Over the past few years I have written a bit on the damage feminism has caused women, men, children, families, church, and society as a whole. As time has gone on, I am more firm in my pro-patriarchal views than I ever was. The Scriptural teaching of patriarchy (a positive reality) is clear as day to me, but as with everything, there is controversy on the matter. So as black and white as its biblical presence and societal necessity (as well as the detriments of its denial) are, continued discussion on the matter is necessary.

Please join me in this discussion.

Recently I heard a respectable man express his amazement that we as a society highly esteem women who exhaust themselves in male-oriented roles (holding full-time careers outside the home), while expecting them to still fulfill their female-oriented roles (raising children and keeping a home). He noted how we would never expect a man to hold two full-time jobs and excel at both. One or both would surely suffer. Yet society has lied to women, telling them that their value is in holding a full-time career with bonus points if they can also obtain a husband and children on the side (and keep their home as well). Or is it more bonus points if they reject the family altogether and only focus on their me-centered career aspirations? It gets confusing which is more valued, but the obvious point is what is being under-valued: the woman’s role as homemaker, mother, helpmeet, and nurturer to her family.

In a 2008 interview between Voddie Baucham and several renowned female politicians, the topic of a female’s role according to Scripture was debated. Everyone listening couldn’t help but notice the one major difference between Voddie’s argument (that God has instructed women to be keepers of the home) and the feminist politicians’ argument (that women can pursue anything they want): Voddie kept referring back to Scripture, while the feminists kept referring back to culture. “Look at the culture around us,” Sara Palin would say. “Look at what God says in Scripture,” Baucham would reply.

Sadly, even in the church the cultural argument for woman’s roles is often favored above what Scripture plainly teaches, in spite of the many detriments that feminism causes. On the one hand women aren’t to blame when all they are being taught from an early age from everyone they look up to are lies about what they should be pursuing in life. Starting at their very early years, everything they learn in grade school about what their aspirations in life should be are in direct opposition to what God’s Word says about women and His beautiful design and purpose for them.

If they aren’t being groomed in kindergarten to act and be just like men, girls are being taught this in nearly every movie. Recently my five-year-old daughter asked if she could buy a 25-cent DVD at the library. (We don’t have cable or any streaming services so DVDs are all they get.) Her movie choice was A Cinderella Story (2004). Good choice, I thought—the story of Cinderella certainly portrays a beautiful picture of femininity, masculinity, and even the happily-ever-after ending which as Christians we love because it points to our happily-ever-after with Christ in His kingdom. But no. Five minutes into the movie the sweet six-year-old girl looks up admirably and expectantly at her father as he tucks her into bed and asks him what his dream is for her. His reply: “My dream is for you to go to college, sweetheart.” Readers may well know my blood pressure went up. That was it. That was the father’s dream for his daughter. He expressed no desire for his daughter to find a loving man who would provide for and protect and care for her. He expressed no desire for her to experience the absolute wonder and joy of having children and being a mother. His only dream was for her to go to college. And so, I’m told (we didn’t finish the movie) she goes on to pursue her college aspirations to satisfy her daddy’s dream for her, believing that this is where her purpose lies. She does meet a boy in the process and they go off to college together, and that is as much as I know of the ending. But I had to explain to my sweet daughter who looked up at me confused when the dad expressed his dream for his girl that the writer of the movie was confused and wasn’t portraying God’s beautiful design.

     Watching movies like this and seeing how little girls are being groomed from the start of what they are to pursue in life makes many things make sense in the world we live in today. What is remarkable to me is that while it is no surprise that the world confuses girls in this way, much of the church has joined in pushing this false feminist agenda and teaches girls the same thing. This astonishes me not only due to it being in direct contrast to God’s revealed will in Scripture, but in that we can clearly see the detriment and harm this false ideology is causing women (as well as men and children). I can hardly go a day without encountering an example of the destruction feminism is causing, all while in the end we see example after example that being a wife and mother is what women truly want. Why not spare the lies of what women should be pursuing and just tell them the truth from the start?

     Just yesterday an acquaintance of mine from several years back (a Christian female) expressed her frustration with “living out her dream,” i.e. being an independent career woman for the last 5+ year, not “tied down” to anyone but making it on her own, and how she really just wants to get married and have children now. She mentioned how she had left several relationships because they were distracting to her career pursuits. Now she is in her mid-30s and moving back to her hometown near her parents, tired of working endlessly to provide for herself all to come home to her dog every night and is praying she’ll meet a man who will take care of her and give her children. Why didn’t she just pursue this to begin with? Because society lied to her. It told her since she was five that the way to make everyone proud and to fulfill herself was to go to college and do well for herself. (Notice all the emphasis on the self.) This is what it teaches all women. And we cannot blame them for following suit if we as a church are not teaching them otherwise. Why don’t we teach them otherwise? Because we don’t want to offend, I’m guessing. We’ve seen the self-entitled pride and anger of women who demand equality with men, and they do not want to hear that God has actually not given men and women equality in everything. But who is being feared in this, God or women? And how are we showing love by being cowardly? If we truly want to be loving, we need to teach truth. Young women need guidance in this corrupt and deceitful world, and who should be guiding them if not the church? God’s very Word instructs us to teach younger women to marry, to submit to their husbands, and be keepers at home. This is how we as women honor the Lord, by abiding in these things with joy. But these are the last things the church teaches. Rather, it encourages and applauds the independent aspirations of women, regardless of how far from Scriptural instruction they are.

     And again, we see all around us the detriments of this. Last week when I was out visiting a few friends and neighbors I was told various true stories that broke my heart and were direct results of women living out their female-empowered entitlement. Here is the first: A man served in the military with multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He came back with terrible PTS. He has depression and other issues. When his wife became pregnant and they had a daughter, he had the most joy in his life than he’d had in a long time. His daughter was a gift to him and a spark of light. However, his wife is tired of dealing with him. She’s taking their daughter and moving out of state. No cheating, adultery, abuse…nothing of that. She’s just tired of him and wants someone who can “meet her needs.” This is tragic and yet so common. Maybe the PTS part isn’t common, but wives leaving their husbands out of mere dissatisfaction and “wanting more” is becoming the norm. And everyone defends the woman because the woman is always the victim, right? Yet my heart goes out to this poor man. He is hurting. He has terrible PTS, and where is his helper? She’s leaving him. God gave Adam a helper to be just that—a helper to him, for all of life, to be there for him and pray for him and lift him up and support him, for better or for worse. These days we might as well take that part out of our marriage vows because once once the “worse” hits, so many women bail out. And now the one joy in this man’s life is being taken away from him too. Good luck to this woman who is looking for someone to cater to her desires. I pray they both find Christ and find their ultimate joy and fulfillment in Him.

Here is the second true story I heard shortly after hearing the last one: A man and his girlfriend are engaged and have been for some time. She is in the military but they had discussed and agreed that she would get out when her four years were completed and they’d get married and start a family. Her four years have now ended, but she was offered a promotion to become a sergeant. She took the promotion (committing herself to another term), and when she told her fiancé he asked, “What about our plans of starting a family and owning a farm and you staying home to raise our children?” She took off her engagement ring right there and said she wouldn’t have any man controlling her life and holding her back from “bigger things.” This too is the norm now. At first I felt sad for the young man but I actually am happy for him that he can now find someone who wants to be married to him rather than to a career. Men are so discouraged these days from getting married or even from dating because this is what they deal with, and it is not what they’re wired for. They’re wired to be a leader and provider. They’re wired to have a helpmeet who will respect and support him and keep the home and nurture his children. Yet as beautiful women are the Achilles heel of men, many don’t realize the importance of pursuing these traits in a wife, and they simply pursue and marry any outwardly attractive woman who will date them, only to find out the hard way years later that biblical feminine traits were what they really should have been looking for in a wife. (I’m not denying that physical attraction is important, but too many men become blind to character when their eyes are satisfied, and it hurts them in the long run.)

“Teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the Word of God be not blasphemed,” (Titus 2:4-5). This is what will bless a husband. Not a career-driven woman. Not a self-entitled, female-empowered woman seeking equality in all things. But a woman who reads this passage and sees that her job is to be a loving, respectful, supportive wife whose vocation is in the home to provide a haven of peace and sanctity for her family, and to raise her children in the ways of the Lord, teaching them excellence and preparing them for Christlike living.

This is not oppression. God’s design is for the sanctity and protection of the family, which used to be what all of societal life was for—to benefit and serve the family unit and thereby create and sustain flourishing communities. All of which, in a Christian perspective, serves with the higher purpose of glorifying God in all we do. But even in secular society the family unit was still always at the center of what society was serving. Now it is the individual which is being exalted—more specifically, the individual woman and however she wants to exalt herself, even at the expense of babies’ lives and marriages and so much more. It is as if God had a very good reason for the way He instructed us to live and not stray from.

I believe as a church we don’t realize how much we contribute to these types of stories by our neglect of teaching the truth of what the Bible speaks regarding gender roles. We think we are doing women well in supporting however they want to live, but in reality the neglect of teaching them what God designed them for leads to confusion, burdens they were never meant to carry, burdens men were never meant to carry (it is not a man’s job to keep the home—this holds him back from being as productive as possible in the role God has called him to in the public sphere), believing children are a burden, killing babies in the womb, gender dysphoria, and all around disorder of God’s beautiful design.

A few months before his assassination Charlie Kirk was holding a discussion with a college girl regarding her acclaimed “right” to kill her baby in the womb. The girl very clearly viewed her college education not only of higher importance than being a mother to her child but of holding more value than a human life. She could not fathom that anyone would demean her “collegiate life,” as though college is the end-all of existence. As tragic as her mentality is, I do not entirely blame the girl for thinking this way. It is what she has been taught since childhood. Perhaps as a little girl she too was told by her father that college was his overarching dream for her. What little girl wants to disappoint her father?

My question continues to be, why doesn’t the church guide women correctly?

Recently still I was gathered with a few men and women eating a meal together around a table. I was sitting next to a young girl who is pregnant and I expressed how thrilled I was that she was going to be a mother. She quickly turned the conversation to her career aspirations and how she plans to pursue various trade academies to obtain her desired career. “Don’t you want to stay home with your baby?” I inquired. She laughed and said she isn’t giving up her career path just because she is having a baby. I continued and said, “You don’t want your husband to provide for you?” She again laughed and replied, “No way, I’m an independent woman!” I looked over at her husband who simply looked down and said nothing. The seven other people at the table also said nothing. I left it at that, not wanting to be overbearing about it, hoping my questions would stay with her and allow her to reconsider. But I couldn’t help but continue to wonder, who is going to raise her child? Why didn’t anyone else back me up? Why do we support this “independent woman” mentality in the church when it contrasts what Scripture teaches to Christ-following women?

Is it because society teaches that motherhood is beneath women? It may claim this, but we see time and time again that in the end this is what women deep down truly want. We can look at Taylor Swift to see this portrayed to a front row audience. She began her career singing sweet heart-felt songs about happily ever after fairy tales where the prince comes and takes care of his princess. It wasn’t long before Hollywood culture reshaped her philosophy, theology, values, and lyrics, and for almost two decades she pretended to hate men, exalt empowered women, and make fun of marriage (all while jumping from relationship to relationship). But in the end she returned to what she truly wanted and longed for all along—a masculine man down on his knee proposing to her as she wears a beautiful, sweet, feminine dress, finally hopeful of her happily ever after. Now of course we don’t know if this is how her story will end, but it sure highlights the ingrained longing of every woman, as much as they try to suppress it for empowerments’ sake.

One last recent example before I move on because I tell you, dear reader, these first-hand encounters present themselves to me all the time without any effort of my own. I assure you I am not seeking out where I might find the detriments of feminism; I have just come face to face with them on such a regular basis that I am convicted to not remain silent about it. Recently a kind man was over my house installing our internet (we went 7 years without internet in our home but we finally had to cave due to my husband’s work *tear*, but I digress). The man smiled as he observed my four children playing around the house and commented that he found it beautiful that I stay home with my children and homeschool them. I asked him if he has children and he said, disappointingly, “I do not. My fiancé wants to finish school before starting a family” (he and his fiancé are in their late twenties). I asked what she is studying and he replied that she is going to be a welder. He continued that even after she finishes school they probably won’t have children because she will then have her full-time job that she will need to attend to. You could not deny the tone of shame in his voice as he told me these things. He said in the end that he is really anxious to have children and be a father but he doesn’t feel he can impose this upon his fiancé. How did we get here? How did we persuade women that they would be more fulfilled being a welder than in being a full-time wife and mother? Why are husbands losing their helpmeets in the home so that women can be helpmeets to bosses outside the home?

If women do get married at all, they now expect their husbands to take on homekeeping duties or else they complain that it’s demeaning to be expected to perform housewife duties on their own. But what a detriment and frustration this is to men. Men were never instructed in Scripture to keep the home; this was a specific instruction to women. Not only in Titus, but all of Proverbs 31 describes how a woman is to diligently and cheerfully keep her home while her husband is praised in the gates (i.e. the public sphere). Why? Look at our biology. We were made to bring babies into this world and nurture them. Our husbands contribute to this biological task in a matter of seconds, but we are biologically bound to this task for nine months for a reason. It keeps us home-bound, and sets the pattern for our vocation. God created us women to bring babies into this world and nurture them. To nurse them. To raise them. Nowadays career women boast in how they can pump breast milk and leave their babies in the care of others and show off how they can “do it all.” But this is not how God naturally created us. Babies need their mothers’ warm skin and close touch. There is nothing to boast in when we are leaving our children with other people so that we can pursue our independent desires. Children need their mothers, and husbands need their wives’ support so that they can focus on the call that God has placed on their lives.

I love how Charlie Kirk’s wife, Erika, made note that she never pressed guilt upon Charlie for being away from the home too long or too late. She knew he was out doing wonderful things for the Lord and for society, and her job was to take care of the home and children and provide loving support for him however he needed. And look how he flourished. What a picture of what men truly need and how God’s design is good and beautiful. No one can claim that this was patriarchal oppression, for they both radiated joy and happiness that is undeniable.

On the other hand, I have heard on several occasions this year the observation that pastors have become increasingly lazy and slack in their job. Now before I expand, I must give a disclaimer that this is not true of my pastors at my church. My pastors are anything but lazy. They give themselves away for their congregation and I love them to death. That being said, I strongly believe that this perceived laziness among modern pastors is a direct reflection of the demand of their wives. Women have lost sight of their role as helpmeets and so demand more of their husbands—pastors or not—than should be asked for. For centuries Christian women understood that men were called to serve God in the public sphere for His glory and the kingdom, and women were to help them by being the backbone in the home. God is equally glorified in both roles. But somewhere along the way women began to esteem men’s roles as more honorable, so they forsook their biblical calling and sought equality with men in all metrics. What gross confusion and destruction of beauty this has caused, friends. Gender roles were never meant to be interchangeable. We now have married gay men raising babies and women fighting in wars. This is not God’s design. Some might argue that these are extreme examples, but it is all related. These stark scenarios started somewhere. They don’t simply immerse in society without the little acceptances first being allowed. These days many Christians don’t see anything wrong with females being in combat positions or in dominating sports, but these roles are black and white to me. Men are called to protect women. Women should never have been allowed to enroll in the military. Women are instructed to have gentle and quiet spirits. It is impossible to have a gentle and quiet spirit in the military as its very nature demands aggression and domination.

The same goes for dominating sports such as wrestling. Women are not created to be aggressive. It’s against our nature. It is not possible to have a gentle and quiet spirit while aggressively pinning down a man. Nor is it ethical. I can only imagine if any man was wrestling me in intimate positions, pinning me down in nearly the missionary position or myself pinning him down, I would be feeling some kind of way—a way I should only be feeling with my husband. And I’m a woman. I can only imagine what internal feelings men must fight against during this. Yet we don’t blink an eye at seeing men and women wrestle each other in this way, undoubtedly because we don’t want to imply that women aren’t cut out for it. After all, telling a woman she can’t do something is the most untouchable offense in society, right? Yet if women must insist that they wrestle, I think females should only wrestle other females. I still think it’s off-putting, and there are far more feminine activities that women could more beautifully engage in, but at least temptations wouldn’t be arising. But even apart from the temptation aspect, men simply are not meant to be tackling women. They should be opening doors for women and protecting women; not aggressively competing with them. This is something all of history understood and protected up until recently—until, that is, “progress” brought women into every facet of a man’s role and called it good. I call it corrupted, for we can plainly see the destructiveness and confusion that intermixing gender roles has brought about.

I know many will disagree with me on a lot of this, but along with Voddie Baucham and many other precious saints who have passed, I am adhering to Scripture on these matters, not to cultural acceptances. I am looking out for the best interest of women, not the best interest of their egos. Feminism is a self-entitled movement, putting the self above anything and everything else, including God. Rather than stepping back and first asking what it is God says about what He designed us for (all of which is good and for our benefit and His glory), feminism and all its attachments puts the female desire first, asking first and foremost what the woman believes she is entitled to. This, of course, is backwards, and this is how we get the church catering to how women claim things should be run and twisting Scriptural passages accordingly so as not to offend the agenda.

But friends, this is not honoring God, and this is not honoring women.

Feminists and those who push the feminist agenda pretend to care about women, but they do not care about what’s best for women; they care about prestige. I often hear the phrase “she’s doing well for herself,” but that is a modern and unbiblical concept that isnt to be admired. We aren’t made to “do well for ourselves.” We are not autonomous beings. We were created to rely on and need each other. Modern women pride themselves in not needing a man. Women were created to need men and men need women, but in very different ways. This is where the term “complementary” comes in. We complement each other, because our beautifully distinct roles and abilities serve each other in ways that we can’t (or at least shouldn’t) serve ourselves.

But modernity has a way of erasing truths and blending everything together in the name of “progress.” Zygmunt Bauman’s term “liquid modernity” describes so well the “growing conviction that change is the only permanence, and uncertainty the only certainty.” While a hundred years ago “to be modern” meant to “chase the final state of perfection,” now it means “an infinity of improvement, with no final state in sight and none desired.” This is why I am conservative. What does it mean to be conservative if not to conserve all that is good, true, and beautiful? Truth doesn’t change. Nor does goodness and beauty. But modernity says these three are liquid and can and should be conformed to the spirit of the age (that being whatever society favors/demands in the moment). But God does not change, and His Word does not change, and so I am conservative because I am committed to conserving what comes from God. I have said this before, but I believe we don’t realize just how modern we really are. We have grown up in a generation where feminism is the norm, and it takes a great deal of historical and scriptural analysis to break through the corrupted culture and see what has been distorted and what we were really created for as men and women.

Looking at history is such a neglected necessity to understanding how we arrived to where we are. I have heard so many women try to justify feminism by referring to its initial motives, as if the initial motives were innocent. Let me give you just a few statements from the original suffragettes and their motives: 1) “We have to erase men from our minds, our books, our images, our culture.” -Alice Coffin. 2) “Men have ruined the world. Women must overthrow society and eliminate the male sex.” -Valerie Solanas. 3) “Hererosexuality is an institution of male supremacy. Women’s liberation requires its abolition.” -Sheila Jeffreys. 4) “I feel that man-hating is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred to the class that is oppressing them.” -Robin Morgan. 5) “If women are to effect an amelioration in their condition, it seems obvious that they must refuse to marry.” -Germaine Greer. And this is just a few. Feminism was never about simply “voting rights” or defending wives against drunk husbands. It was an attack against biblical patriarchy and the respect of manhood altogether.

And how we have fallen for it, followed its path, embraced and applauded it, all to our detriment. Little by little, women have convinced the world that they are more valuable to society outside the home than inside raising children. If they do have children at all, they see them as a burden that distract them from more important things. When women first started holding jobs outside the home, their boss would let them go once they married because priorities were understood, both on a familial and societal level (it was called The Marriage Bar.) But women would laugh at this idea now. And how husbands and children suffer because of it.

How tragic that it is now the norm for women to leave their husbands for their careers. How tragic that it is now the norm for women to not marry at all, or to leave their fiancés because they’d rather be married to their job, thinking this is empowering. Or to have children but drop them off in the care of others every day, seeing them as a burden rather than a blessing to be cherished and protected.

The thing is, none of this is empowering; it is all selfish. This is saying you are putting yourself as the most important person in your life. This is saying you are going to live for yourself and not others. We were created to live for others, not for ourselves. We were created to give ourselves away for others, reflecting the beautiful way our Lord gave Himself away for us.

But the paradox, which I always try to emphasize, is that when we do so—when we live for others and submit to God’s beautiful design for His creation—we are the most fulfilled and joyful and satisfied than we ever could be.

Society has taken us so far from God’s beautiful design for the family—male headship, the soft and nurturing role of women, wives keeping the home and the husbands providing for it. I will always and unapologetically try to point us back to this because it is good and true and beautiful, it is what children need and benefit from, and above all it aligns with Scripture.

Now there are two disclaimers I feel need to be said in light of all of this:

1.    In all of this I am not referring to single women who desire to be married and simply have not found a husband yet. Nor am I referring to widows who lost their husbands. I am not implying by any means that women who aren’t married are doing something wrong. I am entirely referring to mindset and what one deems worthy of a woman. There are simply too many women in this culture who praise girls who seek to be independent and obtain authoritative career roles and look down upon women who “merely” devote themselves to raising their children, keeping the home, and being helpers to their husbands. Not only is the latter worthy of aspiration, it is biblically what we as women are called to pursue and do. The latter is what should be encouraged, not the former. I see very few if any women these days encouraging this God-honoring role of women, but I see many many women encourage wives to pursue and boast in being a “career-boss-babe-working mom”, as if that’s something worth applauding, and so I am committed to encouraging what is actually Scriptural, and what actually benefits children and families and society. (*Also, the term “working mom” is an oxymoron. If you’re a mom, it should be implied that you’re working. In our language the term implies that only if you earn a paycheck you’re working, but I know of no other women who work harder than those who take care of children nonstop all day everyday. They are unseen, they earn no medals or promotions or applause, but they are the hardest working women I know. They are nurses, teachers, comforters, chefs, gardeners, care-takers, educators, administrators, ((add as many roles as you can)) all in one, and I will forever defend and admire the hard work of these women.)

2.    When discussing gender roles I’ve heard people say “All that matters is the gospel.” No, all that matters is the whole counsel of God. Everything matters because of the gospel. Everything matters because Jesus is our King and Lord of our lives. What matters is everything He has to say in His Word. I assure you that the gospel reigns in my heart above all else, and that is why everything else matters to me, because I want to honor Him in all things. I assure you that gender roles is not the primary consuming thought in my mind each day. The first thing I do every single morning when I wake up is get on my knees and praise God for sending His Son to die for me. I preach the gospel to myself every single morning, and I aim to keep Jesus as the supreme treasure in my heart and thoughts all throughout the day. My favorite books are the ones that exalt Christ’s glory and make me love Him more. I need a good amount of time every morning on my knees in prayer and in God’s Word or else my heart will feel a sadness throughout the day. And after I get my sweet time alone with Christ I then get to do it again with my children once they wake up, and these daily times with the Lord are my favorite parts of life. I am the most happy when Christ is the most magnified in my heart. It is because of this that I take heed to what He says about how He has ordained things and I strive to uphold them. If I see a very clear picture in His Word of what He has created men and women for in how they are to uniquely govern the land, and if I see the very clear detriments of straying from these ordained roles, and if I see firsthand the very beautiful and fulfilling life that comes from submitting to God’s ways in all areas, how can I stay silent and watch as everyone continues to encourage and promote the opposite? I will get backlash, I know. But I am ultimately dedicated to truth (which is Christ and His Word), not to how people feel.

This is why I love our guilt-grace-gratitude liturgy. We have our guilt down. We sure have our grace down. But where’s the gratitude? Where’s the part that is so overwhelmed by what Christ has done for us and forgiven us of and saved us from that all we want to do is fully submit to Him saying “Your will be done in all things” because we see how good He is, we see that we can trust Him, and most of all we see how worthy He is? Where is the part where we say “I cannot believe You’ve chosen me and have called me into adoption as Your child and have given me all the precious benefits of belonging to You and all the precious promises that I can cling to in this life and I therefore want to live my life for Your glory on Your terms because You’ve enabled me to desire this by giving me a heart of flesh and giving me Your Spirit that now dwells in me?” We have forgotten our place. We forget who we are and who our Creator and Author is. We think and act as if we own ourselves, while we need to remember that God is the Potter and we are the clay. If God has molded us for certain purposes, who are we to re-write our purpose? If God has instructed us to do anything, we should willingly and joyfully do it. He is our trustworthy, loving Master who ordains all things for our good and His glory. Who are we to think we have a better way?

My encouragement will remain this:

Women, respect and submit to your husbands. We are instructed by God to do so.

Be keepers of the home. We are instructed by God to do so (lest the Word of God be blasphemed.)

Maintain a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in God’s sight.

None of these encouragements are to beat anyone down with the law. They are to point us to God’s will for us, which adhering to will bring about the most joy and honor to Him. Pointing away from these instructions brings chaos and disorder. One should be discouraged and warned against. One should be promoted. Although we can never uphold these things perfectly (and praise God for His grace as we stumble and fall at times), they are worth pursuing and teaching. Necessary even. Biblical even. This is my whole point.

“It is a naive sort of feminism that insists that women prove their ability to do all the things that men do. This is a distortion and a travesty. Men have never sought to prove that they can do all the things women do. Why subject women to purely masculine criteria? Women can and ought to be judged by the criteria of femininity, for it is in their femininity that they participate in the human race. And femininity has its limitations. So has masculinity. That is what we’ve been talking about. To do this is not to do that. To be this is not to be that. To be a woman is not to be a man. To be married is not to be single – which may mean not to have a career. To marry this man is not to marry all the others. A choice is a limitation.”

-Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be A Woman

Now I cannot write a paper on biblical gender roles without mentioning head coverings, as they go hand in hand. For those who know me, you know this is very near and dear to my heart. I started this off by saying that the more time goes on, the more firm I am in my beliefs of biblical patriarchal gender roles. This stands true of head coverings as well. The more time goes on, the more clear it is to me that the wearing of head coverings during public worship was an ordinance to be kept for all time. The very fact that the only reason the practice was thrown off (after a 20-century history of all churches holding to it) was due to feminists rebelling against male headship, and not due to any sort of new revelation of the text, speaks volumes in and of itself. But the modern church catered to feminist demands rather than faithfully upholding scripture, and the church has suffered because of it. Women are now accepted as pastors at higher and higher rates. Wives are encouraged to pursue careers outside the home and demand equality in all things within the home. Any teaching of a wife’s submission to her husband in the marital relationship is nearly absent in the church. And instead, women are holding Bible studies taught by feminists who applaud and encourage mothers to work away from their children. Some may think the absence of head coverings have nothing to do with these modern realities, but they go hand in hand.

In light of the dominance of women’s empowerment, it is no surprise that head coverings are now despised in our society. What do head coverings represent? God’s distinct roles for men and women. These roles are beautiful, and abiding by them produces the most good in our lives, the most joy, and the most fruit for the kingdom. But what does feminism care about? Equality with men. This is the ultimate concern. I am repeating myself, but this is worth repeating. While as Christians our ultimate concern should first and foremost be what God says in His Word about a matter, feminism seems to have overrided that concern even within the church. Now, rather than first asking what God says about His distinct designed purpose for men and women, we first conclude that there are certain matters we are just not going to touch if they offend women in any way, so any consideration of God’s will for women is off the table if it conflicts with their entitlement. God is surely gracious, and He does not abandon His church due to our hardness of heart. But what hindrance we bring to ourselves due to our lack of willing submission to our God and King. We have forgotten our place. Or we have forgotten His goodness in all that He instructs. Or more probably, we have come to fear angering women more than we fear anything else.

But as I mentioned, the more time passes, the more my eyes are opened to how critical head coverings are to keeping God’s ordained design. The more I learn of all the church reformers and beloved church fathers who taught this practice (which was all of them), the more I am confident in my belief. Every time I hear a pastor or any fellow Christian quote Tertullian, Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, Aquinas, Tyndale, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Spurgeon, Pink, Sproul, Waltke, Beeke, and many other beloved saints, I can’t help but think to myself, They taught Paul’s instruction for women to cover their heads during worship. Yes, all of these historical church fathers did (and do, for the faithful few who still live). We listen to them and esteem them on all other matters, but we completely ignore them on the head covering matter. Why? Because women despise it. And men have become more afraid of angering women than nearly anything else.

Many say that abiding by this instruction is up to individual conscience. But that doesn’t make sense. No where in the passage does Paul leave this instruction up to individual conscience. He clearly says that if a woman does not cover her head, it is shameful to her. This shame/disgrace/dishonor is the same Greek word Paul uses to describe the shame/disgrace/dishonor of homosexuality in Romans 1:26– “God gave them up to dishonorable passions.” We see the seriousness here of the disgrace we bring to ourselves and to God by not covering our heads, yet we have come to take this instruction so lightly and leave it up to our own preference. Either this passage was only meant for the Corinthian church (an interpretation that was conceived only this past century, and as we know as Christians—if an interpretation is new, it’s probably not true), or this instruction was meant for the universal church for all time (which is what all of church history understood it to be).

If this instruction was only meant for first century Christians, then all the women in all of the universal Christian church for twenty centuries did not need to cover their heads. But again, when we see the reason why women stopped covering their heads in church less than a century ago, we see that it was not because some new interpretive insight of Scripture was discovered; it was solely because women were rebelling against what the symbol stood for. And again, this is not a reason to overturn the authority of Scripture or start applying new interpretations to it. The passage either applies today or it doesn’t. It either applies to all or to none. As I’ve written extensively elsewhere, the reasons Paul gives for covering are all rooted in creation, not in culture, so the instruction is undeniably universal.

I’ve also heard a few Christians claim that the instruction must not be too important since it is only mentioned once in Scripture and not repeated. But is that really how we decide whether we are going to obey God or not? Is that how we decide whether God is serious in what he says, by whether He repeats Himself in His Word? Does He only mean something if He says it more than once? If a father tells his child to do something in the morning, and at night the child says, “Well I didn’t think you were serious because you didn’t bring it up again,” is that justifiable? I think we are smarter than that. If God has said something in His Word, it is because He means it. And while He doesn’t even need to give us an explanation for His instruction, He graciously goes into great detail giving us reasons why we are to cover our heads during worship (or not cover, for the men). The endless excuses people come up with to overthrow this passage amazes me. Yet women need to be taught by those they look up to the truth of this passage, or else how will they know? I pray God instills a greater fear of Him in His people over the fear we have of women.

(*I have written much more extensively in two previous articles on head coverings. My comments here are merely adding to what I have already written.)

May we submit ourselves unto God for His good use, for His glory, trusting in His goodness and praising Him for His glorious grace unto us—His indebted people whose debt has been paid in full.

Soli Deo Gloria 🤍

@lauritadill