(Author’s Note: This is not a political piece. I do not wish to contribute to the destructive debates of this moment. My job is first to observe the truth and then to report it, all from a biblical perspective. The current trends of our culture questioning the role of gender needs to be addressed from a biblical perspective. My 2-part essay, “Male and Female Created He Them” is not intended to further divide us but to call upon Scripture in search of an understanding of what can rightfully be called, “the facts of life.” Part One spells out the problem of a relativistic faith. Part Two will present an exposition of the Christian faith. Dr. Stephen Phifer)
Genesis 1:26-28 NKJV
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Part One
People of “Faith”
Beechcrest Elementary School, West Helena, AR
The Boys against the Girls
Except for church, my emergence into the world outside our home happened at Beechcrest Elementary School, the 1st through the 3rd grades. Situated on a ridge serving as the introduction to Crowly’s Ridge where our historic town was located on the western side of the Mississippi river. The graceful hill leading up to the classroom building hosted a huge playground. I remember it as unofficially divided into two sides—the girls on the north side and the boys on the south side. A huge, delightful, metallic pyramid consisting of “monkey bars” divided the territory. This was shared by both the boys and the girls.
From my earliest memories, a handy way to organize any group of kids was to declare, “Boys against the girls!” We all lined up in our gender-specific ranks and the game was on whatever it might have been. I remember what a mystery girls were to me. The boys I understood; I was one of them. But those skinny little creatures in dresses were fascinating and somehow beyond my comprehension skills. I guess things haven’t really changed that much in more than a half a century.
I had an older brother, James, who was my pathfinder. I watched his life to learn about how best to be a boy. James was an outstanding athlete, so my job was to follow in his cleat-prints. I had a wonderful father who served as my example of how to be a man. Watching Dad, I always played that I was a grown man, cowboy, soldier, or sailor, I pretended to be a grown man. From my mother I learned to sing harmony but that did not serve to inform me of anything feminine except the alto part in a song.
Woodruff Elementary School (formerly High School)
In the 6th grade at Woodruff School, my first opportunity came along to strike out on my own to discover what kind of man I should become—beginning band. I remember thinking this was something James had never done. The band director, Mr. Monday, asked me to play clarinet. There were some clarinet solos on the radio that I liked[1]so I agreed. My friends had taken up brass and they berated me for playing a “girl’s instrument.” That was the 6th grade. By the 8th grade those same guys were asking me, “Phifer, why do you get to sit with the prettiest girls in school?” When I saw those mystifying girls becoming classy young women, the feminine mystic remained incomprehensible and completely fascinating.
Boy Meets Girl
My hobby is collecting and enjoying classic films. In the early years of the last century the technology of recording movement and sound evolved into the film industry as dramatic storytelling moved from the local stage to the local screen. At the heart of any movie genre is this idea: “Boy Meets Girl.” Usually, the film unfolds in three acts: I-Boy meets girl, II-Boy loses girl, and III-Boy gets girl back—and they live happily—well, you know the rest. This is an oversimplification, of course, and the variations are many, but the interesting interaction of boys and girls and, of course, men and women, forms an inexhaustible source of storylines. More than a century later it remains so. Why is this?
People of “Faith”
Ironically, we are all people of faith. Secular-minded people may see themselves as people of reason and not faith, but their reasoning is based on their particular set of assumptions, things they believe but could never prove.
- Everything came from nothing.
- There is no God.
- There is no spirit world.
- Truth is not absolute but is highly adjustable to your current desires.
- People are just the highest form of animal life.
Lacking proof, they must accept these things by faith. When agnostics and atheists place their faith in the ideas of men, they believe life to be random, an endless repetition of accidents
We Christ-followers also consciously put our faith in things that must be believed without proof, the objects of our faith.
- There is a Creator who cares for His creation and has communicated with it.
- The Holy Bible is that communication.
When Christ-followers put their faith in the idea of Creation and a loving Creator, we choose to believe that life has meaning, and each individual has intrinsic value. Life has a purpose, an order prescribed by the Creator that helps each of us find our way through the twists and turns of our time on earth.
Notice that both a secular and a theistic approach to the understanding of life requires faith—believing something that cannot be proved. Each person on earth has a faith, a belief system he or she has chosen. Whether we are male or female, our response to this reality begins with what we choose to believe—our faith.
The Creation Context
For those of us who choose to believe in the Judeo-Christian system of thought, a beacon of hope lights the way—People are created in the image of God! There is a TRUTH that provides our chosen structure for human life. This makes sense. It seems more reasonable to assume that there is a Creator somewhere in this vast and still expanding universe than to believe that all of this “something” came from “nothing.” To base one’s life on the assumption that everything came from nothing seems more than nonsensical to me. It is irrational and every blazing sunrise, pulsing sunset, and relentless night argues against it. It takes a lot of faith to believe in nothing.
The answer to life’s mystery lies beyond any laboratory we can build, any microscope into which we can squint, any telescope we can aim, or any computer we can program. It follows logically that if there is a Creator, there would be some kind of word from that realm. I have chosen to believe the Bible is that Word. Why? Because unlike other ancient documents from other sources, the Bible works. Its truth is in its application. Its predictions prove true from generation to generation.
- My father found the Savior his father preached.
- He then led a home of prayer and faithfulness where the Bible was central and I found faith.
- I also found a wife who came from another of these homes of faith and for over 50 years we have enjoyed each other in Jesus’ name.
Simply put, the Truth of Scripture becomes the solid foundation of life itself.
“My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.”
Yes, many have failed the Lord. They have the headlines and the histories as they tried to turn the Gospel into personal and perpetual power. But the reality beyond the newspapers and history books is the untold story of multitudes of True Believers who really followed the Lord in every century since that Resurrection Morning and still do on every continent where the Good News has gone.
“I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus’ name!”
Instead of some science fictional “big bang,” a quiet repentance and confession of faith in Jesus Christ is the real and readily available creation source for life today.
Semper Reformanda!
Stephen Phifer
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Please proceed to Part Two, “People of Faith in God.”
Male and Female Created He Them Part Two – Steve Phifer
[1] “Blue Tango” by the Bill Black Trio and “Stranger on the Shore” by Acker Bilk
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