Complimentary Creatures

This is post is Part Four of a series. Swing by next week to read the next installment!

Over the last few weeks, we discovered how God has infused beauty into the world to show us Himself and that even we as humans reflect His artistry, not only as creatures He made but as His image bearers ¹. This week, we are taking a close look at a specific aspect of beauty.

Because all of God’s creation reflects who He is, everything that makes us human also reflects Him- after all, God designed all of creation with purpose and intention. Nothing is an accident to God, which means God was purposeful and intentional when He created two “types” of humans: male and female.

Beauty in the Differences

Have you ever seen a partner dance? One of those beautiful dances where the man and woman’s movements flow together, their bodies like a single living organism creating something new from what they were before the dance? These dances can move us to tears. They fill us with this sense of awe and a feeling that we are witnessing something truly profound.

This video is a great example. There is a special beauty in the differences between the man’s strength and the woman’s flexibility in these two dancers. They work together in a mesmerizing, synchronous way, not as opposites or exact equals, but as complementary partners.

This is a profound picture of the way God created men and women at our cores: neither sex is greater than the other, neither has superior strengths or more diminishing weaknesses- but the beauty of both is most clearly seen when working with the other.
If you are an artist (or remember color theory from a high school art class), you know that certain colors look best when they are next to their “complimentary” color: blue with orange, yellow with purple, red with green, white with black. We may think of these colors as opposites to each other, but that’s not actually right. An opposite opposes, or fights against. Instead of opposing, complementary colors highlight the vibrance of the other color, making it stand out and seem even more beautiful than if the color were on a canvas alone.

Take a moment to think of another complimentary force or thing in the universe. It won’t take long to realize they surround us:
We taste the creaminess of milk complementing the bitterness of coffee.
We hear the rumbling of a bass guitar complementing the chiming of a piano.
We smell the sweetness of flowers complementing the muskiness of fresh dirt.
We see the glow of the sunrise brilliantly against the dark silhouette of trees.

Our world is FULL of complimentary things. Wouldn’t it be depressing to have everything the same? To have none of this strange, glorious variety? God knew this when He crafted the universe, and I know He had it in mind when He crafted man and woman in the very beginning:

“The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”
– Genesis 2:20-25

Adam, the first man, saw that Eve, the first woman, was alike but not the same as him. He saw that God used the same general design for her (bone alike bone, flesh alike flesh), but who she was complimented who he was. Her strengths made up for his weaknesses (“taken out of man… they shall become one flesh”). In Adam’s few lines of poetry in verse 23 of Genesis 2, we hear a sense of awe in his voice. A sense of wonder at the way Eve is designed, both familiar yet so mysterious to Adam.

Although we don’t get to hear Eve’s thoughts on her first encounter with her husband, I presume she was thinking similarly and also noticed how Adam’s strengths complemented her own weaknesses. Eve was not blind- I imagine she too was rather dumbstruck by the beauty and strangeness of the man’s differences in comparison to herself, both the way he was created on a deeper soul-level and in the physical.

You know, God could have created a humanity that had one gender, that followed one “basic blueprint” of design without the physical and mental differences we experience between male and female, where everyone had matching physical structures and mental wiring. Even with only one gender, God could certainly have kept the same variety we see already in humanity within each gender, and wouldn’t it eliminate the confusion and frustration we experience with the differences in which men and women think and operate? Wouldn’t that be an easier world to live in? Probably. In a way, at least. But would this sort of world be as beautiful? Would God be reflected as well in this kind of humanity?

I believe God created male and female because He needed two genders to truly show us who He is. He didn’t create just one type of human to reflect His image because it wouldn’t be enough. He needed both male and female to be His image-reflectors and portray His character and nature in full.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
– Genesis 1:26-27

Interconnecting Masterpiece

Complimentary things are attractive. There is a completeness to them, a wholeness. A rightness that can only reflect the perfection of Eden.

The wholeness of the interconnecting is the truest form of beauty. It is like a million puzzle pieces, their shapes clicking together with others to make a masterpiece of completion. This is not possible when every piece has the same shape, the same strengths and weaknesses. The beauty of man and woman lies in the contrast and the working-together-ness of both. That is how God designed us.

Men, God designed you: knitting you like wool, chiseling you like marble, with intentionality. He made you a man on purpose, for a purpose.

Women, God designed you: weaving you like cloth, shaping you like clay, with intentionality. He made you a woman on purpose, for a purpose.

The following psalm is probably one you have heard before. Let’s slow down and read the words of it as if for the first time:

“You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
… For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.”
Psalm 139:5, 13-18

God designed all of you with intricacy- and that means our genders as well. Men and women together create a balance in the world that would not exist without both. God designed the universe to work together in this way.

Although our world is riddled with brokenness and confusion and misunderstanding because of sin, the same things also bring a vibrant intricacy to it. We may not ever fully understand the opposite sex this side of eternity- but does that mean we should give up on seeing the beauty in our differences?

That is the extraordinary thing about beauty- it perplexes us. The opposite sex perplexes us. Instead of letting our inability to fully understand, let’s use it to fuel our excitement to discover what God has designed, and the beauty He has created in every person, male and female.