Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Women's Issues: Work
481 Plays4 years ago
This episode talks about women and work: what does Scripture say about work in and outside of the home? Is it okay for a woman to work? What cultural influences color our perspective on this topic? We get a glimpse of how Victorian culture sparked the early feminist movement and how that carries over to the church today.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Podcast Aim
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Verity. I'm your host, Felicia Masonheimer, an author, speaker, and Bible teacher. This podcast will help you embrace the history and depth of the Christian faith, ask questions, seek answers, and devote yourself to becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. You don't have to settle for watered-down Christian teaching. And if you're ready to go deeper, God is just as ready to take you there. This is Verity, where every woman is a theologian.
Perceptions of Women's Work
00:00:30
Speaker
Women's work. It is what we're talking about in today's episode. What do you think of when you hear women's work? Do you think of cleaning the house, cooking? Maybe you think of being a lawyer or a doctor or working in communications. Today, women's work can look all of these ways. We have so much access and freedom in today's Western society
00:00:55
Speaker
to support our families, to support ourselves, to achieve great things with our talents and our skills. But has that always been the case? I think we know the answer to that. The answer is no.
Scripture on Women's Work
00:01:09
Speaker
And even today there are many women who aren't able
00:01:13
Speaker
to work as freely as we can, aren't as mobile in society, or don't have the kind of privileges and rights we have to work in almost any industry. In today's episode, I want to delve into what scripture says about women's work, because over the course of history, the church has not always handled this well.
Genesis: Work & Productivity
00:01:36
Speaker
And we tend to get mixed up in understanding what part of our work
00:01:42
Speaker
is biblical and what part of our approach to that is cultural. For instance, when I just said women's work, the thoughts that popped into your mind are probably the result of your upbringing, your church culture, your ethnicity, the city you live in. All of those are factors in the thought and response you had to the term women's work.
00:02:10
Speaker
And interestingly, over the course of history, the church and Christians have talked about women's work in terms that are often a reflection of their culture and not a reflection of scripture's teaching. And so we're going to look at quite a few passages today, because as always, we want to ground this topic in scripture. And we're going to see what does God think
00:02:38
Speaker
about women working and a woman's work in general.
Rest and Labor in Scripture
00:02:43
Speaker
So I think you'll find by now that we've talked a lot about Genesis. Almost every episode in the Women's Issue series has somehow gone back to Genesis, from the birth episode to the sex episode to our episodes about marriage and the church. We always end up in Genesis, isn't it?
00:03:00
Speaker
funny how our interpretation and our understanding of Genesis actually builds an entire foundation for the Gospel, first of all, because the Gospel begins there, but also for our understanding of ourselves as women. Genesis is so important and those first three chapters really give us a template
00:03:19
Speaker
for what God's vision is and was and what he's restoring in the end. Now, we're not gonna get into end times theology today. Maybe we'll have to do a series on that eventually.
Creativity as Divine Reflection
00:03:30
Speaker
But let's start with Genesis 2.15. When I was a kid, I remember whining about my chores and my work to my dad and being so disappointed when my dad told me that work was not a product of the fall.
00:03:46
Speaker
Work is not a product of the fall. Work existed before the fall, and in Genesis 2.15 we see that God put Adam in the garden to tend it. That's work! Before anything ever happened, before sin entered the world, Adam was working. But we also see him say, Genesis 3.23, after the fall he sent Adam out of the garden to work the land that had been cursed.
00:04:13
Speaker
But now, and remember the curse specifically given on the land, and that would apply to man who was tilling it, was
Traditional Views on Women's Roles
00:04:23
Speaker
it will now resist you. It will bring up thorns and thistles. It will not be easy for it to produce and respond to your work.
00:04:34
Speaker
But man was going to be working both before and after the fall and his mission, his mission to be fruitful and multiply. I want to make a quick note there. Be fruitful doesn't just mean have a bunch of kids. It also means be productive, grow fruit from your life, make beautiful things, create the way you were created.
00:04:57
Speaker
so he's to be fruitful and multiply fill the earth subdue it have dominion over it and this is all part of man's mission and why when god said man needs a helper suitable for him go back to the marriage episode he needs a helper suitable for him he needs
00:05:15
Speaker
all of the strength of woman to help him fulfill this calling. He needs a woman to do this work. So we see work is existing before and after the fall and woman is an integral part of that work.
00:05:31
Speaker
moving forward into Exodus there is a verse we all know so well it is the command observe the Sabbath it's one of the 10 commandments six days you shall labor but the seventh you shall rest it is holy it is a Sabbath to the Lord your God
00:05:47
Speaker
One of the things we notice about this usually is, Sabbath, you shall rest. We're like, yes, okay, I get that. That's the point of it, right? But we skip over the first part of that verse, which says, six days you shall labor.
00:06:02
Speaker
six days you shall labor now in our society today you might be thinking five days I shall labor Monday Wednesday Thursday Friday oops Tuesday too we only labor five days but six days you shall labor but only one day is commanded as a Sabbath to the Lord to be holy and that is
00:06:22
Speaker
a commandment from the Lord. This isn't an optional commandment. You know, we don't just pass over thou shalt not murder and ignore Sabbath. This is something God sees as important. But the work, the six days of labor is important to God too. The Sabbath is of course
00:06:37
Speaker
holy and should be observed, but also those six days of labor are seen by God. He says you shall labor, you shall work those six days. And so clearly God sees work as a good and wonderful thing. We know that creativity is a form of work in God's eyes. It's a way of reflecting God's heart. All creativity is a reflection of God's working heart.
00:07:05
Speaker
creating as he created. And so when we talk about work, this isn't just, you know, the doing the dishes and showing up to the office and typing in Excel.
Early Feminism & Women's Rights
00:07:15
Speaker
It's not just waiting tables or becoming a nanny or
00:07:20
Speaker
working as a lawyer or cleaning your house and caring for your kids all of those things are work and all of them are seen as good in God's eyes but creativity using your mind and your skills artistic or rational whatever it is that God has gifted and skilled you with
00:07:40
Speaker
that is a form of work and he loves it. Exodus 35 is talking about building the tabernacle and it says that there were skilled workers that God specifically inspired with the Holy Spirit to do their artwork. They were excellent at metalworking and at working with jewels and working with gold and precious metals and the Lord inspired their skill. That's phenomenal. It blows my mind whenever I read that passage because I think
00:08:10
Speaker
Oh my goodness, that God is inspiring the creativity of different people. And it's honestly why, little peek into my personal life, I guess, whenever I go to a ballet or I go to an art museum and I look at what man has been able to create, when I listen to certain kinds of music, I just think this is phenomenal.
00:08:36
Speaker
that God imparted some of his creative ability to men and women to make this kind of beauty. To have the mind to make, you know, design a dance, choreograph a dance, to compose a piece of music. That is just mind-blowing to me.
00:08:57
Speaker
And part of why I love the arts so much, even though I didn't really study them in depth in high school or in college, I love them because when I see them, I see God's fingerprints all over it. So that's an aside. But when we talk about work, I want you to also keep in mind that this involves creativity in general. It is not just
00:09:17
Speaker
Work that we we do in order to make a living though. That is a part of it in a fallen world We have to work to eat. We have to work to to make a living and it's hard sometimes because we're working the ground and And you know, we're not in an agrarian culture anymore generally many of us some of you are some of you are farmers some of you own livestock and that is actually how you make your money, but all of us
00:09:44
Speaker
When we are doing our work using our skills and our talents and in exchanging our labor for payment, we are working the ground in a sense. We are working the earth, the world, in order to provide for our families. But the question that often comes up is, should a woman be providing? Doesn't scripture say that men are the providers? This is a question we hear a lot. Man is the provider. He's the breadwinner.
00:10:15
Speaker
At the time of recording this, my husband and I have actually been five months self-employed and he came on to work with me in a business that I started and have run for the last three-ish, four years. So technically, I was working and he came to work with me.
00:10:38
Speaker
So the valid question here then is, am I in sin or not walking with the Lord because I
00:10:48
Speaker
owned and ran a business and my husband came to work with me instead of vice versa." Now some of
Victorian Views vs. Scripture
00:10:55
Speaker
you are like, this is such an ancient question. Why are we even asking it? Reality is a lot of churches do still teach this, whether subtly and through implication or just outright. And we need to be able to give an answer biblically
00:11:13
Speaker
Is it wrong for a husband and wife to be both the breadwinner, so to speak, or for the wife to be and the husband to be at home with the kids for a time or for a long time? I know a lot of families where the husband is the homeschooler and the wife is working.
00:11:33
Speaker
What does scripture say about that? What do we do with the world we live in now where there's a lot more freedom for what work looks like for women? Can women work outside the home at all? Because sometimes you'll see churches say, it's okay if she's working in the home because she's still in the home, but she can't work outside the home.
00:11:56
Speaker
But what about when you have a husband working outside the home, the wife's in the home, and then when the kids go to school, the wife is volunteering her time everywhere. What's the difference? How come she can volunteer, which many churches would be okay with, but she can't work for money?
00:12:15
Speaker
Do you see these double standards and these questions that arise over the topic simply of women working? We take it for granted that it's biblical, but as always we have to be willing to look at what scripture says. And so I want to start with a little bit of a history lesson as always because of how much culture has impacted this discussion.
00:12:39
Speaker
So I was doing some research into the early feminist movement. We have a whole episode on feminism, but I was specifically looking at feminism in Seattle in the labor unions. I know it's super specific, but it was giving me kind of a
00:12:55
Speaker
a picture of what women were fighting for when it came to work, especially among the middle and working class. And I won't get into all of the details because this is a very complicated story, interesting, but complicated. But a big question for a lot of women and a lot of feminists at that time was enabling married women to work. So at this point,
00:13:20
Speaker
single women could work because they needed to be able to support themselves, although it was usually in positions in society like servants. So think like Downton Abbey, although that's in England and not in Seattle.
00:13:35
Speaker
Also, you would have positions like a seamstress, a cook, things like that, domestic type of work. And so in the decades, 1910 to almost the Great Depression, so 1920s, a lot of these early feminists were fighting for married women to also have the right to seek a position and also take positions in the industries that their own husbands were working in.
00:14:05
Speaker
Now there was a ton of conflict around this, mostly because of what was called a family wage. So the family wage was a wage that was paid to a man that would support his whole family. And the idea was that the man should be, you know, the breadwinner
00:14:24
Speaker
But he needs to be able to support his family. And so the unions would guarantee that he would get this family wage to support the whole family so that his wife, well, she wouldn't be working. They were not pro married women working, but she wouldn't have to work. He would be making enough.
00:14:39
Speaker
But a lot of these early feminists are saying, no, like a wife should be able to work, not whether or not they have enough money. It's not about how much money they make, but just because she wants to, that she has the same rights in society as her husband does. She's not dependent on him as the primary wage earner. She can also go out and get a job.
00:15:06
Speaker
Now, I do encourage listening to the feminism episode to understand some of this. There were some motives in this movement that were not pure. There were some motives that were colored by misandry or man-hating for lack of a better term. Misandry is just the opposite of misogyny.
Cultural Biases in Church Teachings
00:15:26
Speaker
And so when these early feminists were fighting for this, there's no doubt that there were some motivations that weren't biblical and weren't pure. But there were definitely some motivations that were justified. And the reason I say that is because of the cultural context that these women were speaking from.
00:15:49
Speaker
What happened very recently for those early feminists was the Victorian era. The Victorian era lasted from about 1837 to 1901, which would have only been nine years or so before some of this was happening. And I think we tend, especially in Christianity for some reason, we can tend to romanticize the Victorian era.
00:16:17
Speaker
Growing up in homeschool world, purity culture, I for sure saw it romanticized, not by my parents, but definitely by the world I was in where it was like, we want to go back to these days of women fainting on couches and men being chivalrous as if that was exactly what the Victorian era promoted and that's what it was like. And if we could only go back there, that was when things were right with the world.
00:16:46
Speaker
But the reality of the Victorian era is actually quite different and I want to read to you a couple of quotes from some historians who were writing about the Victorian era and what the relationship between men and women really was.
00:17:07
Speaker
So many women in the Victorian time were not educated as much as the men were. They definitely weren't working like the men were. And Richard Altych states, a woman was inferior to a man in all ways except the unique one that counted most to a man, her femininity. Her place was in the home on a veritable pedestal if one could be afforded and emphatically not in the world of affairs.
00:17:34
Speaker
So women were not to be out in society doing what men did, they were to be in the home, and a wealthy woman would have servants to do the duties of the home, the housework, and therefore she could just be feminine and creative.
00:17:50
Speaker
But Victorian men also had certain expectations on what a woman should be. Petrie, Charles Petrie, says this in an article, innocence was what men demanded from the girls of his class. They must not only be innocent, but also give the outward impression of being innocent.
00:18:08
Speaker
or naive, pure. White muslin, typical virginal purity, clothes many a heroine, with delicate shades of blue and pink next in popularity. The stamp of masculine approval was placed upon ignorance of the world. Meekness, lack of opinions, general helplessness and weakness, ensure recognition of female inferiority to the male.
00:18:31
Speaker
Now, if you're a little outraged at this, you should be. This is not what scripture teaches about women. And by now in this series, you should know that. Scripture is not teaching that we should not have opinions, be generally helpless, be ignorant of the world, or be weak. None of these things are what scripture teaches about women, and that's not what characterizes the women that we see both in scripture, Old Testament, and new, and in the history of the church.
00:19:01
Speaker
So clearly this isn't what God expects. This is a cultural expectation and unfortunately it has actually been read into scripture. It's been applied to scripture and it shows us how our cultural context and conditioning can actually change how we look at the Bible.
Reactive Theology vs. Scripture
00:19:20
Speaker
And this, I believe, was a huge factor in
00:19:24
Speaker
why the feminists in, you know, early 1900s, and specifically in the articles I was reading when they were in Seattle, why they were reacting so strongly against being, quote unquote, trapped in the home. Today, we think trapped in the home and we think, you know, it's just this modern secular feminism that women, you know, they say they're trapped, but in reality, they just want to control men. These are narratives I'm
00:19:51
Speaker
repeating from some conservatives and some churches surrounding modern-day feminism. But back then, women were often quite honestly trapped in the home. They did not have any other option. Many of them could not afford to have help.
00:20:08
Speaker
And in this society, America, it's different than in Eastern societies where the family would surround and still live together, have grandmas and aunts and mothers living nearby, helping the family. That is something that has been kind of hit or miss in American society.
00:20:28
Speaker
In some generations, sure it's happened, but America has also been, if you look at the big picture of its history, people would pick up and leave their families and move out west. They would move down south. They would move and they'd be on their own, completely on their own, running this household with no option to work in society unless they were absolutely poor. And even if they were poor, they could only work in certain industries.
00:20:54
Speaker
This limitation on women, I think, has a lot to do with the view of women that Victorian society perpetuated, and so it makes a little bit of sense why these early feminists were reacting so strongly against it. Do I think they had pure motives? Not always.
00:21:12
Speaker
But I definitely think that they were looking at another dysfunctional system and trying to find a way to fix it. And so when we look at scripture, we need to ask ourselves, are we reacting against something? Are we reacting against how we were raised or some narrative? Or are we really coming to scripture, trying to see what God is saying about women and their work?
Biblical Passages on Women's Roles
00:21:39
Speaker
Because any time you build
00:21:41
Speaker
A theology on a reaction. It will not be sound. Reactive theology is not sound theology. Christmas is on its way and I know some of you already have your Christmas decorations up and if you're thinking ahead for what you're going to buy for friends and family, I hope you will check out our theology pop-up shop November 20th through 23rd.
00:22:07
Speaker
We only open the shop four times a year, and this is the last shop in 2020. We have all new products, plus we're bringing back some of the favorites, like our student of the heart of God sweatshirt. If you are interested in a mug or some leather goods, new e-books on parenting and on pregnancy, this is the shop for you.
00:22:30
Speaker
It will be open November 20th. It will close November 23rd. I'm so excited for this launch. The theme is peace, which I think is so perfect for this time of year after the election, after the difficulty of 2020. So be sure to mark your calendars November 20th through 23rd. The shop will be live on my website and you can grab your products just in time for Christmas.
00:22:56
Speaker
Let's look at a few other passages that give us kind of a picture of this and deal with some of the questions with women and their work. One of the top verses that I see quoted, at least in super conservative circles, is in Titus. It's Titus 2 talking about young women.
00:23:20
Speaker
It says, I'll go back to older women so we can see the big picture here. Titus 2.3, older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands that the word of God may not be reviled. So this working at home can also be translated keepers at home. I believe that's what it is in the KJV.
00:23:49
Speaker
And that is what many more fundamental churches will quote to say, hey, women should not be working outside the home. It says, be a keeper at home. Now, we're going to look, though, at another passage. So Titus is written by Paul, written to Titus. And then we see Timothy, also written by Paul, where he's talking in 1 Timothy 5 13 about what's going on in the church that young Timothy is guiding and teaching in.
Proverbs 31: A Model for Women
00:24:19
Speaker
He's talking here about younger widows and whether or not the church should put them on the list of people to be supported monetarily, to be taken care of. He says, I refuse to enroll younger widows for when their passions draw them away from Christ they desire to marry and so they incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith.
00:24:41
Speaker
Besides that, they learned to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not. So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander.
00:24:58
Speaker
So this is clearly a specific problem that he was seeing with these young women who originally said they were going to dedicate themselves to the church and to prayer for the church, which is many of what these widows were doing. They were dedicating themselves to prayer and to good works for the church, and they were being supported by the church. But these women were getting distracted and possibly going off and marrying unbelievers
00:25:22
Speaker
whatever the case was, they were not only abandoning what they promised to do, but they also were busy bodies going from house to house. And if you look in a good study Bible, in my study Bible here, when you look at that verse in Titus about women being keepers at home, it literally says in the notes, not busy bodies.
00:25:44
Speaker
It was not about them never working outside the home. It was about don't be bopping around to your neighbor's doors, you know, getting into their business, spreading gossip, spreading slander. And basically what Paul is saying here is they're they're working for the enemy. They're not being productive for the kingdom. They're not being productive for their household. They're just butting into other people's business and therefore I'm not going to enroll them and pay them by the church because
00:26:12
Speaker
they aren't actually using their time in a diligent way.
John MacArthur's Views Questioned
00:26:17
Speaker
So if that's not what keepers at home means, then what other proof in scripture do we have that women can work and that maybe God blesses their work? I'm going to go to my favorite passage on this Proverbs 31.
00:26:34
Speaker
Please excuse the baby noises as I read a little bit of this passage. Proverbs 31 10 says, an excellent wife who can find. She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not harm all the days of her life.
00:26:52
Speaker
She seeks wool and flax and works with willing hands. She is like the ships of the merchant. She brings her food from afar. She rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household and portions for her maidens. She considers a field and buys it. With the fruit of her hands, she plants a vineyard. She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong. She perceives that her merchandise is profitable and her lamp does not go out at night.
00:27:19
Speaker
It goes on to another 10 verses or so talking about everything that this woman dies, both in the home and out of the home. Interestingly, of the 21 verses talking about the Proverbs 31 woman, 10 of them reference her work.
00:27:34
Speaker
Some of that work takes place in the home and some of that work takes place out of the home, including buying a field and working and selling for profit, putting her hand to the distaff, spinning. She makes bed coverings for herself and for her family. She sells linen garments and sashes to the merchant. This woman does not eat the bread of idleness.
00:28:01
Speaker
But that's not the entire point here. We know that she's a woman who fears the Lord, and yet out of that fear of God, she runs a business. She works both in the home and in the community.
00:28:16
Speaker
Now, when we bring passages like this to more fundamental theologians and scholars, such as John MacArthur, they say that because her work was evidently out of the home and not in the marketplace all the time, that it was permissible. And in John MacArthur's book, God's High Calling for Women, he does make that case that a woman can do that kind of work,
00:28:43
Speaker
because it was within her home. But if it were outside of the home, then it would be outside of God's will unless the person was in need and needed to make the money to survive. Then there would be grace for that. But otherwise, it would not be permissible for a woman to work outside the home in that manner. Now, I want to read a quote from John MacArthur's book because I want you to hear one perspective on this.
00:29:10
Speaker
This is on page 30 of God's high calling for women where he says, The contemporary destruction of God's purpose in creating women is very tragic. The role and function of women today and consequently their divine design and their ultimate well-being in life, their meaning and sense of satisfaction is being continually attacked and perverted. The sad thing is women are not the winners but the victims of this. Women are being told to be bold, to be assertive,
00:29:37
Speaker
to be independent, to be competitive, to take leadership, exert authority, be the breadwinner, rise to the same functional level as men, and not take a backseat to anything in that regard. Sadly, there are churches and evangelical institutions, colleges, and seminaries that have bought into this philosophy even though the word of God is absolutely clear on the matter.
00:29:57
Speaker
They are willing in this postmodern day over the last generation to reject all of the Bible's teaching, or twist and turn it to fit new attitudes, or simply abandon centuries of Christian belief. This is tragic because women are not best served by this. They are ill-served by being cast into roles for which God never intended them to be a part.
00:30:14
Speaker
I wanted to read this to you because I think it's important to hear it directly from him as an example of a portion of the church that does believe that things like boldness, assertiveness, independence, competitiveness, leadership are, quite frankly, in this context, sin issues.
00:30:34
Speaker
and that for a woman to exhibit these characteristics, however they decide that looks, is to be out of the will of God. And this is an example of an interpretation of these passages that, quite frankly, is colored by a cultural understanding. Because we see, in the Proverbs 31 specifically, but also in the lives of women like Deborah and Hulda and the women in the New Testament Church, again, go back and listen to the previous episodes,
00:31:03
Speaker
that we've talked about these women, these women did exhibit boldness, assertiveness, a healthy independence, leadership in a biblical and godly way. And what concerns me with this particular passage by MacArthur, now I want you to know I have read widely of MacArthur and there are some wonderful things he's contributed to the church, but this is one particular passage that I want people to be aware of in his view of women.
00:31:33
Speaker
When he's writing something like this, there's this assumption that these character traits by themselves are sin issues. When in fact these exact character traits can be an honor to the Gospel when your heart is submitted to Christ. A woman who loves the Gospel and is dedicated to the Word can be bold in honoring Christ. She can be assertive in honoring Christ and taking leadership in honoring Christ.
00:32:03
Speaker
but only when she is grounded in the word and walking by the Holy Spirit. And so when we look at women and their work, we have to keep in mind that we are never to worship our work, to worship our independence, to place it on a pedestal. We are to be interdependent, both within our marriages and within the body of Christ. And that applies to married people, single people, men, women. We depend on one another. We are a community of faith.
00:32:31
Speaker
And in our work then, we bring our best because we are supported by other godly people in our personal life. The body of Christ equips and enables us to be good at our work, to be good at our creativity because we have that grounding in a community.
00:32:49
Speaker
We have grounding in the Word, in solid teaching. And so, yes, there are churches who would greatly agree with John MacArthur on this, but I would argue that what scripture has to say in general about women and the pictures of women that we see do not align with John MacArthur's interpretation.
Interdependence vs. Independence
00:33:10
Speaker
And if you follow his work,
00:33:12
Speaker
In general, over the course of many years, you will see that he is very concerned about the influence of secular feminism. And I would agree. I would be concerned about the influence of secular feminism, too. But I'm not afraid of it. And the reason I'm not afraid of it is because the Holy Spirit is bigger.
00:33:29
Speaker
And where you see women giving in to idolatry of work, idolatry of independence, idolatry of feminism as the answer, the real issue was never feminism. The real issue was their lack of dedication to the gospel in the first place, their lack of relationship to God.
00:33:47
Speaker
We don't just jump from Jesus to feminism overnight. Something is lost in that process. We don't jump from worshipping Jesus to worshipping our work overnight. Something happened there. And what can happen in some churches is we focus on what we're afraid of. We focus on the end game. Well, I don't want, you know, our women to buy into the entire secular feminist movement. Well, the guard against that is not more rules about what women can and can't do that aren't actually in scripture.
00:34:17
Speaker
the guard against that is the Holy Spirit and grounding oneself in the Word.
00:34:23
Speaker
Couple last points that I want to make. First, independence. I was a very independent young woman. I still am very naturally independent. Being married has taught me healthy interdependence, but it was a very difficult journey for a long time. I really struggled to understand healthy interdependence without feeling weak or as if I had a place, but I've learned
00:34:49
Speaker
through my walk with the Lord, through godly people, through counseling, that interdependence is the call of every Christian. And when we idolize our independence, when we care most about what happens to us and what we're going to do and where we're going to end up and our career,
00:35:05
Speaker
we're missing the point of Christian community. We're missing the goal of the church and we're missing the point of marriage if we're married. It is healthy interdependence that God is after and that means that no one is domineering over the other. No one is exalting their independence over the other and what I was doing personally was I saw unhealthy dependence in the marriages around me and I reacted against it by
00:35:35
Speaker
idolizing my independence trying to protect it at all costs finding my identity in my career and so when i quit my job when i had my daughter to stay home with her we moved to a new state and i just realized that i was going to be chained to a desk and i knew i wanted to give my best to my daughter and have time for her i quit my job
00:35:56
Speaker
And it was kind of an identity crisis for me because I had put so much into my career, so much of what I loved into being a college academic counselor and working with homeschooled families. That was everything to me. And so suddenly it's gone and I just I didn't know what to do with myself. And honestly, for me, it turned into throwing all of my energy into being a mom.
00:36:25
Speaker
I was cloth diapering and fighting to breastfeed. Some of you know that story from the breastfeeding episode, doing everything I could to be the very best crunchy mom that I could. And I do think that this is a factor too for many women, that when we idolize our work or when we find our identity in our work and that work is taken away or we quit our job to be home with our kids, suddenly we don't have an identity anymore. And so we throw our identity into motherhood.
00:36:54
Speaker
So regardless, I hope through every episode so far you've seen that we can't put our identity in any of these things. We can't put our identity in the perfect birth or in what our body looks like or in our breastfeeding journey or in our marriages or in our church and our leadership or in our work. Our identity
00:37:14
Speaker
has to be rooted in who Christ is and what he did for us on the cross. It has to be rooted in the gospel in order for us to have purpose in our work, to have an understanding of what God's called us to do with our skills and our talents, and then to go out and do that, but never idolize the skills and the talents themselves.
Conclusion: Purpose & Identity in Work
00:37:32
Speaker
Never fail to remember that God is the one who gave them to us, and we get to use that for his glory and the good of the world.
00:37:43
Speaker
The last thing I want to mention kind of as a thought to just consider is that the idea of women working or not working outside the home especially is kind of a Western privileged question because there are so many women even today who cannot ask that question at all. They must work. They must work to live.
00:38:07
Speaker
And even in America, there are many families where they must work to survive. They must pull two incomes in order to live. And many of those women might want to be home with their kids, but they can't. This is one of those nuanced topics where we have to think about who is God? What is the heart of God for women and for work?
00:38:31
Speaker
Is he looking down on women who have to work in order to survive because they're not in their homes? Is this their second class status and he's always dissatisfied with them? I can't see that in scripture. Not because I don't want to, but because I can't find it in scripture.
00:38:51
Speaker
We live in a fallen world where things don't always go the way that we wish they would go. But we also see that God has imbued us with part of His creative power, His ability, His love, to do a good work in the world, whether that's paid or unpaid. And some of us have the privilege of choosing whether or not to work. Others do not. God is the ultimate provider.
00:39:20
Speaker
and many times he provides through a woman's work. I do want to add one thing. I said that was my last thing, but I have another thought that I have to add and I'm remembering it because it comes up a lot on Instagram when I talk about seeing your work in the home as valuable.
00:39:40
Speaker
And the Industrial Revolution really changed a lot of our perspectives on work in the home and how because it doesn't make money, we see it as less valuable, as less important, as boring and mundane.
00:39:56
Speaker
All office workers here raise their hands. Have you ever done something boring or mundane in your office? Who likes doing Excel sheets over and over and over again? Who likes answering emails over and over, answering the phone? These are things you have to do in a full-time job that are boring and mundane, but nobody decries them because you're getting paid for it.
00:40:22
Speaker
but dishes and laundry and cleaning and caring for small children that are your own, somehow that gets to be degraded and seen as less than because nobody's paying you to do it.
00:40:34
Speaker
This is wrong. It's wrong. And I'm not afraid to say that because what happens in the home is just as seen by God, just as valuable, just as important as paid work. And it's a big reason that I personally am so happy at home.
00:40:52
Speaker
I didn't always work from home. I didn't always have a business that I ran from home. There were several years where I just had a little side hustle and I was a stay-at-home mom. And as such, I saw my work in the home as my job. It's my job. I show up for it.
00:41:11
Speaker
And how I personally choose to show up for it is to get dressed for it, to put on my makeup, to treat my day as an eight to five, which means that during the eight to five hours, I'm not watching TV usually. I'm not scrolling my phone except when I'm sitting down to eat or cooking dinner or nursing or something. I'm working and that work is in the home.
00:41:37
Speaker
And I see that as a valuable and a time for me to put effort in. And then when my husband would come home, he worked crazy hours in different jobs. So he wasn't always home at five, but five was my cutoff. And that was when I would sit down and read or watch Netflix or just have friends over or hang out with my husband. That's when I rest. But during the day is my work time because this is my job and it's a good work. God sees it.
00:42:03
Speaker
That has given me so much purpose as a mom and someone who's spending all of my time at home. It gives me so much purpose because I know that what I do matters to God, but I also feel the weight of it and feel the purpose of it because I wake up and I start my day and I have my lunch break and then I keep working.
00:42:24
Speaker
until I have my time to rest. And that division of labor for my brain and my life has really been helpful. But the takeaway I want you to have from it, whether you do that or not, is that God sees paid and unpaid labor and he values both. And when Paul said to do your work as unto the Lord, he was talking to a slave, a bond servant, someone who wasn't being paid for their work.
00:42:50
Speaker
So that should tell you that when we do our work as unto the Lord, He isn't looking at the dollar signs behind it. He's looking at the fact that you did it for His glory and you did it with a heart sold out to Him.
00:43:06
Speaker
That's what the Proverbs 31 woman did. If you look at the end of this passage, it says, her children rise up and call her blessed. Her husband also, when he praises her, many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all. Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her the fruit of her hands and let her works praise her in the gates.
00:43:30
Speaker
It was because she feared the Lord ultimately that she was praised, not even because of her works, but her works were there too. The fruit of her hands, the fruit of her labor was given back to her. That's pretty phenomenal.
00:43:45
Speaker
There's so much more I wish I could say about this topic, so much more historically. I wish I could have pulled from and studied for this episode, but we're out of time today. And I just hope that this gave you some things to think about in your own work. And as you navigate your workplace, whether it's in the home or out of the home, that you see that God values what you do, that you are not out of the will of God for doing this work,
00:44:10
Speaker
that what your skills and talents bring to the world is a way to point back to who Christ is and what he's doing in your life. Your work can be a witness.
00:44:25
Speaker
Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Verity. You can connect with fellow listeners by following me on Instagram at Felicia Masonheimer or on our Facebook page by the same name. Also visit FeliciaMasonheimer.com for links to each episode and the show notes.