The journey that God has led our family on these past two years has been remarkable. I pen this account to my children as a legacy of God’s goodness and sovereign work in our family, and my life in particular. I pray this serves as a reminder to them to walk humbly and circumspectly with God, and to follow Him even in the things that don’t cohere to conventional wisdom. After all, God is anything but conventional or predictable.
There were many changes, decisions, or events that I could mention, but I want to track the hand of God on our family in three very personal events. Event #1: I stepped down from a women’s bible study teaching ministry. Event # 2: I stepped down from worship ministry with Worst of Sinners. Event #3: After 20 years of home schooling, we enrolled our last two children in a traditional school.
Looking at this on paper, various and sundry conclusions could be made. Spanning the spectrum from the cynical - “There is obviously some serious backsliding going on in that family!”, to the mundane - “It’s probably a mid-life crisis.”, all the way to the glib - “I wonder if they won the lottery and are planning to travel the world (without their kids)?” In any event, the facts do not tell the story. So here it is.
Event number #1 came about as a result of several long lessons hammered on my heart from the Word of God, applied by the Spirit. First, I began to notice a weakness in the arena of women’s ministry. (I know I am seriously rocking the boat here, and will never be asked to join women’s ministry, or teach at a women’s retreat again, but here it is.) From my perspective, the church and para-church organizations are busy equipping women by giving them knowledge in doctrine and theology. Lots of money in Christendom is being spent developing curricula for women. After all, there is a huge market for it. Churches spend large portions of their budgets on Women’s ministry. It is considered vital to the health and strength of a church. I will not argue that point. But what I began to observe, and experience through many counseling opportunities that teaching afforded, was that this “biblical workout” was producing women (myself included) who were in better “shape” than their husbands.
I could see two potential results of this. One was that men would stop stepping up to the plate of spiritual leadership. With the confidence and growth in spiritual knowledge, their female counterparts would be more than willing to teach and counsel, and in my experience (not a bash on men, really!), men tend to take the path of least resistance. So, if a woman volunteered to teach a class or bible study, then that’s one less thing they would have to do! The other was, that all of this biblical knowledge and spiritual wisdom has the potential to puff up.
What I witnessed in some of our bible studies was that some women would go home and try to teach their husbands the things they learned. Others would wield their knowledge to gain the upper hand in an argument, or to control or manipulate a desirous outcome. In both cases, the woman was subtly usurping the man’s position in the marriage. This became so clear to me, as I was walking in late to a Sunday school class and overheard someone say, “Too bad Kari is not here, she would know the answer to that!” At that moment I was struck with two very opposing thoughts. One born from arrogance and pride; and the other, from the Spirit, was an overwhelming sense of shame and sorrow. You see, my husband was sitting in the room I was about to enter. It was heartbreaking to me that people would value my input in a biblical matter above my husbands, who is my spiritual head!
I was immediately convicted that I had overstepped my spiritual bounds. I had always stressed to the women in my bible studies, the importance of learning from their husbands, biblical things. I had challenged them regularly to take what I said and ask their husbands if it was truth. I had even stated, on many occasions, “Believe what your husband tells you, wherever it contradicts what I say”. But there was a great disparity between what I said occasionally and what was actually happening.
From my first bible study until now, I had always felt the weight of responsibility in teaching God’s Word. I took the responsibility and privilege very seriously. One of the verses I often preached to myself was Mark 9:42, “And whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea.” Yet now I wonder if that sense of heaviness was the Holy Spirit’s warning, which I was either ignoring or downplaying to just a, “be careful!”
Later my Greek teacher challenged me with another look at a passage I had taught to women many times before, Titus 2:3-5. I knew the passage well, but what he pointed out was not some nuance in the Greek, or obscure meaning of a word, but rather what was NOT in the list of things older women should be teaching younger women…doctrine. According to God, (explained through Paul to Titus) older women are to teach how to live out, put on, or apply this list of things. For my analytical, slightly OCD mind, this is a stretch. I can break down a passage, (how adroitly is not the issue) unpack it, put it in context, show how it relates to other passages, but restricting myself to just focusing on teaching how to love their husbands…to live out love, practically, moment by moment… I realized that I hadn’t focused on that in my marriage. So, I ended that semester of teaching. Gathered my leadership team together and told them that I could not, in good conscience, continue leading or teaching.
I have given up things in my life that have been truly a sacrifice before. I am familiar with the struggle of flesh and spirit, doing what you don’t want to do, and not doing what you want to do. I am keenly aware of my sacrifice being a mixed bag of motives… But this was one of the hardest things for me to give up, to date.
8 comments:
Well said, my sister. You're an awesome writer and clearly it's important to you that you do as God would have you to do. I wouldn't be too hard on yourself, however, for the viewpoints of others towards you above your male counterparts. Perhaps our Lord is doing something new in the earth with us as women. God bless you!!
I've never understood why women allow themselves to be relegated to second class citizenship. They willingly allow themselves to be subjugated.
Your husband is not the spiritual head. I may be the only one that ever tells you this, but you are equals and you're worthy of all of the knowledge, rights, freedoms and love that entails. Don't let anyone tell you differently. You are important - every bit as important as any man. You're capable of doing great things.
It appears, sadly, that Canadian Atheist does not know the difference between "equality of worth" and "equality of roles". Even with no acknowledgement of God it is impossible to function in the world with the mindset that each person's value depends on "doing" what other people "do" or "achieving" what other people "achieve". Try imposing that standard in assessing the value of a two year-old child, for instance.
Interesting post.
Although there is no reason to suspect that you have not been led by God in your personal journey, it does become problematic when you suggest that your thoughts should become normative.
What we call "doing theology" involves many different things. Certainly one of those things is brain power. Clearly, different people have different brain function, regardless of gender. In many cases, a woman may have a brain that is more capable than her husband's brain in logic, memorization, critical thinking, recall, abstract and/or concrete problem solving, etc. These raw differences have nothing whatsoever to do necessarily with leadership, submission, humility or spiritual vitality. A wife can walk into a class and have the correct answer to a question and it may just be that she is able to think and process more quickly or efficiently than her husband. Her answer to a question, if correct, would still be, well - correct. Motives behind it are another thing altogether but they don't have to impure just because her brain functions differently than her husband's brain.
Although it is quite true that a woman will often use her natural abilities to usurp her husband's leadership and show disrespect to him, it is simplistic to think only in terms of this specific relationship. Men will also misuse their abilities in relation to their wives. For that matter, so will women in relationship to other women, men to men, parents to children, children to parents, etc., etc. It's called sin. We can't build our paradigms based on the fact that sin corrupts every human relationship.
It does not seem right to throw out all of the Beth Moore's of the world because sin corrupts relationships.
As far as Titus 2 goes: How will you teach a younger woman how to live in relation to her husband and function in the home if not with doctrine and Scripture? If you only "lead by example" the day will come when the women you are leading will want to know why your example is better than, say, Canadian Atheist. You had better be prepared with... wait for it... Doctrine and Scripture.
I should re-emphasize that there is no reason to doubt that God is at work with you personally in the things that you have experienced. It's the apparent generalization that I'm uncomfortable with. Much of what you said about Women's Ministry and marriage relationships ring true. As Kingdom people, we should be careful not to over-correct.
Merry Christmas!
Thank you all for your comments. I appreciate the respect and kindness with which you all write. May I remind you that my post is not a broad commentary on Christendom, it is a picture of my personal journey with Christ. I have written this to expose layers of my thinking and motives for the purpose of clarity and definition to the testimony of my life as I live it out before my children and friends.
I like this! Thanks for sharing with us.
I like this! Thanks for sharing with us.
I think your observations about men are correct. I disciple a number of young adults and lead a small ministry. One of the things we encourage the young ladies is to find men who are spiritually stronger than they. We've seen many young men "put on a show" until they have "captured" the girl only to revert to spiritual uninterested-ness after marriage. I've wonder if that is the reason Paul speaks against women in head pastor roles, that is, if a woman can do the job as well as a man (and she probably can), why does the man need to bother. Too many men leave the spiritual side of the family to the wife. The children need to see a Dad leading the home spiritually. I believe it is his role, and as another comment-er has already said, does not make him better or higher or more worthy, it is just the way God set things up. Well, God bless you in your new direction.
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