When God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden naked, this was a sign that he had given our first parents all they needed. Because God had created them without sin, they had no need for the shame that normally accompanies nakedness.
Then Satan came along with his slithery words of deception and convinced Eve that she and Adam needed to know good and evil as God did. If they were to be complete as man and woman, Satan effectively told them, they needed to be clothed in a garment called equality with God.
So when the Lord found Adam and Eve hiding in shame and fear over their fig-leaf-covered nakedness, he asked them, “Who told you that you were naked?”
In other words, he was saying, “Who told you that you weren’t equal? I’ve given you everything that belongs to me, all of my love, all of my creation. Who told you that you weren’t free? Was it the serpent, who wants to make you his slaves? Who told you that you needed to seize something I didn’t give you in order to be complete? Was it Satan, who wants to take away every good gift that I gave to you? Why would you believe that true peace could be found by trusting the words of the one who only wants to give you war?”
In addition to being a great question for Adam and Eve to ponder in the Garden of Eden, “Who told you that you weren’t equal” is also an important question for our young women to ask themselves as the United States, having recently lifted its ban on women in combat, prepares to require them to register for the Selective Service.
“Women, you aren’t of equal value if you can’t do all the things that men do.” These words seem to be echoing in the ears of many American women. Some, including Amber Smith, have taken them to their logical conclusion—namely that, if equality frees women to do everything that men can do, it also obligates women to do everything that men must do. Therefore, women are not truly equal, Smith argues, until they are equally conscriptable into military service and equally at risk, should they meet the combat standards, of dying on the battlefield.
Sometimes ‘Equality’ Means Equally Evil
So to Smith and all other women who embrace this war-torn path to clothing themselves in equality, I ask the question: Who told you that you weren’t equal?
Was it the advocates of legalized abortion, who insist that women are not equal to men until they are equally unaccountable for an unplanned pregnancy? Was it those voices who said that, because some men despise fatherhood and treat pregnant women like lepers, women aren’t free until they are equally able to treat motherhood as slavery and pregnancy as a disease?
If it was, don’t believe them. Because, just as Satan deceived Eve, so he deceived the pro-choice crowd. When men refused to honor women with whom they fathered children, when they lorded selfishness over service, Satan convinced many of those who experienced this cruelty that justice was not to be found in men repenting of this behavior, but in women mimicking this behavior. The serpent’s lie was that women needed the freedom to be equally sinful in order to be equally valuable.
So when the deceived try to pass that deception on to you, don’t fall for it. While God created men to be the protectors of life, he gave women the glory of being the bearers of life. Just as you don’t need to kill your unborn children to be equal to men, you don’t need to step on the battlefield and kill another woman’s child to have equal standing with the sons of Adam.
Women, just as God wasn’t holding out on Eve when he created her without clothing and the knowledge of good and evil, so God wasn’t holding out on you when he withheld from you the call to put on armor. Don’t believe the lies. The fruit of the tree of war and bloodshed is not something you need to taste in order to be complete.
You’re Worth Dying For
Who told you that you weren’t equal? Was it the same group that said pornography empowers women and that women won’t be equal to men until they too can be heralded as heroes by the moral adolescents of their own sex for engaging in on-camera sex acts? Was it someone who praises Amy Schumer as an icon of equality for daring to combine her aggressive sexuality with humor just like the boys do?
If it was, don’t believe them either. Of course it’s wrong that men are praised for engaging in promiscuity and sexual debauchery while women are condemned for it. But the solution to this double standard is not for women to act like godless men, but for men to remember the God who made them and to therefore treat the women he gave them with dignity.
Just as men do this by giving their wives Christ-like faithfulness in their homes, so they do this by giving their wives Christ-like sacrifice on the battlefield when necessary. So, women, don’t be deceived by the slithering tongues that say, “After learning to act like men in the bedroom, you must learn to act like men on the battlefield in order to be equal.” Don’t be fooled by those who, despising the gift of your womanhood, say you must be force-fed the previously forbidden fruit of compulsory military service to be as glorious as men.
Instead of creating you to die for your husbands, God created you to be worth dying for. This is a far greater glory than the Selective Service could ever offer you.
Equality Shouldn’t Mean Abandoning Women
Who told you that you weren’t equal? Was it the chorus of junior varsity egalitarians who thought that watching a season and a half of “Mad Men” counts as historical research and therefore concluded that rampant sexism is the only possible explanation for pre-five-minutes-ago differences in understanding male and female roles, including women not serving in combat?
Instead of taking their word for it, ask your grandfathers why there were no women with them in the trenches, and you’ll find this was because they actually loved their wives, sisters, and daughters, and wanted to keep them safe, not that those patriarchal creeps wanted to hog all the PTSD, bullet wounds, dismemberments, and gravestones for themselves. Don’t believe those who have so little regard for the men who died on foreign soil so their wives and sisters and daughters could live at home. They don’t have any higher regard for you.
“You don’t get to pick and chose when equality applies to you,” Smith wrote. “Since women are now allowed to try out for the same specialized combat jobs as men, women should have the same draft requirement. That’s what equality looks like.”
No, that’s not what equality looks like. Just as equality never looked like American women having over a million abortions a year and having 40 percent of their children out of wedlock while a pornography epidemic has swallowed the men who won’t commit to them, equality doesn’t look like American women having to risk getting half their faces blown off in Afghanistan just like the boys do.
What Real Equality Looks Like
Rather, equality looks like men and women finding equal peace in the distinct roles God has given them. Equality looks like men providing for their families, protecting them, loving their wives, and in so doing, teaching their sons how to treat women and teaching their daughters how men ought to treat them. Equality looks like women nurturing the ones they love, respecting their husbands, nursing their children, and comforting their friends as only they can. In times of warfare, equality looks like men carrying the cross of risking their lives to defend the families of their nation while women carry the cross of preserving the kind of families that make our nation worth defending.
So women, don’t believe those who told you that you aren’t equal in order to infect you with their bad consciences. You aren’t naked. You have no reason to be ashamed. God has clothed you in the garment of being a daughter, a sister, a wife, and a mother, vocations that shine differently but just as brightly as the vocations of son, brother, husband, and father.
In the eyes of God, you are just as valuable and precious as any man in this world because God has designed you to share gifts with the world that no man can share. Don’t believe anyone who tells you that, for you to be equal and complete, you need to have a gun shoved in your hand as bullets fly by your head. Don’t believe anyone who says that, for women to have the glory they already possess, women must become like men.
