The beauty of gender
John Eldredge

‘He created them male and female and blessed them.’
- Genesis 5:2

The masculine and feminine run throughout all creation.
As C.S. Lewis said, “Gender is a reality, and a more fundamental reality than sex.”
I am very aware of the pain and confusion the gender debate has caused many people. I believe God’s heart aches over his sons and daughters, and their search for identity and belovedness. Genesis 1:26-27 tell us: Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness”... So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female He created them.
Male and female He created us.

Gender is a source of great dignity, beauty, honor, and mutual respect. Many good people fear naming the differences between men and women at all, largely because they believe it will usher in discrimination and divisiveness. But this need not be. When we understand just how glorious gender is, how unique and utterly worthy of respect on all sides, I think we can find a better way in our relations. After all, Jesus – the most loving man ever – seemed to think that gender was essential to human understanding: ‘Haven’t you read,’ he replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator “made them male and female”’ (Matthew 19:4).

Gender simply must be at the level of the soul, in the deep and everlasting places within us. God doesn’t make generic people; He makes something very distinct – a man or a woman. In other words, there is a masculine heart and a feminine heart, which in their own ways reflect or portray to the world God’s heart.