Real Men and Real Women: The Ancient Idea

ligonier ministries the teaching fellowship of rc sprole presents a harmony of differences real men and real women with elizabeth elliott this message is entitled the ancient idea [Music] i want to thank you for being willing to listen to what an old lady has to say about a subject that has really been a matter of a lot of controversy over the past few decades and as far as i can tell it hasn't abated very much i've given to my three talk series the title of real men and real women and what we're dealing with is a mystery it is a deep and unfathomable mystery i'm told that just before freud died having spent his whole life studying the characters and personalities of men and women his question was what do women want what do they really want and i doubt that any woman could possibly answer the question let alone a man and of course we women would say what do men want what do they really want and we don't understand each other and i really don't believe that god ever intended that we should understand each other perfectly and i'm very aware of the pitfalls i feel as if i'm a toddler blundering into a minefield when i start talking about this subject and it's not my purpose to be controversial to put anybody down but i would certainly hope that i will be able to help some who have been greatly confused by this issue and perhaps belong to a generation that bought a lot of what seems to me to be just cheer balderdash about the differences between men and women or the lack of differences between men and women i would hope that perhaps we can clarify our perceptions of what the ancient idea was behind them and that is the mystery that i'm going to try to talk about in these brief talks now given the fact that i am dealing with the whole subject of masculinity and femininity the question is raised and a legitimate one as to why i go by the name of elizabeth elliott when i have a husband whose name is not elliot and of course it does lead to some confusion on one occasion lars was setting up his book table and an old lady was setting place cards on the banquet tables she said what's your name and he said well he said i'm an elliot too just facetiously he said they'd been joking back and forth and so she said you are she said are you the speaker's husband and he said yes and she said well that's funny i thought they told me that the speaker had a different name and he said well really my name is gren spelled g-r-e-n but he said you know i get called mr elliott and i'm mr elliott iii and but he said i am her third husband and she said oh my goodness i've only got one place card can you imagine and he said well i think you can relax because the other two are dead and i don't think they're going to turn up but the truth is that there is a lot of confusion about this and so i do want to explain it and i want to simply say that because i wrote my first book under the name of elizabeth elliott and have been writing under that name since and because of course for very good reasons publishers take a dim view of authors changing their name that is the name that i would be recognized by by perhaps more people than the name of mrs lars gren but i am very thankful to be mrs large grin and at home we do go by that name so having gotten that out of the way let's think about what is the meaning of real men and real women now we all know that real men don't eat quiche and real women don't pump gas right true of course but there's nothing more fascinating and i think to some of us at times infuriating than this fathomless mystery it's often delightful but it is admittedly perplexing so for the title of my first talk for those of you who are note takers and i see that some of you are let's give it the ancient idea and the first thing that i would like to try to do is to obey what we're told to do in romans 12 2. paul says there that we are to surrender or yield our bodies present our bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable unto god and the body that i have to present happens to be a female body and the body that some of you have to present happens to be a male one but we don't have a choice about that do we it was god's idea and the second verse goes on to say don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold but let god remold your minds from within and then you will be able to prove that the will of god is perfect it meets all his demands and moves toward the goal of true maturity i think i'm quoting fairly accurately there from jb phillips translation and i love that word don't let the world squeeze you into its own mold and i'm sure that all of us have let the world squeeze us into its own mold about many things and the most difficult thing in the world is to swim against the tide and that's what christians have to do christians are people whose lives don't make any sense except in terms of another of another world another level another master another motive that's my purpose in life not to let the world squeeze me into its own mold but to let god remold my mind from within and i have spent two decades thinking and pondering and studying about this mystery of masculinity and femininity and i take my cues certainly not from my own temperament and i would hope that any of you would realize even in these few minutes that you're not looking at a woman who was born submissive or a woman who is a shrinking violet and needs to be told what to do and wants to be told what to do not a bit of it in fact there isn't in me one atom of submissiveness naturally speaking i take my cues from this book and it's to this book that i go back over and over again and with this book that i think you would have your quarrels if you have any quarrels with the things that i'm saying today i expect to be challenged i expect to be challenged whenever the things that i say don't line up with scriptures so let me give you three points i'll try to tell you what i'm going to say and then i'll try to say them and then i may remember and have time to tell you at the end what i've said but these three points number one the sources of confusion number two archetypes and number three the harmony destroyed now there have been many sources of confusion over the past couple of decades particularly we might go back to the last part of the 19th century but serious confusion i think has arisen because of a movement that was dedicated to erasing eradicating or at least smudging the differences between men and women a very powerful movement there have been freedoms so-called freedoms which women have gained in the last half century century or so the pill being one of them making it possible to have almost total freedom of sexual activity in or outside of marriage without a whole lot of risk the amazing rise of divorce and careerism and i think there's a relationship between all those three things the pill divorce and careerism there probably wouldn't be nearly as many divorces if women hadn't gone out into the workforce and had many opportunities to play around and things like that and the movement that i referred to and also the equal rights amendment emphasized rights rather than responsibilities and i'd like to read what my old mentor c.s lewis says in screwtape letters no man who says i'm as good as you believes it he would not say it if he did the saint bernard never says it to the toy dog nor the scholar to the dunce nor the employable to the bum nor the pretty woman to the plane the claim to equality outside the strictly political field is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior what it expresses is precisely the itching smarting writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept and therefore resents yes and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others denigrates it and wishes it annihilation think about those words nobody who ever says i am as good as you believes it it always comes from those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior now the reasons why women have felt inferior are many and i'm not going to attempt to get into all of those but i hope that before we finish that we will make some clear distinctions between inferiority of worth and subordination there's been an effort to eradicate the traditions and what people have called the stereotypes and stereotypes of course can be very damaging they also have their advantages the stereotype of what women's work was supposed to be as opposed to what men's work was and when i lived with a tribe of indians in the south american jungle it was very interesting to me to notice that the distinctions between men and women were absolutely unmistakable and unarguable for one thing they didn't wear any clothes and there can't be any argument about who's who in a case like that there can't be any doubt even from a distance and when i asked the obvious question that any foreigner would ask once i learned the language why do you wear that piece of string it was just a string it wasn't it was not a g string they looked at me with shock and horror and they said well surely you wouldn't expect us to go around naked would you so let's just get rid of all the distinctions and we'll all be not men and women not masculine and feminine but persons well my personhood is intricately bound up with the fact that i am a woman and i don't know any persons who are not either men or women and this whole protest for equality is not a new thing do you remember the story in the book of numbers in chapter 16 where a man named cora started a rebellion against moses and aaron because he accused them of putting themselves on a pedestal he said aren't we all the lord's people and korah actually belonged to the same tribe as the tribe from which the high priests came who do you think you are is what he was saying in effect to moses and aaron putting yourselves up there in a position of authority moses we're told was a very meek man and don't you ever confuse the word meek with the word weak there was nothing weak about the figure of moses was there but meek in the sense that he recognized his place in god's economy and he was meek enough not to get into the ring with cora and his crowd of rebels he said you meet me here tomorrow morning and we will ask god about this question well to skip over a lot of the amazing details and it would be worth your while to check number 16 and read the whole story they did meet the next morning and the ground opened up and swallowed korah and his family and fire fell from heaven a fairly convincing proof that korra was wrong and moses was right moses and aaron had not ab arrogated to themselves a position of authority they had been assigned that position so those are some of the sources of confusion are we all equal well we need to think about that some more second the second thing i want to talk about is the archetypes an archetype is the original pattern from which all the other things of similarity are made a model the the words the original words from the greek come from the two words meaning first stamp the archetype is the first stamp and obviously the archetypal man and woman were adam and eve and there were some equalities that we might cite about adam and eve they were both made by god they were both made in the image of god and they were both placed under moral responsibility the responsibility to rule the earth be the ones in charge of all god's creatures and the responsibility to be fruitful and multiply clearly a command that neither could have obeyed without the cooperation of the other but in the second chapter of genesis we find some very glorious differences the differences in design god created the woman in a slightly different design from adam she was very much like adam as opposed to the giraffes or the clams but she was gloriously different and she was made from the man we're told that she was made specifically for the man god saw a need in adam that needed to be fulfilled and could not be fulfilled by any of the creatures that he had up to that point made and so as you remember the remarkable way in which god made the woman it wasn't out of the dust it was out of adam's rib he put adam to sleep and brought her then to him after creating the woman out of this rib so she was made from for the man she was made from the man she was brought to the man and she was named by the man and adam's willingness to name her as he was assigned to name all the animals was his acceptance of responsibility for her and for those animals each creature the man and the woman was given divine assignments each to bear the image of the earthly under a different modality this female body is made in the image of god and it bears the image of the earthly under a separate modality from that of you men and each we must remember is necessary to represent the image of god in human beings and here's a mystery right here i can't begin to explain to you why it was necessary for god to create male and female in order to represent his image but we have a glorious harmony of differences i like to call them glorious inequalities but if inequality rubs you the wrong way then let's just say a harmony of differences operator and co-operator one was the operator one was the co-operator one was the leader the other was the follower one the initiator and the other the responder now i don't know how to dance but i love to see a man and a woman who danced beautifully together not long ago my husband and i were in vienna and we had the privilege of watching that beautiful waltzing that isn't done very much anymore but to a strauss waltz played by an orchestra here was a lovely young couple just sailing floating around that floor and it was very obvious that one was the leader and one was the follower and if both had insisted upon leading there wouldn't have been no dance right or if both had insisted on following what would it have been it would have been chaos so it was god's idea that there should be this power and passivity ebb and flow and we see this in all of nature god created the moon to rule the night a lesser light and the sun to rule the day and he called it greater and lesser but i don't think that god loved the moon less than he loved the sun loves the sun so all these wonderful original ancient ideas of gods have to our great poverty been defaced and even destroyed and here we come to the third thing that i want to talk about the harmony destroyed we've talked about the sources of confusion about the archetypes or the original patterns adam and eve and how that harmony that god created for our joy and our delight has been defaced now what did go wrong with the original archetype with man and woman well for the arc for the architects designed to work certain things must be done and certain things must not be done i don't know whether there are any architects listening to me today but you know and the rest of us could certainly know that an architect's design has to it if it's still work then certain things must be done and certain things must not be done and god said be fruitful rule and in the second chapter of genesis we get into the forbidden thing there were the positives in chapter one and there was one negative god said do not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge so the tempter came along that was his opportunity and the tempter's first temptation i believe was not particularly the fruit it was the basic idea that god was trying to cheat them god was trying to cheat eve out of something which was her right and so he persuaded her that she could upgrade her lifestyle and eve bought the whole package it was pride that was the first sin her unwillingness to be just a human being because satan said to her did god say that you will die you not only will not die but you will be like god the tree of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil was not created for man's good man was not created to bear that kind of burden that weight that is the burden of the god but adam and eve eve first decided that she wanted to know and she wanted to find out check out god's word she was too proud to be just a human being she wanted to be a god and then she usurped the position which belonged to her husband that of being the initiator and what did adam do adam abdicated his responsibility as the initiator he was made to be responsible for eve to protect her and if he had dug in his heels and said no way are we going to touch that fruit the whole story might have been different surely must have been different but instead of that eve became the initiator adam became the responder the roles were reversed not equalized but reversed and we've been in a terrible mess ever since he was convinced that she was trapped and that there was some injustice in this does this ring any bells with some of the things that we women have been told were supposed to believe in the last couple of decades she believed she had been cheated of the one thing necessary for her happiness now have you ever spent the whole day giving your little children a wonderful time at the zoo or at the carnival or someplace and you've given them all the cotton candy they want and all the hot dogs they want and you're driving home at five o'clock in the afternoon everybody absolutely exhausted and one of the children sees a mcdonald's and says hey mom can we have a milkshake or can we have a mcdonald's and mom says no and what does the child say you never give us what anything now who talks like that nobody but us isn't that the way we talk with god god answers ten thousand prayers and he says no to one prayer that he knows will destroy us for the same reason that that mother says no to that little child it's not because she hates the child it's because she loves the child and she says no we're going home and eat a sensible meal and god said don't touch that tree and eve felt she was being cheated of the one thing necessary for her happiness deprived of the possibility of fulfillment that word that all of us women have been told we've got to have and the only way to be fulfilled is to become equal with your husband if you've got one get out of the house don't do all the dirty work get an eight-hour day job and you'll be fulfilled well of course you men could have certainly told us a long time ago that that is not very fulfilling is there anybody that's ever found fulfillment in a job it really breaks my heart the way women will often come to me and say oh it must be so exciting to do what you do one little girl said i believe god's god has called me to do exactly what you do and i say well what's that well write books and speak and travel around i think it must be so exciting i'm not going to tell her that i'm suffering and that it's really a tough job and i hate it and all that that's not true but i do want to tell her that my fulfillment does not lie primarily in any particular piece of work whether it's ironing a shirt or writing a book my fulfillment lies in doing the thing that god wants me to do at that moment and i think it's just as important that i iron the shirt when it's time to iron the shirt as it is that i write a book or stand up in front of an audience and talk we want to concern ourselves with the why and the how of things instead of the what god is not going to tell us why or how he is going to fulfill us but fulfillment lies in obedience in a yes lord whatever you want to give me i will receive whatever you do not want to give me i let go of i relinquish for your name's sake so eve usurped the thing that was not given and we women are being tempted constantly to to use serp a position that god never created us to fill and depriving of the glory of god in the work that he gives to men depriving men of the glory which lies in their assignments in other words the manufacturer's instructions have been ignored you know what it's like if you buy a gadget and you try everything in the world you can think up to make the crazy thing work and it doesn't work and when all else fails what do you do read the directions well i think a lot of things have failed in these relationships between men and women why the phenomenal rise in divorce well because men and women really don't understand the divine assignment the mystery that god has given to each one of them instead of being concerned with lord what do you want me to do which was paul's first question on the road to damascus we want to say but lord how are you going to work this out for me lord why do you have this happen to me that's the hunger for the tree of the fruit of knowledge instead of for the tree of the fruit of life so when they sinned and took the forbidden fruit what happened well adam ceased to husband eve the verb to husband means to care for to cherish to protect to provide for animal husbandry caring for animals adam ceased to husband eve and he had been assigned to be her husband he failed to protect her he failed to be the leader he capitulated to a woman's whim and i've seen marriages fall apart because of men capitulating to women's whims i've also seen them fall apart because of men lording it over them in a way and we're going to get into these specific ways in which husbands and wives are to relate to each other but just simply to say well if that's what the little woman wants well let the little woman have it you know because men don't want to get into the ring and argue with screaming women and i don't blame you for that who wants to get into an argument with a screaming woman and some of them can be very shrill and very loud indeed but eve said in effect my will be done and that's the rule of hell thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven the rule of heaven is thy will be done she took the initiative she usurped the responsibility that god had laid on her husband adam and he became the follower now rule and submission and union these three things are inextricably bound together rule submission and union they are principles of the universe in fact they are principles of our relation to god pt forsyth said subordination is not inferiority it is divine the principle has its roots in the very cohesion of the eternal trinity to recognize no lord or master is satanic i insist on the christian principle drawn from the very nature of god and essential to the masculinity and femininity which he has made without the spirit of subordination there is no true piety no manly nobility and no womanly charm no true piety no manly nobility and no womanly charm and with all my heart i want to do what little i can do to restore those three things to a world desperately in need of it so we've talked under the heading the ancient idea about the sources of confusion about the archetypes and about the harmony destroyed

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Length: 30min 29sec (1829 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 09 2020