I don't watch much television. There are very few shows our children watch. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to see a few kids' cartoons, and I could hardly believe what I was seeing! If you don't watch these shows closely, it would be easy to just assume they were fine for kids to watch. They seemed to be normal kid-oriented shows, but as I watched carefully, I could clearly see that the shows' writers had an agenda I did not appreciate.
We happened to be away from home, staying in a hotel. While enjoying breakfast in the lobby area with my daughter, there was a television tuned to a cartoon channel. Here was the basic story line of the cartoon that was on. Four friends (three boys and one girl) wanted to play a game of two-on-two basketball, but since "girls don't play basketball", the girl was sent away to play with the other girls. Meanwhile, two girls and one boy wanted to have a tea party, but "boys don't play tea party", so the boy was sent to play with the other boys. Of course in the end, the boys found out that girls can play basketball just as well as boys (maybe even better), and the girls found out that boys can play tea party.
Later in our room, the television was tuned to a show that portrayed a few young boys telling their sisters that girls can't make cars for a soap box derby, only for them all to find out that their mother beat the boys in her neighborhood at building and driving soap box cars when she was a young girl. So the mother helped the girls make their own car. In the end there was a big race. The girls, with the help of the mother, beat the boys easily.
These messages that children receive through television are contributing to the erroneous perception that boys and girls need to be treated not only equally, but also exactly the same way in everything. Differences in the sexes are nothing more than mere biological function, nothing more. The only differences we see culturally are a result of nurture, not nature.
However, we know that God created both male and female to fulfill different, but equally important roles. Genesis 1-3 talks about the different roles God has created us to fulfill. Satan is using our society at large to erode the biblically based roles that God ordained for us. Society is pushing gender identification from two distinctly individual roles (male and female) into a single, nebulous, unisex or non-gender.
One example of this is the modern view of marriage, by which I mean "parallel living". A man and a woman share a bed and a home, but nothing else. They live their lives as if there were no spouses in their lives; each with their own jobs, dry cleaning, and bank accounts. Unfortunately, feminism has blinded women into believing that this can be the only way for them to live an emotionally gratifying life.
I recently read an article that described how ladies of high IQ were the subject of a
study. "The study, based on 900 men and women, measured their IQ at the age of 11 then revisited them 40 years later to find out whether they had ever married. Academics at the four British universities who carried out the survey said the schoolgirls with high IQs later witnessed a dramatic decline in their marriage prospects. But the brighter schoolboys found it easier to find a bride."
What society tells these young ladies is that if they do not follow a career path, they will be wasting the brains God gave them. This "career path" scenario
actually destabilizes families and marriages, and hence society as a whole. The
researchers who carried out this study do not seem to have a clue as to why women with high IQ's are not as often able to marry or stay married. They say it's because men feel threatened by powerful women; or that men value beauty over brains; or they want to be treated like a "king", something that women on the career-track are not able to do satisfactorily.
But I think that in their hearts, men know the answer to the question of why smarter women are less likely to be married. It's not evolutionary in nature, as has also been suggested. Men simply want to marry someone who will bring stability to their lives. How easy would it be for a powerful woman in a high-paying career to leave her home and family? I'm guessing it would be as easy as packing a small bag and driving away. This is not stability. "Parallel living" is not stability. Only by living within the guidelines given to us through scripture can a man and a woman find stability in marriage.
Of course there are times when a wife or single mother has to work for reasons she cannot escape. I am only thinking of ladies for whom work away from home is her means of self-fulfillment. They are the ladies who clearly place their careers above the needs of their families.
God made men and women with different needs and different desires. Their needs and desires complement one another. I want to encourage our boys to play basketball, make soap box cars, and pretend with trucks and construction vehicles. I want to encourage our daughter to play with dolls, play tea party, and to enjoy wearing beautiful dresses. We need to keep them all from viewing television shows and reading books that would attempt to teach them that girls are better than boys. When we do, we encourage them to resist Satan. And when they resist Satan, he will flee from them (James 4:7).
