The Gentler Sex; Mother’s Day and Reformed Anthropology

This morning, on this Mother’s Day I want to open by just allowing the weight of Scripture press down upon us as it speaks to the glorious calling and nature of women.

I Peter 3:7 Husbands, likewise, dwell with them (your wives) with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.

I Timothy 2:12 And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. 15 Nevertheless she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control.

I Timothy 5:14 Therefore I desire that the younger widows marry, bear children, manage the house, give no opportunity to the adversary to speak reproachfully.

Proverbs 31:27 She watches over the ways of her household,
And does not eat the bread of idleness.

Titus 2:3 the older women likewise … that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, 5 to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed.

I Corinthians 11:7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. 8 For man is not from woman, but woman from man. 9 Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man.

I Corinthians 14:35 And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church.

Ephesians 5:22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

Psalm 68:12 “Kings of armies flee, they flee,
And she who remains at home divides the [a]spoil / plunder.

Isaiah 3:12 As for My people, children are their oppressors,
And women rule over them.
O My people! Those who lead you [a]cause you to err,
And destroy the way of your paths.”


What we see from this compendium of Scripture is that the prima facie evidence from Scripture is that women are different from men and as being different have a different role and calling then men.

We also would say that from this reading that when a social order is operating in a way that reflects Biblical priorities women have a unique relationship to the maintaining of the household to the glory of God. Scripture teaches, that God made women to be man’s Prime Minister in the Home. The Man is the King but the role of Prime Minister in domestic affairs is a position of honor and esteem.

Now, we immediately offer the caveat that when social orders are not operating in a fashion that reflects Biblical priorities it is often the case that women are pressed into responsibilities that should have been filled by men. Deborah is the prime example. Huldah, if your remember your Bible is another. Huldah was a prophetess but in an age of severe decline in Israel. She becomes key when she steps on the scene but one wonders if Israel had not been in decline if Huldah would have even been in that position.

So, what we are looking at this morning is the normative, all the while conceding we hardly live in a biblical normative social order and as such we might find all kinds of irregularities that we might support now that we otherwise wouldn’t support. For example, given the irregularity of our social order we might well prefer that a Biblical Christian women be elected for a particular political position vis-a-vis her opponent, a sodomite being elected. If things were normal, women would not be forced into positions where Scripture says they don’t belong, just as Deborah didn’t belong in charge of an Army.

When we press women into roles that men are by nature called to fill it is as if we have decided that the purpose for Roses is to serve as Kindling for fires or that our best bone China is to be used as a dog dish. When women serve in roles that is contrary to their God ordained nature and calling we are at that point abusing women and that is criminal.

The Scripture speaks with a uniform voice, as we heard, that a woman’s high responsibility and privilege is to fill the honorable role of wife and mother – supporter of the work of Her husband.

Gen. 2:18 Now the Lord God said, “It is not good (beneficial) for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper [one who balances him—a counterpart who is] suitable and complementary for him.”

Now invariably when we talk about the nature and role of women as help-meet and complimentary to her husbad, there will be some men who hear strange things.

They will hear things like “Me Tarzan. You Jane,” or they start humming the Stones, “Under my Thumb.” They become one part Ghengis Khan and one part my former Brother-in-law. However those types need to hear Rushdoony at this point,

“The Bible declares Sarah to be the model wife in her obedience and subjection (I Peter 3:1-7). We cannot understand the meaning of that without recognizing the fact that, on occasion, Sarah, confident in the godliness of her position, gave Abraham an ultimatum (Gen. 16:5; 21:9-13), and God declared, “in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice” (Gen. 9:12), a sentence men rarely if ever use as a sermon text! “

So, the fact that women have a particular nature and role as wives and mothers as help-meets to men and as complimentary to men does not mean that she is inferior to men. It merely means that God has equipped her to excel in one way and domain while God has equipped men to excel in a different way and domain.

We see that we have a Charybdis and Scylla here. On one side is the danger of overbearing men treating their wives altogether as lesser beings. If you’ve ever seen this danger you pray God you can get away from it as fast as you can. It is an embarrassment to see and a tragedy to have to live with. On the other side is the danger of a women who are Shrews and who run their men. They may even become Governors in Mitten shaped states. If you’ve ever seen this foul state you begin to pray, “And deliver us from the Evil One.”

The Scripture forbids both the Charybdis and the Scylla providing us a patriarchal paradigm that honors men as men and women as women resulting in a harmony of interests in the home that is promissory of God being honored, adults being happy, and children growing up well adjusted.

The Scriptures teach that the biblical call for Patriarchy can’t exist without faithful women who are delighted with their callings as Prime Ministers in the home. But of course we have long lived in a Church wherein women have revolted from this place of honor and wherein men have encouraged them to cast aside their God honoring privileges.

Let’s take a few examples,

Aimee Byrd is a member of a Reformed Church and has been pushing to overthrow Biblical Patriarchy for years now.

The easiest way to prove her feminism is simply to read her blog.  She complains that women don’t write more theology and aren’t encouraged in higher theological learning, and wonders why “all the women publishing good academic works are egalitarian.”  She promotes the writings of egalitarians. She criticizes the Nashville Statement on human sexuality for being to conservative when in point of fact the Statement is too progressive. She warns of the perils that attend teaching abstinence from premarital sex. She praises an author for denying that Scripture is “a hopelessly patriarchal construction” and for explaining the “gynocentric interruption of the dominant androcentricity of Scripture.”

Another “Reformed” woman is who is seeking to tear down Biblical Patriarchy is Rachel Miller. She has a book out that says it all, “Beyond Authority and Submission.”

The third woman is Valerie Hobbs. She was previously a fellow at the Greystone Theological Institute, working alongside noted Reformed ministers and professors. A senior lecturer in applied linguistics, one of her pet projects has been researching the treatment of women in conservative Reformed churches as seen in her numerous journal articles The articles reveal her animus against the teaching of Reformed churches about women. Her popular level articles reflect the same animus.

There are countless men as well. Ministers Todd Bordow, Carl Truman, Todd Pruitt likewise push the egalitarian feminist agenda. However for our purpose this morning let’s consider,

Michael Rea is Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, renown Roman Catholic Institution could write several years ago,

The love of a mother is no more or less important than the love of a father. We all know this. But then, in general, mothers should be under no greater burden than fathers to abandon their callings for the sake of their children. The asymmetry in our responses to working mothers and fathers, then, suggests that other factors are in play. In an evangelical Protestant context, the context I have in view here, there is good reason to suspect that these other factors include a tendency to devalue the gifts and contributions of women particularly in positions of teaching and leadership.”

Why, instead of the conclusion that Rea draws in his last sentence above, don’t we conclude that the reason Evangelical Protestants don’t want women in social order leadership is,

1.) The Scriptures forbid it as we saw at the outset. Scripture clearly envisions the women as the Prime Minister of the Home advancing her Husband King’s dominion.

2.) We so value women and their role in hearth and home that we don’t want to treat them like fine family silver used to dig for worms by exiling women from hearth and home in order to embrace the curse of men to till the ground by the sweat of their brow.

Overall I would say it is Dr. Rea, and people like him, who are devaluing the gifts and contributions of women. It is people like Rea who are taking from children their Mothers and Mothers from their children. It is men like Dr. Rea who are suggesting that somehow women are missing out by being the leaders and teachers of the most impressionable in our social order.

The hidden goal of feminism, as a created tool of the NWO, since feminism’s rise at the turn of the 20th century and its acceleration in the 60’s and 70’s was to destroy the family. By engendering discontent in women with the home and so getting women out of the home and into the workforce (i.e. — Rosie the Riveter) via the NWO’s instigation of WW I and especially WW II multiple ends were served, one of which was getting women out from under their husband’s authority and another was separating Mothers from their children — their instinctual impulse.

In such a way two things happened. First, children would more naturally become defacto wards of the state (from daycare to Government schools) as two income families increasingly predominated across the landscape of America. Second, women would become less dependent upon their husbands and so have the resources to leave at the smallest provocation. In all this the family would become more destabilized and the State would expand in power where the family decreased in power. Feminism serves the end of the rapacious state. Indeed, it might be well said that state legislation that supports feminism is a case where the State is raping women. For those women who support feminist legislation one might rightfully say that, metaphorically speaking, “those women enjoy rape.”

So, it is in the interest of the tyrant State to breathe life into feminism because by doing so the tyrant State breaks down a potential adversary insuring that the family, as a potential alternate power center does not arise to challenge the tyrant State. This explains why the we have gone from the Trustee family model in the West to the Trustee family model and now ever increasingly to the Atomistic family style. The elimination of the family is life for the tyrant state.

The tyrant state does not want a Christian home where wives and mothers as homemakers are paid and amply taken care of and provided for by a loving Christian husband. Unless there were extenuating circumstances, why should a Christian wife and mother want to work for a different covenant head in the workforce when she can take care of her covenant head and family at home?

I have no doubt that situations will arise where women have to work outside of the home in addition to their work as caring and nurturing wives and mothers in the home.

I have no doubt that situations will arise where women have to work outside of the home in addition to their work as caring and nurturing wives and mothers in the home. Further, I am convinced where women can do the same work as men they should be paid commensurate with their work.

Having said that, and having worked for the Airlines industry for 15 years I know for a fact that in many career occupations that require strength, women, on the whole, (again exceptions probably exist) can not do the work that a man can do and so shouldn’t be paid what a man is paid.

Men are not women and women are not men and to say that they automatically should be paid equally reinforces the egalitarian agenda.

Now, there are industries where women should might well be paid more than men. Nursing, for example, were predominated by women early on and this because women were seen as natural nurturers and caretakers.

Having conceded that, the best and safest place for a woman is in the home. Women being forced outside the home are being cheated.

There was a time when this kind of thinking was not controversial in the least and was embraced, above all, by women.

“No system of philosophy has ever yet worked out in behalf of woman the practical results for good which Christianity has conferred on her. Christianity has raised woman from slavery and made her the thoughtful companion of man; finds her the mere toy, or the victim of his passions, and it places her by his side, his truest friend, his most faithful counselor, his helpmeet in every worthy and honorable task. It protects her far more effectually than any other system. It cultivates, strengthens, elevates, purifies all her highest endowments, and holds out to her aspirations the most sublime for that future state of existence, where precious rewards are promised to every faithful discharge of duty, even the most humble. But, while conferring on her these priceless blessings, it also enjoins the submission of the wife to the husband, and allots a subordinate position to the whole sex while here on earth. No woman calling herself a Christian, acknowledging her duties as such, can, therefore, consistently deny the obligation of a limited subordination laid upon her by her Lord and His Church.”

Susan Fenimore Cooper

Conclusion

Unless God is pleased to give us Reformation, and that right quickly, future sane generations will look back at our current dementia and with the benefit of sanctified hindsight will see our time as the apex of lunacy wherein warfare against God’s design of human nature was waged with full fury and intent.

They will trace how the lunacy began stirring in the Anabaptist Radical Reformation and in the murkier depths of the Renaissance. From there with Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelly as accompanied by the likes of the Marquis de Sade and Charles Fourier they will trace how the Enlightenment vomited up Feminism as a continuing theme… a theme then taken up by the French and Russian Revolutions which heaved up the likes of the Marquis de Condorcet and Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai… they will trace a theme which finally triumphed here with the aid of WW I and WW II.

A future sanctified generation will look back at our times and identify what the modern Conservative Church cannot see today and that is late stage Cancer feminism and egalitarianism finally expressed itself just before the death of the blood and family patient with the tumors of same-sex marriage and gender confusion. If God is pleased later generations will draw a line connecting the Cancer’s earlier manifestations of legalizing birth control, easy divorce, women in the work-force and deadbeat Fathers.

And perhaps a future sanctified generation will promise by God’s grace alone,

“NEVER AGAIN.”