"Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls." (Jeremiah 6:16)

Christians Must Be Careful Not To
Become Practicing Egalitarians


by Stuart DiNenno


Christians need to be careful to preserve gender roles and not become practicing egalitarians. Good parenting for a husband is sharing in the work by performing the duties according to the role of his sex. Good parenting for a husband is is not sharing in the work by making himself an interchangeable part with his wife. For both parents, regularly taking on the roles of the opposite sex is gender blending and a bad example for their children.

Of course, certain circumstances may arise which make it necessary for men to do work that normally pertains to women (and vice versa) and I am not saying every time a husband helps his wife cook the dinner, or a wife assists her husband while he is doing repair work, they are sinning, but if you are a father regularly pushing a baby carriage, changing diapers, bathing the children and the other things traditionally pertaining to womanhood, and you are training your women to do hand-to-hand fighting, hunting, home repairs or other things that traditionally pertain to manhood, so that everyone in the family is performing the same functions interchangeably, then you have become a practicing egalitarian regardless of any opposition you may be presenting to egalitarianism in your words. The same is true if everyone in the family is dressing similarly and not maintaining the traditional distinction of men wearing pants and women wearing dresses, or not holding to a male short hair/female long hair differentiation.

Christians ought to be speaking out against all the ways that gender roles are being perverted and how the lines of distinction are being blurred in our nation today, but we have to be careful that we do not become hypocrites by practicing egalitarianism at home while we are condemning it in the larger society. All the distinctions in behavior I mentioned above are what every family in Western societies normally practiced until just a few generations ago, without even giving it much thought, and these things should not seem the least bit controversial to us. The fact that so many of today’s Christians find it to be so, is only evidence of how far our societies and our standards have fallen.

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