Dear Dawson,
Thanks for your quick reply. I gather this entire subject has your interest.
So I want to start by picking up on one of the central ramifications of something I mentioned to you in my first letter. It is really important that you banish every form of evolutionary thought from your calculations. The sexual differences between men and women are created, and they were then bent by the fall. They are not the result of evolutionary “strategies,” with women developing their own set of them, and men developing theirs. The relationship between the sexes is not the result of blind groping at the cellular level, but rather purposive and intentional, a gift from God.
In the former, we have a haphazard arrangement that men and women have to negotiate with their own peculiar sexual goals in mind. In the latter we have an intricate organism, meticulously designed by God, one which is accompanied by a user’s manual. And there is a vast difference between life in that first world and life in the second. More about that in a minute.
God created man in His own image, male and female. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27). And in the verse immediately prior to this, He established the cultural mandate for all of humanity, expecting them to exercise dominion over the earth and all of its creatures.
I know you are familiar with the whole concept of intelligent design when it comes to certain mechanisms like the falcon’s eye, or an eagle’s feather, or how the liver functions, or a monkey’s tail, or any number of other “irreducibly complex” interactions. The complexity of all these things is beyond staggering, and yet the relationship of a man and a woman puts all of them in the shade.
“There be three things which are too wonderful for me, Yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; The way of a serpent upon a rock; The way of a ship in the midst of the sea; And the way of a man with a maid.”
Proverbs 30:18–19 (KJV)
The doctrine of creation means that the relationship of a man and a woman beyond marvelous. But sin has made the relationship between them discordant. The redemption offered through Christ sets them back on the path again, albeit with more than a few bumps along the way. Those bumps are the result of the man learning to overcome his sinful tendencies and the woman learning to overcome hers.
Picture a guitar badly out of tune, and then try to picture accounting for this in two different ways—by the way of evolution or the way of creation and fall. If you thought the guitar evolved randomly, you would not be inclined to complain about how out of tune it is, but rather would be amazed that it could make any sound at all. Imagine all those pieces of wood coming together in complete darkness, and the metal for the keys mining itself, and the spacing of the frets, and winding of the strings, all sharing a total absence of any intentionality. That is the idea of evolution. There is no overall telos.
Now imagine a master craftsman making a beautiful guitar, with each piece exquisitely formed and placed, and then after it is placed on its rack it is left alone for a month, and it goes out of tune. That is creation and fall.
When a representative of each school of thought explains why the instrument sounds so bad, their explanations will be completely different. One will say that further evolution is needed, and the other will say that the guitar needs to be tuned, in order to be brought into conformity with its obvious purpose.
Not only will the explanations be different, so also will the practical strategies of the men and women involved be different. Over time, people will act in a manner consistent with their basic worldview. If all that matters are the dictates of the selfish gene, then logic says that a male will want to impregnate as many females as he can, so that his numerous progeny might have a greater chance of survival, and the female will want to attract the attentions of an alpha male so that her offspring will have a greater chance of survival. And let the sex games begin.
By way of contrast, when a man and a woman have submitted themselves to God and His Word, and entered a monogamous relationship, bound by covenant, in the light of His Word, their stations are assigned to them. The one who assigns them is the one who designed the whole thing in the first place. We don’t have to figure it out ourselves, following the instructions of our own selfish and very sinful proclivities. But when we submit ourselves to Him and obey Him, we are tuning the instrument, not inventing the instrument.
Let me make another musical illustration, but this time in the context of one man and one woman. Say we want them to sing a duet, in harmony. Let us say that the piece as composed really is beautiful, and that the harmonization as written is wonderful and glorious. As they sing together, the man and the woman are singing completely different parts. While he is singing a G, for example, she is singing a C. When voices blend like this, the way they are supposed to, and the harmony is tight, there are few things on this earth more beautiful.
But now suppose we can still recognize the part that each was supposed to be singing, but we hear that he is just sludging along with it, singing pretty flat. And she for her part, trying to compensate in a weird way, is singing sharp. In this scenario, the sound is like nothing on earth, and not in a good way.
Masculinity and femininity were created by God to harmonize, not compete, and when a man and a woman are walking with God, they do harmonize. “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).
There is no way for a man and a woman to be in fellowship with God and not to be in fellowship with each other. In the world, on evolutionary assumptions, it is possible for a man and a woman to come to some sort of negotiated settlement, but when that happens one of them will have won and one of them will have lost. Somebody got the better end of the deal.
It is easier to sing unison than to sing in harmony, so in some marriages the man browbeats the woman so that she loses her distinctive feminine voice, and is required to sing his part along with him. In other homes, which is far more common these days, the man is the one who is required to abandon his distinctive masculine voice—the woman carries the melody, and he hums in the background like a servant leader.
Within a secular framework, egalitarians and feminists want the women to win, and within that same framework, the reactionary men’s movement want the men to win. The result, predictably, is strife—ongoing strife. And as they carry on their love/hate thing, believing Christians can observe from the side. As we do, we will find that the women can and do say lots of pointed and insightful things about the men, and the men can do the same in return. But despite whatever points are scored, there is no real hope for any harmony.
Men and women are so different, and the world is so broken and fallen, that there is no way for us to get along unless these sexual games have authoritative umpires all over the field, not to mention authoritative coaches all along the men’s bench, and all along the women’s bench. Without those umpires and coaches, the players are sent out onto a big open field, their bodies full of hormones, to play a game that has no rules, no boundaries, and no overarching point. The result is the chaos that we now see.
In case my analogy was unclear, the umpires and coaches are the standards and assigned sex roles given to men and women in the Scriptures. If the Scriptures tell the man to be the pitcher, he doesn’t get to go out to left field. If the woman is told to play in left field, she must come out of left field (in one sense) in order to take her place in left field. Scriptures assign our positions (coaches) and Scriptures tell us the rules of play (umpires).
But in God’s economy, the relationship between a man and a women, bound together in covenant, is a relationship that is truly sensible, full of good sense. God created us to function as one flesh. This means that a godly man and godly woman are one instrument with two parts, like a violin and a bow, or one mechanism with two parts, like a lock and a key—or like one flesh, with a man and a woman.
As you have questions, please send them on, but in my next letter I hope to cover how sexual all of this is. All of human life is sexual, top to bottom, front to back, side to side.
Your uncle,
Douglas