic because there has been much harm done by people using the bible to come up with a  list of things that a woman can not be.     There is much hurt; there is much historical hurt.   We decided to take these on these topics straight on because we really feel that we are limited by the hurt that has been done.   Christian marriage is about embracing our maleness or femaleness, as God has created us.  Completely male.  Completely female.   Our differences are a beautiful part of creation that causes a marriage to thrive.   When you talk about gender differences, you have to be careful about stereotypes and about anything that takes away life.     I think (Amanda here) the most important thing for us to discern when we are talking about gender differences is what is our purpose?   Why are we talking about it?   Why are we considering it?    Is it to prohibit, to limit, to squelch, to minimize?   If so, we have missed a marvelous aspect of God’s creation.   And, this is not what we see with Christ and the Church.   Some get upset when gender issues are considered because they feel that a list of feminine qualities means that men can’t have those qualities.    That is certainly not what we see when we look at the metaphor of Christ and the Church.  Isn’t the Body of Christ the Church?   Isn’t the Church the presence of Christ in the world, as the Body of Christ?    Male and female both are created in the image of God.    We can become robbed by our culture and by all this hurt of some of God’s highest uses for us.   We would like to invite you to dialogue here about this topic.  We are hoping that by dialoguing, we can all find our way to a greater appreciation for male and female, that we can become unbound from some of the destructive things said in done in the past in relation to gender issues that have been hurtful.   What do you think is the most important thing to remember when considering gender differences?   What about gender similarities?   What about gender hurts?   Let us mine the beauty that God created and intended.   When we accept male and female, we get a unique glimpse of God.