From The River of God by Kim Cimio — Part III. Mission, Chapter 9
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)
Declining birth rates, the conflict between the sexes, the struggles of both women and men, women in church leadership, how to interpret Scripture on gender, and why male and female together reveal God.
What does “be fruitful and multiply” mean, and why are birth rates falling?
God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28), repeated to Noah and Jacob, calls humanity to grow in quality (fruitfulness, civilization) and quantity (numbers). From two people we have grown to about 8 billion. In the eighteenth century Thomas Malthus warned that population would outrun food, and in the twentieth century that fear seemed real as the population nearly quadrupled. The Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth (1972) predicted collapse. Governments urged smaller families; South Korea said two children, and China imposed its One Child Policy, under which countless baby girls were abandoned. Today these look like colossal mistakes. South Korea’s birth rate is around 0.72, China’s about 1.0, and nearly all of Europe is below replacement. The world population will likely peak this century. Shrinking populations mean shrinking economies, empty houses and abandoned towns, as already seen in Japan.
Why do you disagree with radical feminism?
One key factor in falling birth rates is gender conflict; many young people have such negative views of the other sex that they don’t want to date or marry. I disagree with radical feminists for two reasons. First, their antagonism toward men. Many women have suffered male aggression, but personal experience doesn’t justify prejudice against a whole group. In the 1960s, Malcolm X sought revenge for racial oppression, while Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of black and white children joining hands. King’s way of love and reconciliation is the right approach to gender too. Second, their desire to control other women. They seem to accept only certain choices, like tech careers without children, and treat a woman who leaves her career to raise children as a victim. Telling all women they must be strong burdens those who want quiet, peaceful lives. That’s why fewer than half of European women call themselves feminists, while nearly all support women’s rights.
What injustices have women suffered, and does feminism have a role?
Yes. I grew up seeing women’s suffering. Traditional Confucianism in Korea taught that men are valuable and women worthless; poor families sent boys to college and girls to work. Films like Nine to Five and shows like Mad Men show how recently working women were routinely harassed. #MeToo revealed how widespread sexual violence still is. I’ve seen pamphlets from a former Soviet country advising military wives who are beaten to hide their bruises and ask forgiveness. Dowry systems turn marriage into an economic transaction in which women who can’t meet demands face violence or death. Politically, US women gained the vote in 1920, fifty years after black men; Switzerland only in 1971, Saudi Arabia in 2011, and the Taliban has since taken it away again in Afghanistan. Many women still suffer simply for being women. This is a great evil, and feminism has a role to play.
What challenges do men and boys face today?
Media often portrays men as stupid and immature: Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin, Charlie Harper, even loving but childish Phil Dunphy. The “lovable manchild” trope teaches boys that avoiding responsibility is funny rather than shameful. Boys are falling behind in school, and many working-class jobs have disappeared. Some men react by embracing voices of discipline like Jordan Peterson, or weightlifting, martial arts, Stoicism and traditional crafts. More alarmingly, others turn to the “manosphere,” from pickup artists to Andrew Tate, or retreat into games and pornography, or join incel communities that blame women. Dating apps amplify their sense of inadequacy. Young men know they are men but not how to be men; fathers were often absent or distant, and rites of passage have vanished. When they hear “toxic masculinity,” many hear a condemnation of maleness itself. Their misogyny is not justified, but we should try to understand them before judging.
Can women be leaders in the church?
I believe so. Korea was once deeply unequal, but today gender equality is highly valued. I never heard of “wives submitting to husbands” there; Korean wives often manage the household finances, and most denominations ordain women. So I was surprised that some Christians in Europe doubt women can lead. Women have succeeded in every profession, and countless women serve in the church; it would be unfair to benefit from their service while denying them leadership. In YWAM we believe women are called to lead alongside men. Loren Cunningham co-authored Why Not Women with David Hamilton and released women like Corrie ten Boom and Joy Dawson into ministry, and we say YWAM was founded by Darlene as well as Loren. When a male teacher says it is God’s will for men to lead, it sounds as self-serving as a powerful nation saying it is God’s will for it to rule others.
How should we interpret Bible passages about women and slavery?
We accept the Bible’s authority as God’s inspired word, but that doesn’t mean reading everything as literally as possible, and we don’t. Paul says a woman who prays with her head uncovered dishonors her head (1 Corinthians 11:5), yet Protestant churches treat this as instruction for the original recipients. We must always ask how to apply Scripture today; that is part of what Luther meant by a church always reforming. Without this, we would be trying to reproduce an ancient culture, as some religious movements try to preserve seventh-century Arabia. What was progressive then can be backward now. Ephesians 6:5 tells slaves to obey their masters, but a strictly literal reading might conclude we need slavery to live biblically, and many nineteenth-century American Christians did defend slavery that way. Extreme literalism can be dangerous.
Why does the Bible contain commands that don’t reflect God’s perfect will, like on divorce and slavery?
Jesus said Moses allowed divorce “because of your hardness of heart, but from the beginning it was not so” (Matthew 19:8). Without divorce, some would rather harm their spouse, and in a patriarchal society a wife could be trapped in a dead marriage while her husband moved on. An orderly divorce was the best option in that world, but God’s ideal remains a couple living together in love. God’s will is perfect, but reality falls short, so he often gives what fits an age. Slavery is an example. Scripture points against it (“For freedom Christ has set us free,” Galatians 5:1), but if Paul had declared slavery wrong, the church would have become a political movement. Instead Christians treated each other as Christians, freed slaves voluntarily, and over two thousand years helped abolish slavery. Still, this principle doesn’t let us ignore passages we dislike. Paul’s teaching on homosexuality (Romans 1:26–27), for example, went against a Greco-Roman culture that widely accepted it, so it cannot be explained away as cultural accommodation.
Is gender only a social construct?
I don’t think so. Physical differences are undeniable: men don’t get pregnant; men have denser bones and more muscle; women have wider pelvises and hormonal cycles that affect energy and immunity. Saying “that’s sex, gender is still constructed” ignores our bodies too much. Men and women also differ in tendencies. From early childhood, boys generally prefer cars, robots and competitive games, girls dolls, stories and cooperative play. Newborn boys look longer at mechanical mobiles, girls at faces, and young monkeys show similar toy preferences. There are exceptions, as some women are taller than some men, but exceptions don’t erase general traits. Nor can parental expectation explain everything; no parent wants loud, unruly boys, yet that is how many behave. I believe hormones reveal who we are rather than determine it: you have high testosterone because you are a man, not the other way round.
How do men and women differ in their relationship to beauty and the body?
A popular meme shows a bare apartment with a chair and a TV, captioned by a woman: “Guys really live in apartments like this and don’t see any issue.” Most of my male students don’t. For a man, function trumps form; a wall’s job is to stand. For a woman, home expresses who she is, and a bare wall is a missed opportunity. Linking women with beauty can be dangerous; as Naomi Wolf showed in The Beauty Myth, beauty standards have oppressed women, and social media makes it worse. Some react by rejecting beauty altogether (“escaping the corset” in Korea, “goblin mode” in the West). But taking away the freedom to be beautiful is also oppression. Many women enjoy creating beauty for their own satisfaction, and men need their leadership in it. Men also tend to see themselves as brains and treat their bodies harshly, while women tend to be at one with their bodies and cherish them.
Why do many men struggle to find their place in modern civilization?
Primitive society is ruled by violence, with little beauty and much pain; civilization offers beauty, peace and little pain. Men played vital roles in building it, but the desire for peace without violence is more associated with femininity, so in that sense civilization is a feminine project. In primitive societies a man’s strength, aggression and risk-taking were needed; in civilization, an aggressive man is a troublemaker or criminal. That’s partly why games are so popular among men: there they can still fight, adventure and win glory. Civilization also changed relationships. In the Iliad, the victor simply takes the loser’s woman; today a man must win a woman’s heart, which is complicated, and pornography appeals partly because it returns to objectification. Nothing justifies that, and pornography harms both makers and viewers. Civilization is a great blessing, but men must now be wise as well as strong. We need to raise men secure in their masculinity who relate to women in healthy ways.
Why did God create humanity male and female?
“God created man in his own image… male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Even amid today’s gender tension, both men and women are precious creations of God. We fall in love because that is how we fulfill his command to be fruitful and multiply; it is natural for men and women to love each other, and hatred and distrust between the sexes is not what God wants. God created male and female to reveal himself through them. He is not only masculine or feminine; we understand him only when we think of masculinity and femininity together. Carl Jung said a man’s soul is feminine and a woman’s masculine. In love, I see my soul in a woman and she sees hers in me, and that is also how we discover God. The alternative is to be alone, which God called “not good” (Genesis 2:18).
Source: Kim Cimio, The River of God (Vision & Logic, 2025), chapter 9, “Why Not Women?.” Answers are condensed from the book in the author’s words.
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