And framing matters.

There’s a lot of sound and fury lately in Australia about Same-Sex Marriage, Safe Schools, and gender education. On a personal front, it’s been an especially sobering year as I reflect on my own relationship with God, and contemplate deeply how God designed humankind and what that means for me, a woman made in His image. I took a deep dive into Genesis and I’m still confronted by the overarching narrative of how God and Christ treat women. Growing up, I thought I understood His design but the closer I’ve been looking at this, the more troubled I am by what I’m finding.

And I’ve been equal parts unsettled and unbelievably excited.

Thing is, I’m now looking at my daughter and my son, and the responsibility of what lies ahead looms ever larger. Do I want my daughter to grow up learning what I learnt about womanhood? Or my son, for that matter? I thought I believed in the equality of the sexes, but now I’m wondering if I didn’t grow up buying into a form of second-class citizenship in this world that isn’t just wrong, but heretical.

And I don’t want that for my daughter. And I don’t want that for my son.

Words have power, and our words matter because they articulate ideas, and all ideas have consequences. I spoke very briefly — and perhaps not articulately enough — yesterday about how words frame issues. We know that instinctively, and we’re confronted by examples every time. Someone I was chatting to online yesterday gave a common example. When a woman is out front organising people in an assertive way, is she being bossy? Is she behaving like a man? Or is she leading people? How we use words shape attitudes, and they teach both our young men and women a lot about what is “allowed” and what “isn’t” for each of them.

And we often clip both their wings in the process.

This stuff matters. It goes right to the core of things. And I want the right things for my children.