Let me explain what I mean by that. When God created woman, we are told quite specifically that she was unlike the man, who was created from the dust of the ground. That’s easy to understand – our bodies are made up of normal minerals that you will find lying around the place – but God did not make woman from this dust of the ground; He took her from the side of man.

Old Matthew Henry says, “He didn’t take her from his head, so she would dominate him; and He didn't take her from his feet, so that he would trample all over her; He took her from his heart, that they might be one.” She was made of exactly the same substance that he was – there was a unity of being – but it became abundantly clear immediately that there was differentiation as well. She was described as somebody who was parallel to, equal with, complementary to him. In other words, you take a male man, and a female man – using man in the generic sense – you put them together, and you’ve got a whole that will in some way reflect the image of God. That’s what it says.

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One of the key things that we have to do is recognize that there is a oneness of maleness and femaleness, and there is a differentiation. As the French would say: We must learn to proclaim “viva la difference,” enjoy the difference, embrace the differentiation and recognize how the male and the female compliment and complete each other. This is the high view of marriage that Scripture teaches.

Now you see why we’ve got to be very careful before we take down the fence, particularly if we don’t understand why it was erected in the first place. I’ll grant you that there are problems with maleness and femaleness. If we do not embrace the differentiation, and we do not take the trouble to understand why He made us differently, instead of there being complement, there will be competition. There will be conflict instead of conjugal joy.

Deborah Tannen is a linguist. She wrote a book on the difficulties which we have in communicating through conversation. She complained, as she went on the talk shows, that while she had written twelve chapters in her book, they only wanted to talk about one of them, and that was the difficulties men and women have in communicating in conversation. So she went back and did more study on this particular subject of male and female communication, and wrote a second book. The titles of her two books are That’s Not What I Meant! and You Really Don’t Understand. I'm just sorry I did not write the books!

This is the sort of thing which she explains in her book: A husband says, on one occasion, “I’ve got a headache.” The wife immediately says, “Ah, honey, I had the most awful migraine yesterday. It was just dreadful. My head was just thumping; I couldn’t bear any light, I had to draw the drapes, I lay on my bed for six hours. I was sick to my stomach, I was totally nauseated. I tried to stand up to go to the bathroom, the room was just spinning, it was awful, and the whole of my body felt as if a Mack truck had run back and forwards over it.”