Oh, Amber. What a can of worms! This blog post sent me to my journal, and I wrote a tome. In fact, my journal has a lot of musings on this subject, or related subjects, already.

I wasn’t going to post here at all, because I struggle with this issue, this is my on-going battle. But I will post part of what I did write. And incidentally, my journal is written to God, so you’ll see me addressing Him throughout:

We are not called to be good “Christian women”. We are to be good Christians. Men’s Christianity is not predicated on their gender, as women’s is. There is a move afoot to do “Identity Christianity”, just like Identity Politics. There are bibles for African-Americans, African-American Women, Teens, Girls, Boys, Pentecostals, ad infinitum. And the conservative church rightly says that this is wrong. It’s divisive. It gets us thinking about ME: MY identity, MY need for solace in MY trial, MY desire for guidance as I live MY life as a woman/teen/Lutheran, whatever.

In the same way, for writers or teachers to tell women what a Christan woman must be like is to divide women from the body. We are one body, says the Bible.

We all have one purpose here on the earth, whether we are Christian men or Christian women or Christian Engineers or Christian Pentacostals or Christian lizards. If we are Christian, we have one job on two fronts: we are ambassadors for Christ, to the unsaved for reconciliation, and to the saved for building up.

And none of us, whether Christian men or Christian women or Christian ministers, none of us can be an ambassador on our own. We cannot read the Bible, determine what to do based on the “principles”, and go do it. The ranks of the Pastorate and Missionary workers are replete with burnout because of this belief.

And the ranks of the rest of us are filled with washouts. Reference all the ATI folks whose kids never embraced You, but ran away to the lusts of the world because they didn’t have the self-discipline to be self-disciplined, the attentiveness to be attentive, or enough of the other 49 character traits to not hate themselves when they found themselves lacking in every wisdom search, every lesson, every day. They ran away to prevent the cognitive dissonance that us older folks are able to live with. We call it being a hypocrite. The Bible calls it being double minded. We walk with our necklines up to here and our hemlines down to there, but hate and berate and belittle and wrangle for our way. But we consider ourselves good Christians because of our “standards”. And our kids have to choose whether they will enter into this façade for the sake of acceptance into our (and their) social group, or if they will find a different social group (outside the church) who will accept them as the flawed folks they are and still be able to find something good to say about them.

No, not one of us can do this life, not one of us can be such an ambassador unless we are leaning, abiding, going and going and going to You, Lord, for power and direction and insight and wisdom and stamina and a loving heart and so on and on.

And that is all of us. Male or female, Jew or Gentile, Barbarian or Scythian, bond or free.

And that gives us our value as women. It is the same in the kingdom as the value of anyone else.

All that being said, though, Lord, You know how much I struggle with the bondage that others put on me, wanting to throw it off, but knowing that “we are called to peace.” You long ago asked me if I was going to get into a wrestling or shouting match in the hallway of the church to teach what I saw as truth about this matter in the face of others who used “standards” or “principles” to tell me what they had decided that You wanted from me.

And I have seen other women, women who have received the same yoke but like me, didn’t have the naturally compliant personality (the ones who as newborns slept through the night in two weeks, cooed and didn’t cry when wet, etc., showing it to be personality, and not training), I have seen other women throw off the yoke of “the principles” and begin to decide for themselves what they would wear/see/do/say.

But they become like the unsaved. For the unsaved don’t ask You, and the saved-but-deciding-for-myself don’t ask You. I think of the young mother’s Sunday School recently, and the comments that because they “liked” something they saw in the store, and they didn’t “think” there was anything wrong with it, then they should get to buy it. But nowhere did they mention that they prayed and asked You while they were in the store looking at the coveted item.

But the teaching could so easily come out as, “Think about what men will think when they see you in this.” And THAT isn’t asking You either.

Is the only way to decide what is right or wrong to ask “What would Bill do?” Or, “what should I do?” Or “what will men think?” Or “what will the church think?” No wonder our young people think the best choice is to decide for themselves. That’s waaay better than always being subject to the whim of someone else. Shall we wear a burqa because some guy might be a pervert, and we can’t be sure who we’re “defrauding”?

And that’s why young folks leave the church and embrace the world, or go find a church that has enough of the world in it to let them have it their way. Because they are not taught to ask You, God. They are not taught how to be in relationship with You. They are taught to look at the book You wrote, and figure out what You want based on that, or listen to some “expert” who will tell them what You want. And there is an expert for every idea out there, so that we can always get someone to agree with us about what You “really” meant in this or that passage of Your book. But they are not taught to ask the Author, and wait for a reply. And to wait on You, and not act until they have that reply.

Lord, You know my flesh gets in there too, with the best of them, with the rest of them. There are days that I want to be heard, to be valued for my contribution to the kingdom, the contribution I have to give, not the contribution I’m “permitted” to give by those who think it’s their job to give others “permission”. I know that sometimes the contribution I have to give is MY contribution, not Yours, and You just want me to keep that little gem to myself. For if it’s not from You, it doesn’t build up anyway. No power. But I know that I have contributions to give that are given to me by You, and that You want me to share them for the building up.

And my personal resentment from 36 years of “independent” ignorance of all truth gets mixed up with my legitimate indignation from not being able to contribute from the “You” taught part of me. [I was 36 y/o when I got saved.]

And I don’t know how much of my self-doubt is legitimate (“the arm of flesh will fail you, ye dare not trust your own” is so true), and how much of my self-doubt is devil-ignited from the last 18 years of conservative teaching on how women are “deceived”, from 18 years of hearing intelligence in women scoffed at as some sort of quasi-feminism.

I love this from Dorothy L. Sayers:
“Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man–there never has been such another. A prophet and a teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as “The women, God help us!” or “The ladies, God bless them!”; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything “funny” about woman’s nature.”

I, too, was made, or remade, in Your image. An image of inquisitiveness, creativity, longing for righteousness. Thank You for taking my questions and arguments seriously. And I would be HAPPY to have You map out my sphere for me, were I to know that it was You only, and not You-plus-my-guilt-or-pride, or You-plus-someone-else’s-guilt-or-pride. Thank You for thinking I am feminine enough, and for not jeering at my femaleness. I had two children and that was enough for You. I am a little loud and You still like being around me. I talk and You listen with interest, not mere duty, or absentmindedly, or to rebut, or with condescension. I am a little lazy but You don’t bring that to my attention all the time. No, You are changing me, loving me, growing me, giving me hope for what I am becoming.

Love you, Amber. I suppose it’s good to talk about all this. I think us old fuddy-duddies worry that when these things get talked about, you younger ones, without the settledness that happens with age, will race off headlong to throw off the yoke of bondage (as legalism is called by Paul in Galatians), and throw off everything else with it. It’s impossible to know what is meat to be swallowed and what is bones to be spit out without asking the only One who has a clue: Christ Himself. But we must ask believing He intends to answer, nothing doubting, for let not that man think he shall receive anything of God. We get our answers when we believe what He says about Himself: He is a prayer answering God. We receive not because we ask not. We must ask with expectation of getting an answer, and patience to not act until we receive it.

About everything.