Male and Female He Created Them: The Beauty of the Binary, by Luke Griffo

In my remarks about this book, I recount some of my experiences connecting with this issue, but so much has happened since I wrote them. What Harvard's Harvey Mansfield calls "gender nihilism" (in Manliness [Yale, 2007]) has captured the cultural elites in America, and the 'T' in 'LGBT' has, for at least the moment, stolen the spotlight from the 'L', 'G', and 'B'. As a nation, we're losing our minds and souls on this matter. We Christians must continue to hold the biblical plumb line up against the constructions of the lost and the otherwise addled (even within the Church), and Luke Griffo has done yeoman service in this cause.

Foreword

Established by Congress in 2017, the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service was charged with exploring ways to increase participation in federal programs, and by the spring of 2019, they were holding hearings on whether the U.S. should extend selective service registration (preparatory to the draft) to women. Representing the Southern Baptist Convention, whose resolutions had opposed this, I joined with a Catholic, a Quaker, a libertarian atheist, and a woman Marine veteran of the Iraq War to speak against the proposal. The commission was stacked in favor of it, so in 2020, they commended it to Congress through their “Inspired to Serve” report, but it ultimately failed in 2021, thanks to the adamant opposition of eleven conservative senators.

Of course, the political and media air was filled with talk of the competencies of women-at-arms. Two big-budget films, G. I. Jane with Demi Moore (1997) and Courage Under Fire with Meg Ryan (1996), had tutored us in the noble cause of giving women warriors their due, and in 2015, combat roles were opened to them. Yes, physical fitness tests had to be adjusted, and studies had shown that women lagged behind men in both “lethality and survivability” on the battle field.  Furthermore, new facilities and gear had to be designed and provided, and a range of gender challenges had to be negotiated, including sexual tensions in the ranks, unplanned pregnancies, and awkward vestiges of chivalry in task assignments. But never mind that: Modern men and women were supposed to “grow up” and work through these outmoded concerns and throw the doors wide open to equal opportunity and such.

The focus lay upon the question, “Are women up to the task?” and an affirmative drum beat was heard all around. On the table was the matter of whether we should conscript them into military service, but I asked whether women should be conscripted away from the role of wife and mother, which is what a draft would do. For this point, I asked my DC-area daughter to bring her four daughters to the hearing. In her twenties, she had walked away from a full-ride doctoral program at Georgetown University and from prestigious federal job offers, including one at the White House, to be a homeschooling homemaker. I argued that it would be absurd to institute a policy which could have derailed this life choice.

I also recalled the draft lottery installed during the Vietnam War, imagining how we guys would have heaped contempt on a dude who complained that the draft board would never have reached his magic birthday number (e.g., March 1, 1949: #108) had they included women in the system, for that would have cut the men’s liability in half. Indeed (with apologies to Shakespeare), had that happened, such fellows “then abed in America in 1970” should “have held their manhoods cheap” as they watched their girlfriends negotiate the horrors of the Mekong Delta.

That same 2019 spring, my wife and I attended the retirement ceremony for our Marine officer son at Camp Lejeune. He’d served two tours in Iraq, and in his remarks on the occasion, he praised his mother for the contribution she’d made to the formation of his character. You see, Sharon didn’t serve in the Marines, but she’d served the Marines just the same, and in a way that was natural and honorable. They even gave her a certificate of appreciation for her “unselfish, faithful, and devoted service . . . [her] unfailing support and understanding . . . [and her] personal sacrifice and dedication” throughout his tour of duty. Oorah, Mom!

Luke Griffo’s case is grounded in Scripture, from the Torah on through the Epistles, with generous attention to poetic, prophetic, and gospel passages. For instance, he builds on the relational nature of the Trinity and the “toxic masculinity” of David against Goliath. Throughout,  I’m so thankful for his explicating, honoring, and defending the differentiation of roles—creator and sustainer—divinely ordered from the beginning. Until I read this book, I’d missed the corresponding elements of the Genesis 3 curse, the first concerning childbirth, the second concerning agricultural toil. And he does us a favor by extending our pro-life enthusiasm for the unborn child in Psalm 139 to include God’s esteem for the womb as the vehicle from bringing the Lord to earth. Contrast that, for instance, with the mythical “births” of a fully-formed Venus from the sea (portrayed in a famous painting by Botticelli) and an adult Athena from the forehead of Zeus.

Griffo doesn’t shrink from the procreation mandate of Genesis 1:28, a command that, surprisingly, even evangelicals find optional or quaintly outdated. I recall a conversation our Kairos Journal team had over our treatment of that passage. One of the editorial crew suggested that maybe our “filling the earth” was a wrap, what with well over seven billion people crowding the planet. But that got nowhere since, for one thing, you had to replace the dying right along, and, for another, you could fit the entire population of the world into the city limits of Houston should folks stand close together (four per square yard). Indeed, our small human “footprint” astonishes people since we’ve been besotted with ZPG hysteria for decades.

About this time, I was teaching two sections of Christ-and-culture to freshmen at Wheaton, and I asked them whether, in light of Genesis 1:28, they had a responsibility to try to have at least some kids if they married. I wasn’t asking them to forswear contraception, but just to say that they thought they should give procreation a chance. Out of the thirty or so in each class, only a handful raised their hands. It was as if I’d asked them if they thought they had a responsibility to visit New Zealand, cook with tofu, or buy a house. Maybe career thinking or financial concerns rather than overcrowding came into play; maybe they thought it was none of my business; or perhaps they’d never thought of it as a directive that applied to them. At any rate, they treated Genesis 1:28 as an elective. Not so Luke Griffo.  

Griffo is bold, but also circumspect and nuanced as he deals with Scripture. He states clearly the purpose of the book—“not to emphasize the similarities between men and women, but rather their differences”—but he  takes into account our debt to such strong “weaker vessels” as Rahab, Esther, and Deborah, whose beyond-homemaking deeds were strikingly helpful. And he takes pains to deal with difficult passages, such as the Deuteronomy 17 dictum that an unbetrothed rape victim and her rapist should marry after a fine was paid to her father. And while granting, with reference to Proverbs 31:30, that charm and beauty can be (and perhaps often are) deceitful, they are not necessarily so, for God “cherishes aesthetic beauty and majesty.” And while Griffo is on the topic of appearances, he gives special attention to the way the face is prominent in the Bible (another of his discussions to which I said, “Hey, I hadn’t thought about that.”)

Both of my sons attended seminary, and the presidents were kind enough to invite me to deliver a prayer for the graduates. On both occasions, I included this sentence: “I ask that, in this terribly confused and willful world, the men gathered here today would be manly, and the women womanly.” I wish I could say that some attendees thanked me for sounding that note, but none did. Indeed, I think it struck their ears as a bit embarrassing or unfortunate. What was I trying to say? What outdated stereotypes was I advancing? If, however, they had asked, I would have enjoyed handing them this book with the suggestion that they give it a read.

Griffo dedicates the book to “Arianna, Katie, Penny, Ellie, Evie, Lydia, Sophie, Ruby, Felicity, Adeline, Ivy,” and he has served the graciously-godly best interests of those ladies well, whatever the culture may presume.