In “other” Words: Gentleness — It’s Not Just for Women

“Gen­tle­ness is part of being fem­i­nine — part of being a woman, and God made us dis­tinctly dif­fer­ent from men on purpose!” ~~ Melanie Chit­wood (Proverbs 31 Ministries) ~~

The quote for this week actu­ally comes from a devo­tion enti­tled “A Gen­tle Breeze or a Sledge Ham­mer” which is aimed exclu­sively at women and based upon this verse:

But the Holy Spirit pro­duces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kind­ness, good­ness, faith­ful­ness, gen­tle­ness, and self-control.

Gala­tians 5:22–23 (NLT)

In recent months, I have been read­ing The Mes­sage and absolutely love it. Here’s how the same pas­sage is pre­sented in that translation:

But what hap­pens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard — things like affec­tion for oth­ers, exu­ber­ance about life, seren­ity. We develop a will­ing­ness to stick with things, a sense of com­pas­sion in the heart, and a con­vic­tion that a basic holi­ness per­me­ates things and peo­ple. We find our­selves involved in loyal com­mit­ments, not need­ing to force our way in life, able to mar­shal and direct our ener­gies wisely.

The Mes­sage was cre­ated from the orig­i­nal Greek in order to help read­ers expe­ri­ence the “vital­ity and direct­ness” of the texts in the same way as the ear­li­est audi­ences. It was not intended to be a study Bible. Rather, “The Mes­sage strives to help read­ers hear the liv­ing Word of God—the Bible—in a way that engages and intrigues us right where we are.” I gen­er­ally com­pare sev­eral dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the same pas­sages because I learn a great deal by com­par­ing sev­eral trans­la­tions and con­sid­er­ing the var­i­ous ways in which the trans­la­tions dif­fer slightly.

Inter­est­ingly, I have not found a sin­gle trans­la­tion that lim­its the above-cited verses’ appli­ca­tion to women. Gen­tle­ness is not the sole province of women and it is not only wrong to sug­gest that it is, it is harm­ful and destruc­tive. Men are equally capa­ble of gen­tle­ness and to prove that propo­si­tion, you need look no fur­ther than the Bible which ref­er­ences “the gen­tle but firm spirit of Christ” (2 Corinthi­ans 10:1) and admon­ishes all per­sons to be “gen­tle with one another” (Eph­esians 4:31). The Psalms por­tray the diverse char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Divine Cre­ator, gen­tle­ness and com­pas­sion along­side strength and ferocity.

Church lead­ers must be “not pushy, but gen­tle” (1 Tim­o­thy 3:1). Iron­i­cally, some denom­i­na­tions rely upon that very book to jus­tify their denial of lead­er­ship posi­tions to women.

With all due respect to Ms. Chit­wood, gen­der stereo­types such as those set forth in her devo­tion are out­dated, inap­pro­pri­ate, and do not advance the very prin­ci­ple she espouses, i.e., the cre­ation and main­te­nance of a gen­tle and lov­ing mar­i­tal relationship.

After all, who was the first real fem­i­nist? None other than Jesus Christ him­self. Lest you be tempted to quit read­ing and close the browser win­dow right now, con­sider that the true mean­ing of “fem­i­nism” — a dirty word among many Chris­t­ian women — is “the doc­trine advo­cat­ing social, polit­i­cal, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.” Who could argue with a straight face that there is any­thing wrong with those goals? Cer­tainly not Jesus, who said:

Hus­bands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church — a love marked by giv­ing, not get­ting. Christ’s love makes the church whole. His words evoke her beauty. Every­thing he does and says is designed to bring the best out of her, dress­ing her in daz­zling white silk, radi­ant with holi­ness. And that is how hus­bands ought to love their wives. They’re really doing them­selves a favor — since they’re already “one” in marriage.

Eph­esians 5:25–28

Those were rad­i­cal words in those days! Jesus was a rad­i­cal fem­i­nist! Putting women on the same level as Jesus’ church on earth was a wild idea in an age when women had absolutely no value or stand­ing in the cul­ture, and were bought and sold like the chat­tel that they were. I believe that today, given the steps that have been taken toward the estab­lish­ment of an egal­i­tar­ian soci­ety, he would direct his words to men and women.

“Gen­tle­ness is part of being fem­i­nine human — part of being a woman lov­ing and com­pas­sion­ate human being, and God made us dis­tinctly no dif­fer­ent from men in this regard on pur­pose! God wants us — male and female — to bring our gen­tle­ness to our mar­riages, to love our hus­bands spouse with the ten­der love of God. Our ten­der­ness woos our hus­bands spouse and allows them us to be vul­ner­a­ble with each other in return.”

With that foun­da­tion, Ms. Chitwood’s “Appli­ca­tion Steps” are insight­ful and help­ful to all of us in our rela­tion­ships with each other:

Appli­ca­tion Steps:

• Enjoy God’s quiet pres­ence and ten­der love.
• Don’t let harsh­ness become a bad habit. Begin to replace it with gentleness.
• Prac­tice patience.
• Refrain from inter­rupt­ing, cor­rect­ing or nag­ging your husband/wife.
• Think before you speak. Do you really need to say what you’re about to say?
• Spend time with friends or fam­ily — male and female — who have a gen­tle spirit and observe.

Reflec­tions:

• How do you think being gen­tle helps your mar­riage? How does harsh­ness hin­der your marriage?
• Do you have any fears about being gen­tle toward your hus­band spouse? Be hon­est before the Lord and ask Him to give you His gentleness.

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