I just browsed through the latest catalogue from the largest Christian bookseller in Australia and one of their latest titles is “His Brain, Her Brain” with the subtitle “How divinely designed differences can strengthen your marriage”. A few pages later there are books suggesting there is a ‘feminine heart’ (created in the image of an intimate God) and a ‘masculine heart’ (defined in the image of an intimate and passionate God).
The first book is written by a couple with many years experience in marriage counseling which could give it credibility, but with our more than 35 years marriage counselling my husband and I have discovered a diverse range of ‘brains’ among both women and men. One outstanding example was a guy who was extremely hierarchical even to the point of saying that if equality was correct then he would lose his very personhood as a male and yet when he was tested for a university study he was found to have a ‘female brain’ – how embarrasing!
If these differences are so apparent and God-ordained, why didn’t God make separate statements and commands for women and men, girls and boys? I wonder how God feels about his name being put to human efforts to explain/excuse the behaviours of his creation. Apart from the few verses which refer to situations unique to the time, there are no verses which suggest that women and men are ‘wired’ differently or that God’s image is reflected in two ways.
