A very important aspect of Christianity is the issue of creation—yes, how everything came to be. The Bible says that after creating man God realized the man was alone and since it was not good for man to be alone, made a helper perfectly suited for him—the woman.
The woman was designed by the creator to help man and the big question is, what exactly is the woman expected to help the man to do?
Let’s take relationships
It’s almost a cliche when you say men do not understand women. It is a fact that many memes have been made and axioms created to reflect the thinking of many men around the world to the effect that women are complex, difficult to understand, and sometimes unbearable to live with.
I dare say that men see women this way because men do not understand the mandate the creator gave women.
We have created a world we profoundly refer to as “a man’s world” as if to say that women are supposed to be subservient to us but that is as far from the original mandate as you can imagine. It is not a man’s world.
Women are naturally designed to care about the wellbeing of men to the extent that I will even say it’s a woman’s world. When a woman feels that you are not allowing her to care for you, nurture you, she feels the same disdain one feels when he/she is not allowed to do their legitimate work. This is where the confusion over the true intent of feminism comes in.
Feminism is the result of the many years of ignoring the woman’s mandate and pretending that we as men can do this project alone. God in his infinite wisdom knew that man could not do this alone. He created the woman to “help” the man in executing His vision for the world and for years we have excluded them in building the home, our communities, businesses, and everything else.
When you read Proverbs 31, the true intent of God for the woman is revealed.
The woman in Proverbs 31 is the direct opposite of what we as men have allowed women to be in the world all these years. Today’s woman is trying to have an equal place in the world but the one in Proverbs is over and above the man in terms of economic might. She provides everything for her home. She shores up her husband’s place in the community and makes him relevant. The true potential of women is not being felt or realized because we have become supermen in our homes and communities. Trying to do everything to the exclusion of women.
A total disregard for God’s original mandate for women is what is causing the gender relations problems especially with respect to heterosexual relationships and feminism on the world stage—women are just trying to help.
They always have been trying to play the role they were designed to play and the ignorance of man makes it almost impossible for the woman to play that role successfully. Anytime we feel like women are nagging, or they are overstepping their bounds or being disrespectful, they are trying to help 80% of the time. When a man understands this, he does not only have a peaceful relationship with women, he also subconsciously “permits” (used advisedly) the woman to be all that God created her to be.
This is not to say that women are to live their lives with the permission of men or not have their own aspirations. This is to say that women do not have to be independent of men to realize their full potential and that’s where modern feminism gets it wrong.
Once men get the idea of God’s mandate, we will come to terms with the limitless power women have and work together to solve the most difficult problems the world faces—it does not have to be an us versus them when it comes to the place of women in our homes and communities.
Chief Executives
Women are the ideal chief executives, whether in the home, workplace, or our communities. When a woman is in charge, it’s never about who gets the credit. It’s almost always about getting the work done and what’s more, they are competent like that—they get the work done.
If running our homes is anything to go by, we will know that managing things is naturally the forte of women.
It is also an established scientific fact that women are natural multitaskers. Why do you think God made them like that? Maybe, God designed men to carry the vision but designed women to do the vision.
According to a BBC report, an experiment in China found that women outperformed their male counterparts, while another in Sweden found that men may actually be better than women at multitasking when spatial tasks are involved.
To settle the argument, psychologists in the UK set out to compare women and men in a certain type of multitasking; the kind we use when faced with juggling many tasks in rapid succession – but not quite simultaneously.
A group of women and men were given eight minutes to complete a series of tasks – locating restaurants on a map, doing simple maths problems, answering a phone call, and deciding how they would search for a lost key in a field.
Completing all these assignments in eight minutes was impossible – so it forced men and women to prioritize, organize their time, and keep calm under pressure.
In the key search task, in particular, women displayed a clear performance advantage over men, says co-author Prof Keith Laws, of the University of Hertfordshire.
Who takes the credit?
The number one reason why some men seem bent on the idea that women must be second-class to them is just three letters—ego. The question of who will be seen as running the show is very important for men. But, women don’t care (at least most women don’t) who takes the credit for an achievement. In fact, many women are willing and go ahead to give credit for their successes to their spouses and colleagues.
In my Akan dialect, there’s a saying that translates literally as “when a woman buys a gun, she keeps it in a man’s room”. It is an age-old truism of how women are wired to give glory to men and keep them standing in society.
