Calling names and being called

It has been said, pardon my language, that the worst thing you can call a man is a coward, and the worst thing you can call a woman is a whore. While you may be able to come up with a greater insult for a specific individual, it seems to be mostly true. It has no doubt been the start of many bar fights and cat fights. But why?

What is it about being called a coward that makes men raise their fists, even when they don’t respect the opinion of the offending party? What is it about being called a whore that makes women bristle, even when they know someone is just being catty? Why is that so much worse than being called stupid or fat or ugly or mean?

I may be reading too much into it, but I suspect it’s because those things go against the very nature of what it means to be a man or a woman. And it cuts to the very heart of our fallen nature. Hear me out.

If we’re to believe countless saints (and I’m inclined to), man (as a species, not a gender) is most fully alive when we become the people God has created us to be. If we remember back to the story of Genesis, we can get some idea of what that looks like.

When God created Adam, He “took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” (Gen 2:15). The word for “keep” here is the Hebrew shamar, the same word used when describing the covenant between God and Abraham and how priests would defend the temple. It means to guard over and protect. Then when God gives Adam the animals, and more importantly Eve, these come under his purview to shamar as well. So the responsibility and desire to protect and defend is ingrained in man (gender this time) from the beginning of creation.

What about women? Woman was created from Adam’s very side to be his “helpmate”, a word that I’m sure riles feminists everywhere. But the Hebrew word for helper here is ezer, a word mostly used to describe God in the Old Testament, as one who comes to the aid of, rather than as a subordinate, one who demonstrates power and strength, and therefore has the ability to help. “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). From the very beginning, woman was made to give her strength and self to one man, as a visible sign of the creative and self-giving love of God, in whose image she was made.

Now it’s starting to make more sense why we get so worked up by the words coward and whore. They are contrary to our very nature. Not only that, but they remind us of original sin, of us turning our back on God, and I think on some level, even for nonreligious people, that feels wrong.

When the serpent came to Eve, he played on her insecurity that she couldn’t sit back and receive God’s love, but had to grasp it for herself. She had to give up on Adam’s providing for her and do things for herself, in a sense giving herself away to the most seductive bidder.

And where was Adam? Sure as heck not shamaring his wife, not protecting the garden like he was supposed to be doing. He let evil in, and it cost him paradise.

So now, in this culture where masculinity and femininity are under attack and seem to shift with the daily newsfeeds, no one really even knows what it means to be a man or a woman. Yet deep down, we must still have some idea, or those insults wouldn't hurt so much. We know, intuitively, at our core, that men are to protect and defend. Women, children, the truth, goodness, beauty, all of it. And when they don't, when they act cowardly, they are not being the men God calls them to be. They know it, and they hate being called out on it.

We also know, at our core, that women were created to receive love, to bring their special gifts to the service of their loved ones, to trust God to provide, and--if married--to trust our husbands as well. When we start grasping at love or desires ourselves, when we abandon our commitments for the sake of things that are "a delight to the eyes"(Gen 3:6), we lose our dignity as women. We are no longer able to be a "helpmate" to anyone; we lose our strength and power. And when someone accuses us of that, even in a superficial way, we feel it.

So more than not calling people unnecessary names, I hope you take away from this a renewed sense that it is possible to recover our greatness. It is possible to become the men and women God created us to be, and in doing that, we will be fully alive and bring glory to Him. We just have to go back to the beginning.