Tangled in the Blinds

With the recent high-profile domestic abuse, and sexual exploitation cases in the news, it is interesting to watch moral relativists try to find a reason why delivering a knock-out punch to your fiancé in an elevator is wrong. It is sort of like watching this:

No matter how hard they try, they can’t seem to free themselves from the tangle of relativism that they have got themselves in. Our culture is rampantly seeking to do away with gender roles and at the same time decry the exploitation and objectification of women. It moans about abuse of women, but refuses to acknowledge that relativism has no clear definition for what a woman is. Is it any wonder that in doing away with biblical gender identity, we have created a monster that doesn’t know the difference between a woman and a piece of meat?

A perusal of websites quickly reveals that a woman’s body is useful only for click-bait. The female figure is not a sacred human being, with dignity, and who ought to be treated with honor and modesty. Instead the female body is used to entice us to discover the arrest records in Denver, how to get cheaper driver’s insurance, how a mom who is 56 looks 29 using this or that cream, how to get ripped in 5 days with no exercise, how to have a spicier sex-life, and a zillion other preposterous gimmicks that have little or nothing to do with a woman’s body!

Studies show that we as humans are more likely to buy the product or click the link that uses sexually suggestive content over against purely factual or informational content. So, a link to sell a new car is more likely to be clicked if it has cleavage and skin than if it simply presented the facts that make it a superior vehicle (i.e. mpg, engineering, safety features, etc.).

Further, the stars and starlets of music, movies and media seem to be the ones most vocal about gender equality, and freedom of gender expression/identity. However, they are the very ones whose bodies are plastered in the check-out aisle, news sites, and commercials. They are the ones who are letting their bodies be used merely to sell more copies, get more clicks, obtain more buzz.

Let me make a statement that is immensely politically incorrect: women will cease to be objectified when we return to the Bible as the authority on so-called gender identity. Scripture alone (and what it tells us about nature) provides us with the clearest understanding of gender. Here is a familiar example: “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).”

Christianity is the only answer to the objectification of women (and men as well), because Christianity alone has a clear definition of what gender is and what it is for. When an inventor crafts a new widget, he also assigns to it a certain purpose and use. If someone begins using it wrongly, and it breaks, the fault does not lay with the inventor, but with the one who improperly used the widget.

God made us male and female and assigned to us what the purpose of our existence is. Biblical Christianity–as opposed to its other forms–is able to convincingly declare what a man’s or woman’s body is and what is for. A woman’s body does not exist simply to help sell more products or get more hits on a website. A woman’s body is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever! The Bible, contrary to the secularist propaganda, does not objectify women, nor does it inhibit or oppress women. Now, that is not the same as saying that saints in both the Old and New Covenants have never failed in this regard; rather, they have often failed miserably at understanding and carrying out God’s purpose for maleness and femaleness. Let it be clear though, God has not changed His definition and purpose for male and female, and His purpose is the right and only purpose.

The objectification of women will only get worse unless we humble ourselves, repent of our gender-confusion, and return to God and His Word for what it means to be male and female. His answer to the question of gender is the only answer that ennobles and dignifies both a man and a woman. God makes a man a giver, not a taker (Gen. 2:15, 21) . God makes a woman a glory-bearer (1 Cor. 11:7), not a harlot. God made man to produce, create, and give life; God made woman to receive, bear, and nurture life. God made man to give his sweat and blood for other’s good, and God made woman, not so she could sell her body to the serpent, but so that she could use her body as a weapon to crush the serpent’s head. God takes a man and woman and makes them one flesh, so that they operate with loving consideration of the other, seeking to serve and advance God’s purpose in the other. Any culture or nation who refuses to acknowledge this is certain to only entangle itself more fully in the blinds of relativism.