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HE SAID, SHE SAID
Genesis 1:24-27
Ephesians 5:21-33
August 30, 2009
Dennis and Nancy DiMarco have an African gray parrot named Congo. Congo likes men, but he does not like women. It doesn’t matter how long or short your hair is, how tall you are, how much you weigh, or how deep your voice is; Congo knows the difference between men and women. Now, if a bird with a brain no larger than a walnut can figure out that men and women are different shouldn’t we be able to grasp that concept as well?
Entire industries have blossomed based on the fact that men and women are different. Some comedians make their entire living off of the differences. Why are men happier than women? Your last name stays put, the garage is all yours, car mechanics will tell you the truth, wedding dress $5000/ rented tux $100, phone conversations are over in 30 seconds, three pairs of shoes are enough, and you can do your nails with a pocketknife.
Of course, that knife cuts both ways. How are husbands like lawn mowers? They’re hard to get started, they emit noxious odors, and half the time they don’t work. How do you get a man to stop biting his nails? Make him wear shoes. How do you keep your husband from reading your e-mail? Label the folder ‘instruction manual’. What makes a man think about a candle light dinner? A power failure. And, why do men need instant replay on TV sports? Because, just like a goldfish, after 30 seconds they forget what happened.
The jokes are funny because they point out inherent differences. But, these differences are not an accident. In our Old Testament reading this morning it said, “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” To reproduce the image of God requires both male and female. Neither one of us is a complete representation of the attributes of God. It takes both of us together, with our intentionally designed differences, to get a glimpse of what God is like. Any attempt to suppress, or change, or deny our differences is an attempt to reduce and limit how God represents himself to us.
There are those who will agree that physically we are different, but claim that at our core – in the deepest part of our brain, there is no difference. That is not true. Dr. Louann Brizendine of the UCSF School of Medicine says, “There is no unisex brain. Girls arrive already wired as girls, and boys arrive already wired as boys. Their brains are different by the time they’re born.” (We’re going to talk a little more about that later.)
That difference is not an accident of evolution; it is an intentional design quality. King David writes, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body” (Psalm 139:13-16). You are not an ‘oops’. You are not the consequence of a lightening strike on a primordial sea. Your personality, and all of the quirks you share in common with other men and women, is the result of intentional intervention by a loving and wondrous God.
And, because of that love, men are brain damaged. Between the eighteenth and twenty sixth month of pregnancy something amazing happens. At that time a chemical bath of testosterone and other sex hormones washes over a baby boy’s brain. From that point on, the brains of a boy and a girl will never be the same. The brain is divided into two halves. The chemical wash causes the right side of a boy’s brain to slightly shrink, and it destroys some of the connections between the two halves. So, boys start life left brained. A baby girl is born with a complete set of connections, and the ability to use either side of her brain. However, even though she has all the working parts, a girl tends to spend most of her time using her right brain.
These opposite sides of the brain have very different characteristics. The left side focuses on logic, analysis, and aggression. “It enjoys conquering five hundred miles a day for family vacation trips; favors mathematical formulas over Harlequin romances; it memorizes batting scores, and loves to sit for hours watching back to back games and yelling at the referee.” The female side, the right side, is the center for emotion; catalogues relationships; and controls communication skills. It pulls over at rest stops – on purpose; wants to hear about your day; and doesn’t care about a hockey player unless it personally knows the hockey player, and his wife.
These are powerful differences, and they make themselves the most obvious in the different ways men and women communicate. From the earliest ages girls talk more than boys. In the nursery of the hospital, where the newborn babies are kept, girls have more lip movements than boys. A Harvard preschool program wired all of their children for sound. They found that 100% of the sounds coming from a girl’s mouth were audible, recognizable words. The girls spent most of their time talking to other children; if there were no other children around they talked to themselves. For the boys only 68% of their sounds were words. The rest of their sounds were just noises, like vroom.
Those differences continue throughout life. Special education teachers will tell you that nine out of ten speech pathology problems are boys. By the time we become adults the average male uses 12,500 words a day. The average female uses twice that many, 25,000 words per day. So, one of the first problems in a marriage is that they kiss each other goodbye of a morning and head off to their separate jobs. When they return home ten hours later he’s used up all of his words, and she still has half of her words to go – and time is running out! The second problem shows up in how words are said. The right side, the female side, is the same side that senses and interprets tone of voice and inflection. When you use sarcasm on him, and there’s no response; he’s not stupid, he just doesn’t hear it.
But, the aspect of communication which is at once both the most uplifting and the most devastating, is how we interpret what is said. For those of you who have been doing the forty day Love Dare, we have spent a lot of time tying affectionate words to affectionate actions – here is why. Words are how we communicate our needs, and our brain differences give men and women very different needs.
Our New Testament reading today told wives to submit to their husbands as a matter of respect, and for husbands to continually emphasize to their wives their unconditional love. Two thousand years later, science has proven that God is absolutely correct in this matter. A survey asked men, “Would you rather feel alone and unloved, or inadequate and disrespected?” Seventy six percent of the men, three out of four, said they would rather feel unloved than disrespected. What’s more, virtually all of the men said that being disrespected is the same as being unloved. She thinks she is fixing a defect in his leadership, so he will be a stronger leader. He interprets; she doesn’t love me.
Because of this, wives will make casual comments with no malice whatsoever, and never realize how they are damaging their marriage. Comments like, “You’re not really a fix-it kind of guy, why don’t you call someone else; when are you going to start being responsible and stop dreaming about owning your own business; last night it took my husband three hours to get the computer running, he’s not a technical person, when are you going to start making more money?”
Women, on the other hand, require constant verbal assurance they are loved. They evaluate all personal comments on a ‘love scale’. Because of this, men will make casual comments with no malice whatsoever, and never realize how they are damaging their marriage. Comments like, “I know your birthday is tomorrow, but I’ve been really busy. Here, take the credit card and spend $50 on yourself; John’s wife went to that new fitness class and lost 10 pounds. Why don’t you check it out – it might make you feel better about yourself; when are you going to clean up this mess?” Each one of those statements says loud and clear to a wife, “I don’t really love you.”
If you looked closely at our New Testament reading you saw that there were three verses about wives respecting their husbands. However, there were nine verses about husbands loving their wives; three times as many. God is right in this presentation as well. A woman’s brain needs to be constantly reassured that she is unconditionally loved; not an occasional reminder – constant reminding. She probably needs three times as many reminders she is loved as the man needs to be assured he is respected.
I want to talk a little more about respect for the man. The word we have called respect today is often translated as submit. Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands. Respect is a more accurate and contemporary interpretation, submit has a lot of history. And, unfortunately, for centuries some men have used that word to justify abusing and punishing their wives in the name of a Christian home. That is submission in a way that God never intended. Jesus would never approve of forced submission in lieu of respect.
Dorothy Sayers wrote, “Women had never known a man like this Jesus – there had never been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronized them; who rebuked without querulous ness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; and who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unselfconscious. There is no act, no sermon, and no parable in the whole Gospel that is based on female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything ‘funny’ about woman’s nature.”
King Solomon wrote, “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (Proverbs 15:1). Men and women have different needs, and we communicate differently. A husband and wife can do irreparable damage to their marriage by not taking the time to figure out how their words will impact the needs of their spouse. We are different by design, and a failure to recognize that difference dooms a marriage. Taking a moment to think about what we say can save a marriage.
David Switzer advances the theory that after a while, a marriage becomes a single entity, a single person. And, when the marriage stops caring how the partners talk to each other, when the language is allowed to become hurtful to the needs of the other, it is exactly the same as watching an individual sink into schizophrenia. Multiple personalities with cross purposes begin to emerge. Paranoia colors each interaction. There is apathy and a complete loss of interest in protecting the well being of the entity.
God was two thousand years ahead in dealing with this issue as well. Paul writes, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:2-3). When you protect your marriage, you protect yourself.
Men and women are unique among all Creation, in that only we are created in the image of God. In spite of that, we are not complete. It takes both male and female to describe and display the attributes of God. Now, that’s not a sad accident - that is an intentional design. We have deliberately been created differently. We tend to spend our time in different parts of our brains. No part is better or worse, they’re just different. Because of that we have different needs; a man must feel respected to feel loved; a woman must be told over and over – with words – that she is loved. We use words differently. When we assume that our way of speaking is better than their way of speaking we inflict terrible, sometimes fatal, wounds upon our marriage. When we care enough to seek out our spouse’s needs and validate them in the way our spouse speaks, we protect our marriage. And, when we protect our marriage we protect ourselves.
Roger asks Diane out on a date; they go to dinner and a movie, and have a great time. The next week they do it again. After a while they are only seeing and dating each other. One night as they’re driving along Diane says, “Did you realize this is our six month anniversary?” There is complete silence. Diane thinks ‘he feels confined by our relationship and he’s sure I’m pressuring him to move to the next level.’
Roger thinks, ‘Six months. Must be about time to get the oil changed.’ Diane stares at the side of his head and thinks, ‘I’m not sure I’m ready for our relationship to move any further. We have a comfortable level of intimacy and perhaps our lives would be more fulfilling as friends. How much do we really know about each other? Can you ever truly know someone?’
Roger thinks, ‘The transmission is starting to make noise too. I’ll take it in. They’ll argue with me about the warranty. Well, I am not going to take this lying down. They are going to stand up for the warranty whether they like it or not!’
Diane thinks, ‘I’m too idealistic. I keep waiting for a knight on a white horse. Look at Roger’s face, he’s angry. I have no right to cause him pain for my school girl fantasy.’ Diane says out loud, “Roger, don’t torture yourself over this. Let it go!” Roger breathes deeply and says, “You’re right!”
Later that night, when their best friends ask each of them why they’re dating, they each say, “Because they understand me so well.”
We are different. Thank God for the differences. Use those differences in your marriage, so that your life might be more complete, and more fulfilling than it ever could be alone.
Gary Smalley & John Trent, Ph.D. The Language of Love (Pomona: Focus on the Family Publishing, 1988), 36.
E. Zaidel, “Auditory Language Comprehension in the Right Hemisphere: A Comparison with Child Language,” Language Acquisition and Language Breakdown (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1978).
Robert Kohn, “Patterns of Hemispheric Specialization in Pre-Schoolers,” Neuropsychologia,12 (1975) 505 – 512.
Gary Smalley & John Trent, Ph.D. The Language of Love (Pomona: Focus on the Family Publishing, 1988), 34.