Move Over, Rambo!

And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made He a woman,

and brought her unto the man.

Genesis 2:22

I was a young mother (with five children under the age of 8) when my husband asked a special favor of me.

"After the kids are in bed tonight," he said. "There is a Rambo marathon on television.  Would you watch a couple of the movies with me?"

Now I like action movies as well as anyone, but the Rambo movies had never particularly appealed to me. But since it meant so much to him, I said "yes."

I'll never forget one particular part of the movie. Rambo had been injured and was evidently in a lot of pain, but that didn't stop him. My husband turned to me, admiration in his eyes.

"Now that is a real man!" he told me. "He's bleeding and in pain, but he just grits his teeth and continues on with his mission."

I looked my husband squarely in the eye.

"That's no big deal," I replied. "Women do that every single month!"

There's no doubt about it, women can be as tough as nails, if the situation demands it. But like two sides of a coin, the other side of us is delicate and fragile. We are a true study in contrasts.  It's no wonder that men have such trouble understanding us.

The Bible describes us as the "weaker sex" and this is true in many ways. As a gender, we lack the
upper body strength of men. Our smaller lung capacity and lower red blood cell count causes us to have much less stamina than the opposite sex.  During World War II, factories were running around the clock to keep up with the needs of the military.  When work hours were raised from 8 to 10 hours a day, accidents among the women workers increased 150% while rates among men were unchanged.  It was determined that exhaustion was the number one cause of accidents in those cases. The long hours were just too much for the women.

That doesn't mean that we aren't pretty tough, in our own way.  Studies have shown that women can withstand extreme temperatures (both heat and cold) much better than men.  Despite Rambo's apparent insensity to pain, numerous studies show that women can tolerate much higher levels of pain. Recently, ABC news reported a study in which two men were hooked up to a machine that simulates the contractions of childbirth.  Though most labor lasts between 12 and 14 hours, these men lasted a mere two hours before pulling the plug.

However, few would debate the suggestion that women are more emotionally fragile than men.  And, despite what we would like to think, women have historically been more easily duped into believing false doctrine.  Eve was just the first of many to fall for Satan's lies. Women generally make up two-thirds of religious cults in America.

From the beginning of creation, we were created as a unique counterpart to man. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the original Hebrew wording.  In Genesis 2, we read that God formed (yatsar) both man and beasts. The word is intrinsically connected to the concept of a potter and his clay.

But when God prepares to create the woman in verse 22, He builds (banah) her. The word is not used for any other part of the creation process.  It is unique to the woman.

The word is later applied when Abram built an altar to the Lord and to describe the building of Solomon's temple. It seems fitting that this Hebrew word came to be used to express the concept of building a family; the same expression that we use in English today.

From this we can see that God had a very different approach to the creation of woman.  We were, and still are, unique in His eyes.  It is that uniqueness that makes us the perfect complement to man- even when our differences drive them crazy!

Since God created us so differently, it shouldn't be a surprise that women are so different from men in so many ways.