Contra CBMW: Is the Body Enough?

Historically, the assumed inferiority of women was always based on an assumed lack of reason. The man was considered wiser, wherefore he was given the role of leading. A century ago, this assumption was proven wrong by science, but the idea that all women belong in a box have not gone away. Since we can no longer talk about silly women who don't have half a brain, the cheerleaders of the old model are now looking to the body for a reason why women belong in the home.

If a man can physically work, and if he is able to keep employment, then it is his special, God-given call to devote his strength, his intellect, and his attention to providing for his family. In following this pattern, we’re responding directly to Scripture, and also to the worldview taught us in our bodies. Men are not made for childbearing, as we have pointed out. Our bodies do not give us this revelation, to use a Wendell Berry word. They tell us otherwise. God has made men strong, in general, to provide. And he has not left us only with principles, but has supremely given us his Son, who laid down his life to make the provision of eternal life for his bride, the church. Internet controversies will wax and wane, but the image of the Son yielding his life for us will press successive generations of men into sacrificial service for those God has given them to lovingly lead.
(From: http://cbmw.org/men/manhood/studies-in-controversy-erick-erickson-and-sexual-distinctiveness/)

The concept is simple enough: men can't have children, wherefore they must work outside the house and lead the family. But what about women who are barren? Should they also work outside the house lead the family, since their bodies are clearly saying that they don't belong in the world of nurturing? And what about men who aren't physically able to work? Should they stay home with the children, while the wife works outside the house, although her body says she belongs in the world of nurturing? And what about widows, divorcees, unmarried men and women? What do their bodies say about their place in this world? Is potential enough, or do people actually have to have a baby, or a functioning body, to know where they belong?

Perhaps we are meant to study the original couple for an answer. The first humans lived in a garden, where they were naked and ate from the trees. There was no office, no home, no clothes to wash, no dinner to cook, and no babies. How did Adam and Eve know which sphere they belonged in? Did they perhaps divide the garden into two, one side for Adam, the other for Eve? Or did Adam draw a circle in the middle, tell Eve to stay put while he went out to collect fruit for both of them?

What we do know is that when the Serpent came for his infamous chat, Adam and Eve were together (The Hebrew word, 'imaah, denotes such intimacy that it is used to describe sex), Eve took the fruit (which ironically makes her the "fruitwinner"), and when God came looking for the two, he looked for both of them, not just the man. If the first humans roamed the garden freely without restrictions, perhaps God never designed humans to exist in separate spheres?

In the end, it because of sin that we have created the "breadwinner" and the "homemaker" to deal with a hostile world in which food must be produced through hard labor, and the weather forces us to seek shelter. Our bodies tell us that men and women are of the same species (since they can have children together), and that they are created to live on a planet commonly called the earth. Where we all belong on this earth is not mapped out by the body; that is something our minds must tell us.