Bible Text: Genesis 1:27 | Speaker: Darlene Sala | Series: Encouraging Words | Elaine Boosier says, “When women are depressed, they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country.” We laugh at that, but it’s true—men and women are indeed different. God created them that way. The Bible says, “God created man in his own image…male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

A few years ago an historian in northern England found a book called Womans [sic] Worth that dates back to the early 1600s. Its subtitle states that it is “A treatise proveinge by sundrie reasons that woemen do excel men.” Previous to this find, the earliest known feminist writings dated to the late 18th century, though most people think of the women’s movement as emerging around the start of the 20th century.

Whether or not women excel men, as the book claims, science has recently proven what men have believed for a long time—that women are far more complex than men. Here’s how. A man has an X and a Y chromosome. The Y chromosome determines maleness but otherwise does very little, scientists say. Men are largely products of one chromosome, the X. But women, as you no doubt know, have two X chromosomes, and the genes in them are very active. That means each woman is the product of about twice as many genetic instructions as any man. When they cracked the genetic code of the female X chromosome, researcher Huntington Willard of Duke University said, “Literally every one of the females we looked at had a different genetic story. In essence, there is not one human genome, but two, male and female.”

So, the Bible is right. And so are you men who said all along that women are complicated. Yet, when men and women understand how different we really are and respect those differences, we understand that each has what the other needs, and we value the unique qualities that each brings to a relationship.

Never forget it! You are truly God’s special creation!