Gender Roles in the Bible

biblical gender rolesThe bible is frequently sited by Christians as a depiction of what gender roles were meant to represent. The bible is full of not only examples of men and women interacting under God’s plan, but also scripture about what men and women should be to one another. The more narrow-minded faction of people who live by scripture do so ignorantly, without understanding its meaning. They refer to biblical principles that have been skewed in favor of some kind of bias in order to perpetrate a gender role that comes from their personal culture instead of the bible. Upon examining what is true and what has been skewed, one comes to a much clearer picture of what gender roles in the bible look like.

The lie that the overbearing, dominant and largely misogynistic culture in North America would have people believe is that the bible supports the notion that men are greater and women are lesser. People who hold this notion to be true manipulate verses in the bible to inform others that women are vain, mislead and impressionable, and must therefore submit and defer to men in all situations. Many cultures, both contained to North America and across the globe, have found ways to try to validate this sentiment through use of the bible.

However, when one takes a scholarly look at the content in the bible, one will find a very different set of values described there. The writers of the bible esteemed women, not for being good wives, but for being faithful servants of the Lord. The bible is full of examples of Godly women who took steps of courage to defend God’s commandments, to other women, to the public and even to (gasp) their husbands. These examples do not portray a man knowing best and a woman following his direction. They depict women with hearts and minds that belong to God and serve as examples to all people, regardless of gender, of how to walk in faith.

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