Learning to Speak Up
A little over four years ago, I started down a path that I thought would lead me on a relaxing Sunday afternoon stroll through the woods. Little did I know I was actually starting a hike through the mountains.
When I hit "publish" on the first post here at SAL, I had no ambitions or plan for what God might do with me. I knew that I needed to do something--that I needed to cultivate certain gifts and desires--but there was no plan. At least from my perspective. As the path has twisted and turned, I've simply taken the next step in front of me. Sometimes those steps opened onto breathtaking vistas where I could pause and marvel at all that God had done; sometimes they led me up increasingly steep and narrow paths that made me doubt the wisdom of having ever left the couch.
This year, one of those uphill climbs has been doing more traveling and speaking.
If you're a regularly follower of this blog, you've probably noticed that I've been a little... um... absent lately. But if I've been absent here, it's only because I've been present in many new places speaking and teaching on the truth of living as image bearers. And like most uphill climbs, it has been immensely rewarding--once I was able to pause long enough to catch my breath.
Despite the challenges--whether it's been covering my responsibilities at home or overcoming the strange panic that inevitably settles on me right before I leave--I've relished each opportunity. Hand me a mic and watch out. The truth of imago Dei is so large--so all of life encompassing--that I'm never at a loss for words even if it's sometimes hard to know exactly where to land. Whether we're talking about how being image bearers affects our approach to work or learning how the gospel is both the means and model of for our transformation, I feel like I could spend the rest of my life teasing out the daily realities of being made like Christ.
So that's exactly what I have and am doing. Traveling and speaking has allowed me to develop ideas that I didn't get to explore fully in Made for More. I've been able to dig more deeply into the relationship between the Creation Mandate and the Great Commission; to explore how the gospel informs and enables the process of Christlikeness; and to focus more specifically on a woman's calling in the home, church, and society. It's been wonderful.
This year has also taught me how to "speak up" through the chance to co-host a weekly podcast with Erin Straza. The goal of Persuasionis to provide a space where "fine ladies, rational minds, and the best kind of company" can gather to discuss ideas and issues. We noticed that there were a lot of Christian podcasts focused on"women's issues" and there were a lot of podcasts for women Bible teachers; but we wanted to do something different. We want to amplify women's voices and perspectives beyond the typical conversations--to apply Christian truth to the issues around us, whether it is doing chores, failed attempts at authenticity, or funeral traditions. After all "when you're a woman, all issues are women's issues."
So consider this your invitation. Whether you're cleaning house, wrapping presents for the coming holidays, or running errands, grab a pair of earbuds or download the file and listen along!
Mattie Chatham, My Kind of Woman
Someone once asked me where I got my vision for womanhood, and I honestly (if not curiously) told him that it had come from times and places I'd never been. It came from wherever good women worked alongside good men civilizing the land, caring for their families, and loving their neighbors. It came from all the true daughters of Eve that have existed in history, literature, and life.
Women like Abigail Adams, Hannah More, Mary Slessor, Amy Carmichael, and Ma Ingalls. Women like Lizzie Bennett, Anne Shirley, Caddie Woodlawn, and Katharine Mary Flannigan. Women like my grandmothers and great-grandmothers. And yet, until my friend asked me that question, I'd never realized how much these Eves had shaped my understanding of what it meant to be a woman--how they modeled what it meant to be fully alive, participating in God's great work.
This week, I found another name to add to my list: Mattie Chatham from Wendell Berry's novel Jayber Crow. She isn't the central character of the book, but it isn't a stretch to say that she is its heroine. Bound in marriage to an unreasonable and foolish man, Mattie displays the kind of maturity that separates the women from the girls. The kind of maturity that makes me want to be a better woman myself.
...Mattie Chatham never looked like a woman who was put upon and divided in her loyalties and having a hard time; she didn't look as though she would have welcomed sympathy, or as thought she needed it. She was not her parents' child for nothing. She was going about her life, taking her pleasures as she found them, suffering what was hers to suffer, doing what she had to do. She had no air of self-pity or complaint. And this could only have been because, in her own heart, she was not pitying herself or complaining. It was as though her very difficulties had confirmed her sense of herself and her capabilities.
I knew Mattie Chatham a long time, and I never knew her to falsify or misrepresent herself. Whatever she gave you--a look, a question, an answer--was honest. She didn't tell you everything she knew or thought. She never made reference even by silence to anything she suffered. But in herself she was present. She was present in her dealings with other people. She was right there. She was, to my eye, a good mother who liked and enjoyed her children, leaving them free within limits that both she and they understood...
Mattie Chatham, as time went on and the older women [of the church] became less able, had a way of being involved and seeing to things. Her way was quiet and unobtrusive--and effective; she got things done. She was never bossy (as, for instance, Mrs. Pauline Gibbs always was) but was just simply and quietly kind. She certainly made nothing special of me. But when she asked me to do something, she asked clearly knowing that she was putting me to trouble. She would say, "Jayber, would you mind?" And she always thanked me. She was considerate. That was one of the reasons I remained aware of her...
She had come into her beauty. This was not the beauty of her youth and freshness, of which she had had a plenty. The beauty that I am speaking of now was that of a woman who has come into knowledge and into strength and who, knowing her hardships, trusts her strength and goes about her work even with a kind of happiness, serene somehow, and secure. It was a beauty she would always have. (pp.189-191)
How to Review a Friend's Book (and Still Be Friends)
French philoso
pher Blaise Pascal once wrote: “Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.” This is never more true than when you are reviewing a friend's book.
Many of you know that my first book, Made for More, released from Moody Publishers back in April. When it did, I entered a complicated maze of friendship and work. I didn't want to leverage my relationships in order to promote my book, and yet, the people most supportive of my writing were often those closest to me. Add to this the niggling doubt that I'd just made the greatest mistake of my life by actually putting my words out for public review. In the last two months, I've worried that no one was actually telling what they really thought or worse, that my friends felt caught--obligated to encourage me but struggling with their own sense of credibility. Because how honest can we really be about things like books and babies without risking our friendships?
And yet, I need your support. I need your help. Sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble and goodreads rely on readers' reviews and give books with more and better reviews greater visibility. But since it's frowned upon to pay people to review one's book (kidding, not kidding), I have to ask you--my friends--to do it. Like I've already mentioned, this is not an easy thing for either of us. So I've devised a handy-dandy cheat sheet much like those automatic tip suggestions that mysteriously appear at the end of your bill. The following chart will help you navigate the relational complexities that come from reviewing a friend's book. Just find the number of stars you want to give it and follow the row all the way to the right. (And of course, if all else fails, you can always use a pseudonym like "BookNerd0593" or "UnicornLiterati.")
More than anything, thank you for taking this journey with me. As readers, you have encouraged me that my writing was worth the time. As friends, you have encouraged me to keeping working even when it wasn't.
Little Golden Book of Theology
I’m entering a stage of life where my hands aren’t quite as full as they once were. Almost ten years into this adventure called “parenting,” I rarely deal with diapers and midnight feedings; but yesterday, when I watched a friend’s three-year-old and one-year-old for a bit, it all came rushing back.
The irony of small children is that they have absolutely no ability to entertain themselves and yet every ability to be destructive and bring harm to themselves. So during this season, parents learn to never look away. You learn to get down on the floor and build train tracks and play princess. You learn to put lesser things aside and grab a pile of books to read about Horton andLlama Llama and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Well, at least, that’s what we did yesterday. One of the books we read was the story of Tootle by Gertrude Crampton. Tootle is a young train who dreams of becoming the Flyer on the New York-Chicago line. But in order to do this, he must attend train school. He takes classes in “Not Spilling the Soup in the Diner” and “Stopping at Waving Red Flags.” But, according to the headmaster Bill, the most important class, the one that every little train must master, is “Staying On the Rails No Matter What.” Tootle must get a 100 A+ in this class.
Things are fine for a bit, but eventually the lure of the meadow is too much. Day after day, Tootle sneaks off to dance in the daisies and frolic with the butterflies. Bill becomes aware of what Tootle is doing, but instead of reprimanding him, instead of insisting on obedience, Bill makes a plan. He gathers all of the townspeople, gives each of them a red flag, and then hides them in the meadow.
Eventually Tootle comes to the meadow again to play. But as he’s enjoying himself, he suddenly sees a red flag in front of him. He stops and turns to the left. But there is another red flag. And then there is one on his right. Soon the only thing he can see are red flags. He is caught and helpless. The one law he knows to obey--the law of Always Stopping for a Red Flag—has trapped him.
But then he sees it. A green flag! A green flag means freedom. A green flag means “Go!” A green flag means race. A green flag means he can fly. Bill is standing on the tracks, waving a green flag with all his might, beckoning Tootle to come to him.
To our modern sensibilities, the moral of Tootle’s story—Stay on the Tracks No Matter What—could sound a lot like conformity. Won’t this make children feel guilty about pursuing what they love? Doesn’t this reinforce legalism? Shouldn’t we teach children to think outside the box? But the moral of Tootle isn’t quite that superficial; it isn’t about conforming to societal expectations and it isn’t about legalism. In fact, the moral of Tootle is deeply teleological; it’s rooted in who Tootle is. Tootle has to stay on the rails, not to please Bill, but because he is a train and he is destined to become a Flyer. The horse can run in the meadow. The bees can buzz around the flowers. But a train stays on the rails.
A lot of times we can believe that God’s standards are a barrier to our happiness. Like Tootle, the idea of “Staying On the Rails No Matter What” can feel unnecessarily confining. Worse still, some of us have been taught that we have to choose between making God happy and making ourselves happy. So when we do conform to His standards, they weigh heavily on us and we can begin to believe that we’re missing out. But we trudge on, committing ourselves to keeping “the rules” out of fear or self-righteousness. Some of us can’t handle that kind of pressure and eventually end up rushing off to the meadow.
But the truth is that neither of these paradigms is right. A train is not made for the meadow, but it not meant to trudge down the track either. A train is meant to fly down them with joy.
In Made for More, I write about this tension:
Because God's boundaries reveal His nature, they also reveal our own... Instead of a barrier to keep us from being ourselves, God’s law is intended to guide us back to our true selves… Apart from God’s law, we would ruin ourselves because we would keep living in direct opposition to what we were made to be.” (53-54)
But as we all know, and as Tootle learned, a standard by itself is not powerful enough. We need Jesus. Just like Bill stood on the track to guide Tootle back to where he belonged, Jesus stands waving the green flag, inviting us to the abundant life that only He can offer.
But it takes faith to live in our true identities. The world tells us that we will only be ourselves when we do what we want, when we do what we love. Faith tells us that we will never be more fully ourselves until we live as image bearers of God. But when this happens, when we are conformed to His Image through Christ, we are free to race. We are free to run. We are free to fly down the tracks.
We are finally free to be who we are meant to be.
Why Made For More?
If you're a regular reader of Sometimes A Light, you probably know that I have my first book coming out soon. I'm not sure how you could miss it given the constant stream of Twitter and Facebook updates and the fact that my mother has actually replaced her Facebook profile with an image of the book. (Thanks, Mom!) Entering this process, my three biggest fears were:
- Starting a book that I would not be able to finish.
- Writing a book that even I would not want to read.
- Writing a book that would end up in The Dollar Tree.
We’ll have to see what happens with #3, but as far as the first two, let me say that God has been faithful. I. actually. wrote. a. book. And not just any book but a book about a topic I love: How does the truth of being made in God’s image change our daily lives?
As excited as I am, a funny thing has happened. When you spend this much time with a subject, it’s easy to forget that others haven’t. When you become so familiar with your book, it’s easy to forget that very few people have even read it yet. Your own paradigm has shifted and you actually begin to forget why you wrote it in the first place.
But recently I read several blog posts that reminded me why I did.
The posts themselves weren’t in any way earth-shattering. They were basic defenses of conservative positions about gender and marriage. In one post, the writer rooted his arguments in Genesis 2, and not surprisingly, those who disagreed with him were quick to point to other Scripture that seemed to contradict his applications. It’s the kind of debate that has dominated the church for decades, and with the advent of the internet, has been multiplied thousands of times over.
So what was significant about these conversations? These conversations reminded of how quickly we all—conservatives and progressives alike—miss the big picture. They reminded me of how quickly we give lip service toimago dei but then root our definitions of human flourishing in very secular notions of personhood, calling, and identity. They reminded me of how essential it is to start at the beginning.
I am convinced that we cannot understand the lives we lead and the choices we make if we do not first understand what it means to be image bearers. Simply put, we cannot understand what is happening in Genesis 2 (or any other text) if we don’t first unpack Genesis 1. To do this, imago dei must become more than a caveat or a starting point.Imago dei must become the paradigm by which we understand the entirety of the human experience.
>Think about how the conversation would change if a woman’s calling were not defined primarily by a man's identity but by God’s identity.
>Think about how the conversation would change if the ability to give birth were not simply about producing offspring but about sacrificing our bodies to produce new life—the same way Jesus Christ did.
>Think about how the conversation would change if we realized that all work is defined by working like God does, whether that happens in an office, a school cafeteria, or a subdivision.
>Think about how the conversation would change if education became less about preparing for a career (whether it be mothering or accounting) and more about being image bearers of the divine Logos, the source of all thought and wisdom Himself!
Next Tuesday, Moody Publishers will release Made for More: An Invitation to Live in God’s Image. Made for More is not a theological treatise. It is not a defense of a specific position on womanhood or family structure. It is, in fact, not even an academic book. Instead, Made for More is for those of us who have been caught in the middle, those of us who feel like the current conversations miss the larger point--even if we don't always know what that is.
It is for the mama who’s lost herself in the midst of dishes and diapers. It is for the single woman who doubts her worth because she isn’t married or a mother. It is for pastors and counselors who are guiding the rest of us to the abundant life in Christ. And it is for my brothers who, whether they realize it or not, have an invested stake in the lives of their fellow image bearers.
In this sense, Made for More is an invitation to fundamentally change the way we think about ourselves.
Over the next several weeks, I hope to write more about it. If you’d like to join the conversation, please comment here, share these posts, or write your own! (File under #madeformore.) If you’d like to review Made for More or host a giveaway, contact me at hannah(dot)anderson(at)live(dot)com. It's also available on Net Galley for review.
So why Made for More? Well, I'll let the book speak for itself:
"If we are to find any lasting stability in this life, if we are to really answer the question: "Who am I and why am I here?" we must move past these categories--we must stop talking simply in terms of home vs. career; we must dig deeper than biology or gifting. We must find something more stable, more fixed, more permanent on which to base our sense of self. We must find a North Star. And not simply because our circumstances change, but because we ourselves are more than the roles we play in this present world. We are large, deep, eternal beings, and only something larger and deeper and more eternal will satisfy the questions in our souls."
We are made for more.
Photoshopped Goddesses: How the Gospel Frees Women
Last week, Target got caught with their pants… er… umm… photoshopped. To be completely accurate, they got caught photoshopping pictures of the women modeling their junior line of swimwear. Their attempts to create the perfect womanly figure were so absurd that I was tempted to just laugh the whole thing off. And I would have--if this sort of thing didn’t happen each and every day.
Those pictures of flawless skin that make yours look like the hide of an elephant?
Photoshopped.
Those perfectly shaped curves achieved without the assistance of Spanx? Photoshopped.
Those sculpted arms that most certainly do not belong to a woman juggling her briefcase, toting a baby on her hip, and chasing her two older children down the grocery aisle? Photoshopped.
I don’t think I’m the first to tell you that the images we see everyday in magazines, on television, and splayed across the internet are not real. And yet, everyday we see them. Everyday women are confronted with impossible standards of beauty and success. Everyday women measure their own identities against these photoshopped marvels and everyday they come up short.
What you may not realize is that this problem didn’t start in the digital age.
Over the last several months, my husband has been preaching through the book of Acts. Acts begins with Christ’s commissioning his disciples to “be [his] witnesses” and details the spread of the gospel throughout the ancient world. Interestingly, Luke, the author of Acts, makes a point to record that even in a highly patriarchal society like Greece, many women came to embrace Christ. In Acts 17:12, he writes: “Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men.”
So why would these women be particularly drawn to the message of the gospel? What about the gospel resonated with them in a way that other philosophies had not? What about their lives made them ready to receive it as good news? I think it has something to do with photoshopping. I think it has something to do with what we experience when we’re confronted with images of unattainable womanhood. The helplessness, the judgment, the insecurity.
In his commentary on Acts, G. Campbell Morgan, writes:
What comfort was there for a Greek woman in the cold gray eyes of Athene, or the stereo-typed smile of the voluptuous Aphrodite? What was there in Greek religions or philosophic thought for a woman? I am not surprised to read that these Greek women turned readily to the great Gospel. What is there in the world to-day for womanhood other than this great evangel? Let there be no undervaluing of the meaning of this. The women of high and noble estate, the convinced daughters of Greek culture, sick at heart because of the degradation of womanhood, as the result of Greek philosophy, turned to this great evangel with its broad and spacious outlook, with its light flashing and shining upon them.
I used to think that civilizations that worshiped goddesses would have a stronger view of women. After all, deifying women seems like a natural way to elevate their status in society. Turns out it doesn’t. It just sets the standard higher for us mortals.
Today we don’t have temples to Athene and Aphrodite, but we do have Sheryl Sandberg telling us that we’re not savvy enough; we do have Pinterest telling us that we’re not domestic enough; we do have religious leaders telling us we’re not feminine enough, and we do have Target telling us that we’re not beautiful enough. It was into this very same context that Paul spoke the gospel. And it was in this very same context that women embraced it and found it to be a balm for their tired, worn out souls.
The beauty of the gospel is that it frees women from the cult of perfect womanhood. It teaches us that we don’t gain immortality by pursuing certain feminine ideals but by pursuing Jesus Christ. It teaches us that we have already been “crowned with glory and honor” as His image bearers; and what sin has destroyed, Christ is actively and persistently restoring. He is right now transforming you, not into some photoshopped idealized womanhood, but into His own likeness.
C. S. Lewis put it this way in Mere Christianity:
He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness.
The reason those Greek women embraced the gospel—the reason you and I embrace it today—is because the gospel confirms what we already know. There is no way we will ever live up to the “ideal.” There is no way we will ever be successful enough, beautiful enough, or feminine enough. But it doesn’t stop there. The gospel reminds us that this was never the point in the first place. So in those moments when we feel small and helpless, when we feel judged and less than perfect, when we know we are not enough, the gospel invites us to Christ. It invites to run to the One who is, and will always be, enough.
If You Give a Girl a Blog
If You Give a Girl a Blog(with apologies to Laura Numeroff) If you give a girl a blog…
She’s going to ask you to read it.
When you read it, she’ll probably ask you to share it.
When you do, she’ll get so excited she’ll stay awake all night.
When she stays awake all night, she’ll start getting big ideas.
So she’ll probably write those down too.
When she’s finished, she’ll share them with you.
And she’ll start planning more.
She might get carried away and write a book proposal.
She might even send that proposal to a publisher.
She may end up signing a book contract.
When she does, she’ll feel overwhelmed and want to hide.
She’ll wonder why she ever agreed to it in the first place.
She’ll probably want to quit altogether.
When she remembers, she’ll get so excited that she’ll start writing again.
She’ll spend even more time in front of the computer and miss your favorite shows.
She’ll stay up late at night.
When she stays up late at night, she’ll get sleep-deprived and won’t be able to finish chapter 8.
So she’ll take a nap.
(She’ll take lots of naps.)
When she wakes up, she’ll finish chapter 8.
And 9, 10, 11 and 12.
When she finishes chapter 12, she’ll send it to the publisher.
Then she’ll have to wait.
While she’s waiting, she’ll start to feel hungry.
So she’ll eat a snack.
(She’ll eat lots of snacks.)
Eating lots of snacks will make her feel pudgy.
Feeling pudgy will make her think about going on a diet.
Thinking about going on a diet will make her think about other things too.
So she’ll write them down.
When she writes them down, it will remind her of writing a book.
And chances are, when she writes a book…
She’s going to want to blog about it.
The Least of These
On the third Sunday of January, people all across the country celebrate Sanctity of Human Life Day which commemorates the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion. And the very next day, the third Monday in January, people all across the country celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day which commemorates our complicated history of racial inequality.
On the surface, these two days may seem disconnected, nothing more than an odd fluke of the calendar. But if you look closely, there is a deep and profound connection—one that reaches to the very definition of what it means to be human. Every year, this third week of January reminds us that when society doesn’t view you as a person made in the image of God, it won’t see your children as image bearers either.
This year, this week struck me particularly hard because I had just finished reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Published in 1861, Incidents is the first-person account of Harriet Jacobs, a woman who had been born a slave but eventually escaped to freedom. Harriet’s story is important because it shows how women uniquely suffered under slavery. Often preyed upon by their masters and unable to legally marry, these women had little hope. But as Harriet's story reveals, if there was anything worse than being a woman and a slave, it was being a mother and a slave.
During Harriet’s life, American society operated under the legal precedent of partus sequitur ventrem or “the child shall follow the condition of the mother.” Whenever a slave gave birth (even if that child had been fathered by a white man), her son or daughter was automatically a slave, the property of her master who could do with that child as he saw fit. Harriet writes that the slave mother
…sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns… I saw a mother lead seven children to the auction-block. She knew that some of them would be taken from her; but they took all. The children were sold to a slave trader, and… before night [they] were all far away… I met that mother in the street, and her wild, haggard face lives to-day in my mind. She wrung her hands in anguish, and exclaimed, “Gone! All gone! Why don’t God kill me?” I had no words wherewith to comfort her.
And I had no words when I read this.
I immediately thought of my own three children—children who live in a world of innocence and security, who know nothing but abundance and love, who trust me to protect them. How could a society be so degraded, so unfeeling, that something as natural as the bond between a mother and her child was completely disregarded?
And then I remembered. We are not much better.
Ultimately, the laws of Harriet’s society saw her children as less than image bearers because they saw her as less than an image bearer. "The child shall follow the condition of the mother..." Today, the laws of our society view unborn children in much the same way. And I wonder why? Could it be that we view unborn children as less than image bearers because we view their mothers as less than image bearers?
"The child shall follow the condition of the mother…"
To all you who are tiring of the fight to protect the unborn, who are jaded by “culture wars” and one-issue votes, let me say this: We are not fighting simply for the imago dei of unborn children; we are fighting for the imago dei of their mothers as well.
To all you who think it is enough to fight for the unborn, who turn a blind eye to the poor, the marginalized, the outcast, let me say this: We are not fighting simply for the imago dei of unborn children; we are fighting for the imago dei of their mothers as well.
Because as much as we’d like to convince ourselves that we’d have stood for the rights of Harriet and her children; as much as we’d like to believe that we’d have marched shoulder to shoulder with Dr. King himself, if we shy away from protecting those who today bear God’s image—whether born or unborn—we must not trick ourselves into believing that we would have protected them then.
So on this third week of January, do not truncate your vision of justice; expand it. Do not walk away from the fight because it has been too narrowly waged on one front. Instead, become a true one-issue voter—a voter who sees the image of God in your fellow men and willingly fights the evil that preys on them. To co-opt C. S. Lewis, the problem is not that our desire to protect the sanctity of human life is too strong; it is that it is too weak.
Do not forget that God Himself once became a child, embracing the weakness and vulnerability of living nine months in His mother’s womb. Do not forget that this same God also made Himself a slave in order to redeem those who were enslaved to sin. And do not forget that this same God calls you to defend “the least of these” even as He defends you. Because it is in the face of those yet to be born, in the face of the oppressed, in the face of the slave that we see Him.
We see them imago dei.
Teach Like a Girl
Doris Day in "Teacher's Pet" (1958)
One of the books I discovered over the holidays is a collection of vignettes about the women of the New Testament. I was prepping for this year’s women’s Bible study at church and like any good teacher (who is consistently running just shy of deadline), my first stop was the Amazon search engine. I typed in “Women of the New Testament” and one of the first entries was written by, of all people, Abraham Kuyper. Apparently in the midst of reforming turn-of-the-century Dutch society, establishing an entire branch of theology, and pastoring multiple congregations, Kuyper also had time to write on women of the Bible. (Abraham Kuyper: Statesman, Theologian, and Father of the Modern Women’s Bible Study?)
I snagged a 1933 English edition (complete with “Suggested Questions for Study and Discussion”) for a little over a $1. Presumably Kuyper wrote his Women of the New Testament in the late 1800s (I couldn’t find an exact date), and so it’s not surprising that he affirms a fairly traditional understanding of womanhood. What is surprising, however, is that his traditionalism has been thoroughly informed by the gospel and in some respects, doesn’t look like traditionalism at all.
Take this gem from the chapter about Mary of Rome. In writing about the work a woman is called to as a Christian, Kuyper says:
A woman who really loves Jesus must place all she has upon His altar… therefore Jesus may expect that those who love Him exert their energies strenuously to help His sacred cause to prosper. In this matter, too, talents are too frequently buried; gifts are allowed to lie fallow, and energies to remain latent. This does not imply that a woman must forsake her home… but a woman frequently proves to be amazingly ingenious and energetic in the care of her husband and children. She should give full expression to that same ingenuity and energy in her endeavors for the Lord. (p.86)
He reiterates the same thought in discussing Priscilla, who with her husband Aquilla, actively taught and discipled early converts:
A woman such as Priscilla was, is a potent influence in any congregation to which she happens to belong, and we might wish that we could point out ten or twenty such women in each of our larger congregations. From her position in the Word of God, she affirms that a woman, also a married woman, has another calling besides those of dispatching daily duties and engaging in activities of mercy. A woman, too, must have faith, and that faith must borrow its strength from a knowledge of the truth… In that lies the strength of a Priscilla. She knows the truth, and knows how to present it with perfect clarity. Beside, she has the ingratiating tenderness of feminine appeal, a quality no man has… (p. 105).
There is a lot of debate about the role of women in Church and society. And while I’ll quickly identify as a conservative, I’ll also quickly admit that women who use their gifts to teach the Scripture—whether through writing or speaking—can sometimes feel like their femininity is a weakness. Teaching is something they do despite being women rather than an outgrowth of their full personhood which includes being a woman. But for Kuyper at least, Priscilla’s womanhood was an asset that allowed her to communicate the truth in a distinct way—in a way no man could.
Thinking about this reminded me of another woman I read about over the holidays who “expounded the way of God more perfectly.” For Christmas, my husband gave me a copy of Laura K. Simmons’ Creed without Chaos: Exploring Theology in the Writings of Dorothy L. Sayers. (Don’t assume too much about us—he also gave me the first three seasons of Duck Dynasty, the juxtaposition of which reveals more about me than I care to admit.)
Dorothy Sayers is best known for her detective stories, but she was also an academic translator and lay theologian who actively argued for orthodox Christianity in the public sphere. Simmons writes that Sayers
had a unique combinations of talents: a keen theological sense coupled with tremendous writing skill and a concern for how ordinary people understand Christianity. In an increasingly complex and fragmented world, we need these gifts more than ever. (p.12) So to all you Priscillas and Dorothys out there who have been gifted to communicate the word of God, do so; and do so out of your femininity. Do not be afraid of your curves or what Kuyper calls the “tenderness of feminine appeal.” Do not believe that you must adopt a masculine voice or be something other than you are to be heard. At the same time, do not hide behind your femininity; do not give yourself a pass for sloppy work or careless study because you are “a woman” and less may be expected of you in theological circles. You must do the work because, in the end, logic and clarity and beauty are not masculine concerns but human ones.
Do the work because you love Jesus and you are offering Him your talents and energies. Do the work and engage in it with all He has created you to be—including your womanhood. Remember that being a wife or mother or aunt or sister or niece or daughter is as much a part of God’s calling on you as your ability to teach His Word in the first place. Because if Abraham Kuyper has anything to say about it, your womanhood might just be the very means by which you communicate it best.
The Writer's Life
DeYoung’s advice was aimed at those in ministry, but I think it applies to most writers for this reason: Very, very few of us will actually make our living as a “writer.”
Very, very few of us will spend our working days in front of a computer (or scribbling in our moleskin notebooks) in order to share our deepest thoughts with a waiting world. Even if we get that elusive “book deal.” Case in point: a friend of mine has published four novels with a major Christian house, has a contract for more and still finds that she has to work at something other than writing. So she works another job, is a wife and mother, and only in the in-between moments, a writer.
Like her, the majority of us write for the sheer passion of it. We have been gifted to do this; we have heard God’s call to speak a specific message; and in His providence, He has given us opportunities to proclaim that message. But along the way, we end up doing a lot of other things. And this is fine. In fact, I believe it’s more than fine. It is good.
So much of this goes back to how we understand calling and gifting. (Or should I say, how we misunderstand calling and gifting.) When I was younger, I believed that my calling was some sort of magic—that God would reveal “His will” for my life and I would then commit myself to a specific job. In high school, I thought it might be mission work. When I was in college, I thought it would be teaching. After I married a boy headed to ministry, I thought it would be found in being a pastor’s wife. And once I had children, I thought my “calling” would be motherhood.
But there was something I misunderstood. God does not call His image bearers to categories or abstractions. God calls them to life. He call them to a specific embodiment in a specific place and time for a specific purpose. In my case, it is a life that includes being a pastor’s wife, a mother, a writer and a whole host of other things that work in coordination to reflect Him in a unique way. Truth be told, we really can’t even discuss calling apart from the specific image bearer who is called.
Here’s what I mean: about two weeks ago, I posted a link to a video that celebrated the life of the stay-at-home-mom. Many of the scenes were familiar to me—the small acts of care, the late nights and early mornings, the countless hours in the kitchen. I found it beautiful and affirming of work that often goes unheralded. But shortly after I posted it, a friend tweeted this response: “It was pretty sweet, but a very specific kind of motherhood for a specific cultural context. Not my experience.”
At first, I was surprised, but then I realized, of course, it wasn’t. This film wasn’t depicting an abstract calling—it couldn’t; it was depicting the lives of three specific women who happened to be stay-at-home moms. There is no such thing as a “job” apart from the one who embodies that job. There is no such thing as a role apart from person who gives form to that role. There is no such thing as a position apart from the image bearer who lends life to that position.
What does this mean for writing?
Those of us who write must have faith to believe that the other things we do—whether it is pastoral work or motherhood—make us the people that God calls us to be. We must have enough faith to believe that these things are not in conflict with each other but are all part of His Providence. We—no, I—must have enough faith to believe that being a mother makes me a better writer and being a writer makes me a better mother because He has called me to both.
This is not easy, and often we feel like we will be torn apart by the very things that God has created us to do. We crave the safety that comes from ordering our lives in an efficient hierarchy. We long to know ourselves in terms of job descriptions and boundaries; we want to understand where we belong—to be able to definitively identify ourselves, to say, “I am a ____________.”
But what if God never intended for us to find safety in anything other than Him? What if He is the only One who can make sense of the competing forces in our lives? What if He is the only One who can reconcile all things under His feet—even our unique callings?
What if this is precisely what He intends to do?
The God who Himself exists in wholeness invites us to live in this wholeness. He calls us to peace. But this only happens when everything in life comes under His headship. When every part of us is submitted to Jesus Christ, when He pervades every facet of our being, when nothing else—not our writing, not our motherhood, not our pastoral roles—has preeminence. Because when He is supreme over all, all will be unified. All the different parts of our lives will work together because they have been united by something greater than themselves.
And suddenly there is peace.
I don’t know what this means for your life. For me, it means submitting to the calling to write and mother and love my husband and clean the kitchen floors and hem the curtains. It means submitting to the multi-dimensional, layered, crazy existence God has given me. It means pursuing my work with passion and abandon, at the same time that I hold it loosely, never once believing that these roles give me my core identity. For me, embracing God’s calling for my life starts by embracing Him. By finally understanding that all things—my motherhood, my writing, my personality, my gifting—all these things “flow from Him and through Him and unto Him." To him be glory forever. Amen.
Women's Work
Last week the Pew Research Center released a report revealing that women are the primary breadwinners of 40% of American households. Conservatives have interpreted these statistics as yet one more step on the road to social ruin. And I agree that they should give us pause—not because of how many women are in the workforce—but because of the staggering number of these women who are single mothers. But somehow, instead of focusing on issues like male abandonment, the conversation inevitably shifts to the fact that women are earning more money than men. The standard conservative response goes something like this:
“It’s not that women can’t work—it’s just better that they stay home with their children. Men should be the primary providers for their families.”
For the record—and perhaps in my defense given what I’m about to write—I’ve been a stay-at-home mom for the last eight years and my husband has been the primary breadwinner for our entire marriage. Still, I find this response highly problematic. Not because I don’t value what happens in the home, but precisely because I do.
The problem with this kind of response is that it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of work and what it means to provide for a family.
One of the interesting things about gender issues—both inside the church and out—is that they are rarely about gender alone. Instead, gender is often a presenting issue for deeper values and assumptions--in this case, how we evaluate what it means to “work” and what it means to “provide.” (For those following the New Wave Complementarianism conversation, this post addresses Theses 17 and 22.)
A significant part of the problem is that we are still relying on the false paradigm of work vs. home. It is ironic that even as conservatives push against what they see as the fallout of 2nd Wave Feminism, they end up perpetuating the very philosophical assumptions that made feminism problematic in the first place. They continue to define “work” as something that happens outside the home and is rewarded financially. In context of feminism, this division plays out as an undercurrent of condescension toward women who have not pursued careers. In conservatism, it plays out by restricting men to the workforce and women to the home.
The problem is that these strict categories simply don’t exist. When God created man and woman in His image, He commissioned them to rule over creation by reproducing and stewarding the earth together. But not only were they to rule together, the very things that embodied their rule—reproducing and stewarding—also had to be accomplished holistically. God did not issue two commands but one command that exists with an internal tension and intrinsic interconnectedness.
Anne-Marie Slaughter highlighted this tension in her article, Why Women Still Can’t Have It All, that appeared the July 2012 issue of The Atlantic. In this now famous piece, Slaughter argues that the greatest barrier to the success of both the family and business is that they are pitted against each other. So that when we insist on a strict divide between home and work, we set ourselves up to fail at both.
Secondly, by defining a man who works outside the home and earns a paycheck as the “primary” provider, we unintentionally communicate to women that what they provide is “secondary.”
If by saying “a man must be the primary provider,” we mean that a husband should be the first to sacrifice his freedom by indenturing himself to an employer because his wife needs greater flexibility to care for young children –well, and good. But what I’m afraid we are unintentionally saying is that by being the “primary” provider, he is doing something more essential to the well-being of the family. We are saying that the greatest need of the family is financial.
That is not to say that money is unnecessary or that money is not a legitimate expression of our values. One of the most romantic things that my husband has ever done was purchase life insurance for me at the same time that he was purchasing it for himself. In this moment, he communicated that he understood what I contributed to the family. He understood that despite the fact that I did not earn a salary, the work I did at home—the boo-boos kissed, the noses wiped, and the books read--was just as much a “primary” provision to our family as his work in a salaried position.
Which brings me to my third and greatest concern. By defining “work” as what men do in the role of primary financial providers, we allow women to excuse themselves from stewarding the earth because we position “work” as a male characteristic instead of an imago dei one.
When we say a woman “can” work, we are, in essence, saying that work is optional to her identity. But as a person made in the image of God, a woman MUST engage in meaningful work that capitalizes on both her biological potential and her personal gifting. Where and when and how this happens will vary, but she must be working because work is what humans do--not simply what men do.
Don’t think this is problem? You’ve obviously never watched the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
It is, in fact, so likely a problem that the apostle Paul warned against it in two of his epistles. In Titus 2, when he calls women to be “workers at home,” he does so in context of calling them to "renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to [be]… zealous for good works.” In I Timothy 5 when he issues a similar call, he cites that the danger of caring financially for young widows is that they would become “idlers... gossips and busybodies.”
Paul’s concern seems to be not simply that women would work outside the home but that they would cease from working altogether. When your physical needs are being met by someone else, the natural pressure to be a working, productive person evaporates. The greatest danger to a woman who is wealthy enough to stay at home is not materialism, but laziness. The greatest danger is that she would not keep working even as she is at home because she would think that "working" is what men are called to do.
As women made in the image of God, we must be productive, life-giving people because our God is a productive, life-giving God. How this works out in practice is undoubtedly affected by our various callings and seasons of life. But in the end we are not Cinderellas waiting to be whisked away from our work--we are Susans and Lucys bravely embracing our call to be Queens over Narnia who rule faithfully alongside our brother Kings.
So that in the end, the best we can say is about work and family is that a husband should provide for his family by working imago dei and a wife should provide for her family by working imago dei as well. If these new labor statistics reveal that men are failing to do this, we should be concerned. But we must be careful in how we express this concern. If we are not—if we insist on perpetuating the oversimplified categories of work vs. home--we run the risk of undermining the very thing that we are called to pursue in the first place—the flourishing of every individual as an image bearer of our infinitely complex, infinitely glorious God.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ If this post piques your curiosity, here are several more that address the issue of gender and work:
http://www.sometimesalight.com/1/post/2012/09/my-take-diy-pintrest-and-the-rise-of-the-new-domesticity.html http://www.sometimesalight.com/1/post/2012/11/mad-men-june-cleaver-and-biblical-womanhood.html http://www.sometimesalight.com/1/post/2012/08/dear-coal-miner-exterminator-cafeteria-lady-hotel-maid-and-anyone-else-who-works-a-less-than-glamorous-job.html http://www.sometimesalight.com/1/post/2012/09/on-being-a-stay-at-home-mom.html
Woman in the Image of God
Last Friday, Edith Schaeffer passed away at the age of 98. Despite the potential to have been overshadowed by her husband, Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer, she held her own as a writer and thinker, delivering a message of joi de vivre and teaching a generation of women that there is power in the small moments, that even things like mothering and domesticity are an expression of God’s image. She taught us that when God takes up residency, our homes will be filled with His nature—filled with art and music and beauty and wonder and hospitality and joy.
But something’s happened to Christian women in the subsequent years--something that I’m not sure even Mrs. Schaeffer herself would approve. Over the last several decades, we’ve flipped the paradigm; instead of seeing womanhood (and all that comes with it) as an expression of imago dei, we've come to see our womanhood as an end in itself. We’ve come to believe that our core sense of self rests in our gender and our ability to conform to certain paradigms. And in doing so, I’m afraid we’ve developed a bit of identity myopia.
This idea has been rolling around in my head for a while now, but I didn’t quite see it clearly, didn’t quite have the words to speak it, until one day. It was the same day that I resolved to start blogging. It was the same day that I realized that my daughter was growing up.
She was six at the time, maybe seven, and I remember this moment of awareness that she was being shaped, not simply by her school work or television, but by the routines and liturgies that were happening in our home. She was being shaped by me. Every moment of every day, she was forming an idea about what it meant to be a woman. When I put on my makeup, she put on hers. When I wrote my stories, she wrote hers in a hot pink, spiral-bound notebook. She was becoming the woman I was.
This awareness made me consider what kind of woman I wanted her to become, and I realized that it wasn’t enough to teach her simply about womanhood—I had to teach her about what it meant to be a person. What it meant to be made in God’s image. Because all that is true about my womanhood--all that is beautiful and glorious and lovely--flows out of this deeper identity. If I didn’t start there, nothing else would make sense.
At the same time, I began to observe a kind of identity myopia among my peers. I saw women desperately striving to fulfill roles. And then angrily casting them off when the weight and expectations were more than they could carry. I saw women judging those who couldn’t carry them. I saw woman fighting loneliness and a pervasive sense of loss because they were single or not yet mothers. I saw women defining themselves by their sexuality or dress size. I saw women lost and wandering, confused about who they were and what they were supposed to be.
And I knew that there had to be an answer.
There had to be a truth that could speak to all of us. There had to be a truth that could transcend all the differences, that could bring order to the chaos. And that truth was this: each of us is made in God’s image and we will never be at peace until we live in it.
You see, being made in God’s image does more than establish the equality of all people (although is does); it is does more than simply level the playing field between men and women (although it does); it does more than argue for the sanctity of human life (although it does). Understanding that you are made in the image of God gives you a way to finally make sense of your life, to finally know who you are.
To know that your nature flows from His, to know that your identity mirrors His, to know that “in Him you live and move and have your being” to know that you are destined to be like Him, to know that He will move heaven and earth until you are.
This is what it means to live imago dei. This is what it means to be human.
And this is what Jesus Christ came to do. The perfect Image became the perfect Image Bearer to restore what we have lost, to redeem what we have sold away--the bits of ourselves that we have prostituted off to smaller gods. The perfect Image became the perfect Image Bearer so that we could finally be what we were meant to be, so that we could finally be like Him.
Which brings me to the book I’m working on. When I first started talking with Moody Publishers about writing for them, one of the questions they asked was, “How do you want to influence women?”
This is how.
More than anything, I want women, I want my daughter, I want myself to understand that the point of our existence—the answer to the question “Who am I and why am I here?”—is not found simply in being a woman, but in living imago dei. Our core sense of self comes, not in our domesticity or our careers, not in our relationships or motherhood, not in our brokenness or our fears, but from God’s nature. It's not that the details are unimportant; it's that they only make sense in the scope of the larger picture. In the end, I want what Edith Schaeffer did: I want all of life--all the domesticity, all the arts, all the beauty, all the love, all the philosophy, all the theology—to flow from this central Truth:
You were made to reflect and represent God on this earth. You were made for glory.
The writing is going well; but as you might expect, it’s slow at times. Something as heavy and intricately-layered as the image of God doesn’t come easily, and it’s just like me to try take on the world in one fell swoop. And yet, even this serves as a reminder that the whole point of living imago dei is living in dependence on Him, of following Him one faltering step at a time.
As you think of it, pray for me. I don’t view this so much as “my” book or a chance “break into the market.” It is a sacred trust. It is both a privilege and a responsibility. And most days, it scares me to death.
But just as quickly as I become afraid, His Spirit comes and whispers to my quivering heart, “Do not fear, my daughter; I have made you for this. I will give you the words that you need. For this moment, for this time, this is your work; this is how you reflect and represent me. My daughter, this is what it means to live imago dei.”
That Burning Fire
I also shared with you my firm conviction that the dreams that we hold dearest are often the very ones that God intends to use, that they are in our hearts precisely because He placed them there. I realize that this could have come across as overly simplistic--that it could have sounded a little too “Pollyanna/Mary Poppins/Climb every mountain”-ish—especially to those of you who are struggling through a low point right now. And yet, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the path of dreaming “never did run smooth.”
There are days when things are not working out as you planned, when you feel less than enthusiastic about the dreams stirring inside of you, when you want to pitch the whole thing and walk away. There are days when all you want is to escape your calling, and to do so, you wish that you could become someone else entirely.
There are days when you feel like Jeremiah.
The opening chapter of the book of Jeremiah contains a beautiful text that confirms that God sovereignly plans and ordains our callings. When God comes to Jeremiah, He assures him of that, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (ESV) And yet, twenty chapters later, Jeremiah curses the day he was born. The very thing that gave him comfort at the beginning of his ministry was the very thing that he wishes had never happened.
Jeremiah feels like God has tricked him—that by making him the way He did, by appointing him a prophet from birth and placing that “burning fire” deep inside of him, He has doomed him to a life of misery. So that as much as Jeremiah wants to escape his calling, for all the trouble that it has caused him, he simply can’t because God had made him that way. The very thing he is resisting is the very thing that he can’t stop doing. He calls it a “burning fire shut up in [his] bones.”
When I was in college, I attended a church whose pastor routinely gave this piece of advice to anyone considering vocational ministry: “Only do it if you can’t do anything else.” He wasn’t denigrating the value of ministry so much as emphasizing that ministry (like any other calling) is fraught with hardship, discouragement, and heartbreak. And in those moments, the only thing that will keep you going is the sure knowledge that God has made you for this—that there is nothing else you can do because you have that “burning fire shut up in your bones.”
It is so much a part of you that it is knit it into the very fabric of your being.
And if it is, there will be plenty of times that you will find yourself precisely in Jeremiah’s position—both hating the struggle and knowing that you can’t escape it because God Himself formed you this way. There will be plenty of times when it feels like a burden, times when you want to walk away, times when you will shake your fist at Him and say, “I didn’t ask for this. Why have you made me like this?”
For me, the “burning fire” has been a combination of being analytic and outspoken. It is both my greatest strength and my greatest weakness. It is the very thing that drives me to write, but it is also the very thing that leads me to be overly critical, noisy, and self-righteous. And I’ve hated myself for it. I’ve always wanted to be the quiet, demure one—the girl at the party whose very presence lends an air of sophistication and elegance–and yet, I always end up being the girl animatedly arguing some political or theological point. I inevitably wake up the next morning with a mental hangover and mountains of regret. “Why did I have to do that? Why couldn’t I have just kept my mouth shut?”
Ultimately though, it’s not about keeping my mouth shut. And it isn’t about achieving some mystical balance between the extremes of not caring and caring too much. Instead, it’s about finding a way forward, about transcending that type of one-dimensional thinking, so that you can pursue a greater reality--the reality that despite your frustration with yourself and despite your disappointed dreams, you know that God has “made you thus” for a reason. You know that He is shepherding and guiding you, that His Spirit is actively maturing you, and that even in the darkest valley, He is walking beside you and will bring you back into the light.
And this is requires faith. Not faith in your dreams or yourself, but faith in His providence and faith in His goodness. This requires believing that He has made you fearfully and wonderfully, that He did knit you together in your mother’s womb to fulfill a specific purpose, and that everything about you–even your dreams--are ultimately from His hand. So that in your darkest moments, this faith will manifest itself in obedience; an obedience that some days will simply mean putting one foot in front of the other and continuing down the path that He Himself has laid for you.
Dreaming His Dreams
Several weeks ago, I stumbled across a yellow legal pad that has been at the center of those meetings. On it, we’ve chronicled our goals for the past eleven years. On it, we’ve strategized and organized and neatly categorized them into 1-year, 5-year, and 10-year plans. Some have been eerily prophetic; others, hilariously naïve. Our first year's goals included eventually owning “forty acres of land” (because as my father-in-law says, “They’re not making any more of it.”) and having “a couple kids.” Today, we own ½ acre and don’t “have kids” but we are a family that includes three marvelously creative and unique individuals, none of whom I could have imagined ten years ago.
Looking over that legal pad reminded me of two things--- 1) how foolish we are to think we can plan our own paths 2) how kind and wise God is to give us dreams that He wants to fulfill
I grew up in a church tradition that, while perhaps unintentionally, was often suspicious of personal dreams and ambition. We had just two choices on the shelf, after all—pleasing God or pleasing self. And while I don’t really believe it was intended to be that simplistic, to an impressionable teenager, this often presented itself as the need to choose between doing what God wanted and doing what I loved. What no one seemed to clarify was that a life well-lived would undoubtedly involve both.
My parents believed in dreams though. And they believed in Providence--the kind of Providence that made each of their five children unique and would ultimately lead each to very different callings from finance to design to music. They never pressed the false dichotomy that I felt but instead taught us that all of life was to be lived with joy and faith, all of life was to be lived for His glory regardless of what we ended up doing. Still I don’t think it really sunk in for me until adulthood. I remember privately agonizing through high school, desperate to prove to God and myself that I would follow “His will” if only He would reveal it to me.
All the while never realizing that He already had and I already was.
In fact, as I look back, I realize that I was doing His will every time I followed in obedience, every time I loved another person, every time I longed to see His glory. I also realize that I was doing His will every time I sat down to write, every time I read and reread books that stretched my thinking, every time I reveled in and pursued the dreams that He had already placed inside of me.
Eighteen months ago, I began blogging, in part to finally prove or disprove this theory. I wanted to fully commit myself to a dream in order to see what He would do with it. I guess, in a way, I wanted to put my big toe in the Jordan to see if the waters would part. To that point, I had been writing bits and pieces but only as a hobby. I think it was my way of not having to commit, a way of inoculating myself from disappointment. What if my dreams weren’t God’s dreams for me? What if I failed? I would just play it safe; and while that meant that I may never know what God could have done, I would also never have to face the possibility of seeing my dreams crushed.
But I soon found that I couldn’t play it safe. Every article I wrote and every query I sent flamed the passion that was burning inside of me. And slowly I realized that God Himself was the one nurturing and cultivating my dreams. He faithfully sent the right people to encourage me and faithfully sent the right rejections to keep me in my place; until one day, He finally gave me the courage to accept that as much as I loved writing, He loved me writing as well.
Back to the yellow legal pad. One of those silly goals that my husband and I wrote down over ten years ago was that I would write a book. Shortly before Christmas, in large part due to blogging, I signed a contract with Moody Publishers to write that book. I signed a contract that will enable me to do what I love at the same time that it will serve His people on a broader scale. I signed a contract that will enable my thoughts to be embodied in paper and ink and type and give me a chance to truly earn the appellation of “writer.”
I am humbled. I am grateful. I am scared. And I have never before so strongly believed in Providence.
The next several months of writing will probably be similar to the last several years—I expect to wrestle through fears, doubt, and discouragement, to swing from heights of elation to depths of despair. And while I have plenty more that I want to share about this unbelievable opportunity, at this point, I just want to sit in awe. To publicly acknowledge the kindness and wisdom of God and to remind myself that the God who gives dreams doesn’t abandon His children in the middle of them.
Each of us has different dreams; and each of our yellow legal pads should have different goals on them because He was made us distinct. Writing may not be your passion, but it is essential that you pursue whatever is. It is essential that you surrender not only to what you love but to the fact that God wants to use what you love for His kingdom. It may not end up being your profession, but it will be your calling. It will be something that only you can do--something that only you can contribute.
So this year--in this brave new world of 2013--find what you love to do, surrender to His hand, and know that a kind, sovereign God put those dreams inside of you in the first place. And because He has, this same kind, sovereign God will, in His own way and in His own time, bring them to pass. Not simply for your joy, but for the joy of His people, and I’m convinced, for His own joy—for His own secret delight in watching His sons and daughters become all that He has created them to be.
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Mad Men, June Cleaver, and Biblical Womanhood
For some this may sound like a confession of moral laxity; for others it’s a confession of being horribly out of touch and having lived the last five years in a cave. Still, apart from the rampant licentiousness, unchecked greed, and ubiquitous alcoholism, I have to admit that it’s a pretty engaging show, especially as it captures the glamour of mid-20th century Manhattan--the perfect pencil skirts, the tailored three-piece suits, the sleek cars, and the poolside lunches at the Astoria. In its attempt to be historically accurate, Mad Men is also quick to make (and overstate) the point that this was a world dominated men, a world where housewives were vacuous ninnies, and the only women with any sense of power were the “hens” at the office who knew how to get a man to do what they wanted.
Of course Mad Men is interesting in itself, but it’s been particularly interesting as my exposure to it coincides with the ramped up conversation surrounding traditional gender roles. With this week’s release of Rachel Held Evans’ A Year of Biblical Womahood, everybody and her cousin seems to be parsing conservative interpretations of gender via the late 1950s and early 60s. Evans explains how she understands conservative mores here:
"The term 'Biblical womanhood' is basically a reaction to feminism. It means a woman who stays home and submits to her husband. It's a remembrance of June Cleaver—not what we see when we actually read scripture."
Now I can’t speak to Evans’ experience, but this correlation is funny to me. It’s funny because, despite being a woman who identifies as a conservative, I’ve never once thought of myself as June Cleaver. And the main reason isn’t because there’s anything wrong with June or even with women who care for their families fulltime. (I’m a SAHM myself.) The main reason my conservative understanding of gender has never led me to recreate the 1950s is because of what was happening below the surface. In a word, June was June, not because of conservative gender roles or because she stayed at home; June was June because of what broader society was pursuing at the time—stability and comfort.
June Cleaver vs. Kingdom Values During the 1950s, the United States experienced relative peace and prosperity for the first time in over two decades. In this context, Ward and June became icons of stability, comfort, and ease; they represented a generation who had known deprivation their entire lives, who as children had endured the Great Depression, and who came of age through the atrocities of WWII. By the time the 1950s rolled along, they were also a generation desperate for “the good life.” In this context, a woman’s role was naturally reduced to being a comforter, a nurturer, a source of emotional stability the same way that a man’s role was reduced to being a source of financial stability. (Think how important it was for a man who had grown up in the leanness of the Depression and watched his mother and sisters work in the factories during WWII to be able to make enough money to enable his wife to stay at home. And think too how important it would have been for women--who only a decade before had welcomed broken men home from war--to provide them with some sense of domestic normalcy and peace.) In this sense, gender roles weren’t simply about men oppressing women as so many Millennials think—although as Mad Men is quick to point out it was very easy for selfish men to do so--no, gender roles of the 1950s were a way to work toward the societal values of rest and stability.
So here’s my question: Is June Cleaver really synonymous with a conservative Christian understanding of gender?
I grew up in a very traditional home. I was taught to respect my father as head of the family and my mother spent years at home caring for us. But despite being traditional in their understanding of gender, my parents were very non-traditional in their view of the world. Instead of teaching their children to pursue stability and comfort, they taught us to love God, to sacrifice for his kingdom, to seek heaven’s riches over those of this earth, and to never forget where we were heading. The effect was that these kingdom dynamics created a different paradigm in which I applied conservative gender norms. Instead of thinking that the greatest good for me was to marry, have children, and rear them in a comfortable suburban environment, I grew up believing that the greatest good for me was to follow Christ, to devote myself to His service. That might very well mean marriage and children, but it could have as easily meant working overseas, pursuing post-grad degrees, or relieving the sick and oppressed. June Cleaver never once entered the conversation.
So I don’t think the problem is as simple as conservative gender roles. The problem comes when we use conservative gender roles to further our own comfort, our own sense of stability, or our own sense of ease. And my guess is that this is what many of my peers are confusing when they associate a conservative reading of gender with the 1950s. Ironically, conservatives fall prey to the same mistake when they insist on shaping applications of gender after a Cleaver-esque domesticity.
No Stepford Wives Because let’s be clear on one thing: the kingdom dynamics of love and sacrifice call us to apply gender roles very differently than we would if we were pursuing lives of ease and stability. When you believe that you’re pioneering a new country, when you believe that you’re pushing back the boundaries of brokenness, when you believe that you are fighting to see the kingdom of God reign in the hearts of men, it’s highly unlikely you’ll be content as June Cleaver.
Instead your role models for womanhood will be women like Katharina von Bora, who singlehandedly managed her family estates thus enabling her husband (Martin Luther) to do nothing less than turn the known church on its ear. Your role model for womanhood will be Abigail Adams, great-granddaughter of Puritans, whose minister father insisted on her education and who by her intelligence and grace helped her husband (and son) establish the very foundations of our fledgling government. You’re more likely to look to a woman like Caroline Ingalls who sweated alongside her husband, built her home with her bare hands, plowed fields, and tamed the frontier all for the sake of a dream. And you’re more likely to model your understanding of Christian womanhood after someone like Elisabeth Elliot who rejected the opportunity to be June Cleaver and went instead with her husband to live and die in the jungles of Ecuador--all to tell those who had never heard that Jesus lives.
These were no Stepford wives.
And yet, neither were they feminists in a political sense. (As a former nun, Katharina von Bora’s most revolutionary act was marrying and having children.) No, they were simply strong women who embodied all that it means to be human—they embraced their femininity, their capacity to bear and nurture life, their minds, their husbands, and their individual callings all in pursuit of goals and glories greater than their own private issues.
Deeper Issues Today, the easiest way to undermine a conservative understanding of gender is to align it with 1950s domesticity—something that that both liberals and conservatives are prone to do. But we must acknowledge that applications of gender are simply an expression of deeper values; poor June Cleaver was really only ever a presenting issue. The deeper question is what is driving us: Are we being motivated by our own needs or our own fears? Are we looking for lives of ease and comfort? Are we willing to use others to achieve that for ourselves?
Or are we pioneers, pilgrims on a journey from this world to the next? Are we men and women working together in pursuit of the kingdom of God? Are we captured by a greater vision and a greater dream of what God is doing in the world? When our churches are motivated by finding comfort in this life, it’s very possible that we would end up recreating a 1950s context; but as we concern ourselves with service and love, as we valiantly pursue the kingdom, June Cleaver with all her niceties and comfortable stability will have little place in the conversation. Until then, let’s put a moratorium on associating her with a conservative understanding of gender; and as a first step to that end, maybe we should all watch a little less Mad Men from now on.
My Take: DIY, Pintrest, and the Rise of the New Domesticity
In the past when we dreamed of our ideal (then non-existent) house, we always envisioned a room devoted to creating--whether it be crafting, sewing, drawing, writing, or simply playing with play-dough--we wanted a room that invites you to find your inner creative muse and let lose. Instead of fussing at my daughter for yet again cluttering up her room with odd bits of construction paper and glue, I want to be able to point her to cupboard of paints and glitter and chalk and say, “Go for it.”
I don’t know if other people dream of rooms like this, but I have noticed a trend among my generation. More and more of us are devoting our time and energy to things like crafting, cooking, and frugal living. You only have to hop on etsy, pintrest, or any number of DIY blogs to know that this phenomena is larger than any one subset and isn’t contained to the SAHMs among us. Women everywhere—from university-educated vegans to crunchy conservative homeschooling moms—are embracing the domestic.
In this Washington Post piece, Julia Rothman worries that this “new domesticity” will lead to obligation and foster a whole batch of June Cleavers trying to one up each other, not necessarily with our meatloaves and kitten heels, but with knit scarves and cheese making. And while this is definitely a possibility, I think the new domesticity can actually teach us something deeper about ourselves, if we let it.
Because whether it’s being motivated by a case of burn-out in the boardroom, a commitment to staying home with young children, or simply trying to make ends meet in these difficult economic times, this renewed interest in the creative process is really about reclaiming something very fundamental to our humanity. Whether you realize it or not, it’s about reclaiming the image of God in us.
In the case of my peers, generally young Christian women, the return to crafting and baking and decorating has accompanied a renewed emphasis on the importance of family life. We see marriages crumbling around us, children struggling through cookie-cutter schools, and so for many, the solution comes by devoting themselves full-time to their families. They’re educated women with more than a heaping of gifts, but they choose to become SAHMs because they really believe that, at least in the early years, they can best care for their families there.
But the truth that many are learning the hard way is that staying at home isn’t without sacrifice. In the eight years that I’ve been at home, I’ve discovered that little ones don’t often want to discuss French existentialism or world events, and major life accomplishments have been reduced to having everyone clean and fed at the same time. It doesn’t take very long to realize that staying at home can be less than stimulating.
In her breathtaking essay “Are Women Human?,” Dorothy L. Sayers argues that this is one reason why so many women pursue professional careers in the first place (a novelty in 1938 when she first gave the speech that would eventually be published as an essay). She says:
It is all very well to say that woman’s place is the home—but modern civilization has taken all the pleasant and profitable activities out of the home, where the women looked after them, and handed them over to big industry, to be directed and organized by men at the head of large factories…
It is a formidable list of jobs: the whole of the spinning industry, the whole of the dyeing industry, the whole of the weaving industry. The whole catering industry…the whole of the nation’s brewing and distilling. All the preserving, pickling and bottling industry, all the bacon-curing. And (since in those days a man was often absent from home for months together on war or business) a very large share in the management of landed estates…
Now it is very likely that men in big industries do these jobs better than women did them at home. The fact remains that the home contains much less interesting activity than it used to contain… It is perfectly idiotic to take away woman’s traditional occupations and then complain because she looks for new ones. Every woman is a human being—one cannot repeat too often—and a human being must have occupation, if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world. Sayers concern was not really to define what constitutes a “woman’s” job or a “man’s” job but to emphasize that every human being—of which half the species are women--MUST be engaged in creative, productive work because they are made in the image of a creative, productive God.
So I’m wondering, especially in the case of my peers, how much of the return to domestic creativity has less to do with our need to care for our families and more to do with caring for our own souls? How many of us craft and sew not primarily because we can do it better or cheaper, but because we simply love to do it? And for women who don’t stay at home, how much of your drive toward the new domesticity comes from the fact that the modern workplace has forced us to become mechanistic, unimaginative robots, spending most of our days processing bureaucracy and paperwork, without ever seeing tangible progress for our labor?
This is why we’re seeing the resurgence of creativity, especially in the home. Ultimately, we create because He did. We love beauty because He does. And when those things are less and less present in our lives, we are driven to find a way to recover them—whether we realize that’s what we’re doing or not.
This is not a problem. Domestic arts do often allow us to better care for our families. And creative pursuits do fill a need and enable you to return refreshed to the humdrum of work on Monday. It’s also not a problem if your creativity doesn’t take the form of traditional domesticity—feel free to go rebuild the engine of that ’57 Chevy this weekend—because ultimately what’s at stake isn’t that we all become June Cleavers; it’s that we all become like our God.
In the end, we must recognize that we pin and we plant and we bake and we knit, not simply because we are women or mothers, but because we are human beings made in His image. And all the mechanization, all the industrialization, all the assembly lines in the world can’t remove that part of us that needs first to create, and then to step back with satisfaction and declare, “That’s good.” Just like He once did so very long ago, just like He continues to do every day.
Keeping Up Appearances
So I’ve been watching the industry with a wary eye and following the cultural conversation surrounding it. A lot of talk has centered on the inferiority that normal women feel when they compare themselves to air-brushed, tummy-tucked, photo-shopped and CGI enhanced models. Because while no one’s staging Occupy The Catwalk, beauty--in many ways--has become as exclusive as wealth, with the majority of it being held by the 1%.
In response, companies like Dove have launched “real beauty” campaigns, supermodels themselves have begun talking about the pressures of the industry, and the internet is full of memes contrasting a busty Marilyn Monroe with today’s waif-like fashionista. It seems like the solution to beauty inequality has been to promote inclusive beauty—everyone’s simply beautiful in their own way. Yet for all the discussion, for all the public service announcements, we don’t seem to have made much progress as a culture. And I think it’s simply because we’re not being honest with ourselves. We haven’t yet acknowledged what drives this industry--what drives us as human beings. We haven’t yet touched the darker side of our nature.
Because false definitions of beauty aren’t the problem--jealousy, covetousness, and lust are.
Only this morning I was flipping through my latest edition of Real Simple—not an industry standard by any stretch—and interspersed among the typical “balance your life and achieve perfection ads” were a couple of ads that struck me because of their transparency. One was selling Jones New York jeans with the tagline, “Keeping Up with the Jones’ [sic]” and the other was a spread for Sephora skincare. Their tagline? “Skin So Bright You’ll Make Everyone Else Look Dull.”
Finally, here is the truth. Because if we are really honest, the fashion and beauty industry isn’t propelled so much by becoming a better me, as it’s propelled by becoming better than you.
You see, we human beings have a difficult relationship with beauty. It’s not enough for us to simply appreciate it from a distance. No, we must possess it, we must own it, we must have it exclusively. And so while a man may lust after a woman, desiring to physically possess her beauty, women just as quickly lust after each other’s beauty, desiring to possess it in our own bodies. It is not enough that we are all beautiful. I must be more beautiful. I must be better than you. I must have your beauty for my own.
And it’s all vaguely reminiscent of another beautiful creature whose own beauty was not enough to content him.
For many of us, the solution is to teach our daughters that charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but even in this, I don’t think that we go deep enough. It’s not that beauty simply hides the truth of a person’s negative character or even the false corollary that plainness can actually reveal greater spirituality. No, the truth is that beauty and charm deceive us and drive us through our lust, jealousy, and pride to aggressively fight to overcome each other.
The answer to this can’t simply be that everyone is beautiful or even that beauty is unimportant. No, the answer must be modesty. And not a modesty defined by skirt length or a lack of fashion sense, but a true modesty—a heart of modesty, a heart of meekness and humility. A heart that doesn’t use fabric or cosmetics or diets or anything else as a way to one-up someone else. A heart that doesn’t judge itself superior or try to draw attention to itself. A heart that is more concerned with making others beautiful than making itself so.
Because this kind of heart will overflow into hands and feet and lips and bodies that go about bringing beauty and joy and peace to everything and everyone they touch. This kind of heart—this truly modest heart--will produce girls and women who love others and love well. And trust me darling, if you do that, you will be dazzling.
Nancy Drew and True Womanhood
I’m not talking about the newer series post-1970s that’s filled with nasty bits and epic romance – my nine-year-old self was quite content with an amorphous Ned who appeared ever few chapters to escort Nancy to a seasonal BBQ or give her an occasion to wear her new taffeta party dress. And as far as violence, for me it was pretty dicey when Nancy was bound, gagged and left to starve.
No, I’m talking about that classic Nancy Drew that lived somewhere in the magical world post-high school but pre-matrimony. Old enough to drive and travel independently, but young enough to still need her dad. And, always, regardless of the situation, mature enough to help others with grace and style
I’m not the only one who thinks so either.
In this NY Times piece, all three women Supreme Court Justices identify Nancy as a formative literary role model. What captured them probably has less to with Nancy’s white middle-class upbringing and more to do with the essence of Nancy herself. As critic Melanie Rehak recognizes, “Nancy was courageous and independent but she never used that independence in an overtly rebellious way. Instead, she used her freedom to have adventures, but they were always in the name of doing good and serving justice.”
And that’s one reason why I’m purposefully directing my daughter to these books. (That and it gives me an excuse to re-read them myself.) I’m not vying for her to be a Supreme Court Justice one day—heaven knows we don’t need the High Court adjudicating whether or not Barbie Fairytopia is in copyright infringement of Disney’s Pixie Hollow—but I do want her to have a robust view of womanhood. I want her to know how to bake a cake for the elderly neighbor next door and have the guts to chase away the intruder who’s trying to steal said neighbor’s family silver. I want her to be smart and kind, pretty and unpretentious, appropriate and daring. I want her to be forgiving and humble, gracious and accomplished.
All at the same time.
Certainly I’m not conferring faith or belief on Nancy. And maybe it’s simply an example of common grace, general revelation, or the two times a day that the stopped clock is right, but a lot that I learned about womanhood came from having Nancy Drew in one hand and my Bible in the other. And the more I read the latter, the more I’m realizing that true womanhood isn’t an either/or proposition.
More than likely, it’s both/and.
It’s women with a hammer in one hand and a baby in the other. It’s women with the wisdom to defer an angry king and the kindness to minister to the King of Kings. It’s women with strength to lead and the humility to follow. And it’s women with the grace to move in society at the very time that they are turning the world upside down.
I’m from a generation that is quick to throw off anything that we don’t deem significant whether it’s marriage, motherhood, or social propriety. But I’m also from a generation that is perilously divided and grotesquely caricatured by our private definitions of what it means to be a woman. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere with a powder blue convertible, a twin set, and a pair of pumps. So as for me, don’t be surprised if you peek in the back of my minivan while I’m ferrying my children around town and see an overnight case packed with a change of clothes, pajamas, a toothbrush, and a bathing suit.
Just in case.