I was raised with a certain standard for women. Actually, more like a box. A box that women could never step outside of. I remember doing a career choice research paper for English in my Christian school- you picked a certain career path and wrote about how to get there, what the work would be like, etc. I chose to write about becoming a journalist. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but writing appealed to me. I clearly remember being stared at incredulously when I handed in my topic. My teacher/principal/pastor of the church said to me, "A journalist? Well, just until you become a wife and a mother, right?" You see, there were only a few viable life choices for women: wife (preferably a pastor's wife), mother, or (if God were to go buck wild and call you to be in the workplace, or by some unfortunate accident He never sent you The One), a Christian schoolteacher or church secretary. This message was reinforced when I went to Bible college, where the only majors for women were Religious Education and Secretarial Science. (And possibly music of some sort? But not leading worship, of course...)
In all of these pursuits, there was one goal: Biblical Womanhood. Of which, the dear Proverbs 31 Woman was the gold standard. This lovely woman cooked everything from scratch so that hubs had a hot meal when he came in from working hard as a pastor all day. She raised and homeschooled six children, and she served by teaching Sunday School in their local synagogue. She hosted ladies' Bible study every Wednesday morning at her house. She dressed modestly and sang in the choir......right?
Except she didn't.
She, um......worked. Like a lot.
The day I read her story for myself and really realized that she was not what I had been told, I felt as though she and I had a little secret. From then on, when this ideal for women was presented in such a pious way through Proverbs, I chuckled to myself. Little did they know- this woman was investing in property! She had hired help with those kids! She and I had an inside joke. We were outside of the box.
I don't bring this up to bash churches, or stay at home moms, or homeschooling. (To be fair, the church I grew up in didn't even believe in homeschooling, a rarity among hyper-conservative churches. They believed in everyone's children attending their school for reasons I won't bother getting into today.) So if you are someone who stays at home or believes in homeschooling, I have no intention of offending. I'm not even saying it's outside of the realm of possibility for my life. I can think of a variety of circumstances that could lead me in that direction.
BUT....
When you are presented with those things as the absolute only option for your life...that's not ok! When you are taught to believe that this is all that GOD has laid out for women, in general, in His Word and that any deviation from that would lead you outside of His will...that's destructive. (And that's the nicest way I can put it. It's more than destructive, actually. It's abusive.)
So, back to our Proverbs 31 lady....she gets a bad rap. I mean, she is actually very cool. It's not fair that she is held up to women and used to create a standard of "Biblical womanhood." She didn't ask for that. A lot of women just hear the words "Proverbs 31 woman," and want to run for cover, because they know where that conversation is headed. Straight down the path of "here is what you should be." So, the name of my blog is probably off-putting to many, because they assume they know what it will be about. That's how I would feel.
I'd like to try to change her reputation a little bit. I'd like to write about her in a way that makes you realize we might actually like her. She is even a pretty decent role model, if you're looking for one.
Oh, and one more thing? She not real. Yep, that's right. Don't forget that Proverbs 31 was a hypothetical woman written by another woman....a mother, to be more accurate. A mother who was giving her son a breakdown of what makes an ideal wife. So while I am not downplaying the importance of this being included in Scripture.....do you know a lot of women who live up to a laundry list of ideals laid out by their mother in law? Chew on that for a little while. I like what the woman has to say, but.....I'm just sayin'. :) It's worth considering.
I'm going to talk a lot more about her, along with a lot of other great ladies in the Bible. I'm not going to focus on just the ones that are typically used to create a box for women in churches (the Proverbs 31 woman, Mary the Mother of Christ, or 1 Peter 3 where we call our husbands "lord"). I'm not going to focus on the ones that are typically used to break us out of that mold, either (Deborah, Miriam, Anna the prophetess). Instead, I like the approach of looking at the Bible as a whole, and appreciating that there are all kinds of women. We have unfortunately turned being Christian and female into this monumental thing of achieving the highest standard. What if there are no "sides" and we're totally missing the point? So I don't want to pick and choose the women that back up my arguments for how I think women should be. There are so many varieties of women in my own life, I could never just pick one, and say, "There- her. That is what God wants women to be." And I don't know any woman who would welcome that kind of pressure! So why do we do that with the women whose stories are laid out in Scripture? As far as I can tell, there was only one Gold Standard in the Bible, and He tended to blow the culture's expectations wide open. So....I think I want to be a woman just like Him. Not some other woman that was just doing her best and would be mortified that her life has been used for millennia to beat up other women.
It's going to get controversial, because it always does when you talk about gender. That's not limited to Christianity by any means. But I'm good with that. I can't wait to dive in to our gold standard women and talk about how awesome they are....just not awesome enough to worship.
What are your initial thoughts? Do we worship certain women in the Bible? Do some of them make us nervous because they are a little out-of-pocket?
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