City Life Starter

By Scott Fiddler

Ji asked us to write on gender this week. As the writer who is responsible for Monday’s post, I am like  Jose Altuve: I am not expected to hit a home run but just to get on base. Those who follow later and have the advantage of having seen what was written before are supposed to hit the homers and get us to home plate.

So, I thought about what might get a simple hit, nothing fancy or earth-shattering, just a little insight on gender over coffee in the morning. I remembered that Ji wanted us to write about gender from a Biblical perspective. However, I have only known one woman (my wife) in the Biblical sense, so I didn’t feel I had too much to offer on the subject. I did hear about that book, Men are from Venus and Women are from Mars—or is it Women are from Venus and Men are from Mars?—that talks about the difference between men and women. Anyway, I never read the book. I have noticed that women are different than men, but I didn’t think that was sufficiently interesting to peak your devotional interest in 500 words or less on a Monday morning.

Then I thought I might write about the #metoo movement. I have represented many women in sexual harassment cases against powerful men, everything from unwanted sexual comments to sexual assaults. I thought about writing how women respond to sexual harassment, why they rarely falsely report it, and what that has to do with their gender. But then I thought that might be seen as too political because I have noticed that our country has actually taken sides over the #metoo movement.

Then I thought about exegeting Genesis 1-2, you know, the part about how God made man in His own image and made them male and female, but Chris did such a good job preaching on it Sunday I thought there was no way to improve on that. “If it ain’t broke don’t fix It,” right?

Lastly, I thought about taking up the issue of gender confusion. A few years ago I saw the musical, Peter Pan at the Hobby Center, and Peter Pan was played by Cathy Rigby. Having never read the book or seen the movie as a kid, I commented to Cindy during the intermission that I thought Peter Pan had some serious gender confusion issues. The people in front of us laughed, but I was mostly serious. It was all very confusing. Anyway, the more I thought about it, the whole issue of gender confusion seemed too confusing to tackle in a blog post.

So, in the end, I have nothing for you. Maybe some of the women can do better.