Gender & Grace

I finally finished VanLeeuwen's book.  She asks all of the questions I have been asking for years regarding Christian assumptions  and conclusions about gender and sexuality, and she attempts to answer them according to her knowledge of science and consistent hermeneutical principles applied to Scripture.   I believe she succeeds, offering Christians a solid biblical approach to a host of questions that plague us.  For those of you who panic at the very thought of placing our gender views under the microscope, perhaps (*perhaps*) the closing paragraph of the book might put you at ease:

"When all is said and done, the struggle for Christian freedom is not between men and women, nor even between feminists and traditionalists.  The struggle is within each one of us, male and female, between the old person and the new person, between the flesh and the Spirit, between the impulse to be first among all and the call to become the servant of many.  Debates about sex and gender will be around for a long time to come, both in the community of the church and the community of social science.  But long after our current questions have been settled or forgotten, the radical words of Jesus to his followers, both women and men, will ring down through history from the Gospel of John: 'Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it cannot bear fruit.'  And this is a saying which will rightly continue to offend us all."