A second disclaimer.

Anytime you talk in generalities there are exceptions. I know there are a lot of generalizations and stereotypes when it comes to men and women. Some of them are based on truth. Some aren’t. Some are healthy. Some aren’t. We’re going to talk quite a bit about male and female differences. And they are generally true. But you need to think of male and female characteristics on a gender continuum.

On average, men are 7% taller than women. But there is a continuum. The tallest men are generally taller than the tallest women. And the shortest women are generally shorter than the shortest men. But there are lots of women who are taller than lots of men. But on average, men are 7% taller than women.

I think the same holds true for our unique emotional, intellectual, and relational capacities.

Women tend to be better at language than men and men tend to be better at math than women. But that doesn’t mean that men shouldn’t be English teachers and women shouldn’t be math teachers.

Now let me tell you what I want to accomplish in this series. I want us to have a greater understanding of and appreciation for the opposite sex. It’s that simple. I want to celebrate our differences. I want to give us permission to be men and women. And I want to help us have healthier and holier relationships with the opposite sex.

I’m going to lay a foundation in this evotional by talking about our differences. Next week we’re going to explore the unique challenges and issues facing women. Then we’ll explore the unique challenges and issues facing men. I just think we need to embrace our maleness and femaleness. We need to figure out who we are as men and women and then we’ll cross the gender divide and try to figure out the opposite sex.

Gender Equality
Genesis 1:27 says that God created us male and female. Genesis 2:18-25 tells us how. God forms Adam from the dust of the earth. But Eve is taken out of Adam. God uses the DNA from one of Adam’s ribs to create Eve.

You’ve heard the extended dialogue right?

God told Adam that he was going to make Eve. He said, “She will cook and clean and wash your clothes. She’ll agree with every decision you make. She will bear your children and never ask you to get up in the middle of the night to take care of them. She’ll never nag you and will always be the first to admit she was wrong when you’ve had a disagreement. She’ll never have a headache and love you just the way you are.”

Adam was pretty excited. “Wow! What will a woman like that cost me?”

God said, “An arm and a leg.”

Adam said, “What can I get for a rib?”

Trust me ladies, we’ll even the score before this series is over!

Six times in Genesis 1, God steps back and looks at what He has created and He says it is good. Then in Genesis 2:18, God says, “It is not good for man to be alone.”

I don’t think much has changed. I think loneliness is one of the great struggles men face. And a lot of our loneliness is self-inflicted. We have a hard time opening up.

I read a study this week that found that 98% of women want men to talk to them more about their own personal thoughts, feelings, plans, emotions, and questions.

One of the fundamental differences between men and women is this: men are more task-oriented and women are more relationship-oriented. It is harder for men to develop meaningful relationships.

So God comes up with a solution: “I will make a helper suitable for him.” I think the most common misinterpretation of this passage is the false notion that by calling woman a “helper” she is somehow inferior to or subservient to Adam. Nothing could be further from the truth. The word “helper” comes from the Hebrew word ezer. That same exact word is used to describe God in several Old Testament passages. Psalm 118:17 says, “The Lord is my helper.” It’s the same word. If anything, common sense would dictate that the party doing the helping is somehow superior to party in need of help. But this is not about inferiority or superiority. It is about complementarity.

I love the way John Piper describes it:

Men and women as God created them are different in hundreds of ways. One helpful way to describe our equality and differences is this: Picture the so-called weaknesses and strengths of man and woman listed in two columns. If you could give a numerical value to each one, the sum at the bottom of both columns is going to be the same.

Men and women are of equal value in the eyes of God. And we believe that men and women are equally called and equally qualified for any ministry in the church. That is controversial in some church circles, but we believe that is the pattern established in both the Old and New Testament. We are an equal opportunity church. But here is the mistake we sometimes make: we try to stress the equality of men and women by minimizing our differences. And all that does is do a disservice to the God who made us different. And just causes gender confusion. Equal value. Equal opportunity. But very different in gifts and passions, strengths and weakness, roles and responsibilities.

I like the way John Gray says it in his classic book, Men are Mars, Women are from Venus:

Without the awareness that we are supposed to be different, men and women are at odds with each other. We usually become angry or frustrated with the opposite sex because we have forgotten this simple truth. We expect the opposite sex to be more like ourselves. Men mistakenly expect women to think, communicate, and react the way men do; women mistakenly expect men to feel, communicate, and respond the way women do. We have forgotten that we are supposed to be different.

I want to share some differences between men and women that are scientific serious. The discoveries made in recent years via neuroscience and magnetic resonance imaging are absolutely fascinating. But let me share a few less serious differences that are no less profound.

The average man has four items in his bathroom a toothbrush, an electric razor, a bar of soap, and a towel from the Holiday Inn. The average number of items in the typical woman’s bathroom is 437. The average man is able to identify four of those items!

A man will pay $20 for a $10 item he wants. A woman will pay $10 for a $20 item that she doesn’t want.A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments, best friends and favorite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams. A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.

A woman has the last word in any argument. Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

If Emma, Suzanne, Debra and Michelle go out for lunch, they will call each other Emma, Suzanne, Debra and Michelle. But if Mike, Phil, Rob, and Jack go out for lunch, they will affectionately refer to each other as Fat Boy, Godzilla, Peanut Head and Useless.

Women love cats. Men say they love cats, but when women aren’t looking, men kick cats.

And just to make sure I offend everybody.

Guys, do you know the difference between women and terrorists? Terrorists negotiate.

Ladies, do you know the difference between men and government bonds? Bonds mature.

I’m an equal opportunity offender!

The Miracle of Conception
One of the great miracles and one of the great mysteries in the universe is the miracle and mystery of conception. We take it for granted because it happens all the time. But it is pretty amazing that each of us—with all of our unique gifts and dreams and emotions and memories and personality traits—each of us was once a zygote. A single sperm penetrated a single ovum and all the genetic data that determines who we would become was encoded in that single diploid cell.

According to geneticists, if you could unravel your body like a ball of yarn, there would be enough DNA-string to reach the moon and back ten thousand times! But we start out as this single diploid cell. And that cell is one of the great mysteries and great miracles of life.

Let me talk a little bit about the process of gestation. I find it absolutely fascinating the way a little baby develops in the womb! The heart starts beating around day 22—often before a woman even knows she is pregnant. The first neuron is formed around day 42. 120 days later a baby will have a hundred billion brain cells—that is about 10,000 new neurons every second of every minute of every hour of every day! But let me zero in on what happens around week 6.

Each one of us is a unique combination of forty-six chromosomes—half of them were contributed by our mothers and half of them by our fathers. Those twenty-three pairs of chromosomes are the genetic blueprint that determines things like the color of your eyes; the length of your body; and the shape of your nose. But the last pair of chromosomes is unique. The last pair determines our gender.

The mother contributes an X chromosome via the egg. And the father determines the gender of the baby by contributing another X or a Y. The end result is a baby girl or baby boy.

At about six weeks, a genetic switch flips and the sexual identity is determined. And the key is hormones. The baby boy starts producing testosterone. And the testosterone doesn’t just result in male genitalia. It literally determines the way the mind is shaped. One of the most fascinating discoveries of neuroscience is the simple fact that men and women have totally different brains.

In her book, Brain Sex, Dr. Anne Noir says, “the way our brains are made effects how we think, learn, see, smell, feel communicate, love, make love, fight, succeed, or fail….Infants are not blank slates, on whom we scrawl instructions for sexually-appropriate behavior. They are born with male or female minds of their own. They have, quite literally, made up their minds in the womb, safe from the legions of social engineers who impatiently await them.”

God-ordained Differences
God has designed men and women so they have physical, emotional, intellectual, and even spiritual differences. And again, that isn’t just a good thing. It’s a God thing.

So let me celebrate a few differences or special features.

One of the major differences is the unique relational abilities of women. And it starts early. One study of babies 2-4 days old found that baby girls maintain eye contact with a silent adult twice as long as baby boys. A week-old baby girl can distinguish a baby’s cry from general background noise. Boys cannot. A four-month-old baby girl can distinguish photographs of people they know from photographs of strangers. Boys cannot.

This is fascinating. During pregnancy and breast-feeding, mothers release a hormone called oxytocin that creates a unique bond between mother and baby! It is almost like relational glue. It is the trust hormone. Genetically speaking, women tend to be more nurturing and more compassionate.

For what it’s worth, women see better in the dark. They are more sensitive to the red end of the color spectrum. They have better visual memories. And women have more peripheral vision because they have more receptor rods and cones in their retina.

Women tend to think long-term.

Financial studies have found that women put more money into retirement plans because they think of and plan for the distant future. The National Association of Investors Corporations also found that women are better investors in all but the worst market financial markets. In one study, women-only investment clubs earned a 21.3 average annual return. Men-only clubs made an annual return of 15 percent. Part of it may be that women have the ability to take more factors into consideration.

For what it’s worth, women have superior memories; emotional intelligence; and intuition.

It is easier for women to master foreign languages.

Six times as many girls as boys can sing in tune!

Women are more verbal. At the age of three, 99% of the speech of girls is comprehensible. It takes boys an extra year!

And females have a superior sense of hearing. Ironically, the one exception is the fact that boys have superiority in identifying animal noises. And while I don’t know of any formal studies in this area, I would also submit that men are better at making bodily noises!

I like the way Dr. Anne Noir describes the basic difference between boys and girls:

Girls are much more likely to play caretaking games, with dolls; with boys, such dolls as they have may well become fantasy human dive-bombers or super-heroes. Faced with a new toy, boys have been seen to find more original and creative uses for it—the key word being uses. Boys are interested in the function of things, and how they work; that’s why they will take them apart with infuriating regularity.

Let me talk about some of the unique strengths of men.

Boys have a stronger grip; better eye-hand coordination; perform better in mathematical tests; and are generally better at spatial reasoning.

At all ages between and six and nineteen, human males are better than females at moving a beam of light to hit a moving target.In other words, we’re better at blowing things up!

Men have more physical and mental endurance. Men are able to focus on one thing for longer periods of time and work better under prolonged pressure.

Studies have found that boys are more natural explorers than women.

One study found that it took baby girls about 92.5 seconds to say goodbye to their mothers at the school gate and it took boys 36 seconds.

For what it’s worth, playground studies have also found that boys play more vigorously and occupy a larger space on the playground.

Now let me get to the bottom line: we’re different. And that isn’t just a good thing. It’s a God thing. I don’t get bent out of shape because women have some superior cognitive capacities. Some studies suggest that women have 40% more connections between the right and left hemispheres in the brain. I’m fine with that. Praise God for women who tend to be more bi-lateral. And the fact that men have 20% more bone density shouldn’t get anybody bent out of shape. It’s just is the way it is. It was part of God’s original intent.

The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

The English word “suitable” comes from the Hebrew word neged. It literally means counterpart or opposite part. I like to think of it as two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that fit perfectly together. And together it gives us a picture of who God is!

Our differences reflect the character and creativity of God.

Deepest Desire
Let me close on a personal note.

If you were to ask me what my deepest desire and greatest challenge is right now, I would honestly say that my deepest desire and greatest challenge is helping my oldest son become a man. He’s still a boy, but I desperately what to help him become a man after God’s heart.

And that desire for Parker is really my own desire—to be the husband, father, and man that God has called me to be! And it’s hard. There are days where I feel like I’m becoming the man God has called me to be. But there are also days where I feel like a complete failure!

Deep down inside, so many of us want to be men and women of God. We want to know what that means. We want to know how to make it happen. But it is one of our greatest challenges.

I can’t promise that this series will be a cure-all, but I’m hopeful that it will help.