Out and About 19 Sexism, Say What?

[HKHaugan]

Isms distort truth.  Jesus said He is the truth which makes truth more than an idea.  Truth is a person and what that person says is truth verbalized.  In Jesus what you see is what you get, a mind, a heart and Spirit, truth in a person and truth in His Words.   It’s what we do with Truth that tarnishes Him and His Words. I still can’t get out of my mind the image of Jack Nicholson playing a Marine Colonel in ”A Few Good Men” when he shouted that oft quoted line at the defense attorney,  ”The truth? You can’t handle the truth!”  Actually he was quite right.  None of us can handle ”THE Truth”---the Lord Jesus.  We have to let the Truth handle us!

 

But the secular formula defies Truth’s elegance.  You take an idea of His and change its meaning. Love, for instance, becomes the satisfaction of a physical drive in order to prove its emotional fulfillment.  Love becomes the satisfaction of some physical need.  Then it is extended into social concern for the welfare of others until it becomes whatever you decide best fits any situation.  Love goes from being God’s idea to a human ideal to a self-gratifying idol---from idea to ideal to idol.  This process is so subtle in its shift that time becomes its ally.

 

Ideas, thoughts and the thinking process itself are products of a God-given mind to comprehend Him, one another and our environment.  The problem is we use what God has given us, say an idea, isolate it from God, put our spin on it (idealize), look good through it (idealist), and that’s how it becomes an idol (idealism).  If we take an idea and attach ’ism’ to it we have changed its original meaning and it becomes our religion over which we become its deity. 

 

Let’s look at this slippery slide from what a word meant to what it may come to mean.  Think about the origin of the word sex.  It begins its ascent in the 14^th century AD.  It comes from Latin, ‘secare’ meaning ‘to divide.’  Then it began simply as the physical description of the difference between man and woman.  Now, used as a verb, it describes a physical activity.  In recent decades when it is used as an adjective like ’sexy’ it describes the allure of whatever object it is attached to, be it a person, a car, a ’look’ or, as the country song says, ”She thinks my tractor’s sexy.”  Contemporary usage has blended it with an abstract far removed from its origin, as in ‘mystique’ or to describe an invisible incommunicable nature.  Then there are those who try and attach to it a past goddess known as Sophia which in Greek means wisdom as though wisdom is exclusively feminine.  See what I mean?  When you leave the Bible behind sin deceives the intellect and its ’deja vous,’ Genesis 3, all over again. 

 

So let’s go even farther back to the idea behind the word ’sex’ and look at what it it really was in terms of its biblical origin.  First, Genesis 1 tells us that ”God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female He created them (1:27).”  He created them first in His spiritual image and then created physical male and female bodies for them to reproduce, fill the earth and subdue it (1:28).  Second, the birth of children occurred after ”Adam knew Eve his wife...(Gen.4:1 KJV).”  It was not just the result of physical pairing (’laying’ in KJV) but also a spiritual intimacy of ’knowing’ the other person as the word ’know’ implied.  It was both an invisible and visible knowledge.  Why both?  Because she responds in the same verse, ”With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man [Cain].”  She responds the same way after the birth of her second child [Abel].  God has established His order for humanity.  They will reproduce spiritual images of God through the joining of physical male and female bodies.  Note the balance of the spiritual and the physical intended by the word ’know.’

 

But sin dislodged spiritual intimacy and as Genesis 6:5 tells us, every inclination of a man’s heart was only evil all the time.  Sin had made everyone self-centered so ’knowing’ went out of balance.

 

In Leviticus 18 we see a number of restrictions placed against visible and invisible ’knowing’ between male and female outside of marriage.  These restrictions are spiritually centered and to be applied to visible relationships of all kinds. In further Old Testament reading the word for improper ’knowing’ is fornication (2Chron.21:11, Is.23:17, Ezek.16:15 and in the NT Mt.15:19, 1Cor.6:18, Col.3:5  KJV).  The King James Version of the Bible was the authoritative reference for translation of past Greek and Hebrew word usage.  History records mankind indulging itself in emphasizing the physical above the spiritual thus throwing personal reality out of balance.  That is the real dynamic involved, the dynamic of sin at work.  

 

Look what has happened to the word ’sex.’  It has gone from a simple physical classification to an ’ism’ intended to brand an accused as anti-female (rarely used as anti-male).  Again subtlety has captured the moment.  Three things have happened in the use of the word.  First, it has become a social and political weapon.  It is promotes self doubt, guilt and withdrawal. Second, it is used to raise self-conscious differences by creating the need to see one’s inner self as defined in terms of outer differences.  Third, it is used the gain social and political prominence.  Keep up the pressure on society to maintain self-conscious differences and take the side of the so-called ’oppressed’ victims of gender discrimination for political office and power.

 

But sex has also become an industry for exploitation of emotional and self-conscious manipulation.  Pornography, descriptive literature, clothing styles, automobile sales, movies and how all of it is marketed with suggestive language and pictures only increase the distance between what God intended and man has complicated. 

 

Add ’ism’ and both inner and outer battles make the subject a minefield.  Media exposure and scandals have reduced moral concern to a casual ho-hum.  It’s time to return to the simplicity as God purposed it, intimacy of mind, heart and spirit.  So when you hear the word sexism, ’Say what?’