Male and Female on Purpose

As promised, I plan to post a few excerpts from Kevin DeYoung’s message “Who Am I? Humanity in the Eyes of the World and the Christian” from the 2011 Next conference. Here’s the first excerpt, on gender roles, personal identity, and why husbands must not be dictators or doormats:

The world says you are free to create yourself. God says, “You are created to reflect my image.”

What does it mean to be in God’s image? It means we have a certain resemblance to God with our intelligence, our appreciation for beauty, our rationality, and in our capacity for worship and language. It means we represent God, that we have dominion over creation as rulers, as stewards, as those called to cultivate. It means that we are relational beings, interacting with God and with each other so that the image of God consists in these relational virtues of knowledge and righteousness and holiness.

Listen to Colossians 3:9–10: “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” Likewise, Ephesians 4:24 says, “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” So the restored image of God shows us what sort of image bearers we are. We are those who have the righteousness and holiness that is characteristic of God himself. Keep Reading...

Female Beauty Matters

Recently, several bloggers tackled a highly sensitive and debated topic— the need for women to attend to their beauty and appearance. I published a post, extracted from my Girls Gone Wise book, which examined some Scriptural directives for women on what and what not to wear. I came under fire for focusing on such mundane matters rather than really important stuff—like comforting the sick and war-torn.

I admit it. The topic of woman’s appearance is trivial compared to the war on the other side of the world – but given the reality of our culture, it’s a battle that hits much closer to home.

The Debate about Female Beauty

Tim Challies, a popular Christian blogger, published his thoughts on women “letting themselves go.” While he was careful to stress that “the beauty the Bible commends is the beauty of character more than a beauty of appearance,” he suggested that inner and outer beauty are actually inexorably connected, and concluded that women need to make the effort to remain beautiful to their husbands.

Another blogger, Rachel Held Evans, was disappointed by Challies’ refrain that “outer beauty reflects inner beauty” and that “a good wife will keep up appearances for her husband choosing an attractive sweater instead of the stained Mickey Mouse t-shirt.” She argued that Keep Reading...