What Will You Tell Your Boys and Girls?

A great post by Pastor John Piper got me thinking - what will you and I tell our children about men and women? How will explain how God made us? How will we explain our differing roles? What will we tell them is important about a man being a man and a woman being a woman? What will we tell them that men should not do and that women should not do? What will all this say about the God who made us so?

Now some of my questions are obviously weighted and weighty, but the question remains for you - what will you teach your children? The way that you teach and display gender roles to your sons and daughters tells them a lot about how they should view not only the world, but most importantly, God.

As Piper points out, how we understand God as masculine - yes, the Bible does use exclusively masculine pronouns and exclusively masculine descriptions of God in all three persons - matters for how we understand His character, worship, missions, gender relationships, marriage, preaching, leadership, singleness, and the Christian life, just to name a few.

So I had to ask myself, and now ask you, what will we tell our children about the way God made men and women so beautifully different and yet complementary? Our words will speak volumes toward how they will understand God Himself.