This question has to be right up there with “Why can’t two men get married?” and “Why can’t a woman decide she’s a man?” as questions no one would have foreseen anyone, let alone a Bible believing Christian, asking in their own lifetime even forty years ago. Foolishness, however, begets foolishness. When you push back against biology and God’s Word bad things happen. The denial of genuine, top-to-bottom, inside-to-outside essential differences between men and women is the bedrock of this lunacy.
When the Bible says, “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27) God is affirming not just that He is our Maker, not just that we are, male and female, made in His image, which is the source of our equal value and dignity, but that He created them male and female. The difference is not culturally conditioned, though some applications could be. Rather it is innate, God-made, true. It is deep-real.
One of those key differences is here- boys protect girls. This is not cultural, for it began at the beginning. Adam was called to protect his bride. That he failed to do so reminds us not only that the reality goes back to the beginning, but that denying that reality goes back to the beginning. That is, from the beginning boys were to protect girls. From the beginning the first boy and girl threw off their roles, and here we are in a fractured and distorted world.
Though the failure of boys to protect girls goes back to the garden, I can’t help but believe that we are reaching a new low. Because men and women are made in the image of God, for almost all of human history men went to battle to protect the women and children who did not. In Asia, in Africa, in Europe, in North and South America, in Australia, going back through recorded history this was the pattern. Of course, though perversion was surely around as well, no culture until decadent 21st century western culture has ever denied marriage was not possible for two men or two women. Nor has any affirmed that gender is a just social construct.
In the news of late this question has come up yet again. Conservatives are bemoaning the lowering of standards in the military to make room not just for women, but women carrying babies inside them. Conservatives also make a great deal of hay about how dangerous it is to send women off to war. Liberals on the other hand rejoice in this folly and refuse to acknowledge reality. How few, however, have rejected sending women off the war not because it’s not safe, not fair, not a place for social experimentation, but because it’s wrong? Complaining about PREGNANT women in combat is like complaining about unsanitary abortions. The issue isn’t the status of the women, but that they are women. And the issue isn’t the filth in the abortion mill but the murder of the babies. Men are made to protect women. Women are made to care for children.
Is there more? Of course there is, for both men and women. Can we imagine exigent circumstances? Of course we can, on both counts. Does that change reality? Not in the least. Men, protect the women in your life, not just from the perils of carnal warfare but in the midst of the perils of spiritual warfare. And train your men to be men.