The doctrine of imago Dei teaches that every human being, every man and woman, every boy and, yes, every girl is made in God’s image, destined to reflect His character and to represent Him on this earth. Our core identity comes from God’s identity. Pay attention: imago Dei is not simply a starting point for other doctrines, nor is it simply a means of ascribing equal worth to men and women (although it does). No, imago Dei is the most basic paradigm for how we understand our existence.

This is an unusual post for me. Most of the time I opt for crafted, essay-length pieces that are innocuous and affirming. Sorry, today’s different. Maybe it’s post-vacation angst. Or maybe I just can’t sit idly by and watch anymore.

This week, while catching up on emails and other things I’ve missed while away on vacation, two articles caught my attention. The first was a synopsis of a speech Vyckie Garrison, the founder of No Longer Quivering, gave at the 2014 national convention of American Atheists.  In it, Garrison describes how her life in the Biblical Patriarchy movement led to her rejecting Christianity as a whole. (For those who don’t know, “Biblical Patriarchy” is a subset of evangelical Christianity that is heavily defined by gender roles. Its main emphasis in on pursuing “biblical” family structures, with men assuming the role of “priest” for their families, mediating the members’ relationships with God.)

The second piece,“2 Reasons Why My Daughter Won’t Go to College,” was written by Karl Heitman, a pastor in Washington state. In it, he unintentionally confirmed much of what Garrison claimed to have experienced in biblical patriarchy. While the piece was ostensibly about the future education of his daughter, the sum total of his argument was that the highest calling for a girl is to be a wife and mother and that college doesn’t encourage that calling. Instead, he believes it sets women on a career path and independence from men. Within days, Matt Tarr, another pastor in the same family of churches, wrote a response entitled, “So… Can (emphasis mine) My Daughter Go to College?” In it, he argued that by all means, college is a valid option for our daughters because, among other things, it can “equip young women to be lovers of their husband, lovers of their children, and workers at home”

*sigh*

Please permit me to say (with all the deference and graciousness I can muster),

No.

No.

No.

No.

We educate girls and women for the same reason we educate boys and men. We educate our daughters because they are made in God’s image. Full. Stop.

This doesn’t mean that everyone should go to college or that all education happens in a classroom. It also doesn’t mean that we don’t weigh the cost of a college education against the practical usefulness of it. And it certainly doesn’t mean that any of us (male or female) can elevate getting a certain degree to the detriment of our closest relationships. What it does mean is that the choice to educate a child is not a gender-based decision because both men and women bear the image of a God of knowledge.

But there’s a bigger problem:

In both pieces, a girl’s identity was rooted in her relationship to a man. Arguing that a girl shouldn’t go to college because she should aspire to be a wife and mother positions her core sense of self in relationship to a husband. Arguing that she SHOULD go to college in order to be a better helpmeet does the exact same thing. And because it doesn’t change the point of reference, it doesn’t deal with the core issue—which incidentally was the very same issue that led Vyckie Garrison to embrace atheism. Her entire experience of Christianity was based in her relationship to a husband or father and NOT in relationship to Christ.

This is not simply an area of misunderstanding. This is a line of thinking that represents a much deeper, much more insidious problem. One that boarders on heresy because it distorts, and at times rejects, a key doctrine of the gospel: The doctrine of imago Dei.

The doctrine of imago Dei teaches that every human being, every man and woman, every boy and, yes, every girl is made in God’s image, destined to reflect His character and to represent Him on this earth. Our core identity comes from God’s identity. Pay attention: imago Dei is not simply a starting point for other doctrines, nor is it simply a means of ascribing equal worth to men and women (although it does). No, imago Dei is the most basic paradigm for how we understand our existence.

It is a truth that runs through the warp and weave of the entire Scripture. It informs everything about the gospel—what we were created to be, what sin is, how redemption happens, and what we will one day become. It is also the basis on which Jesus Christ, the God-Man, can redeem us. Simply put, the truth of imago Dei IS creation, justification, sanctification, and glorification all in one package.

And if you mess with it, you mess with the gospel.

This is why I’m so passionate about women’s discipleship and teaching women to find their identity in Christ, and not in a man or in gender roles. If we don’t get imago Dei right, if women don’t find theirfirst identity as image bearers destined to reflect the perfect Image Bearer, we will erect false gods and create an environment of legalism. An environment devoid of the gospel. In such an environment, women will either rely on their own ability to be “good” women, or they will become discouraged and depressed when they can’t meet the standard. And, as in Garrison’s case, when they can’t, they will walk away from “the faith” out of sheer self-preservation. Worse, if they do succeed in their righteous works, someday a whole host of them will stand before Christ saying, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name?”

Brothers and sisters, listen. This issue is the Achilles’ heel of many gospel-driven churches. Too many of us would rather fellowship with those who (appear) to align with us on gender and family structure, but who are denying a core doctrine of the gospel, than fellowship with those who hold to the gospel but apply it differently. Too many of us find more affinity with the man who doesn’t affirm the full personhood of his wife and daughters than with the gospel-driven woman who holds a ministry position that we are uncomfortable with. And in so doing, we have elevated our applications above the gospel.

I am hopeful that we are beginning to recover a richer understanding of imago Dei. Women contact me every day expressing their gratitude and joy over the truths in Made for More. Their weary hearts and parched souls are drinking deeply from the reality that God has made them in His own image and has destined them for glory. But one book is not enough. We must work together to recover the gospel as it applies to our understanding of gender and what it means to be made in God’s image. We must acknowledge that false doctrine comes from the right as often as it comes from the left. And we must speak against it as quickly as we would any other false teaching.

If we don’t, Vyckie Garrison’s story is just the tip of the iceberg.

Hannah Anderson is a wife of a pastor and a mother of three children.  This article first appeared on her blog, Sometimes a Light,and is used with permission.