When God created man, he created them male and female. This divinely instituted gender differentiation holds the key to the success of any society or individual. As creatures, it is best for us to submit to God's design of sexual differentiation and all that such a differentiation brings into our lives.

There has been a sustained campaign to erase or minimise the divinely instituted gender differentiation from both inside and outside the Church. Those who wish to pretend that there are no differences between men and women have for long deployed various arguments to buttress their position.

The most common among them is the claim that men and women are equal. Any one who dares to question this claim is dismissed as a Pre-Cambrian ignoramus. The trap is a subtle one. Those who claim that men and women are "equal" do not qualify their statement. In what respect are a man and a woman equal? Is it an equality in terms of their strengths and abilities? Or does it mean that they both are "equal" before the law - equally liable to prosecution if found guilty? Or, is male-female "equality" merely a political one - by which they both have "equal" political rights?

An unqualified statement "men and women are equal" is as meaningful as the statement "apples and oranges are equal." Political and legal equalities are guarenteed by law in civil society. Therefore, any one who wishes to highlight the differences between the sexes, if he or she is not specific, falls prey to the designs of those who cannot think beyond political or legal terms. Men and women aren't equal either physically or emotionally. Gender differences aren't superficial; they are etched on every cell, down to the level of chromosomes.

Those who pretend to know everything dismiss "gender roles" as another flawed human invention. The task of bearing and rearing children, they would say, was given to women by oppressive men! And yet, none of these 'liberated' men or women have been able to modify their bodies in order to reassign or alter reproductory functions! Will they be able to produce altered men or women -- something akin to "seedless grapes"?

What about the task of bread-winning? The so-called enlightened women would ask, "Why should that be the exclusive preserve of men? Let us also do it and prove our mettle." That God, in the garden of Eden, assigned the responsibility of breadwinning to men and that of bearing children to women does not matter to them. They would gladly take upon themselves both the "labour" of childbearing and the "labour" of breadwinning!

In short, both men and women find it difficult to be what God has created them to be and to do what their specific creation entitles them to do. We are willing to be anyone else and to do anything else! The recent case of woman lawyer's choice to become a "man" illustrates this wayward tendency. In order to defeat "male dominance" in society, she paid the ultimate tribute to men by opting for a sex reassignment surgery. The success of the surgery is still suspect.

he Anglican Church's debate on the question of ordaining women as bishops has brought gender-debate to the fore once again. Those for the ordination of women candidates talk about gender equality. They want their church to grow out of "old-fashioned" and "biased" Biblical teachings, which they claim were written by men from a male-dominated society.

An arbiter in this gender war should certainly not be a man or a woman! Both men and women cannot but be biased. Both stand on either sides of the gender divide! A man cannot see a woman's perspective as a woman sees it. Neither can a woman see a man's perspective as a man sees it. In such an impasse, those who believe in the divine inspiration of Scriptures are at an advantage over those who see the good Book as a set of human writings. If the Bible is God's Word, inspired by the Holy Spirit, then it certainly is above human biases. The Scriptures thus help us to rise above our biases and to understand the meaning of our lives as men or women.

In the Church, the body of Christ, both men and women are equally precious before God. Men and women are equal as recipients of God's grace. However, men and women are assigned different roles. Men are called to lead and to exercise authority. Men who refuse to lead their Churches and families are as guilty before God as are women who refuse to submit to such leadership.

There are Christians who cannot stand the idea of a hierarchy in Church. Yet, the Bible is clear on this matter. "I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ." Are men protesting because Christ is their head? Or is Christ protesting about the Father being His Head? Then why should women protest about men being their head? We are all under God and the chain of command leads to the throne of God!

The Bible teaches that God created Eve after He created Adam. This was a deliberate divine action that supports another biblical teaching that Eve was created for Adam and not vice versa. The Bible's prohibition of a woman assuming authority over men in Church is not based on St. Paul's fancy but on the historical priority of the creation of Adam and on Eve's initial fall into sin (1 Timothy 2:12-14). Those unwilling to submit to God's authority and God's Word will dismiss this passage as archaic and irrelevant to modern society.

Those who demand ordination of women as bishops point out the failures of men as leaders. Men in leadership have failed in the past; they might fail in the future too. Women may be able to showcase excellent leadership. And yet, men's failures or women's abilities are not the factors that should decide who should lead the church. Women's exclusion from leadership does not mean that they are incapable or inefficient. Men are to lead because God wants them to do so. And women submit in order to please God. It's is God's design and purposes - not the standards of the world - that should hold sway in His Church.