How would you react if the next iPhone came out with a pair of devices? If you buy the phone, you automatically get both. Sounds good, right? But what if these two devices ran on two different operating systems that were hard to sync. Well, I guess you could just use one and chuck the other one in the draw yeah? Wrong! Using the devices separately produces toxic gases that over time cause disease and corrosion both to the devices and their environment. So, in order to use the iPhone safely, you must figure out how to sync them.
What a crazy design. What were the designers thinking? Surely this problematic system would have been shot down in the early brainstorming phase and not made it to prototyping let alone production. But it did. Not a new iPhone, but humans, made in the image of God. Two corresponding designs that can work supremely well together but also have the potential to short each other out. God’s design can appear crazy to post-fall human perspective.
Genesis 1:27 -28 reads, ‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. God Blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number fill the earth and subdue it. In verse 31’ God saw all that he had made, and it was very good…’
Both genders were made in the image of God. Perhaps this speaks to the social nature of God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each connected but with unique and specially designed functions and strengths. Or perhaps it highlights that God designed difference on purpose, for complementary functioning.
In our human outlook, we frequently see differences as disadvantageous or undesirable. Seeking to avoid being seen as different and pursuing commensurate treatment for, and from all. We want to remove those beautiful freckles so that we look the same as the other girl in our class, or perhaps buy a similar car to those we work with so we ‘fit in’ when we leave the parking garage each day. So often we don’t want the difference. All too frequently we wish to ourselves, ‘oh couldn’t they just be more like me, do things the way I do!’ But God’s designs are in no way boring or repetitive. There is uniformity and order for sure. But not a selfsame lack of variety, instead an infinite range of stunning designs, even if we are just talking about beetles!
1 Peter 4:10 encourages us to use whichever gifts we have received to serve God. Now, if we all had the same gifts, women and men included, would we need this encouragement? It is given as we are different and need to see those differences with God’s perspective rather than our human one. Our human view leaves us all too prone either to envy the other and their gifts or strengths, or to be proud and wish the others to have ours. Men may want women to be more logical or less emotional. Women may want men to be more organised and keep on top of all the small but important family matters that require so much time and effort. But what does God want? Why did he design humankind both male and female?
‘… in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.’ When we truly put on Gods love, ‘by the strength that God supplies (1 Peter 4:11)’ are we not the best mirror image of God, when we put on His love and cooperate with those different from ourselves? Are we not bearing His image most beautifully and fully when we allow God to show us the advantages in our differences. When we allow His view of difference, to teach us to appreciate rather than despise the other. Our differences are by God’s design, not deformity.