What Are Women For?

Prerequisite

    This isn't something I necessarily want to write about. I don't often care about the "You're not qualified to talk about this issue" push-back for far reaching issues that affect everyone and therefore require an opinion. You can't have an opinion of what men are for without having an opinion about what women are for.

    This issue, however, is one of those rare ones that I'd prefer to not talk about at all. That's because my opinions on the subject have already cost me greatly, what with Patriarchy being "a semi-heretical view." The sure-fire way to stir up controversy in many churches is to point out where women are teaching and preaching. Take for example in my former church: the adult Sunday School class was an open discussion that was "led" by an elder where anyone could raise their hand and offer a comment or question. At one point the Pastor made a statement about a text, to which his wife responded, "I think you're wrong," and then proceeded to give her contradictory understanding of what the text meant. This may not be happening in your church, but it's still hard to see these examples in churches where they are happening when there are so many excuses that allow people raised with an egalitarian mindset to excuse such disrespectful behavior ("the truth is more important than good order" [for people we like], "she's just blunt," "that's not public preaching/teaching," etc.). To state it more plainly, we all have blind-spots and it's possible you aren't noticing them simply because you are not noticing them.

    Anyway, I've been burnt by Egalitarians (who refer to themselves as Complementarians) that wanted to defend having women preaching mini-sermons during their "Special Music" segment of their liturgy. That's not hyperbole: it was the last conversation I had with my sister prior to things blowing up. Defending/believing that the world is fundamentally Patriarchal ruined my life. The bible is so incredibly clear on this issue yes, but (practically speaking) it's never been of any benefit for me to discuss it.

Introduction

    Still, at a recent men's meeting we had a discussion about "raising our daughters" and "preparing them for dating/marriage." I didn't really want to go since my oldest daughter isn't even 10 years old. And having gone through the ringer with the whole courtship/dating thing myself, it's another area that I've made up my mind on and just don't want to discuss unless it's necessary. But I went and, among other things discussed, the issue of women's roles in a larger society came up. There was general agreement that the ideal situation for women working outside of the home would be within a trusted family/church community, whether that be at a family-owned grocery store, as a teacher (likely in a private school), or even on a construction site. And there was general agreement that women in military positions is disallowed by scripture. And there was plenty of room left open for women taking part in roles that attract more stereotypical feminine virtues, such as mercy ministries (nursing for example).

    The point I wanted to emphasize there (and intend to emphasize in this post) is the idolization of being a wife, mother, and homemaker for women. And even with the push of having a men's meeting forcing me to think about this, I wouldn't be making this post if it were just for that. The reason I'm making my post is because in a conversation we had about it later my wife told me "Women exist to serve men."

    That is so wrong. I didn't teach her that. I didn't demand that. I reject that notion 100% and always have. Just because scripture says "Honor your father and mother," it doesn't mean sons exist to serve their parents. It doesn't mean daughters exist to serve their parents. We all know this. And, in the same way, when Ephesians commands wives to "submit to their husbands," that is not what they "exist" for. When God created Eve, that is not what Eve existed for. That is certainly what obedience to God demands, but there's a certain careless idolatry that turns this command into the entire reason for a woman's existence. She was created to obey God, yes. A wife cannot obey God without submitting to her husband, yes. But that wife exists to glorify God prior to her marriage and will continue to exist to glorify God apart from her husband and children for all eternity.

Idolizing Marriage

    It's a subtle lie, like all the best lies are. The closest approximation to the problem for men that I can think of is the constant preaching that makes preachers out to be the most important people in the world, which in turn can cause men to become discontent with their secular work or feel a call to the ministry when God never called them to it. It doesn't help when practically gnostic preachers redefine "success in business" as "being a part of the Babylonian system" (which is a very effective way to guilt trip the "greedy-rich" in your congregation to feel the need to fund your ministry, as it is the only thing in the world that matters). But I'm getting off topic: men want to do the most important work and are often times told the only option ~that really pleases God~ is explicit Christian ministry. In the same way, women want to do the most important work, so being a wife, mother, and homemaker in order to bring eternal souls into the world that will glorify God for all eternity is the ideal way they can please God. To state it another way, Christian circles tend to expect men to go through a mold and come out the other side looking scholarly and winsome like Tim Keller. For women, we expect them to train themselves to look like Laura Ingles of Little House on the Prairie fame.

    And for most people, that's it. There's no second thought given. So we prepare our daughters for marriage. She might go to college, sure, but that's really just a secondary option to help her prepare for teaching/ministry work for her future family and church community. And maybe she'll meet her future husband there? If there's no godly, qualified, and/or suitable men in her immediate community we can only hope so.

    Now I agree that gospel ministry is a weighty calling worthy of all men's respect when done well on this side of eternity. I also agree that being a wife and mother is a glorious calling intrinsically worthy of honor greater than any secular work/career. I also believe that marriage is normative and has particular implications that are more costly for women than for men. Marriage should be promoted and expected for most women, and none of them need you to tell them that. I'm not arguing against that notion in this article; the idolatry of marriage that I'm arguing against is a willing surrender of the humanity of women in exchange for what they have to offer the world. The temptation for women to exist "for breeding purposes only" is very much present in reformed circles, accepted by parents and singles without them even realizing it.

    This limitation of women to the role of "for breeding purposes only" can be present even among highly educated, highly intelligent girls and their families. Let's look at a thought experiment involving women police officers. Have you ever said or thought "Women shouldn't be police officers: it's a militant role and we shouldn't put them in such dangerous situations." I understand and I agree somewhat: I don't think women should be "patrol" officers. But do you want your daughters frisked by a male officer if they're ever arrested? And is that not something necessary to be done in a lot of criminal cases? With the state of the world as it is now, most church-going people's minds will jump to wrongful arrests due to wicked charges with the tyrannical laws we have governing us and the abuses that go along with such evil behavior (being arrested for protesting outside of a planned parenthood, for example). But as someone who grew up in Decatur Illinois I am well aware of low-life women who will smuggle whatever they feel like on their person where searching them is mandatory for drug charges, assault charges, etc.

    So I believe there should be female police officers in order to assist with female criminals. I believe there is nothing wrong with a female detective, especially considering most detective work is just sifting through files and electronic records today. There's nothing wrong with a female chemist either. And obviously we want female doctors, midwives, and nurses. So there are roles that require a high level of education that should be wide open for women to fill. I don't even mind women pilots: the DEI hires at airports were an injustice to them because it made the women who worked hard to earn those roles look unqualified. Gender is always a necessary consideration when it comes to hiring practices but making it a qualification hurts everyone involved.

    And that's really my point. There are plenty of men who aren't qualified for leadership in the church. Is theology of no value to them and the women who are disqualified by their gender? There are also plenty of men who aren't qualified for military service. It's not being a man that makes you fit for the role, it's just one of the necessary considerations. Being a woman certainly disqualifies you from a military role, but that doesn't mean women shouldn't ever learn self-defense or anything else related to combat (especially in a day and age where proficiency in firearms removes the need for any questionable physical contact). We all love Eowyn in the Lord of the Rings for her role in defeating the Lich King: the fact that she was a shield maiden proficient in combat precedes the events of the story. We shouldn't ever be opposed to teaching girls/women skills that would serve them well or that they are interested in. They may use them differently and in a context that's typically focused within an already established community, and in areas of physical strength there's an obvious gap between their highest potential and your average male's potential (like sports or weight-lifting), but there's nothing that requires us to treat women like dainty-little children who would break under the slightest bit of weight.

    Most people never think about this. And it's not that they're actively pushing girls to forget about doing anything with their life and focus only on marriage and family some day: there's just nothing else they hope to see them accomplish. And since most young girls are already inclined toward playing house, taking care of their dolls, and roleplaying the future they're already expecting, it's not like they even need to be encouraged toward thinking about marriage and family as they grow older. But then they start to get to an age where marriage is an option without a godly man in sight, so both the young hopeful girl who's had no thought of any pursuits outside of marriage and her parents start to be tempted toward bitterness/discontentment as they pivot toward something to distract her while she waits for that man to show up.

    In this way, Christian families are unintentionally roleplaying the story of Rapunzel. There are three key elements to the story that repeat themself in real life all the time: the tower (isolation), the escape (marriage), and the happily ever after (carrying over the effects of youth wasted on longing for marriage).

Isolation (The Tower)

    Like the witch in the story, parents lock their daughters away in a tower by creating the spaces that she is allowed to interact in, usually with some amount of supervision. In the name of protection and safety they create isolation. Sometimes the towers are horrible (abusive homes that have little to no interaction with the outside world: whether hippies or Christians these types of situations do exist). Sometimes the towers are homeschool groups and churches. This is pretty normal (even if there are some dangerous groups to be part of at this level), but even in a normal/safe/smaller community girls can still FEEL like they're locked in a tower that can't be escaped from. Even if the girl goes to a private or public school, it can still FEEL like the people she's allowed to spend time with outside of school hours are a very limited pool without much hope of escape. It's not so much about the number of people she interacts with on a regular basis: the sense of entrapment in a situation beyond her control is all that's required.

Marriage (The Escape)

    And all the while these church girls are stuck waiting for someone from the outside to wonder into their group and rescue them from their life of tedium. The danger here is that they'll fall for the first guy that crosses their path because they're so desperate for the escape. I've seen enough pregnancies before marriage in Christian circles throughout my own life to know this to be true: immaturity and desperation breed life-altering consequences. Even in the original Rapunzel fairy-tale, the witch figures out that there's been a guy visiting her because her belly is getting big.

    But it doesn't haven't to have such a desperate conclusion for the effect to be noticeable: a girl in a good family may be just as desperately waiting for any guy to ask her dad for permission to date her. It's the obsession with marriage that's the problem here, not the attention from guys or lack thereof. In the end, marriage becomes both a way of escape and the beginning of her real adult life, and everything that came before it was just waiting for that rescue to occur.

Happily Ever After(?)

    And while every step of the way there's a chance to correct course among Christians, sometimes girls even carry this mindset into marriage. Not every marriage is a "happily ever after," and that's still true for Christian marriages unfortunately. What initially felt like an escape from the mundane prison of a former life soon becomes a prison of her own making. Marriage isn't all it was cracked up to be. And now what should have been relief and purpose becomes the source of frustration and strife. Proverbs warns about "the continual drippings of a contentious wife;" these women exist and had to come from somewhere. Sometimes they are the very women doing everything they can to "submit to their own husband." The problem is her idea of submission has no role for herself apart from what she imagines her husband wants. She'll apologize if her husband ever has to lift a finger to do what falls under her arbitrary responsibility over kids, cooking, and cleaning, because God forbid she ever needs help in the role God assigned her. So this type of woman just becomes a broken, miserable person to be around, because everything she is has been defined by a man who's become more of a slave-master than he is her husband.

    And she did it to herself. She did it by turning marriage into an idol. She did it by creating this abstract ideal that she always imagined "the perfect wife" would be like which the ideal husband would find attractive and that's all she's ever aimed for. Regardless of the context of her actual marriage to her actual husband, she knows what submission is and her husband should be grateful to have married such a wonderful woman. In the same vein, she can't ask questions because she should already know what her husband and children want and need before they can even ask. So she wastes her time doing things that don't need done and that no one asked her to do only to get upset at the ungrateful people in her life that can't see how good they have it.

    Of course, some good women who have strong marriages feel this way from time to time because we're all sinners. And of course everyone has the capability to do intelligent, considerate, and necessary things for the people they love from time to time without ever being asked simply out of the kindness of their heart. And of course again, some men are abusive and have unreasonable expectations for their wives that they can never meet. There are all sorts of caveats that could be made here, but I'm not trying to describe the only type of woman who ever acts this way or to exhaust all the particular examples of how this mentality is displayed: the point is to give a few practical examples of how the idolatry of marriages creates women who mistake their unwanted "obedience" for righteousness. The type of woman I've described above has thought about nothing but marriage for her whole life and all it's done has made her marriage miserable.

    It is possible to be miserable while married even when both spouses have a high view of marriage. How does that happen? Yes it's because both of them are sinners. But you don't need both of them to be stupid to ruin a marriage: one of them is enough for that. And while men and women both have a multitude of idiotic actions and ideas they can implement to ruin their marriages, I'm talking about a singular one that's problematic in how a woman views herself in this one. I'm not saying woman are worse or the source of all strife in marriage: I'm saying this one form of idolatry has deadly serious consequences that have long gone unnoticed by the church.

    Some women love the idea of marriage more than they love their husbands. After all, that was supposed to cure everything that ailed them when they were single. There's no more loneliness in marriage, but for some reason there is in this one so it must be his fault. And then there's the home and kitchen that I can mold my husband into a handy-man to shape it into everything I need; if only he had learned those skills instead of being such a deadbeat. You can even see it in a couple who are struggling to get pregnant: how many women have suffered depression because they feel like they are somehow less of a person for struggling to have children, as if they're failing in the calling God didn't give them in that moment?

Summation

    The underlying problem in everything I've addressed so far is that we've flipped the script so that women exist for marriage rather than marriage existing for the shared benefit of a man and wife, who both exist to glorify God. But the image of God in women is not affected by how many children they have or even whether or not they are married. The old maid that has served God faithfully and goes to her grave having never married is just as much made in the image of God as the woman who bore 10 children and faithfully raised them. Because the value and worth that every human (man, woman, boy, or girl) brings into the world is found first in the transcendent value of their reflection of the God whose image they are made in and only secondarily in the faithfulness with which they serve him. And, frankly, faithfulness doesn't always include marriage.

    "Are you saying we shouldn't prepare our daughters for marriage?"

    Heavens no. What I'm saying is that we should prepare our daughters for way more than that. The tragedy in the story of Rapunzel isn't that she's rescued in the end: the tragedy is that she was trapped in the tower for so long. Stop putting girls in that tower.

Correcting Course

    If I could stick to the Rapunzel reference for a moment longer, I really like the adaptations that Disney's "Tangled" made to the original story. Rapunzel is a victim, but she's also a willing victim because she believes the lies Mother Gothel tells her ("the outside world is a dangerous place full of horrible, selfish people. You must stay in this tower where you are safe"). She's not looking for rescue or escape. She's content to believe her mother has her best interest at heart. So she stays in the tower. In the opening song "When Will My Life Begin?", however, she's desperate to see what the floating lights are about because she believes they are meant for her. And since she's the missing Princess and they represent her lost life and ultimate reality, the desire represents a calling back to that life. She has a "dream," and despite how silly that dream sounds in concept it's a mission that defines everything about her, including the story that came before and the one that follows after. Then a man just happens to stumble into a story that's already taking place. She has a dream, she has a drive, and she expects that man to help her achieve it.

    In the same way, we ought to encourage our daughters to pursue what they love. I mean, what do we tell young men who long to get married but can't find a wife? "Find your mission/calling and get busy doing it." "Use this time of singleness to store up, prepare, and build for that time when you finally do find a good woman who will share your mission and labor, and even if you don't find one to aid you in your mission, you'll still be doing the work the Lord called you to."

    I think that's good advice. But my controversial take is that I think that's good advice for girls too. I believe women ought to have a mission of their own apart from marriage someday. I think it's a really bad thing to tell them that they're only path to true holiness/fulfilment is as a wife and mother, making everything they seek in life revolve around men. Women should also be busy about their own mission until God brings a man into their life that aligns with their calling. She may have to give up her mission in order to submit to her suitor or a man may be incompatible because their goals do not align: that's an inarguable part of the dating process (for example: He wants to be a missionary to China, but she considers the implications of child-bearing and caring for a family in a foreign country hostile to their faith contrary to what she wants). The problem is that most women are only concerned with a man and sometimes his mission while they don't have a mission of their own and are just waiting for him to give them one. Often time these things work themselves out, but for some couples it's a trap and a snare leading to a miserable marriage between miserable people.

    So I guess all I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't raise boring women. She ought to be more than beautiful: she ought to be Proverbs 31 woman, skilled in labor, skilled in trade, a prize to be fought for because of the tremdeous value her life brings to the world, and the glory and crown of her husband. She won't get to be that way if all she ever hears is that she's on this earth exclusively to make babies. So someone give her a hammer and teach her how to build a house. But also teach her how to garden. And show her how to use a firearm. But also teach her how to dance. Show her how to run a business, and whatever other skills you have, pass them down to her too. She may not use them in the same way a boy would but she should still have access to them to use at her own discretion. Our goals as a parent should be to raise a girl that it hurts to hand over in marriage because her work is so excellent that her marriage is an irreplaceable loss.

    Most importantly of all as parents with young girls, just encourage her to pursue whatever she wants to pursue in obedience to Christ. If that's marriage, great. If that's a higher education, great. If it's art, great. If she gets interrupted in pursuit of her dreams and meets a man that she wants to marry, great. If she never meets a man and lives a life devoted to the service of her community, church, or business, she probably doesn't want to think that's possible, but God is the one who's sovereign and not her. Even then, life happens one day at a time and is full of temptations to become discontent for everyone, married or not. Whatever the case, she should never feel like her life is empty and meaningless just because she isn't married. Her worth is greater than gold whether any man ever acknowledges that or not. She's a valuable creature made in the image of God with an immortal soul: there is nothing any man can do to add to or take away from that truth. So teach her to let her light shine no matter what her calling or circumstance may be. And then do all you can to make sure the world sees it.