Transcript
Speaker: See, if you realize and recognize that your ability to think and to engage with the world is something given to you by God, you then have to report back to God on how you stewarded that gift.
Speaker: Hello, friends, and welcome back to Verity Podcast for our new Thinking Biblically season. i am so glad you are here watching or listening with me today. My name is Felicia Masonheimer. If you're not familiar with me, I am the founder of the ministry Every Woman a Theologian, which is based in northern Michigan but has the privilege of serving women in America and around the world. So thank you for being here, and we are launching a new series series today. If you watched the introduction to the series that we posted a few weeks ago, you know a little of the vision that I have for this and how we're not afraid to talk about some pretty tough topics in this series. Now, if you receive my email newsletter, you will also know that I have been sending out Thinking Biblically newsletters throughout the summer And so those have addressed a variety of different topics in our expansions on a previous smaller section that I was doing in that newsletter.
Speaker: If you would like to receive my weekly email, you can head to feliciamasonheimer.com forward slash newsletter. It's totally free. We send two emails a week and the Tuesday email is the one that contains the thinking biblically section. So each week during this series, I will be writing a separate piece of content, a separate essay in that newsletter related to what we're talking about in this week's episode. So this episode is coming out after that newsletter has gone out, but you can still sign up or email us and ask to be sent that particular essay.
Speaker: So with all of that said, we're going to jump in with a very controversial topic. We're going to just start with a bang today. We're going to be talking about the trad wife debate.
Speaker: And the reason that I chose to start with this is we've gotten a lot of questions about this over the last couple of years. I have done a few Instagram reels about it. I've written smaller pieces on the topic, but nothing that really treats the core of the issue.
Speaker: And as I studied, researched, and observed this, I noticed that we have a situation of the classic human pendulum swing going on. And that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about the the sides of the debate, the pendulum swing that's happening, how one side drives the other side further into their opinion and vice versa, and then step back from it and think biblically.
Speaker: What does God say? about the purpose of a woman? Because that is the question that is at the heart of this debate. So before we get to that, I want to revisit the passage that I gave you in the introduction to this series. My hope is, if I remember, um to bring this passage back to your mind each time we do an episode because I want it to be really core, really at the front of mind as we look at these different topics.
Speaker: This is Hebrews 5, 11 through 14. About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing.
Speaker: For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
Speaker: And this is why I say we are called to think biblically. What that means is that your powers of discernment as you mature in faith are trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Or as one scholar said, to distinguish good from almost good, which is actually a lot harder to do and I think is actually at the core of the trad wife debate. It's not so much distinguishing good from evil, but best distinctk distinguishing good from almost good.
Speaker: And who defines what's good? God alone. God alone is good. He is the definition of what good is. So we need to be going to him, to his revealed word, as handed down through the historic church, as inspired by the Holy Spirit and given to the prophets and the apostles. We need this so that we can have renewed minds to discern through what is being offered to us in this world, even if it seems really, really good.
Speaker: So now let's transition to some of my credentials on this topic. I find this topic so intriguing, probably because i straddle the line in this conversation. I don't really fit in any box. And it's not one of those I'm not like other girls situations. It's just the nature of how my life turned out and the calling that the Lord has placed upon me.
Speaker: I knew even as a teenage girl, even in my 20s, I wanted one day to be a wife and mom. And I knew that I wanted to be home with my kids. I just knew that. My mom was home with me. She homeschooled me and my siblings. um And I just saw that and I loved that. And I loved the other moms who were around us when I was growing up. And I just wanted to be like them. I wanted to provide that for my family. But I also felt this compelling call, this an undeniable from such a young age that I knew God was calling me to use my voice for something, to use my writing for something. And I didn't know how those two things could be blended together.
Speaker: I had no idea. And so just a series of faithful steps and saying yes to God and letting him show what door he wanted to open has led to where i am today. And so to give you a picture of what my life looks like,
Speaker: I am baking food for the co-op that i'm orientation that I'm going to tonight. I baked cookies for that. I'm washing dishes. I'm doing laundry. I'm homeschooling my kids. I'm the primary cleaner.
Speaker: I cook 95% of the meals. I do the meal planning. doing laundry. I do the educating. I'm doing most of the caring for my children. and i have the privilege of leading a team of 12 people, including myself, in a ministry that gets to preach the words of Jesus around the globe. I get to write books for publishers, and I get to create curriculums and materials that get to help people understand the gospel. i have work hours, and I have hours that are protected to homeschool my kids. I have times I take my kids out to the farmer's market and we get to go and grab flowers and come home and have scones that I baked. And then other times I am writing a podcast outline in Starbucks and then sitting down here to share this with you. So my life...
Speaker: is one of those things that it looks very much like a trad wife life in some ways. I am home 90% of the time. I am in my house. Everything happens here. Sometimes a little too much. but But at the same time, I'm a working mom.
Speaker: And having a foot in either world of being a mom who's working and being a mom who is um at home with her children, um we have technically one income because my husband and I both work for the ministry. um And so, you know, that's interesting in and of itself. And my husband quit his job to come home and work for the ministry that by God's grace, I founded. So, you know, it's just a unique situation. So how, how what it what does that mean biblically? You know, I have wrestled with this because I am being told in this world that what I am doing should be impossible. That from a philosophical standpoint, from an ideology standpoint, I'm undermining myself by having a foot in each world.
Speaker: And yet, let me tell you something. I have so much peace in what I'm doing. I have the best husband in the world. He's amazing. And he has enabled a lot of this to happen.
Speaker: But my marriage is not under threat by this. My ministry is not under threat by this. My children, their education is not under threat by this. It is really, really hard sometimes. And yet I can know that I am walking in the purpose that God has for me. And I want that peace for any woman who is trying to think biblically about something like this debate, which when you go online and you see the vitriol and the anger and the fury that's happening from either side, it's confusing and overwhelming and can make you question what Am I doing what God has asked me to do? Now, I think we should all ask that question, kind of segue here. i think we should be willing to say, am I doing what God has called me to do? Or am I only doing what is on autopilot? Have I ever sat and asked the Lord, what do you actually want of me in this season?
Speaker: And we'll get to that at the end. But for now, I want to dive into my notes. there therere The notes for this episode were enormous. And when I say that we're not going to cover...
Speaker: All of it. We're not. um Because I wanted to do research into the ends of the spectrum. And so I think there is a spectrum on the tried wife debate. On one end, we have secular feminism.
Speaker: And I'm going to look at some samples of what they have to say about this, specifically highlighting the words of the author of a trad wife fictional novel called Yesteryear. And then we're going to look at what fundamentalist Christians have had to say about this. So that's the other end of the spectrum. So you've got secular feminism and you've got fundamentalism.
Speaker: But in the middle of this spectrum is the average stay-at-home mom or the mom like me who doesn't really fit in any of these boxes. And she's online. She's seeing this stuff come through that's saying, if you're...
Speaker: You know, on one income, married to the same man for 10 years, and you've got three under three, you are oppressed and there's no way you can be happy. And if you are, you're deceiving yourself.
Speaker: And then there are other women who are working women who are doing their best to prioritize their family and to raise them in the Lord. And they're hearing that unless you are wearing linen and making sourdough and, you know, at home for everything, including any income producing work you do, then you're in sin against the Lord.
Speaker: So how does that person navigate this question? First, we're going to look at these two extremes, and then we're going to look at what the Bible tells us, because that's what we do at Every Woman a Theologian.
Speaker: All right, to have a productive conversation, you always have to define your terms. So when we say trad wife debate, what are we talking about? If you're outside of the United States, you might even be like, what even is a trad wife? Because this is a very distinctly American conversation, and I think that's actually a part of this whole thing, as we'll discover later. So what's a traditional wife?
Speaker: Trad wife means traditional wife, but what is a traditional wife? Before we can even talk about this, we have to know, well, what is it? And here is the very first problem we encounter in this debate.
Speaker: There's more than one definition of what a traditional wife is. So trad wife, according to secular feminism, is someone who basically benefits from feminist systems while denying their power.
Speaker: So benefits from being able to have a bank account, drive a car, hold a job, all of the things that women's rights have accomplished on behalf of women, and yet says she doesn't need feminism because she can rely on the income of her husband, and she does not need to go to college, have a career, or any of these things to be happy and successful. So that's the that's the narrative that you're going to be hearing, um the framework of a secular feminist describing a trad wife. But beyond that, many secular feminists take issue with online influencing trad wives. those who portray themselves as on one income or portray themselves as a stay-at-home mom type traditional wife and yet are making income off of brand deals and are are not actually doing everything themselves. So they are hiring a housekeeper or a cleaner or a nanny And so they tend to lump all trad wives kind of under this umbrella of women who believe themselves to not need feminism but have benefited from feminism. Women who are saying they're one thing but actually are not.
Speaker: And women who um believe that they are free but are actually oppressed. And So if you had to describe how a feminist sees trad wife, I would say the word that they don't use but should use is hypocritical, that these women are blind and hypocritical. And so ah this is important because we're going to read a quote from from the author of Yesteryear. And Yesteryear is a debut novel that came out in the last couple, maybe the last year. It made a bunch of bestseller lists. And the author wrote an entire plot line about a trad wife influencer who gets taken back in time to the 1800s in America and has to survive, but doesn't have any of the skills to do it. So ah we're going to talk about what she said in just a minute because I think it really sums up the core of the feminist argument and the feminist issue with the trad wife. Before we get to that, though, let's briefly touch on the fundamentalist perspective on what a trad wife is. So fundamentalism, quite frankly, is just the flip side of secular feminism. They're literally just two poles or, you know, they're two ends, same spectrum, same way of seeing the world in that feminism today is a religion.
Speaker: It has its rituals. It has its priorities, its sacraments, such as abortion. It has its way of seeing the world, its worldview. It's things you must say yes to in order to be called a feminist. And In our world, that is the state of fourth or fifth wave feminism, whichever wave we're on now.
Speaker: Fundamentalism is that flip side. Both are fundamentalists. Both have fundamentals that must be adhered to in order to be a part of the club. And these fundamentals are adding on to what scripture has revealed.
Speaker: But in fundamentalism, you must follow these strict rules and beliefs around the roles of women. Fundamentalist Christianity teaches that a woman's primary purpose is to be a wife and mother.
Speaker: She cannot work outside the home. She must submit to men, just not just her husband. And in some circles, she may not divorce for any reason. We're going to be looking at some quotes from the fundamentalist perspectives, from of the key books that have been written on this topic in a moment. But again, I'm setting this up where I want you to see what's a traditional wife.
Speaker: What's a traditional life? So in the secular feminist view, it is a woman who, quite frankly, is hypocritical because she's benefiting from the feminist system, but won't call herself a feminist. She is oppressed but doesn't realize it.
Speaker: And then on the fundamentalist side, this woman is to live inside a box that, you know, is created for her by God. And it is keeping her to two primary roles, wife and mother. And if she is single, long-term, widowed, these are just considered the effects of a broken world that unfortunately keep you from walking in the ultimate fulfillment of your call, which is wife and mother. And
Speaker: To work outside the home is to participate in the feminist system. And submission, as defined by fundamentalism, is not submission first to Christ the way that he modeled it, but a submission of beyond just the spiritual, the attitude, the heart, which we're all called to as Christians, but even your personality, even giftings, talents,
Speaker: putting them underneath not just God, but a man. And sometimes it's your husband. yeah Some fundamentalist circles would say it's your husband who dictates that. Others would say um all men in your past are and and such.
Speaker: Again, we'll look at some examples of it. So as you might think, If these are the two ends of the spectrum, one who says you're re oppressed if you are stay-at-home mom who has no career goals, and one who is saying you may not have career goals and you are only called to be a stay-at-home mom because that is what God has allowed for women to do, they're reacting against each other. And they're also acting as if they own the entire conversation around women and women's purpose in the world. And if they own the conversation and they own the definitions, there are there's going to be a lot of confusion from the people who are watching in the middle trying to discern who to listen to.
Speaker: So I'll be honest, I did a ton of research into what traditional wifehood looked like in America in each century. So the 1900s, into the modern era of the two thousand And i would love to share all of this information with you, but I think that it's going to make this episode way too long. And so I'm going to put together these notes. If you would like my notes from this episode, you can email Felicia at FeliciaMasonheimer.com and I will send you the notes that I actually spoke from. I'm not going to read you everything I found about what traditional lifehood looked like in each era. Specifically, I wanted to see what was a traditional wife and did it change over time? And the long story short is it did change over time. In fact, in the 1700s, women had so much freedom because this was the colonial era. This was the settling area era and it was all hands on deck.
Speaker: So women were doing everything men were doing in many regards in in the sense that they were, you know, having to simply survive on the frontier.
Speaker: They didn't have time for French and English protocols that were happening in court and being passed over the ocean. They didn't have time or energy or availability or money or health for that. They had to just do what they had to do to survive. And I found this interesting quote from The History of Women in America by Penguin Random House, which said, quote, colonial women worked outside the home in the villages towns and small cities of the eighteenth century they performed virtually every kind of job held by men women ran taverns inns and boarding houses They were blacksmiths, silversmiths, wheelwrights, sale makers, tailors, teachers, printers, newspaper publishers, and shopkeepers of every sort. Many women learned their trades from their husbands. A blacksmith, for example, would teach his wife this skill. If a tradeswoman was widowed, she frequently assumed the full responsibility for the business she had built with her husband. Many women acted as their husband's business agents. Given the power of attorney by their mates, they were involved in all aspects of finance, including bringing debtors to court.
Speaker: We're currently reading the book Johnny Tremaine Allowed to Our Kids because we're studying American history. And this is actually a really great picture of this where the um mother in the family that Johnny Tremaine lives with as an apprentice at the beginning of the book is kind of like managing the whole business deal in replacing the current silversmith with a new one. And I just thought that this was so interesting that in the 1700s,
Speaker: Women were actively working along, not just alongside their husbands, but learning trades, running businesses. And remember, survival is on the table. So the question is, were women outside of God's will in the 1700s or in the founding of America?
Speaker: for a traditional wife to traditionally, as in understood by society at the time, to be working in these ways, including outside of the home, beyond domestic duties.
Speaker: One of my favorite people in American history is Abigail Adams, John Adams, our second president. It was his wife. And for 10 years, while he was the ambassador to France, she was running their farm. And running the farm meant all of the business, all the finances, all of the crops and the crop rotations, the selling of the crops. She handled everything and held it down while he was gone. And this is an influential Christian couple that shaped America for 250 years. So you have to ask yourself again, is this is this outside of God's will?
Speaker: if a woman is rising to the occasion in this way. So I just wanna start with the 1700s. I said I wasn't gonna go through all of these, but as time went on and as America kind of settled itself more and and began to build out civilization and and society in the ways that we know it today, it did change. And so in the 1800s, outside of the settling of the West, you began to see more of a division between um men and women and their labor. And the Industrial Revolution completely sped this up. Because when that happened, men were no longer holding a business adjacent to the home, like ah having their smithy attached to the house.
Speaker: They would then leave to go to the factory or leave to go to the office while their wife was at home. And there began to be this separation of the domestic and the income producing that began to cause problems.
Speaker: people in general to kind of diminish domestic duties. So as we go through the eighteen hundreds the Industrial Revolution continues. And in the 1900s to the 1950s, this is first wave feminism. It began in the eighteen hundreds and then it really picked up between 1900 and 1950.
Speaker: We have World War I World War II. And after World War II comes a season of incredible affluence. All And during that time is when second wave feminism was sparked by a book called The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963 by Betty Friedan.
Speaker: And this particular book expressed the dissatisfaction of women in the 1950s, and it spurred that feminine or that feminist movement. Frieden coined the term feminine mystique to describe this kind of assumption that women could find fulfillment exclusively through housework, marriage, and child rearing. She essentially spoke to this need of women to have something beyond that to fulfill them.
Speaker: So now that I've kind of set this up, again, i have extensive notes here that bring us to modern day that I can send you, plus a list of all of the women's rights, when they were established, and kind of what it did um on that timeline.
Speaker: I want to look at now a little bit more of a deep dive on that spectrum. I have this image here, definition of a trad wife, my little spectrum that I made.
Speaker: If you believe Betty Friedan, as modern feminists do. The current wave of feminism is the legacy of Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique. It is the continuation of what she said and did. That book influenced feminism for 40 plus years.
Speaker: If you believe that there is no possible way that a woman could be fulfilled in marriage, motherhood, caring for her home, she must have more than that. She must.
Speaker: And i want to read you a quote from Instagram by Caro Claire Burke. She's the author of Yesteryear, which I mentioned earlier, because I think that she reveals that That Betty Friedan's legacy and her vision of what womanhood is or isn't still carries on today. So Carol Burke was responding to a comment on her Instagram about her book yesteryear. So this was the comment.
Speaker: She said, it sounds like a fascinating plot. It just winds up ultimately making fun of anti-feminist conservative trad moms like me. I was looking for a good summer read and then I read the reviews. I wouldn't want to spend money on something and invest my time in something that was just going to insult me and possibly hurt my feelings. Can you please let me know? Thanks.
Speaker: So potential reader of the book. Asking Burke, the author. So let's see what she says. I can confirm that if you explicitly define yourself as anti-feminist, you won't like my book.
Speaker: In fact, if you're anti-feminist, you probably wouldn't enjoy any book written by any woman ever, at any time, because, you know, widespread literacy, fair wage employment, gender equity in the arts are all products of the feminist movement, explicitly. You cannot write literature as a woman or consume literature written by women without endorsing this political movement inherently.
Speaker: Interesting take. To put it another way, the stream you theoretically seek to drink from, regardless of where along the stream you rest your lips, is tainted. The only option, if you do want to read a book by a woman, is to consider feminism anew.
Speaker: If you're willing to do this, you could start that intellectual journey with books by Plath, Le Guin, or Morrison, to name a few. All would surely be available at your local indie bookstore, though you should be careful with indies because they are often queer, black, or women-owned.
Speaker: You should also be forewarned that if you ignore my warnings and buy my book anyway, even from Amazon, I'm still earning money if you buy there too, please know that I frequently use the earnings from my author's salary to support abortion rights organizations and other avowedly feminist causes. This is what I like to think of as a feminist circle jerk. You support my feminism by buying my book or even engaging with my social media. Oopsies. You consume feminist thoughts by reading my book.
Speaker: I use the money you gave me to nurture feminist causes, and hopefully more future feminists spring up from this fertile soil to write more books, create more social media, and have more abortions. Like I said, if you don't want to participate in the circle jerk of feminist theory and progression, you should definitely steer clear of me altogether.
Speaker: I wish you luck on your journey to read books by women that will not offend your anti-feminist sensibilities. It sounds like a nonsensical initiative to me, but then again, I'm a feminist. Thanks again for reaching out, and I hope this this gives you the insight you need to make an informed decision. Heart, American flag.
Speaker: Okay, there's a lot here. And we're not here to break it all down, though you know that I want to. But there's a couple interesting things we learn from this response.
Speaker: So we know that the the comment comes from a woman who considers herself anti-feminist. And we'll get to that when we look at the fundamentalist side of things. But right now we're looking at the feminist side of things.
Speaker: She says she doesn't want to read the book if it's just going to offend her. And Caro essentially replies that her goal was to offend her. That's the point.
Speaker: She tells us, in so many words, that a trad wife, a traditional wife, a woman who believes that she can actually be happy...
Speaker: at home, with children, with one man, possibly on one income, possibly not having a career or making any additional income, is essentially living outside of what feminism has accomplished. And she goes so far as to even say that female literacy can be credited to the feminist movement.
Speaker: This is actually completely false. Women in 1700s in America had a higher literacy rate than women do now. So take that for what you will. That was a long time before the feminist movement.
Speaker: And by the time the feminist movement was really starting with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, women were still more literate than we see later on in the 1900s. In fact, literacy rates are dropping, not rising. So it'd be great if feminism did something about that.
Speaker: So you cannot write literature as a woman or consume literature by women without endorsing this political movement inherently. Interesting claim. So we got to keep this roped into the trad wife conversation, you know, rather than veering off into the weeds. But let's talk about that right there. So you cannot have an opinion You cannot have a political opinion. You cannot have a literary opinion. You cannot have an opinion about women unless you endorse this movement, which gave you the ability to have an opinion. And therein lies our problem.
Speaker: The secular feminist side of the trad wife conversation believes that they gave you the right to have an opinion, and therefore they get to tell you what opinion you can have. And that is false.
Speaker: Do you know who gave you the right to think, to engage with the world, who gave you the right to have a worldview? God himself. But then if that's true, you answer to someone higher than the feminist movement. You answer to someone higher than Plath and s Sanger and Frieden and all the rest.
Speaker: See, if you realize and recognize that your ability to think and to engage with the world is something given to you by God, you then have to report back to God on how you stewarded that gift.
Speaker: But this is the belief system. Feminism gave us this right. Feminism gave you these abilities. And therefore, you answer to the feminist political movement and you are not allowed to have a dissenting opinion.
Speaker: I'll have to talk about that whole the control of opinions, again, saving that for a future um conversation. But i do i want i wanted to point this whole quote and interaction out to you because it really shows us somebody who wrote a book about trad wives and yet refused to take the time to understand why many women choose to be what they do deem trad wife, stay-at-home mom,
Speaker: but instead has decided that if you dissent from the prevailing feminist opinion, you have no brain. is literally undermining feminism itself. Like, shouldn't the goal of being a feminist be to enable women to be free thinkers?
Speaker: Wasn't it the fact that men were controlling what women could say and think and do and the education options that were available to them? Wasn't that the thing that we were supposed to get freed from?
Speaker: So if I'm a woman and feminism has freed me to think and choose, why can't I choose this option? Why can't I choose it? Why can't I even choose to like not be feminist?
Speaker: Didn't feminism free me to do that? This is an example of how specifically progressive ways of viewing the world and education and ideas wants to keep you controlled within a very specific way of seeing the world. Because once you can think outside of that, you are uncontrollable.
Speaker: And when we step back biblically, we can say, oh, actually, God has given me the ability to think critically and to think well. Ultimately, what you're seeing here is progressive feminist fundamentalism.
Speaker: Control the person. Control the narrative. Control what they're allowed to think. Control what movements they're allowed to endorse. Control where they go and what they do with their life.
Speaker: And that's going to look really familiar in just a second, because now we're going to talk about fundamentalism. So on the other end of the Tradwife debate is our fundamentalist, Christian fundamentalism. And this is the boogeyman that the feminist reacts against. Truthfully, this is a minority group. This is not the majority of American Christianity. And yet it is a loud and influential group, much like secular feminism.
Speaker: is And let's look at a couple examples of this. Now, i asked Kayla, my assistant, to pull some quotes for me from some of the influential books that talk about a traditional wifehood. And the books that I chose are books that I have personally read.
Speaker: um Some I still have for reference sake. Some of you who are listening to this, you may have read these books too. You might even like parts of these books. But we have to be honest about the other parts of these books.
Speaker: Because these particular passages and quotes that we're going to look at are teaching something they say is biblical about woman and her purpose but they are going beyond what scripture says. They are taking something God said, they're going beyond it, and they're creating something that is not replicable in every culture and every time, which anything that God tells his people to do is something that they can obey in every culture and every time. And that's one of the ways you can spot fundamentalism in Christianity is it's something that has so many added burdens and rules on it that you can't check all the boxes. It's impossible. And
Speaker: And ultimately, if you don't check the boxes, you are now out of favor with man when you're supposed to only be working for the approval of God. So we're going to first look at one of the most common um books, fundamentalist books on um wifehood called Created to Be His Help Me by Debbie Pearl. I have read this book. I have read the book for daughters as well.
Speaker: And here is what she says. The only position where you will find real fulfillment as a woman is as a help meet to your husband. God's ultimate goal for you is to meet your man's needs.
Speaker: In most marriages, the strife is not because the man is cruel or evil. It is because he expects obedience, honor, and reverence and is not getting it. And thus he reacts badly. And once you get it into your head that your husband does not have to be right for you to follow him, you will finally be able to say bye-bye to your overwrought parents even when they were screaming that you are married to a crazy man.
Speaker: Now, keep in mind, these are just quotes out of a whole book. um But at the same time, i have read the whole book. And this is truly at the heart of the message of it.
Speaker: Now, there are elements of truth here. And that's why it's so persuasive. So for example, perhaps you do find some fulfillment in helping your husband.
Speaker: I certainly do. I think any married person should find fulfillment in serving their spouse. But is that all of your fulfillment? Is that the only way to get fulfillment? Is that the only way a human being, male or female, is fulfilled, is only in serving their spouse?
Speaker: And how does a human being who never marries find that fulfillment? There's an underlying theological assumption here that is not leading us towards truth. It is diminishing down in reaction to feminism the purpose of a human life into one thing in an effort to fix a problem. And this is, again, why feminism is another form of fundamentalism, and the two just literally react against each other. i actually have an image to to give you to help you understand what I'm talking about. There is a little, you might have seen these on office desks.
Speaker: It's this little thing. It's like a box, and it has balls on metal strings. Newton's cradle is one of those things my husband would love because he loves physics. And essentially, the balls on either end, if you pull one out...
Speaker: It will swing out, it'll swing back in, it will hit the static balls, and it will send the ball on the other end of the row out again. Many of these conversations are like Newton's Cradle. So the middle balls barely move because they're acting as the transmission path for the collision. So one ball hits the three in the middle and it sends the last one out and then it swings back in but the three in the middle stay static the whole time. And if we now picture my trad wife spectrum as Newton's cradle, the two fundamentalist extremes are like the two balls on the end. And everyone in the middle is just the transmission path for the collision. They're just absorbing all of the energy and conflict that's happening from these two poles. And as that happens,
Speaker: You know everybody's hurting and confused, but we don't recognize that the two people on the ends are crazy. They're not walking in discernment. They're not walking in alignment with what God's word says. So let's keep going with the quotes that I have compiled here. So,
Speaker: Now let's turn to John MacArthur's website. He has a post, the subordination and the equality of women. um John MacArthur is, um he has some amazing things.
Speaker: He was an incredibly intelligent man, long ministry, faithful to the Lord. Yet some of the things that he said about women were going beyond what scripture describes.
Speaker: So let's look. This says, a woman, whether she's married or single, must recognize the fact that in general, as a woman, she must have a spirit of submission to all men. From his website post, The Subordination of Equality of Women. You can look it up.
Speaker: You can read it. Now, in his book, does or his article, Does Scripture Permit Women to Work Outside the Home? Here is what he said. Married young women are to be workers at home. One of the hardest things for many contemporary wives to do is to be satisfied with being a homemaker. Part of the reason is that modern appliances and other conveniences greatly simplify and reduce housework and time that is not used for something constructive and inevitably produces boredom, dissatisfaction, and often increased temptations. Okay, so some of your blood pressure is already rising when I read that quote, but do you want to know something interesting?
Speaker: I think Betty Friedan and John MacArthur would agree about this. In the 1950s, it was the advent of all of these time-saving devices, things like the washing machine and the dishwasher and the refrigerator, all of these things that made life easier for housewives. They didn't have to just survive and do all of these things all the time. Also, they had come back from World War II. They had gone out worked in factories during this time of great wealth, and suddenly they're bored out of their minds, and they're not fulfilled at home.
Speaker: I honestly think that Betty Friedan and John MacArthur might both agree on this particular topic. Now, does this mean that a woman, because everything's been simplified at home,
Speaker: She somehow, just by the nature of that, needs to, one, get a job outside the home, or two, just become more content at home. I would argue that that's an oversimplification, that there's something bigger at play here regarding the purpose of woman.
Speaker: But we're not ready for that yet. So let's read another quote that we have here. but This is from The Excellent Wife by, think it's by Martha Peace.
Speaker: Maybe I'm wrong. Man is to glorify God and woman is to glorify the man. Your role is to glorify your husband. You were created for him. So this is taking a section from the Apostle Paul where he says, he's talking about, i think it's when he's talking about head coverings and he says, woman is the glory of man.
Speaker: And that is why she covers her head. But there's a difference between woman is the glory of man and woman is made to glorify man. that Those are not the same sentence. So this is in 1 Corinthians 11, 7. It is the head covering passage. um And as part of his teaching on head coverings in public worship,
Speaker: Paul says, a man ought not to cover his head since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man, for man did not come from woman, but woman from man. So to understand the cultural norms of the time, we're we're looking at a Greco-Roman society where people covered their hair as a sign of propriety. It was a symbol of purity, holiness, submission to your husband, etc. But men were not to cover their heads during worship.
Speaker: Because this was um a pagan practice in Rome where men would cover their heads with togas. So they're trying to make a distinction in Christian worship versus pagan worship. So the word glory in 1 Corinthians 11, 7 means radiant beauty.
Speaker: Woman is the radiant beauty of man. Proverbs 12, 4 says that a righteous woman has a crown to her husband. Kind of that same idea.
Speaker: And so he's saying, because she is the radiant beauty of man, operate in propriety for your cultural context. Cover your head during worship. Okay. Now let's go back to the quote from Excellent Wife.
Speaker: We're taking that passage in its context. We're twisting it and saying, woman is to glorify the man. But that is not what scripture teaches. Woman is to glorify God. Man is to glorify God. What happened in Genesis 1 and 2 when they were made? They're made in the image of God to work the garden and attend it together to glorify the God who made them.
Speaker: So here we're seeing scripture twisted to achieve an end that God did not design. all right, the last one we have here are from Amy Bird in her book, Recovering from Biblical Womanhood and Manhood, How the Church Needs to Rediscover Her Purpose. um Amy Bird is a conservative um Christian Orthodox, as in adhering to the historic Christian faith.
Speaker: teacher And this book comes from that perspective and yet critiques some of the errant teachings within the fundamentalist movement on this topic. And so in this book, she says, she quotes several other people. talking about um this topic. And one of the quotes she has, I don't have the exact source of this. I'll try to find the page numbers for you. To the degree that a woman's influence over man is personal and directive, it will offend a man's good, God-given sense of responsibility and leadership, and thus controvert God's created order.
Speaker: So a woman's influence over man, if it's personal and directive, it will offend his responsibility and leadership, and it will upend God's design. And this is an interesting claim because a woman's influence in a man's life can actually be A source of power, a source of of glory to God, a source of righteousness.
Speaker: In fact, we learn through, I think it's Proverbs mainly, that a woman who stewards righteous influence is actually leading her husband into greater leadership capacity, greater righteousness.
Speaker: She is spiritually shaping the marriage and home in a positive direction that allows him to thrive. Proverbs 31, the woman's husband is seated in the city gates and she is a crown to his accomplishments. So this idea that a woman's influence will undermine God's goal is is assuming that influence her influence is negative, whereas her influence can be for the glory of God and the righteousness of of um the family.
Speaker: all right, the next one is this. For example, a housewife in her backyard may be asked by a man how to get to the freeway. At that point, she's giving a kind of leadership. She has superior knowledge that the man needs, and he submits himself to her guidance. But we all know that there is a way for that housewife to direct the man in which neither of them feels their mature femininity or masculinity compromised. It is not a contradiction to speak of certain kinds of influence coming from women to men in ways that affirm the responsibility of men to provide a pattern of strength and initiative.
Speaker: This is a bit of word salad, and I think what it's saying is that women should not give directions in a way that offends a man's leadership.
Speaker: I would argue a human being should not give directions in a way that offends another person's intelligence. Think about it. If we are respectful and kind and loving and we treat one another the way God has asked us to treat them, which is to outdo one another in showing honor, we're not going to say it in a condescending way or in a patronizing way. We're going to say it in a way that is the most helpful and clear that we can possibly do.
Speaker: And so a lot of these directives, one, are focused more on how to talk to the man and what to do about the man rather than how a man is to treat the woman.
Speaker: But they also are going beyond what scripture saying about how Christians in general are to treat one another and are focusing in on a reaction to feminism.
Speaker: So again, we see that Newton's cradle of fundamentalist feminism and fundamentalist Christianity reacting against each other and everyone in the middle just has to take the hit. And I am saying that we don't have to take the hit. We don't have to sit here and absorb that conflict. We can actually go to scripture and we can say, we can ask, what is the purpose of women?
Speaker: Is it to be only home making sourdough, wearing natural fibers, homeschooling our kids? Or is it that we have to be out in the world in that career climbing just like the men, you know, just same way they did it, you know, because it was such a great example in the Industrial Revolution. We want to emulate that. We're just going to copy paste because there's nothing like a woman becoming like the worst of men. Now, there's a middle ground here, and we can be grateful for the ways that the feminist movement, the first and second waves, gave us the ability to have a bank account and own a business and own property and have rights that protect us from abuse.
Speaker: have fair wages, to have all those things that we now have. Yes, you can be grateful. We can be grateful. I'm grateful to people like Elizabeth Cady Stanton. And yet, we can also say, I'm not going to stay on this train with where it's headed.
Speaker: We can also look over to the right and we can say, you are taking biblical texts and you are twisting them out of your fear of becoming feminist. We need to look at what scripture says and start there. So this episode is going to get really long if I don't head to scripture now. So let's go there.
Speaker: What is the primary purpose of a woman? Well, if we go back to Genesis 1 and 2, we know that God created man and woman both in his image.
Speaker: And the image of God created he them, male and female, he created them. Genesis 1, 27 to 28. He made them. And he made them unique. He made them different.
Speaker: And he made them to work together to create this world. Well, he created the world, but we get to be part of continuing that creation. Something interesting is at the fall in Genesis 3, we see highlighted the strengths and the weaknesses of men and women.
Speaker: I think that what we see there is an example of the misuse of specific skill sets God gave.
Speaker: In Adam, it was the misuse of leadership through passivity. And in Eve, it was the misuse of wisdom and discernment through envy and urgency.
Speaker: And throughout the rest of the Old Testament, we see this pattern reemerge. Now, I'm not saying only men can lead, but I am saying that this pattern of men rising to the occasion to lead well, to lead by protecting, to lead by sacrifice, they will always be tempted away into passivity.
Speaker: And with women, the primary role we see in spiritual gift we see through the Old Testament and the New is prophecy, the walking out of wisdom and discernment. And so a woman will be tempted into abusing her wisdom and discernment either to take power, just like a man will abuse leadership to take power, or she will abuse it by being misled into a lie.
Speaker: such as the twisting of wisdom and discernment into new age practices and witchcraft. As we are often seeing, that's a predominantly female temptation. So with this in mind, let's look at what beyond that, what does God say the primary purpose of a person is, a human being, a woman? He doesn't really say for women.
Speaker: He really does not say, doesn't say primary purpose of a woman, according to the Bible, is to be a wife and mother. Because what about the women who never marry? What about the widows? What about them? Instead, God actually keeps it very open, very general that applies to everybody. The same rules apply. And we're going to look at a few. Ecclesiastes 12, 13 through 14.
Speaker: The end of the matter. All has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man. That word man means mankind, humankind. It means man and woman.
Speaker: Fear God and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of woman. For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil. He has told you, oh man, what is good.
Speaker: Micah 6, 8. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God? He has told you, O woman, do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God.
Speaker: Matthew 28, 18-20, And Jesus came and said to his disciples, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.
Speaker: So we keep his commandments. We fear the Lord. We do justice. We love kindness. We walk with our God. And we go and we make disciples. We're not sitting on our hands waiting for somebody else to do it.
Speaker: And yes, that does start with the little disciples right in our homes. We don't go out seeking, you know, how many other people can we find when we're not even taking care of that. But it starts there and it continues.
Speaker: Ephesians 2.10 says, We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. We, being all the men and women of the church, you were created for good works.
Speaker: That is one of your purposes on earth, according to God. 1 Peter 2.9 You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession. And here's why. That you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Speaker: You've been saved from something, and now your job is to go proclaim his excellencies. to the world. Romans 12, 2, do not be conformed to this world.
Speaker: Do not be conformed to the fundamentalism of feminism or the fundamentalism of Christianity or the fundamentalism of whatever you choose, but be transformed by renewing your mind that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. And that brings us full circle back to Hebrews 5.
Speaker: Because when we think about the purpose of our lives as women, we need to be diligent and discerning. Train your mind to discern if someone is telling you the only way that you can glorify the Lord is if you are homeschooling your kids. Well, tell that to all the women around the world who literally cannot do that.
Speaker: Or how about if someone tells you, like we saw in this Instagram post by Carol Burke, that unless you get on board with this worldview, you actually aren't even, you know, truly a free thinking woman.
Speaker: In fact, you can't even call yourself a woman if you won't participate in this entire political system. We can say, no, I discern that that is a lie. And my rights and my reality and my worldview, they come from something higher than you.
Speaker: We need our minds renewed and transformed and transfixed on God's vision for our purpose, not the world's. It's not the secular feminist version of purpose. It's not the trad wife influencer version of purpose. It's the purpose God has called you to and called you to in this season.
Speaker: Because my calling in earlier seasons of life, when my kids were three, looked different than my calling now when my oldest is eleven My calling when I was newly married, my calling when I was single was different than it is now with what I am doing.
Speaker: So your calling can actually change a little bit season to season in the specifics. But the core of it, those scriptures I just read you, that doesn't change. That is the core of your purpose as a woman.
Speaker: A purpose given from God. And here here's the truth that I want to kind of end with. The truth is that women have always worked. They've worked inside the home. They worked outside the home.
Speaker: And the ability to choose whether or not you do that, that's a privilege. And American women are some of the most privileged in the world. This is not a feminist talking point. This is simply fact. So the question as a Christian woman, if you are living in a Western society where you have this kind of mobility, is how do I steward this incredible privilege with wisdom?
Speaker: How do I steward it? And reacting to either end of this tradwife spectrum is not stewardship. looking at what the feminists are saying and getting so angry that you start posting about how you're so proud that you're living on one income and you're just reacting to them or looking at the Christian fundamentalist side and just posting these angry posts about John MacArthur or John Piper or about how women in ministry are so oppressed.
Speaker: Guys, There is work to be done. There's gospel work to be done. We need to focus on the core of this. What is your purpose? It is to make disciples. So you can go out there and you can do that, or you can waste your time on the two fundamentalist ends of this Newton's cradle, and you can absorb all of their energy and waste your life on people who don't deserve it.
Speaker: Instead, let this empower you to go out and do what God has said to do, to fear him and keep his commandments, to make disciples of nations, to do good works, to walk in them, to proclaim his excellencies, and to not be conformed to this world.
Speaker: There are two kinds of women in the book of Proverbs. There is the woman folly and there is the lady wisdom. And we get to choose which we are. The truth is that both ends of the trad wife debate are the woman folly.
Speaker: She is loud. She has a lot to say about a lot of things, but not a lot of sanctified action. She cares about how things look on the outside, but she rarely tends to the inner state of her heart.
Speaker: She gets her vision for family from social media apps, not from God himself. She is distracted. She lacks vision. She makes up her purpose based on emotion and the latest trend. She has no defined mission, no roots in God's word. This is the woman folly. And it happens in the trad wife influencer world and it happens in the secular feminist world. But we get to choose a different way.
Speaker: You get to choose to be lady wisdom. You get to choose to model yourself after the wisdom of God. And do you know where the wisdom of God begins?
Speaker: The fear of the Lord. I love how scholar Michael Reeves describes the fear of the Lord. It is to be in awe of God's affection for you.
Speaker: In awe of his affection for you. And the truth is that secular feminists and Christian fundamentalists, they do not believe that God loves them. They do not believe it.
Speaker: They operate under the weight of their own will. They are a God unto themselves. They do not know what it's like to be loved by Jesus. But you do.
Speaker: The woman wisdom lives with restraint. She builds her house from the inside out and she tends first to what's unseen and then to what's seen. And she builds her house whether she's single, married, married with kids or an empty nester or a widow. She is building her house.
Speaker: Wisdom has a vision for her future. She keeps it always before the Lord. She's diligent to take care of the season she's currently in rather than wishing for a different one. Wisdom's purpose comes from God's direction. She has strong roots in God's purpose for her life as defined in scripture, and her work in the home and out of it will always prioritize God and her spouse and her children and her people before success, career, applause, accolades, or personal fulfillment.
Speaker: Because people come first in God's kingdom. And that is not a gender role conversation. People come first because Jesus put people first. The woman folly will speak for both sides of this debate.
Speaker: She is the secular feminist railing against stay-at-home moms, but she's also the fundamentalist church attendee or tradwife influencer who's made extra biblical rules about what to eat and how to school your kids and how your marriage should function and what natural fibers you should wear.
Speaker: And there's a way out. The way out is walking by the Spirit according to the word of the Lord. It is saying, God, I want to live out the purpose that is clear in Scripture.
Speaker: And you can go to these verses. You can go to Ecclesiastes and Micah and Matthew and Ephesians and 1 Peter and Romans, and you can pray those Scriptures to the Lord and say, help me understand my purpose.
Speaker: As it plays out in this season, how can I be faithful with the little I have in this season? Whether that's in the workplace, or that's as a stay-at-home mom to three under three, or that's like me with a foot in either world.
Speaker: The question is, Lord, how do I steward this and walk with you? How do I honor you with what I've been given?
Speaker: In scripture, Jesus tells a parable in the gospels on the parable of the talents. Three servants are given an amount of money. Talents is what they were called in that time. Two of them invested it and one buried it.
Speaker: The two that invested it doubled what they were given and gave it back to the Lord, the master. And he said, well done, good and faithful servant. But the last one who buried his talent was told that he had failed the mission and he was cast away from the master. Why?
Speaker: Because he was given something to steward. And instead of choosing to take that gift, to steward it well, he lived in fear and he buried what he'd been given and nothing happened with it.
Speaker: Be a Christian who stewards what you've been given. You have a purpose. Don't get distracted by what's going on around you in this whole Tradwife debate.
Speaker: Ask the Lord, what have you called me and my family to? How can I walk faithfully in that? Don't react to what other people are saying. Listen to his voice. Listen to your purpose. Align yourself with that purpose. Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and say, how can I walk this out practically?
Speaker: in my season, in my life. And when you do that, you will find incredible peace. The peace that I have found in knowing that I am prioritizing my family and I'm also able to serve the church.
Speaker: Wherever you are, I hope this encourages you to turn off that noise and tune in to the voice of God. Next time, we'll be talking about how to think biblically about denominations. Meanwhile, if you have enjoyed this episode or if you didn't enjoy it, please feel free to share, to comment, to subscribe if you're on YouTube or iTunes. I'm so grateful for each and every listener, whether you agree or disagree. And I will see you next time on Verity Podcast.
