Team Player

To be honest, much of the prophetic or teaching material I write is aimed at hammering guys. To the degree I see my own sins in the mirror, they are the sins I see most clearly in my world at large. I confess I end up writing a lot that fails to address the feminine angle of things. A wise woman can extrapolate and see how it applies to her, but she also realizes my instincts are masculine to the core. Even when I write something about the feminine side of things, it ends up sounding like a warning to men to watch out for it. On the other hand, I don’t pretend to know how it feels to be a woman and I try to avoid lecturing women on how they ought to feel unless it’s an issue that is more universal in nature.

But as noted in the previous linked post from the Kiln blog, the Bible makes a potent distinction in the moral responsibilities of men versus women. We are all under the Curse of the Fall, but it rests differently on the two sexes. Redemptive mercy holds a vast territory of common elements, but ends up somewhat different between men and women in certain ways. In essence, God’s Word says, “That’s the way it is; deal with it.”

This shows up consistently across numerous details. For example in the Law of Moses, we see a warning that men and women should not wear the same clothing. While there is nothing specific about what that clothing must be, it does have to be different. Whatever it is you wear, it must within context signal the difference between which is which. We could go on to explore all the ways it has meaning, but my point is that it serves as an example of something consistent that manifests across the board. It doesn’t matter why or how you characterize the various influences in a given social context, the gender-bender look is a manifestation of rejection of God’s moral character.

As portrayed in the Eden narratives in the Bible, even before the Fall, there were fundamental role assignments in guarding against sin. Both sexes have their best capabilities in this mission. The lyrical wording of the Curse in Genesis 3 does serve as an indicator of what we should expect and points us toward redemptive measures. So it doesn’t matter if a woman sees male dominance as an evil privilege; she had best get used to it as something God says is out of her hands. Her redemption comes by investing herself in other pursuits. We do have some major problems with how Western cultural mythology interprets all of that, and I give lots of time to that here. However, the fundamental moral requirements don’t change just because everyone goes about it wrong. You can see that it’s a problem that affects you, but that does not mean you are called by God to fix the problem directly. Learn what God’s Word indicates is your best way of being a part of the solution without making things worse.

Making things worse shows up often in Old Testament History. One repeating theme is the longing for female deities. Everywhere you see it, there is no question that the Bible condemns it. I can agree it’s never explained directly why it’s so evil, but you should never doubt that there’s a problem with it. Can you not find your feminine redemption in the male image God seems to prefer? The problem is not in the revelation, but in your rejection of it. Let me attempt to offer some context.

That Adam manifested some serious moral failures in the Bible is not in dispute. Whole books have been written analyzing it, but I think most of them agree it was largely a matter of his laziness, perhaps being preoccupied with something that he felt was more worthy of his attention. At any rate, it was his job to step in and guard Eve from the Serpent. He should have been there to offer an argument about the enticement to eat the Forbidden Fruit. He failed; he allowed Eve to choose and went along with it. His motives weren’t pure. Paul notes that she was genuinely confused about things because it wasn’t her job. Of course, I’m characterizing because the story is not meant to be taken literally; it’s a parable of something beyond human comprehension. We end up with indicative language and symbolic logic, and we are obliged to deduce moral applications. That’s our job as children of the Father. So a literal description is simply not possible, but we have to make sure we understand the symbols in the broader context of Ancient Hebrew culture.

So the rest of the Bible keeps hinting back at that original context for us. A part of the Curse on womanhood is rebellion against her man. The obscure lyrical language in Genesis isn’t totally unreadable, but ambiguous enough that Western translators vary widely in what they give us in English. We get the picture that being shoved down into a subservient position to her man is a part of the Curse and we aren’t surprised that she’s not real happy with that. Whatever her position might have been before the Curse is lost to us, and what it is now is unpleasant. So from that point forward, we see women seeking ways to leverage some power against male authority. Obviously there is a right way to do that, but the Bible spends a lot of time discussing how it has been done wrong.

Part of the business of doing it wrong is appealing to authorities that would be hostile to her man. Not every female deity is mentioned in the Bible, but we do see a lot of bad ones used as leverage to interfere with male authority. There is problem enough with it being idolatry, but there is also that issue that it represents attempts to overturn whatever exercise of male authority women don’t like. There is this persistent image of women leading their men away from Jehovah through their private idols, as if they maintained a separate religion entirely.

Did you notice how the writer applauded in the first chapter of Esther the proclamation about wives honoring their husbands? There’s a lot of context not included in the text because the writer assumed it was common knowledge. In the Persian Empire there was a custom of marrying outside your national identity, or at least keeping a cosmopolitan harem. Aside from the obvious thrill for the guys to have a sexual smorgasbord, it was aimed at building cultural and political links to keep the empire united. Solomon appears to have used this ancient custom as an excuse for something less noble. But in the Persian Empire it had become a bit of a problem, in that these noble ladies began building their own little queendoms, keeping servants that spoke her native tongue and her husband having no clue what was going on. She could pursue her own political agenda right under his nose, often contrary to his agenda. This was a part of what Vashti had done by refusing to participate in some imperial ritual that supported something contrary to her personal political agenda. As a godly Hebrew noblewoman, Esther would never stoop to such a thing. Instead, she remained a member of her husband’s team and sought his personal best interest even as she tried to save her own people.

Western minds seldom grasp the true moral lesson of Esther. She never forgot that her commitment to Jehovah included a commitment to her man’s best interest. If the Creator didn’t give her leverage, then she knew she would have to die. But the whole thing had to follow a high moral path of staying on her husband’s team. She could never leverage any lesser power than God Almighty against his stupidity. If God doesn’t deliver, He must have something better in mind. She cannot substitute some lesser Daddy figure for God and try to manipulate things to overthrow her husband. Throughout Scripture, one of the biggest sins of womanhood is trying to leverage some other authority against her man. She can’t appeal to Mommy, either. Female idols are a symbol of that kind of rebellion, but we could say the same about all sorts of things. Accident or not, that the spelling and pronunciation of “idolatry” and “adultery” are so close is morally significant for us. A woman betraying her man’s trust is a harlot in one sense or another. He cannot truly engage God’s calling if she keeps interfering.

Ladies, your man might not be conscious of it completely, but he is wired to know when you are betraying his trust. Sometimes the most incomprehensible idiocy from him is a manifestation of the sense that you have betrayed some trust. Have you ever felt the irresistible urge to “take him down a notch” in front of other men? That was from the Devil.