The Christian Home

Appreciate The Differences Between Men And Women

If you haven’t noticed already, men and women are different. What an understatement! There have been all kinds of jokes by men to show how foolish women are, and there have been many jokes by women to show just how dumb men are. Actually, both men and women are very intelligent creatures. “And God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.” (Genesis 1:27). If God created man and woman in His own image, it would be wrong to call either sex silly. In the next verse, Moses said that God gave man and woman dominion over all the earth. Therefore, men and women are different because God chose to make us different for His purposes.

One of the physical differences is that a man’s skull is thicker than a woman’s. I have never known of a woman disagreeing with that fact. Why would a supremely intelligent God make a man’s skull thicker than his mate’s? Not because it is more difficult for a man to understand things, but because God saw a need the man would have. God gave Adam the responsibility of making a living for the entire family: “...in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground…” (Genesis 3:19 KJV). It is the man who must be in the workplace to make a living for his family. Why does a man have larger arms, stronger legs, and the ability to do heavier labor than a woman? Because God, in His infinite wisdom, prepared man for the work He had given him, by properly equipping him to complete the job.

There are many factors contributing to the differences between men and women. They include gender conditioning by our parents, learning behaviors through role modeling and the biochemical differences between testosterone and estrogen. But one of the major differences happens to children before they are born. To this Abel gives an interesting explanation:

Both boy and girl babies are identical during the first few weeks after conception, but then the boy babies receive an acid bath that washes over

their brain, eating away the corpus callosum. This natural process in boys cause a smaller passageway between their left and right brain hemispheres. It allows men to be more unilateral in their thinking patterns and helps them to remain focused on one thing at a time, separating logic from emotion. Girl babies don’t receive this chemical bath and they generally have wider passageways between the right and left-brain hemispheres. This allows women to think in patterns that are more bilateral in nature. They have easier simultaneous access to the left-brain’s logic and the right brain’s intuition, imagination and emotion (296).

To illustrate this fact, let me tell you about something that happened one Sunday morning when I was preaching. After the lesson, while we were singing and invitation song, a tearful young lady came forward and shared with me what was on her heart. We had a prayer for her and dismissed the assembly. I went to the front door to greet and say goodbye to the congregation as they left. Upon returning to the auditorium, I found the young lady sitting with her mother and both were in tears. The father was standing in the aisle, asking the youth director’s wife (my daughter): “What do you think we need to do? All you have to do is make a suggestion and we will do it.” How wonderful and simple the scene, I thought. The mother was doing what she does best —crying with her daughter, showing emotion. The father was doing what God made him to do and that was to solve the problem.

Even when we are different, we show the wisdom of God. If your mate is different than you, that is great. You wouldn’t want to be the same.

Only God could have made us like magnets, so different yet clinging to one another. Even when there are objects separating us, such as children and other family members, our magnetic pull is still strong. There is enough strength not only to hold us

(continued on page 12)