Yeah, men and women are different. So is everyone.
John Gray wrote a book some years ago called Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, in which he used the metaphor of men and women being from entirely different planets to state something ridiculously simple: Men and women are different.
Society has been so focused on equality—on the idea that women can do the same things that men can, that women are just as good as men, et cetera, ad nauseam—that we appear to have forgotten that men and women are different. They think differently, they act differently, and of course the plumbing works different ways.
Well, duh. Yet sometimes all you need to do to create a marketing bonanza is to create a very simple thing that catches on, then sell a bunch of spin-offs to go along with it. So now we have his book, various book-inspired calendars, day planners, secular devotionals, board and video games, and even an obnoxious TV show.
People on the Bethany University campus are currently attempting to use Gray’s premise to point out that men and women are different. Again, duh. But what’s worse is that, on this campus, we aren’t dealing with men and women. Most of the time, we are dealing with boys and girls, neither of whom are mature enough to date, but think they are because they’ve managed to live for a certain number of years. I’ve ranted on this before.
And what’s also worse is that Gray’s metaphor isn’t comprehensive enough. It’s not just that men and women are different. Everyone is different. Two men aren’t going to think exactly the same way about anything, much less women; and trying to say, “All men think this way” is to make the same mistake John Elderidge did in his piece-of-crap book Wild at Heart. And, from my experience, let me tell you that it’s definitely true that no two women are alike.
The sad fact is that the reason why people have unsuccessful relationships is because they’ve never yet had a healthy one. So my advice to all of them is: Work on your relationship with Jesus first, before you screw up another relationship with anyone else. If that relationship is working, everything else will fall into place. Because Jesus is the only completely healthy person in the universe. True, he has the inconvenience of being invisible most of the time; but sometimes that’s actually a convenience. (As you get to know him, you’ll realize why this is.)
In the meanwhile, it’s interesting to read the comments Bethany students have been scrawling all over a swath of butcher paper in the cafΓ©. They’ve been encouraged to leave comments about the opposite sex. So most of the boys’ comments are about girls being too difficult, and the girls’ comments are about boys being too immature. I would say these responses reflect the fact that they’re all still children.
Someday they may grow out of it… one would hope.