I wondered, on reading the following comment from a reader, how many of us STILL have an incorrect view of the Proverbs 31 woman….much like the incorrect view we have of a homemaker.
I think it she plays in important role in helping us understand our role today (which is why I have a “ruby rebel” button on my sidebar!), for TWO reasons:
1. In the OT times, women truly were oppressed. This passage probably would have made people of the day gasp in horror at the thought of a wife earning income and being so exalted. It was very much against the cultural norm for women.
2. Secondly, many people use the passage to justify women “working outside the home”. Proverbs 31 reveals how a woman can have successful avenues of earning income, using her gifts and talents, dispelling the culture’s view of the “poor oppressed homemaker”, and still “keep” her home in every sense of the word.
Following is the reader’s comment and my reply:
“…On another note, it is a great disservice to tell women that Titus 2 forbids working outside of the home. Catherine R., the commenter, could be industrious as the Proverbs 31 woman was, who certainly went *out of her house* in order to make money (considered a field and bought it—real estate, planted a vineyard—wine business, farming, etc, sold her cloths in the market—sales and shopkeeping), and we are told she is someone worth emulating—that she is a wife worth far more than rubies.”
My reply:
“Interestingly, in your warnings to “not misinterpret Scripture”, you’ve done just that in the case of the Prov. 31 woman. I have used her many times before as the perfect example of the Keeper at Home.She beautifully demonstrates how a keeper is not a woman “chained to the confines of a house”, but understands that ruling her household is priority and gladly manages its affairs. She does not “work outside the home” in the sense that modern women do.
You said she sells garments in the marketplace…no she doesn’t. Read it again. She sells garments to the MERCHANTS. She is a wholesaler. THEY go to the marketplace. (Much like I do when I sell my homemade skin products to someone else for retail.) Buying real estate, planting a vineyard, those are all venues compatible with her duties at home. She doesn’t have to leave her house unattended for hours at a time. Her productivity flows outward from her home, not against it.
And most importantly, regarding her “home business”, is that she is still under her husband’s authority…she doesn’t subscribe to another man’s (or company’s) purpose, time frame or schedule. This is one of the keys in understanding why it so damaging for a wife to hold a career.”
The Proverbs 31 woman continues, even today, to dispel the culture’s understanding of the keeper at home! She is far too smart, elegant, and industrious for the feminists’ agenda!
21 comments
Reminds Me once of a woman I met on the street Wearing a Necklace I made , I Complemented her on how well she looked in it , then I told her it was just like i had envisioned it when i made it. Sho Shocked she didnt belive I made it Then I pointed out a series of Three Beads in the very back that i Leave mismatched as sign of MY work and I showed her the same on my necklace.
It is easy enough to Produce at home and send out to sale.
My Beads lay about the house , always available to make money for my home , yet never anywhere near as important AS MY HOME and Family.
You put this so very well! God is really giving you a true understanding of the Proverbs 31 woman. I never thought about reading it as if it were back then. Sadly women are still that oppressed in many middle east countries today. Following the roles in Proverbs 31 they would be considered radicals. Here in America and other progressed nations she is considered oppressed. Isn’t it amazing how perspective changes everything?
This passage probably would have made people of the day gasp in horror at the thought of a wife earning income and being so exalted.
This isn’t true. Women were able to earn income. This is before the industrial revolution, so there was “no such thing” (generally) as the man leaving the house to go work at the office, while the woman stayed home to care for the home.
Men and women both worked in-and-out of the home (in most cases). We see an excellent example of this in several OT stories:
1. Rebekah was a shepherdess, and never once does the Bible chide her for working out of the home.
2. Samson’s mother was out in the field when the angel came to her (not to her husband), and her husband, the text tells us, was in the house.
3. Ruth went out in the fields to work and this was not considered horrible—this was considered noble.
It is a mistake to take our post-Industrial Revolution way of life and foist it onto the OT. There was no such thing, then.
2. Secondly, many people use the passage to justify women “working outside the home”. Proverbs 31 reveals how a woman can have successful avenues of earning income, using her gifts and talents, dispelling the culture’s view of the “poor oppressed homemaker”, and still “keep” her home in every sense of the word.
Yes, er, she kept her home alright—-by telling her servants how to run it. 🙂 And where do we have any mention of her actually mothering? Chances are, she probably did fairly little. Being a king’s wife, historically the servants did much of the childcare (with her oversight, of course). Note that the Bible does not mention her mothering, nor does the Bible condemn this.
And most importantly, regarding her “home business”, is that she is still under her husband’s authority…she doesn’t subscribe to another man’s (or company’s) purpose, time frame or schedule.
This is something you are reading into the text. (ie, it may be true, but it is not in the text). It appears (strictly from the text we are given) that she does all these things of her own will, and that her husband likes it, as opposed to her asking his permission to do those things.
Just some thoughts (that are probably impossible to even consider?) from someone who reads Scripture very differently, but who very much loves our same Jesus.
Warmly,
Molly
(former patriarchalist, now reformed) 🙂
I think the economy was more family based. You call Rebekah a shepherdess. She might have only been helping with the family flocks, like many of us did in the old days. It didn’t mean we were working outside the home in careers. I am from a family of 9. My parents always employed us in the work of the land, boy or girl, but it didn’t mean anything other than we were doing our duties as children. It wasn’t considered some kind of equality or liberation, and they certainly were not trying to teach the girls that they must have businesses after they married. Being “in the field” to us was just what a family would do, especially in the summer, when all hands were needed to help with the planting and harvest. I think young women read more into the Bible when they want to justify something they want to do, particularly if they don’t want to settle down and see that the house is guided, and well kept and the children taught. Just because I looked after goats or pitched hay does not mean I was a shepherdess or a farmer. When the economy was family-based, things are much different, and perhaps that is why people try to read more into the scriptures than is necessary to understand.
That’s actually my point, Lydia, that we can’t take our post-Industrial framework and foist it onto the OT and NT. They lived in a *very* different framework than we do today. The Titus 2 “injuction” today, supposedly against careerism for women, wasn’t written to say anything of the sort (because there was no such thing then). So we are applying poor scholarship methods when we use that passage as if it speaks directly to a post-Industrial world. We do violence to the text when we wrest it out of it’s context, in other words.
Rebekah was out shepherding—-not near the family farm, but out and about (far enough that stronger shepherds were able to harrass her). No, she wasn’t a “career woman,” she was working for the good of her family. In most cases, women working outside the home are doing the very same thing.
I guess that’s what drives me nuts. I’m a stay home mom, and I’m not trying to read “what I want” into these passages so that I can go have a career. I just get really frustrated at the way we pull Scripture out of the context of the people to whom it was written, the problems with which it was written to address, the things going on at the time. In my opinion, doing that requires a heady amount of ethnocentricity.
No one has answered this question, for example: Jesus had women who followed him (including married women, who left homes and husbands in order to travel with Him, not to mention gave him their money). From the way Titus 2 is being used here, it would appear that Jesus was helping these women blaspheme the word of God.
Either He was, or we aren’t interpreting Titus 2 correctly.
Molly,
Could you site the texts that reference married women “leaving husbands and home” to follow Jesus? I want to study them…not sure I’m aware of these Scriptures the way you have described them.
My point is that you cannot call Rebekah a shepherdess because you do not know for sure that she was or that she continued the care of her father’s flocks after her marriage. After marriage, women settled down to the care of their homes, even if while growing up they helped in the field. All children in my family were required to pick peas in summer, male or female, but as us girls grew older we learned to cook and sew and left the work of the field to the boys. You cannot justify women working outside the guarding and guiding of the home, in scripture. Wife, mother and home maker is the career God gave them. Neglecting the home so they can do a business, is never justified.
WW,
Sure.
Luke 8:1-4
Matthew 27:55-56
Mark 15:40-41
Also of interest might be Romans 16. Lots of women in that passage—-like Junia, who is a woman. She was formerly known as Junius (male) in many translations, because tranlators felt that it *had* to be a male name due to the fact that Paul was clearly talking about a major leader figure here, and so they thought they were correcting a scribal error—-this person couldn’t have been a woman!
Joke was on them, though. The recent years have uncovered the fact that there was NO such thing as the name Junius until about 300 years after the book of Romans was penned. !!! So Junius has become Junia once again, and now those same translators are scrambling around trying to figure out a way to make what Paul said about her sound a lot less impressive than it actually is, because, goodness, Paul couldn’t have said something like that about a woman!… *sigh*
(Again, my point being: let’s let the Bible speak for itself and quit trying to shove the plain facts out of the picture in order to fit into our preconcieved ideas. If we’d let Romans 16 speak for itself, without reading subjected womanhood into it, we’d never go for subjected womanhood in the first place! Urgh…
My point is that you cannot call Rebekah a shepherdess because you do not know for sure that she was…
Lydia,
The Bible tells us that Rachel (not Rebekah–my typo, sorry) was a shepherdess.
“While he was still speaking with them, Rachel came with her father’s sheep, for she was a shepherdess.” Gen. 29:9
Men and women did what helped the family. A godly woman can be whatever. That’s why the Prov 31 woman can go out and “consider a field.” She’s business savvy. She can go look at property and know whether or not it’s worth the money. Obviously she’s got experience with land. (That kind of experience can’t be learned staying inside the four walls of the home).
Women, just like men, do what is best for the family. That’s probably why Samson’s mom was out working in the field when the angel came (to her, not to her husband), and her husband was IN THE HOME.
But we should probably not start in the middle of the Bible. Let’s go back to the first things, to the beginning. It’s always a great place to go when we are trying to figure out the core meaning of things, I think. It’s one of the things that really messed with me in the first place (when I was co-running the website, Choosing Home, I sat down to write a Bible study for our ladies about choosing home. I thought I’d go to the Beginning and start there…and ended up leaving my study time with a lot of questions about my former ideas about a woman’s place being in the home!)…
If we are going to say that women were created to tend the home, then…uh, what was Eve tending in the Garden of Eden? Where was the home that Eve was made for?
It’s not there, because Eden was their home, and Adam and Eve were made to rule and tend it together. (Well, actually, the whole world, according to Scripture, Gen. 1:28-31).
Everything in Gen. 1 is given it’s place—the sun is told where it’s place is, the moon where it’s place is, it’s sphere of rulership. So…where is Even told to rule over the home (or to be ruled over by Adam)? She’s not. It’s not there. Prior to the Fall, they had no “home” in that sense of the word!
In other words, Eve was NOT made to rule over a home (nor was she made to be ruled over by Adam). That’s not her first and primary calling. Her first and primary calling was to be “made in the image of God,” just as is every other human being’s first and primary calling.
We are made to reflect Him in all His vastness, His uniqueness, His wide expansiveness. There’s no putting that in a little box. 🙂
A sheerly logic-based musing: Why is it that we think men are allowed to have a wide and diverse field of interest (outside the home) and feel just fine with that, but yet we feel that all women must be only interested in the same thing (managing a home). Men are godly if they choose to get a career in whatever they love: police officer, doctor, computer tech, professor, biologist, big game hunter, whatever, the sky’s the limit! But we’ll write posts tsk-tsking at any woman who wants to pursue interests outside the home. What a weird and interesting double-standard we employ to the genders!).
By the way, the following paragraph is extremely important:
In no way am I saying that managing a home is not a good and holy and wonderful calling. It is! I just really disagree with using a few Scriptures to teach that women *must* be in the home, when in so doing we ignore other Scriptures that seem to say otherwise.
Each woman was made to be whatever God has called her to be. For some women, that will be a calling to rule the home. It in no way demeans the home when we let it be a *choice* for women instead of a mandate. Jesus had married women following Him instead of tending the home. That means, to me, that following the path Christ has for us will not look the same way for all women, just as it won’t look the same for all men. I want to give just as much grace to women as I do to men. I want to follow the example of Christ and not put women into a box, no matter how well-intentioned that box may be.
With Warmth,
Molly
Molly,
To avoid “wrangling” much more over this, I would answer as briefly as I can.
Those Scriptures where women ministered to Jesus in no way to me negate the whole counsel of Scripture admonishing women to “look well to the ways of the household”; we don’t have enough information about their situations to use them as “proof-texts” for careerism…simply ridiculous. Widows, single women, husband-wife teams–ministering to Jesus? How does that prove that Jesus was permitting women to neglect their homes? What if their whole families were ministering together?
Here’s what we do know…Scripture does not contradict itself. Just because Genesis doesn’t spell out that the husband is head of the woman, does not erase all the other verses that do; just because Adam and Eve didn’t have a physical dwelling has nothing to do with how we handle our homes.. and so on whether we’re talking about authority or roles. The Bible speaks plenty of all those subjects.
It is senseless to me for Christian women to argue about what SCRIPTURE, EXPERIENCE AND EVIDENCE all collectively agree on:
A well-managed home, where children, husband, extended family, neighbors, elderly, widows, orphans, the saints and the poor are properly tended MUST have a full-time person to do the tending; ideally, the whole family works together to meet all these needs.
But if someone must labor to provide for the physical needs of the family, that curse was given to the man.
His wife has ample opportunity, after all those other needs are met to assist him with the family’s needs, but obviously, a full-time career outside the home is not compatible with all the other duties that must be met. It just isn’t…I know. I’ve tried it.
I can hear in your rebuttle the same misconception in the typical feminists idea: you said,
“That kind of experience can’t be learned staying inside the four walls of the home.”
Being a homemaker isn’t about “staying inside four walls”. You use words like “women in a box”.
I can tell you that being at home is the only true liberation. How could subscribing to a company’s hours, schedule, purpose and vision be “freedom”?
I’ve never been more free for industry, opportunity, expression of my gifts and talents, as I am now. (Even tonight, I will, *gasp*, leave “my four walls” to go cater a banquet with my mom and daughter.)
The Bible, the whole counsel of Scripture makes it clear that we have distinct roles. Nature itseslf makes that clear. And if those things aren’t enough, it’s tragically sufficient to take a look around and see the results of our “liberation”.
To kick against it is to devastate our entire civilization.
But I’m not sure we are trying to make women stay inside four walls?
Just because Adam was told to till the ground does not mean that my husband has to provide for us by farming. My husband is generally in an air conditioned office and I’m outside gardening. My MIL is just crazy about mowing their 3/4 of an acre – it takes her hours and she just loves to be outside and exersize and she mows in all kinds of fancy patterns.
First and formost Eve was created to be Adam’s HELPMEET. Helper. Mate. Companion. – not his co-worker or an extra pair of hands in the Garden of Eden, although I’m sure she did her share of pruning and tree-trimming.
I would say that MOST of the time, money is not the best way to “help” our husband’s, nor is it the best reason. For example, I could stay home to keep our children out of day care (save money) or I can stay home to teach them how to live a godly life and so I can teach them from the Bible daily and often.
If the Proverbs 31 woman let someone else raise her children, I pity her. Personally, I think her children were grown because they were praising her – and people where listening.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with being a sheperdess OR following Christ. But why are we doing such things? To get out of serving others? So that someone else gets stuck washing feet or cooking? Our hearts have to be right, and that’s why Mary sat at His feet and Martha was in trouble for her attitude. Peter’s mother, when healed of her fever, went right to “ministering” in her home.
So why is it that hubs wants wife/mom to work outside the home? Because she is ministering to others and giving money away? Because she is learning more about Jesus Christ? Or because he wants more money?
The Bible says to teach your children dilegently, when they wake up, when they eat, when they lay down. If we’re in a race for the school bus, then we conven back at the house at night for a meal and some mutal TV watching … it’s hard to throw some diligence in there along with laundry, homework, dishes, and all the other things a wife can accomplish during the day.
I don’t see anyplace in Scripture where it says it’s okay to let other people raise our children… but Proverbs is full of “listen to mom and dad”. We need to be teaching our children the things of God. My boys cannot go to an aircraft plant and work beside their father and watch him work (deal with frusterations/setbacks) in a God-honoring way. But they can watch me.
This doesn’t have anything to do with earning an additional income, but the way’s and how’s. I honestly doubt there was very many properous homes where the mom was a sheperdess and the dad was a merchant and the kids were raised by servants.
Oh, unless you mean financially properous. They probably were.
Blessings,
Ashley – a happy helpmeet 🙂
http://www.homesteadblogger.com/Jonash2004
Wow, what an outstanding post, Mrs. Crawford!! Thank you so much for it.
It’s so frustrating when Christian women(and men) misenterpret this gem of a passage. It’s quite clear that these are home businesses! I think that often these women are just trying to find another interpretation of this Scripture, to meet their own feminist beliefs and desires. They have to misconstrue this passage in some way, to attempt to justify their life style, rather than just understand the Scriptures in exactly the way they were written! The Scriptures are to transform our way of life-we are not to have our way of life or disires change our beliefs of what the Scriptures are saying!
Instead of changing ourselves to fit the pattern, we often try to change the pattern to fit ourselves. The Bible is our pattern.
…and, Molly, women do have a “wide, diverse” world. Men, do not always have a “wide, diverse” world, as they are sometimes in jobs that limit them to the premises of the place of work, until they get permission to leave. A woman at home usually comes and goes at will, doing the things she needs to do to keep her home running smoothly. She isn’t locked up–the men seem to be more so.
I would just like to ask those young women who want to argue over words and Bible passages if their houses are clean and they are paying attention to organization. Sometimes there is a deeper problem when women rebel against their natural God-given roles of wife, mother, homemaker. Sometimes they want to argue because they want to justify their lack of ability to keep everything in order. Sometimes, not always.
The Proverbs 31 woman having a vinyard and working in it, is like us today having and working in our gardens. It would be absurd in the highest degree for any of us to attempt to say that the Proverbs 31woman was a careerwoman! That simply is not Biblical, and goes against what Scripture plainly teaches in the simplest of terms.
Molly,
If you study Jewish culture and history at the time of Jesus(and during the OT), it becomes clear very quickly that women were indeed oppressed. They were seen as things and slaves. In fact, there was a prayer that Jewish men at this time in history recited every day, that went like this: “Thank you, God, that I’m not a pig, a Gentile, or a woman.” Women were oftentimes chained to their homes, so to speak. Women were not encouraged to learn anything(that’s why the command in 1 Tim. 2 which says to let a woman learn in church was so radical and wonderful!). Mrs. Crawford’s right- very, very few women worked outside the home or earned money outside the home(and they saw a woman doing that to be a sign of harlotry). I find it interesting that you’re disagreeing with Mrs. Crawford on this point, when, a few posts ago(in our previous debate), you said(just as we do) that not many women earned an income outside the home, and that when they did, this was looked upon as a bad thing. With all due respect(and I trule mean that-please don’t misunderstand me!!), please keep your arguement the same.
Mrs. Sherman,
You’re so right!! The woman in God’s design is FAR more liberated than the man out in the workforce. Men can only have 1 career(or sometimes 2, if they work part-time for 2 different companies). Whether it be a doctor, accountant, pilot, etc., there’s only 1 thing that they do day after day after day. The homemaker on the other hand, is a nurse, an interior designer, a chef, an accountant, a first aid worker, a teacher, a child-care provider, and the list goes on and on and on.
Molly,
You said that no one had answered your comments about some of Jesus’ followers being women. I did respond to this in a prior post(where our other discussion was going on). I encourage you to read all that I said here: http://heartsforfamily.blogspot.com/2008/05/homemaker-vscareer-sin-or-suggestion.html
I will however, copy and paste what I said on the precise subject we’re on:
As to women following Christ, for one thing, when these women first started walking after Him, they weren’t Christians! And the command to be a homemaker is only given to Christian women. Secondly, these women(such as Joanna) could have been homemakers before they followed Him. But at that point, what’s more important-acquiring salvation, or keeping the house(something that she wasn’t even commanded to do, because at the time she wouldn’t have been saved)? Of course we would agree on the answer to this. Secondly, we musn’t read into the text. There’s no real reason for us to believe that these women were on their own-their families(as Mrs. Crawford pointed out) could have gone right along with them.
Molly,
In reference to Rachel being a shepherdess, the text precisely says that she was tending to her father’s sheep! Which more than likely meant that they were right there on her father’s property, obviously. That’s just like children helping on the family farm. As you’ve said yourself, we can’t read into the text to have it support our own way of thinking-we have to have the Scriptures change and reform our minds, to bring our thinking into accordance with the Word.
As to Samson’s mother, we can’t read into this either! It’s just like if today my mother went outside to tend to a garden, while my father was inside reading the Bible. If I were to record in my diary that my mother was in our yard(“field”) and that my father was in the home, does that mean that my mother has an outside career, and that my father is the homemaker in the family? Of course not!
Just because the text doesn’t specifically mention the Proverbs 31 woman mothering her children, by no means implies that she didn’t do that! The Proverbs 31 woman is the woman in Scripture that we are to strive to be like in every way-she’s held up as our example. Now, let’s pretend that she had nothing to do with the mothering of her children-that she regulated all of that to the servants. Then, that would mean that she disobeyed the numerous commands to bring up your child in the way that it should go, to teach your child, to care for your child, etc. She would be in sin! And the Scriptures would not hold up this sort of passive woman as our example!
The same(what I said directly above) goes for what you said about the Prov. 31 woman doing her own thing, so to speak, and not asking her husband for permission. This goes against Scripture! The woman is under the headship of the man(this began in the Garden of Eden, BEFORE the curse–more about that later), and so the Prov. 31 woman(in order to be our example that is honored and revered in the Scriptures) obviously must have submitted to her husband’s leadershop, seeking his advice, etc. She wasn’t doing her own thing, without her husband’s input, advice, authority and leadership!
You said: “So we are applying poor scholarship methods when we use that passage as if it speaks directly to a post-Industrial world.” The Scriptures are alive and completely relevant to every time in history-from the OT times, to today, to the future. The Scriptures speak to every time and every person!
Also, you said the following as well: “Rebekah was out shepherding—-not near the family farm, but out and about (far enough that stronger shepherds were able to harrass her).” I already addressed the fact that she was tending her father’s sheep, more than likely on his property, etc. Now let me say this: just because she was harrassed by the stronger shepherds, by no means implies that she was away from her father’s yard. Those men could have easily harrassed her if they wanted to, just as easily there, on the family farm, as away somewhere else. As we’ve said before, we musn’t read something into the Scriptures that clearly isn’t there.
As to Junia, there’s a note in my NKJV study Bible that I want to share with you. In verse 7 of Romans 16, Andronicus and Junia are mentioned. The note of this section of the verse says: “Perhaps a married couple, since ‘Junia’ can be a woman’s name.” In Mark 15:40(one of the other passages you mentioned) the name Salome is mentioned. She was the wife of Zebedee, the mother of James and John. Clearly, she was traveling and ministering right along side her family.
Also, you said that in the beginning(which I fully agree is a wonderful place to start!) Eve was not put under the authority of Adam. That simply isn’t true. Male headship began in the garden of Eden BEFORE the curse(as I said-more about that later).
You said: “We are made to reflect Him in all His vastness, His uniqueness, His wide expansiveness. There’s no putting that in a little box. :)” Homemaking and Biblical womanhood is by no means putting every woman into the same tiny little box! To think that is to misunderstand Prov. 31! She’s evidantly a homemaker, but uses her gifts to the highest capacity, and ministers to others in many, many ways. A homemaker is not in a box, as I’m sure you probably know, since you said you’re a SAHM yourself. To say that to follow Titus 2:5, we have to fit all women into the same cookie cutter molded little box is absured for us to say. You also said something about Christ leading each woman to a different life. In a way, that’s true-we all live in different areas, have different families, have different methods of decorating our homes, etc. But what you’re saying is completely untrue in another aspect. The Lord doesn’t call one woman to be an independent business woman, and another to be a submissive homemaker. The Lord lays out specific, clear commands in Scripture and would not call someone to disobey them!
Before I close, I want to make something very clear. 🙂 I want to let you know(in case you don’t already know this), that by disagreeing with you and leaving you comments to show where we disagree, we are in no way trying to “gang up on you” so to speak. Everyone is free to speak their beliefs in a Christ-honoring way here on Mrs. Crawford’s blog, and I want to make it clear that that’s what we’re doing. I don’t want you to in any way think that we’re being disrespectful to you, or ganging up on you, etc. If I or anyone else come across as disrespectful, I sincerely apologize. We are simply commanded to teach the whole counsel of God, and that’s what we’re striving to do.
May you have a blessed day.
Rebekah
Molly,
As to your arguement regarding the female followers of Christ, there’s something I would like to point out. It’s very clearly a sin to lie. However, Rahab the harlot is praised in Hebrews because of her faith and protection of the Hebrew spies. However, in the process, she lied. At face value, we’d think ok, hang on a minute. She’s not condemned for telling that lie!! Rather, she’s praised for her faith. She should have been even more full of faith, and trusted the Lord to protect the spies and should have not lied or felt like she had to. While all this may be true, she nonetheless is not condemned for this lie. Does that fact somehow negate the command to not lie? Of course not!
We might be also missing the fact that the New Testament was written to Christians. It shows a way of life that is different than those outside of Christ. When we see it that way we are more able to “rightly divide” the word of truth. The church had just been established (Acts 2) and now these groups, scattered all over, were taught through speeches and letters, how to behave in the church. What the world does, does not matter, and even the OT women may have lived under a different system. Christ’s last will and testament showed his new law and provided the way for Christians. One of those principles is the principle of women marrying, bearing children and keeping house (I Tim. ) The women of the world might do just the opposite, or might not do that, but we know for sure that the Christian women were supposed to do that.
Too bad we ran you off. 🙂 But I do understand … I’ve bowed out of my share of blog-conversations for various reasons!
Two final thoughts. God is the same yesterday, today, tomorrow. He didn’t set up a system of female opression in the OT and “remove” it in the NT. It simply was never there to begin with. Christ did not come to destroy but to fulfill.
Secondly, I think that egalitarianism touches on the fact that we are equal before God, complementarianism seems to touch that we have different roles, and yet it’s okay to have a patrichal ‘leader’ like Abraham, or even a faulty one like Jacob. Any of these positions, taken to extremes, can become sin. Being a leader can be interpreted to mean abuse, but according to the Bible it means to ‘Love as Christ loved the Church’. Whoa.
That doesn’t mean ‘as equals’ but it does mean selflessly.
Ashley
http://www.homesteadblogger.com