Immediately, you’re thinking, “Please tell me he did not just say what he just said.” Well, the fact is it does take some explanation to get it straight. So, here goes.
According to the dictionary, a feminist is “one who advocates political, social, and economic equality for women, as compared with men.” A sexist, on the other hand, is “one who makes a distinction on the basis of gender.” To put the two in similar terms, a sexist makes a distinction based on gender, and a feminist does not. Period. End of story.
But wait. That means everyone is either one or the other. And we all know that a good Christian shouldn’t be a sexist, since that degrades women, and he can’t be feminist, either, because that adopts the world’s liberal modernism. So we have to be something else. Only, there is no “something else.” Either you make a distinction on the basis of gender, or you don’t.
Now, in your defense, I have at least one dictionary at home that already defines sexist, a word with less than a century of usage, as “discrimination by members of one sex against another, esp. by men against women, based on the assumption that one sex is superior.” I must argue, however, that the editor of that dictionary has pulled the implication into the definition, and I cannot allow that. “Especially by men against women”? Does that mean it is less sexist for women to discriminate against men, thinking women are superior? And what if the attitudes are not “based on the assumption that one sex is superior?” What is it then? Because whatever word that is, that’s the word I am.
But there is no other word. That dictionary is twisting this word according to its own political agenda. Is that one a sexist who discriminates on the assumption that men are superior to women? Yes, he is. And I would not be proud to be that kind of sexist.
Rather, I would be the kind of sexist our grandfathers were. They would give up their seat for a lady, but not for a man. They would open the door for a woman, but another guy could just get it himself. They saw women as different, and because of it treated them with more — not less — honor.
But, to get back to the basic definition, a sexist is one who discriminates on the basis of gender. I do this. And not on the assumption that men are superior to women, but on the overwhelming wealth of Biblical and empirical (i.e. personal experience) evidence that men and women are different. Wonderfully different.
Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Gender, you see, is not a minor attribute that has developed over time. It was the one primary distinction created into us from the very beginning. Nowhere in the creation account is there any mention of race, language, or cultural heritage. No mention of social or political or economic status. We are not told He created “rich and poor” or “black and white”. But He did create “male and female”.
Of course, today’s church leaders like to say that Jesus changed all of that with his kind treatment of women, and that today there is no difference between man and woman. Some even go so far as to support homosexual unions, on the ill-conceived notion that the New Testament has over-ruled the Old Testament on the fact that men and women are inherently different. Sorry. Wrong answer.
Yes, Jesus was kind to women. He loved and respected women. He still does. He treats women as the equal human beings that they are. Through His death, He even made them equal heirs in His kingdom — sons of God, whether male or female. (In the culture of that day, only sons could inherit anything. The way Jesus made clear that His inheritance was made available to all was to call us all “sons” of God, both men and women. Modern Bible translations like to change that to “children”, but that misses the point. The way Jesus said it was just weird, which actually served to draw attention to the fact that women and men are legal equals before God.) John 1:12 says, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become sons of God….” Galatians 3:28 reads, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
“There,” the feminist will argue. “You said it yourself. There is no male or female in Christ. So don’t discriminate.” But the verse also says, “there is neither slave nor free,” yet in numerous other places the New Testament instructs slaves, “be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart…” (Ephesians 6:5) and so on. They are not slaves as they stand before God in Christ. But they are still slaves in the social order.
Women, of course, are not slaves, and should not be treated as such. Neither are they inferior to men. They are, however, wonderfully and amazingly different than men, and they are designed to serve different roles than are men. It would be foolish to pretend otherwise. This is why the New Testament also includes instructions specifically for women: they are not to teach or have authority over a man (in the church) (I Timothy 2:12); they are to be “discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands…” (Titus 2:5), and they are to “submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:22). Most of these verses, however, come right before or after parallel verses instructing husbands to love their wives self-sacrificially, which only furthers the point: the New Testament includes instruction specifically for men, as well.
So, why does the Church of the Living God bow to the modern pressure to be feminist, to fail to discriminate (i.e. make a distinction) where God has already made the distinction so clear? Why are we so afraid of being labelled “sexist” that we actually are feminist? Most Christians I know today are by definition feminist: they advocate social, economic, and political equality for women, regardless of the family and social structure outlined for us in the Bible. But if you dare call them feminist, they take offense. It is okay to be one, but it is a sin to call a spade a spade. I guess that is partially because we are being left without any words for who we are really called to be. We are not to be sexist in the sense of discriminating against women as though they were somehow inferior. But we are not to be feminists at all.
God made a distinction. Let us rejoice in it. I, for one, am sexist (in the pure sense of the word), and proud of it!