Gender Quality: An extract from the new book by Stef Liston

“Naked and unashamed.” The picture painted of the first man and woman is one of deeply harmonious beauty. Now we have gender wars, gender inequality and gender confusion.

Gender Quality is of course a play on words. What if there was something that included, but went beyond, equality, woven into our very design? A deep and satisfying unity and togetherness that can only be experienced as we wholeheartedly embraced our asymmetry as male and female.

Prepare to think deeply. Prepare to listen carefully. Prepare to ponder purposefully. We no longer have the luxury of ignoring this conversation; it matters too much for us and for our children.

This book explores two quite different perspectives on the matter of what God had in mind when making us as he did. Both need to be heard; maybe it’s only in the hearing of both that we can find the unity and diversity that is the mark of so much spiritual truth.

Curious? We’ve got an extract from chapter one below:

An extract from Chapter One: Oiling the Cogs

Reading a book is a risky thing. If you don’t see it through then it could end up as another unfinished book in a pile of many. If you do see it through, then you will essentially have listened to someone else speak for hours and hours on end with no chance of getting a word in!

Subjecting yourself to another person’s thoughts in that kind of way requires discernment. Especially if they are very persuasive! One of the early church fathers (I think it was Tertullian) said that “heretics convince by persuasion, whereas teachers of the truth persuade by conviction”. Now I’ll be honest - I can be very persuasive! Because of this, I have deliberately decided not to use persuasion in areas of this conversation that are more ambiguous. My chief aim is to aid your own thinking about this vital subject, rather than simply let you know what I think and get you to agree.

Therefore, I would ask that if you start it, you finish it. Come on the journey. See it through and follow the arguments. Don’t make assumptions, but grapple with the scriptures.

Humility needed

When speaking about this age and comparing it to the next, the apostle Paul said that we “know in part”, so we should approach all matters with a blend of conviction and humility: conviction that the Lord will give us the light we need to find a good way through on important matters, and humility in that none of us are seeing the whole picture. But there’s more to it. One of the most challenging scriptures I know says this:

Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. (John 7 v 17)

It’s challenging because it shows me that what we want is often at the root of what we see or understand. Sometimes we don’t understand or notice certain things because we don’t want to. When it comes to a subject as emotive (in the West) as gender, let’s be honest, there are certain things we simply do or don’t want to see.

All of us will bring philosophical assumptions, personal damage, un-sanctified attitudes, nagging fears and sinful blind spots to this conversation. Better to acknowledge this near the start; that way we can check ourselves as we work through the book rather than believing everything we think or feel! So before you read on, please ask yourself: what do I want this book to say? It will help you to take a moment to ponder your answer; maybe even write it down, so you can refer back to it as you read through the book.

Defining Gender

People often use the same word in different ways so it’s smart to nail the definition early.

How do I differentiate ‘gender’ from ‘sex’? I don’t. When talking about gender I am simply referring to the fact that He made us male and female. There is a growing message in the evangelical world that sounds a bit like this: gender, being physically determined, is essentially that, and nothing more.

It’s helpful in two ways: First, it resists the ideology that encourages people to define their gender by their feelings rather than by their physicality. Second, it resists unhelpful and unbiblical gender stereotyping, e.g., real men should like cars but not flowers, and vice versa for real women.

But there’s a problem also. It’s too reductionist, shrinking gender from multi-dimensional to one-dimensional. Our maleness or our femaleness (our gender) involves far more than differing sexual organs; it shapes us psychologically and, I believe, that it also means something spiritually.

More on that in a bit.

What’s all the fuss about?

When it comes to the matter of sexuality, those of us in the West recognise that we are in the midst of a cultural revolution. This book is an attempt to help us figure out, from the scriptures, what God thinks about it all. At the time of printing there are the very live issues of gender fluidity, gender dysphoria, gender neutrality and being transgender, and alongside these there are the more familiar issues of sexual orientation and sexual lifestyle choices.

For the most part Evangelical Christians have clear and agreed beliefs on the above matters. While these are being challenged in certain quarters, the teaching in scripture is so clear on the above that those who hold to the authority of scripture as an absolute priority can’t see how we can change our stance without the whole house falling down.

As a very brief interlude the church, we are told in scripture, is:

…the pillar and foundation of the truth. (1 Timothy 3 v 15)

This means that part of the church’s calling is to hold up the truth by faithfully championing God’s revelation in scripture. If the church gives way on the truth, the truth caves in. Not in the sense that it’s no longer true, but in the sense that she who was entrusted to hold it up has neglected her calling. Those who previously found shade under truth upheld by the church are now exposed to the scorching rays of multiple deadly ideologies that deceive hearts and destroy lives.

Back to the cultural revolution.

The more nuanced issues of male and female personhood, equality and differences, what it means to be a man or a woman, and what the implications are in the church and the home, well… evangelical Christians, for the most part, do not agree on these. Seemingly simple matters can be surprisingly complex, with every issue contested, but the search for clarity is surely worth it!

This book is an invitation to journey through the scriptures, searching for the meaning of male and female, and if we can find one, making sense of it together. We’ll excavate down to the foundations as much as possible; the further we go down and see what’s really there and what isn’t, the better idea we’ll have of how to ‘build up’ with maximum wisdom. The aim is to serve God’s people well, from those in leadership who need to make decisions about these things, to those helping and supporting others, to those in the midst of their own personal struggles…