Emotions and Lies

Intro to Womanhood: What does Scripture say about women?

When I began writing a series of posts about womanhood, I knew I would get sidetracked, since I was expecting to have a baby within the next couple of months. And then there were the holidays, and then we moved, and in the midst of all of it, you can imagine that I sort of lost my way when it came to writing. But the Lord has a way of getting us back on track when we stray and he has done that for me today.

I left off getting ready to dive into various scriptures in which we can find some principles about womanhood. I didn’t want to quite go “character by character” and say this is what biblical womanhood looks like, but instead I am going to just throw some guiding principles out there. This particular principle is something that was ground-breaking for me nearly three years ago now when I was in the midst of wondering what I believe as a Christian woman. And it begins in the Garden.

We women are by and far emotional creatures. I tend to think of this as our strength, because we can often connect with others and sense the climate of what is going on in our relationships intuitively. My husband is a pretty quiet guy at home, but I can usually tell what kind of “quiet” it is: pensive, frustrated, hurt, etc just by his demeanor.

Being emotional helps us to connect with others and empathize with them in their pain or their joy, even when we may not have experienced the same situation ourselves. Or even better, when we have experienced something similar we are able to comfort and encourage and celebrate all the more! Feelings are truly a gift, and having them out of wack once a month is a small price to pay to be an emotional creature!

However, as we all know from experience, being emotional can have its downsides. Sometimes you feel like you can’t trust yourself and your own feelings. And in this fallen world, we have to remember that following our heart is not always the best option, because, like James says, “the heart is desperately wicked”! And we women are easily deceived by our own emotions and that can mess things up for us and those around us.

And women in scripture are no exception. Our mother Eve often has a target on her back as the one to blame for sin and the fall. But as a woman, whether it’s all Eve’s fault or not, we need to take a leaf out of Eve’s book (or maybe her dress).

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”  “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. – Genesis 3:1-7

The serpent deceived Eve, he “engage[d her] in a reevaluation of her life on his terms” (Ortlund, p 95). Isn’t that so like Satan? He drives home a point that causes us to doubt our confidence in God and what God said. Did you ever notice how Eve changed God’s words? God never told them not to touch – Genesis 2:16-17: “And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”” Outland describes this ‘misquote’ on Eve’s part something that “reduces the lavish generosity of God’s word to the level of mere, perhaps grudging permission…” (ibid).

When Eve changes God’s words, she puts herself in position to be God, of her own life, that is, and she puts her interpretation above the truth of what God said. I believe that her emotional response is part of what we still struggle with as women today. When we allow ourselves to be deceived because we don’t remember the truth of what God has said in his Word, we are liable to sin and to bring others, namely our husbands, into sin with us.

I am preaching to myself today! There are a million different topics to pull from this Scripture in relation to womanhood. I will probably revisit this to talk about roles and equality. But today is for introspection and some good ol’fashioned honesty.

Part of the issue in the Garden was that Eve was serving her own self-interest. Because that is what Satan is all about and what he lied to Eve about. “It was a lie big enough to reinterpret all of life and attractive enough to redirect Eve’s loyalty from God to Self (ibid, 96).”

What I found at the crux of my journey into feminism was not liberty, but rather selfishness. It was about me, my role, my importance, my worth, my actions. Me, me, me. As a Christian woman, am I not called to give up those selfish desires to be first in all things, and instead to submit to Christ as my Lord? That would make his words, his role, his importance and his actions, not to mention his worth as we were speaking of identity, the forefront of my life. There is no room here for me to look out for myself because in Christ I have already been made whole and received from him what I need in life. That is the truth I so desperately need to remember!

Jesus, save me from myself, that I would know the truth of your Word and its power in my life and in my marriage so that I won’t be deceived by Satan’s lies. Would you steady me in my emotions and my response to situations in my life; help me to respond with your truth, with your love, that I would be loyal to you first.

“Male and Female Equality and Male Headship: Genesis 1-3.”  Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr. Rediscovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. This was first brought to my attention in Ortlund’s article when I was researching different biblical responses to the feminist movement. This is John Piper’s book on complementarianism, a compilation of many different  evangelical voices on the issue, ome of whom I had heard of, suchas Eliabeth Elliot, others, like Mr. Ortlund, I never had, but really appreciated their viewpoints. Pretty much the sucker punch to all my feminist notions.

Introduction to Womanhood

Birth control. Swimsuits. Hairstyle. Makeup. Shopping. Manicures. Botox. Wrinkles. Stretch Marks. Tanning. Sewing. Drawing. Crying. Dancing. Little black dresses. Little red dresses. Victoria’s Secret. Fun. Ambition. College degree. Doctorate. Scientist. Lawyer. Journalist. Supermodel. Plain Jane. Personality. Tina Fey. Paris Hilton. Reese Witherspoon. Martha Stewart. Jackie Kennedy. Elisabeth Elliot. Beth Moore. Lindsay Lohan. Beyonce. Kate Middleton.

What truly defines a woman? The qualities, activities, and names I just mentioned are a strikingly diverse list, all of the female gender. Our modern world is so very confused about what it means to be a woman, and as a young woman navigating through life, this has been the hardest part of becoming an adult, especially as a Christian. Even within the Christian evangelical subculture, there are certain things that are valued and expected of young women, a certain image that ought to be portrayed. There are Biblical standards of womanhood that we can look to certainly – but each of us is individual, made to serve a unique purpose in the Body of Christ as a woman. Too broad or too narrow, both the world (the Western American culture) and evangelical Christianity are difficult places to identify yourself as a woman.

As a young woman, I have had to come face to face with feminism, even within Christian circles, and I have grappled with and sifted through those ideas. I thought I was secure in who I was, thought I was comfortable being me, and yet being exposed to these new ideas (or perhaps exposing ideas that I had already) caused me to shift. I want to share a little of my journey, my questions and my conclusions over a series of posts that will hopefully enlighten, entertain and challenge you, should you have some of the same struggles.

I didn’t come to a lot of these conclusions on my own. I was influenced by many other women’s writings, by many sermons, by many conversations that helped me articulate and stand firm in my convictions. I won’t lie to you and say I don’t desire to persuade you to my point of view – as a professor of mine said, all writing is persuasive. That’s why I am writing it down. To hopefully save you some of the pain and give you something to hold on to as you journey.

Just to be even more clear, I struggled with this before and after my marriage. I got married at 22, after I finished college and was still in the midst of a struggle, even if I had chosen a path – marriage – already. A lot of what I will write about happened before that event. Many of my conclusions have become more clear afterwards. If you aren’t married, don’t feel that this doesn’t apply to you – each of us must grapple with feminism on our own terms, in our own life situations, wherever that may find us. Marriage just gives us that term of “wife” thrown in with all the rest, and it takes a certain priority in the conversation because of that. Many of my ideas are directed towards those who find themselves under the category of “wife” – or perhaps hope to one day. I feel that many aspects of being a Christian woman and a wife are not mutually exclusive, so if you don’t identify yourself as a wife, you will still be able to find some value in these words, I pray.

I hope to talk to you first about identity, specifically as a Christian, because really at the root of all of this is the question, “Who am I?” and following from that, “How do I live?” If you are a Christian woman, you must approach the challenge of feminism from a heavenly mindset, not an earthly one, or you will easily fall in with her arguments.

After we establish some basics about identity, then as Christians we must go to the Scripture and ask what it says about being a woman. If you have an issue with this, you are reading the wrong blog.

Whenever we speak about gender, we must remember that there are in fact two, no matter what the world would have you believe. So where men fit in this big question of “What does it mean to be a woman?” is actually quite pertinent.

Finally, looking at the movement of feminism in modern history (even in all of history in some ways) is a crucial part of forming an opinion about its beliefs. Yes, there can be some good to come from feminist ideas; we won’t deny that. So let’s look at what some feminist writers actually say, let’s look at history and women and see if we can pick out our core beliefs as evidenced at these different points in history. And perhaps let’s shed some light on some of the supposedly “golden” times of being a woman and determine if they should rule how we think about ourselves today.

And if I still have steam left, I would love to visit the idea of motherhood, which I tried to make a case for in my senior thesis class and conveniently lost the file 6 months later. It was a rough class. Better just to start from scratch.

Maybe this is actually a book. But these are things I have desired to write about for two years now, so I offer it here first, just to get the conversation going.