"Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” (Gen. 1:26)
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
Gen. 1:27
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
Gen. 1:27
Leadership and submission are not the sine qua non of male and female gender roles. If we make leadership and submission the essential characteristic of male and female we may create distortions that harm.
The sine qua non of both male and female is our common creation in the image and likeness of God. Male and female are *derivative* expressions of God’s image and likeness.
We are most fully male and female as we bear and show forth God’s image and likeness. On this basis and in this way, male and female are compatible identities equal in being, dignity, capacity, and value.
The roles of men and women fit *beneath* this imago Dei umbrella. Men lead *to show forth the likeness of God.* Women help *to show forth the likeness of God.* Men and women/husbands and wives partner together to image forth God more completely if you will.
Even though we are compatible or complementary beings, we are not defined primarily in relationship to one another as male and female. We are defined *primarily* in relation to God and our most fundamental role is not leading/helping but imaging.
How does this matter? However we think of gender roles, we cannot allow gender roles to eclipse the primordial purpose of bearing God’s image and showing His likeness. If the imago Dei gets eclipsed in our gender conceptions we effectively dehumanize in a most profound sense.
Keeping the imago Dei primary in our conception of gender roles also matters because, as @sometimeslight has taught us, women (and men) are “made for more.”
God’s calling in the creation and missionary mandates gets played out in ways sometimes particular to gender, but those mandates *also* call each gender to *more* than those roles narrowly conceived.
It's perhaps the case that reifying lead/help roles without respect to imaging/bearing purpose that leads to abuse. We will, for example, call women to submit to abusive relationships when for the sake of the image and its flourishing they should flee those relationships.
Or, to come at it another way, our ambitions for Christ may be so small that our conceptions of gender may do more to *constrain* image bearing and sharing than they do to *display* it.
For example, why do we customarily have women directors of children’s ministry but rarely have a vision for women evangelizing the entire world?Why do we normally have deaconess of hospitality but rarely a deaconess of immigration or of family formation and stability?
A narrow conception of the roles men and women play, independent of creation and missionary mandates, constricts in unhelpful ways. We preclude actively imagining rather expansive ministries appropriate for each gender.
We need something in our thinking that continually pushes out toward flourishing even as we embrace whatever borders or boundaries God sets in His word. Seems to me the discussions are too often all about limitation and rarely about flourishing.
Or to say it simply, we need vision! Godly ambition. A sense of possibility and imagination tethered to that first biographical comment about men and women in Gen. 1:26-27 and to the Church's marching orders in Matt. 28:18-20.
Okay, I'm done.
*@sometimesalight
