When I was seventeen years old, I read a book on the Proverbs 31 woman. I’ve no criticism to offer of the book. I think it was written by a godly woman who was pouring herself out in honoring God. I was electrified to discover a part of the Bible that seemed directly written for me, a female. It was the kind of discovery that felt like I was being given a template for life: no more mystery, no more puzzlement as I clumsily plowed through stuff I didn’t understand — the step-by-step handbook had arrived.
When I combined what I’d read from Proverbs 31 with the other parts of the Bible giving instructions to women, I almost wasn’t sure why I needed to read the rest of the Bible. Maybe my job was to camp out here. Certainly there was enough here to keep me busy for the rest of my life. I knew instinctively that I didn’t measure up to the standard of godliness that I was reading.
I’ve met a lot of churched women over the years, with varying views on these biblical passages for women. Some have developed a flinch and twitch when they hear parts of the Bible directed at women (often because those parts have been weaponized like a 195’s law-bomb against them). In contrast there are those who never talk about the Bible except to quote Titus 2 or 1 Peter 3, content to live there. And then there are some with a chip on their shoulder who just flat out refuse to allow the Bible to say what it says to women, doing feats of flexibility that twist the Bible up to the point that all blood flow has been cut off to certain parts. They just fall off as irrelevant, deemed wrong.
In the English department in college, there was the occasional lopping off parts of literature deemed harmful to women via critical gender studies. Who were these dead white guys to be telling us what good literature is, to be writing female characters for us? Why should enlightened women read such dregs, except to refute them? And for some, this has extended to God’s Word. If dead white guys can be cast off, why not dead Middle Eastern guys too?
But the Bible isn’t a trifle. It isn’t Gulliver’s Travels or Great Expectations. Its author is divine, not dead; perfect, not sinful. To read it is to be changed or judged, in some measure. We either come under it in full-stop submission, or we cast it aside as boring or harmful or stupid or nice. In unmitigated pride, we may even exploit it as its editor. And it isn’t indifferent toward us; it masters us willingly now or unwillingly later.
The God of the Bible won’t be suppressed to a few select passages directed toward women. He also won’t allow his daughters to cut off blood supply to the parts we don’t like very much. He demands all of himself for all of ourselves.
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Our Identity: Layered or Whole?
“Our culture is fascinated with identity — emphasis on the I. The church can be as well. We all want to know, “Who am I?” Or for some, “What’s unique about me?”
The process of discovery often looks like an attempt to climb inside our belly buttons and peer through any cracks to the innards. Maybe then we’ll know who we are and why we’re special. We think of ourselves like an onion with oh-so-many layers, and as we peel them back, we are as beguiled as Mr. Tumnus in C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle: “Yes, like an onion: except that as you continue to go in and in, each circle is larger than the last.” But rather than being in The Real Narnia beholding better glory after better glory, we’re utterly captivated by the navel-lint idol of self.
Even those of us who don’t like ourselves are often still captive to the fixation of self.”
The Trinity, the Local Church, the Para-Church and Women
I don’t know how many readers are following the online “conversation” regarding the doctrine of the Trinity and whether understanding the Son as eternally submitting to the Father has implications for the way women are treated in the church (and if it’s heresy!), but I want to make two small observations.
I’ll start by simply affirming what I believe, from my church’s affirmation of faith: “We believe in one living, sovereign, and all-glorious God, eternally existing in three infinitely excellent and admirable Persons: God the Father, fountain of all being; God the Son, eternally begotten, not made, without beginning, being of one essence with the Father; and God the Holy Spirit, proceeding in the full, divine essence, as a Person, eternally from the Father and the Son. Thus each Person in the Godhead is fully and completely God.”
I’m not a theologian or even a super sharp gal. I am a sleep-deprived Christian; I’ve been a Christian for most of my life. I’ve served and loved and been served by God’s people for that long and longer through gut-wrenchingly hard times. I know the church is full of amazing people, smart people, compassionate people, dedicated people, hard people, messy people, foolish people and more. I’m numbered among those ordinary folks and I have a lot of confidence in God’s work in us.
Observation 1) This Trinity “conversation” (code word for feather-ruffling oft-heated exchanges, punctuated with occasional smugness) is nothing that the local church can’t handle. The local church is equipped to think this through, give wise counsel to its members, and continue un-kerfuffled by it all. Not every reformed church will end up in the same place. Not every church will think it’s as big of a deal as other churches. Not every church will need to have read every article and book about it in order to come to terms with it. Not every church will care whether or not all its members agree on it. Isn’t that good? Aren’t we thankful to be Protestants and not have these edicts come down from on high? Aren’t we thankful for our local church, our actual people, our flesh and blood leaders who will account for our souls? Isn’t agreement with them more important than duking it out with virtual folks? I know that plenty of virtual contributors have met in real life, so they’re not faceless, but how many attend the same local body?
And if your local church is not equipped to walk wisely through this, but is a place of unkind or unhelpful “dialogue” or bullying without godly leadership, then praise God that we are free to find a church that more closely aligns with our beliefs.
Observation 2) From what I’ve seen, the women speaking into this seem to have strong feelings against those who hold to the eternal submission of the Son to the Father. I cannot say why the negative reaction is there, if there is a personal element of hurt, or if there is a more general sense of discerning what could be or has been harmful to women in their view. But if you are a woman who feels strongly that teaching the eternal submission of the Son is harmful because it leads to a devaluing or dehumanizing of women in the church and their ontological worth; if you think it leads to viewing them as their role rather than as a person, and that they aren’t meant to have submission be such a core identity, then live that out. You need not submit to or be ruffled by men who are not in leadership at your church or who are not your husband.
There seems to be on the one hand, a clear delineation on whom we must and must not submit to, but then a disappointment or even a calling on the carpet that men (of the inter webs–not from our church or our husband) aren’t standing in the gap. From my limited perspective, it seems there is a desire to have para-church organizations change their collective minds and come to agree with the women who’ve started the ripple. But why should women need this? Our influence is much greater than the internet. Our orbit of influence always pulls strongest right where we live, for good or ill. We have an ear with our men, teaching our women and children at church and home and school about the Trinity and a woman’s worth which is of more value than any online argument.
Even if books have been published, even if conferences have been spoken at, every person’s actual lasting influence is strongest closest to home. That holds true no matter your view on the Trinity.
CBMW and MoS don’t have to agree with each other. Would it be good if they agreed? Yes, if it is genuine and founded on the Word. But when we disagree with them or they with us it is of tertiary importance, because we don’t submit to them, nor they to us. If they are your employer, then this doesn’t apply, but assuming they aren’t, then we have the privilege of living our actual lives in our actual churches with our actual husbands, friends, pastors and parishioners. As someone who gives my opinion “quite decidedly” in the words of Lady Catherine de Burgh, I’m still averse to airing it out on the nets of the inter where there can be no tone of voice, no back and forth, no quick apology or clarification or drilling down until you can state another’s view in a way they recognize.
I realize there is a large influence that comes out of the parachurch organizations like DG, TGC and CBMW that may impact the teaching at your church, and if you have a significant point of disagreement with one that likely feels hard, but the place to sort that out is in your local church. We can’t force a para-church organization to align with a particular view. We have the duty of bringing our concerns to our local churches and affecting far greater impact than a blog post could, no matter how many hits or shares or likes or high fives from other women and men across the country it may garner. Real life churches with real life people are always where the real action will be.
I’m thankful that the Lord inspired the apostles to write to churches at Rome, Ephesus, Colossae, and Galatia. I’m thankful he knows us all by name, intimately; he knows our frame and knows what word is apt for us in every season because he actually knows us. Oh that we would know the people in the church he has placed us in like that and put more priority on common understanding and reasoning together under the infallible Word with our own people than with those we barely know online.
P.S. I love para-church organizations like DG. God works through them in wonderful global ways for the Gospel. They are made up of people: brothers and sisters in Christ. This isn’t meant to belittle that or the ministry of the men of God who started them like Pastor John (to whom I owe more than can be calculated in terms of my spiritual growth and understanding of the Scriptures), but simply to point to the primacy of the local church and that the para-church is meant to serve the church, not the other way around.
The Man of Dust
The Bible always has a newness to it. Even the most familiar passages are new when they are received by people who are continually being transformed, because we’re never the same when we come to them.
When I read a passage as an 18 year old, it has an effect. And it’s effect is entirely new when it lands on the different person that I was at 20, 25, 30 years old. I’ve read the Bible so many times, but I never read it as the same person. Every time there are differences and changes in me–in my circumstance and the transformation God’s working–and every time there are new beauties that I couldn’t see yesterday.
“It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” (1 Corinthians 15:44-49 ESV)
“We shall bear the image of the man of heaven.” It’s as though I’v never read it before. There is so much discussion about being made in God’s image. It’s good and sometimes helpful. Yet, that image was so horrifically broken by sin that in a very real sense, our image bearing was made untrue by sin without Christ. In sin, we bear the image of the man of dust. But for those in the incorruptible Christ, we bear the image of One who will never tarnish.
The Honored, Undaunted Weaker Vessel
Here’s an excerpt of a new post up at Desiring God. By way of preface, I’ll say that this is not an easy topic for me to write about–because there is so much room for misunderstanding. C.S. Lewis advises that writers should try to close all the possible wrong gates that readers could take and say precisely what they mean to (or something like that). I don’t think I’ve ever written something to that standard. And this is just another attempt. The beauties of the Bible, of God’s works and ways are too wonderful not to write about–even when the attempts fall short.
A package came in the mail with the warning “FRAGILE: Handle with Care.” We fastidiously cut open the cardboard and were disappointed to find a few broken pieces inside. If only the fast-moving conveyor belts and jostling trucks could have read this helpful label. Then they’d have known to give it its proper consideration and value.
A glass chandelier is exquisite in its fragility. We could replace it with a wood frame, sturdy and functional, which would have a certain virtue to it, but it would lose all the things that make it what it is: the light that twinkles off the multi-faceted glass, the gentle high chinkling of pieces as they’re nudged, the suspended refinement that underscores a necessary sort of civilization. It would be a mistake to deem a chandelier worthless because it’s fragile. It misses the point.
Fragility isn’t a defect; it may be the defining worth of a thing.
We have a parallel in 1 Peter 3. How is it that God calls women to “do good and do not fear anything that is frightening” in one verse (1 Peter 3:6), and in the next verse refers to them as a “weaker vessel” (1 Peter 3:7)? We don’t often put fearless and weaker together.
What results from physical fragility? Should fragile things feel insulted because we acknowledge they’re breakable? Or could their very nature as weaker lead them to the source of their fearlessness? A powerlessness resulting in trust in the all-powerful Father?
It helps to first acknowledge that what God says through Peter is true. We areweaker, or we could use the synonym fragile. Not stupider. Not less human. Not incapable of reason or achievement. Not emotionally broken. Not more sinful. And not even without great strength, as the Scriptures testify. But weaker. And yet many of us are, or have been at some point, uncomfortable with this because it’s inimical to the spirit of the age and it feels like an offense to our pride. So much so that we may stubbornly spurn 1 Peter’s verity, even as we take every precaution when walking alone in a dark alley.
Our weakness — the fact that no matter how much time I spent in the gym, I’d likely never be able to overpower an average-sized man or beat him in an arm-wrestling match — is not a sign of something gone wrong. It is to be handled with care, because in it resides exquisite beauties, abilities, and feminine strengths — like the beautiful strength of thick beveled glass.
A pregnant woman is one of the most defenseless humans on the face of the earth. She can barely rise to her feet after sinking into a comfy couch. Yet, who but the weaker vessel, called woman, can grow another human inside her body?
Think of the massive strength and endurance it takes to give birth — yet it is simultaneously a vulnerable type of vigor. A woman in a marathon labor of countless hours is then sitting up in bed, even as her body begins to hemorrhage, trying to feed and care for another person. Why did God do it this way? So that we would know that, like a mother with her nursing babe, he never forgets us, even as the blood drained out of his own Son on our behalf. It’s a fragile, mind-bogglingly valiant design pointing to bigger things, to be honored and protected, not belittled by comparison with a man, but accurately understood by it.
Mothers, Bathrooms, and the Idol of Feelings
Probably by now everyone knows about the Presidential bathroom decree that makes Target’s position look like child’s play.
Following the Target decision I read numerous posts from moms sharing how they intended to navigate using the loo with their little people. The vast majority of what I read from Christian moms were urging a march-in-that-bathroom-and-teach-my-little-one-to-love-everybody-by-smiling-at-the-man-in-the-girls’-room kind of approach. Most were wanting to recognize the humanity and struggle of the man who sees himself as a woman. Some even scoffed and vehemently rejected the idea that this could heighten abuse, instead insisting that men who believe themselves to be women were nothing like child predators, and confusing the two was judgmental and un-Christian.
Here’s where I agree with that thinking: we should recognize the humanity of men who think they are women and are in the women’s restroom. Where I differ is how we do that.
Boiled down, the trans-fiasco is one giant feelings-fest. Feelings are the new Baal. We don’t find our way out of it by teaching our young children that the way to love a man who thinks he’s a woman is by ignoring reality in favor of feelings-only love.
The thing is, you can smile at the trans person in the bathroom. You can hand him the paper towel in an effort to teach your daughter that you love everybody equally and treat everyone with respect. You can tell her that somehow you’re being Jesus to that man. But you’ll simply be teaching her that reality doesn’t matter, only feelings. Because the reality is, that man can’t tell your “Jesus smile” from an “I think being trans is awesome smile” and your paper towel passing didn’t further him along one iota in knowing the true Jesus.
If moms want to go all WWJD on the trans bathroom issue, then consider what Jesus did with the woman at the well whom he’d just met.
“Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” (John 4:16-18 ESV)
Jesus never played around with reality. He never substituted felt needs for actual ones. His compassion was a compassion based in reality.
You have to ask yourself, do you really believe that the wrath of God remains on all who do not honor God as God? Do you believe that God is the one behind our sex, our gender, our personhood? Do you believe that the man in the ladies’ room is currently in anguish and headed for deeper anguish that will last and last? Because that’s what sin is and that’s where sin leads, no matter how he or you or I feel about it.
And you have to ask yourself, have you met the Savior? Do you really believe that the Gospel is the power of God for salvation? Did he do it for you? Did he save you from anguish and sin? If that’s true, then how can you not believe it’s possible for the man in women’s bathroom? I cannot understand how ignoring reality is a strategy for loving people. Your motivation may be to love someone–to show them Jesus–and you may tell yourself that you’re not ignoring reality, you’re choosing to love in spite of it. But none of that is actually communicated without words and therefore it doesn’t matter how you feel about what you’re doing–it doesn’t translate as God’s love to the trans person.
Could it be that we aren’t really being sensitive to the feelings of the man in the ladies’ room or concerned with loving him at all? Could it be that we’re doing what makes US feel good? Smiling and going with the status quo, feeling like we’re so big and above it all. Are we any different from the trans person in our actions? We do what we feel is right and so do they.
Moms, the only thing that matters is what GOD says is right, how he defines reality.
Have you ever considered why it’s God’s kindness that leads us to repentance? It’s because we first were told about our sin. We first had to recognize an authority and reality that is over us. Only then did kindness look like kindness. Only then did it result in repentance. Without the first part, the kindness would have been cruel niceness, happily ushering us on our way, ignorant of the wrath that remained.
So I don’t think it’s loving to merely smile at the man who thinks he’s a woman in the bathroom. I think it’s unkind. I think, if you have a one-to-one encounter, it would be more loving to say something like, “I think you should be in the men’s room.” And then explain why you think that, as difficult and long as that may take. As misunderstood as you may be. As much as it will FEEL hard. Do it with Gospel love coming out in words and actions.
Then there’s the issue of our children. Is it kind to your daughter to take her into a restroom where men are present? Again, reality matters. Men are bigger than women. Men are stronger than women. Men are different than women. To knowingly have your daughter use a bathroom stall next to a man (when other options are present) communicates that protecting her is not a priority, and it increases a negative sense of vulnerability. No young girl should be made to use the restroom with men present. Assuming that no trans person is a child abuser (which is a huge assumption that I don’t even make with people at church), the simple act of requiring her use the bathroom with men there is in and of itself a perversion.
So that brings us to the President’s decree over public school bathrooms. I wonder if the same moms who were going to march themselves and their daughters into Target’s ladies’ rooms with men present will be as keen on telling their daughters to march into the locker room with teenage boys present. Are your daughters valuable or not? Are they allowed the protection of their own bodies or not? Are you communicating that to them in reality or only with feelings?
I can relate to the enticement of feelings as the final authority. I can understand it because I’m a human with one million feelings just like you. And hurt feelings may be one of the most powerful forces on the planet. But there is a God who came to redeem us, along with all our broken, powerful feelings. He cares about you. He cares about your feelings. So much so that he won’t let them ruin your life by ruling your life. He’s the only one who can be trusted to rule.
A Tear for the Clean Slippers That Aren’t
“Occasionally weep deeply over the life you hoped would be. Grieve the losses. Then wash your face. Trust God. And embrace the life you have.”
That’s what Pastor John posted the other day. A friend sent it to me as it was a perfectly timed word for her life. It hit me with a tightness, almost a guiltiness.
I got myself a pair of slippers a couple months ago. It’s no big deal really, but for some reason it was a big deal to me. I looked and looked and price compared and waited and waited for a couple years and finally clicked the button to buy them. It’s not like they were expensive or a well-known brand, they just happened to be exactly what I wanted.
Since I got them they’ve been vomited on more times than I can count. The first time it was just splatters, drips, and it didn’t bother me. Since then, it’s been fuller versions and I still haven’t been upset. I even took a picture the other day, after I’d cleaned them off, and laughed at the ridiculousness of it all.
But somewhere in all that, something has been shoved down. And today it pushed its way out. I sat down to feed Titus, which is always through his g-tube, because he can’t eat by mouth. And his extension tube hadn’t been clipped. So when I attached it the button in his tummy, his stomach contents started to leak out the extension tube, right on–you guessed it–my slipper. It was completely minor. NO BIG DEAL. It’s happened before, it will happen again and I caught it pretty quickly precisely because it was dripping on my foot.
Yet in that moment, there was grief. Grief at the absurdity of what was happening and that my slipper had stomach junk on it again and that somehow it’s supposed to be normal. In that moment, I was transported to my pre-disability days and it all struck me as so bizarre and sad–not simply the small moment I was in, but all that it represented.
Titus throws up about 5-10 times a week–more on a bad week–and this is part of his life. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. The main thing I fret about is the calorie intake. But, we’ve managed that pretty well and he’s growing beautifully.
Self-pity and the isolation of thinking of our trials as unique is a dangerous dangerous thing and my strategy has been to stay as far away from it as possible and to try to plant thankfulness and sow gratitude. Granted, it’s not that hard, God has given me a life that has far exceeded any expectations that I had. I have a wonderful husband, five children and a church family that is very close to my heart. I am the richest of women, owing to nothing in myself.
But what do I do in those moments when a forgotten clip on a tube and a soiled slipper reveal that there are emotions and grief that haven’t been dealt with and are shoved down and threatening to overwhelm? I’ll tell you what I did do. I took a picture. So weird, but I just felt the need to document how bizarre it all was and I knew God was teaching me something that I wanted to remember.
I think what I learned from it is something like, “Don’t cry over spilled milk. But every great once in a while, you can shed a tear for leaked stomach contents.”
Which brings me back to what Pastor John said, “Occasionally weep deeply over the life you hoped would be. Grieve the losses. Then wash your face. Trust God. And embrace the life you have.”
I don’t weep deeply over the life I hoped would be–I used to do that occasionally, especially when I was scared that Titus would die. But I don’t anymore, because my life is a story of undeserved grace. But every now and then I shed a tear for my boy, for his struggles, and for my slipper, and for all the throw up. Then I get a towel, wash up, and brace myself for the next time.
The Prism of Womanhood
I’m grateful to have a post up at DG today. Here’s an excerpt:
“The unique influence of a godly woman is in transforming things. A woman is to be compared to a crown on the head of her husband (Proverbs 12:4). This is not because she’s merely decorative, but because she is the thing that makes her good man great. She transforms a promising bachelor into a purposeful, respected husband. He gives his seed and by some miracle and mystery, God has designed her body to nurture and grow a new person, as Nancy Wilson outlines in her address, Dangerous Women.
In this transformative role, whether single or married, a woman mimics her Savior. Like him, she submits to another’s will and, also like him, God uses her to take what was useless on its own and shape it into glory. Dirty things clean; chaos turned to order; an empty kitchen overflowing with life and food; children in want of knowledge and truth and a mother eager to teach; a man in need of help and counsel and a woman fit to give it; friends and neighbors with a thirst for the truth and a woman opening her home and heart to share it with them.
A woman is a prism that takes in light and turns it into an array of greater, fuller glory, so that those around her now see the rainbow that was contained in the beam. She constantly radiates reminders of God’s faithfulness. She reads the black and white pages of the word of God and takes on the task of living them out in vibrant hues for her children, her neighbors, and the world to see. When the Bible commands feeding, nourishing, training and love, a godly woman sets to the task, enhancing and beautifying everything around her.”
Don’t Hate the Messes of Glorification
I have an article at DG this morning. Here’s an excerpt and link.
“I survey the kitchen and living room, and my eyes are assaulted with messes. Mail, worksheets, art projects, toys, plates of food with a few bites left, an origami style army of paper tanks, counting blocks. The messes feel endless. And for a tired mom, the messes can feel like the enemy.
Of course, they’re not. They’re evidence of life and growth. They are the essence of learning, exploring, and doing. A home without messes is a home without people, without life. If I want my children to grow as people, I must invite them to make messes. To take part in learning requires physical stuff to be used, to be handled, changed, glorified.
Then I also must invite them to learn to pick up, put away, restore order, and turn their learning into more than mere mess. A messy kitchen ought not to be chaos only, but the evidence of raw materials being transformed into something tasty and warm and good to eat.
And as I study God’s word, I find the same to be true. His word is living and active, and the process of growth that happens as I seek to understand it, and live my life under its authority and protection, makes messes. Not the kind of messes that are atrophy and dust-collection, but the messes of life and growing and glorification.”
Mothering and the Reverse of the Curse
Holy week is here, again, and has me in awe, again, over how our God takes a curse and turns it into promise. He takes punishment and turns it to ultimate blessing.
Many are probably familiar with the “proto-evangelium,” the first reference to Christ in the Scriptures that is found in Genesis 3. This is God’s curse of the serpent. And in God’s curse, is also found his unmistakable hint of promise.
“The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:14-15 ESV)
Jesus will bruise the head of the serpent. The serpent will be put under Jesus feet. The best news of the universe and it was there in the beginning. And right under it is a parallel curse reversal that happens for women.
“To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16 ESV)
Many women are familiar with this part of the curse. Pain in childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children. How many stories of pain and near-death experiences have we heard of childbirth. I have my stories to tell–5 live births, 1 miscarriage and 3 of the births with stories of true drama, heart-pounding stuff–emergency surgery, hemorrhages, blood transfusions–you all know the kinds of stories and have your own.
Yet in two ways, God takes the curse of childbearing and turns it into redemption.
First, God ordains that his Son, the God-Man, be born of a woman. The Savior of the world comes through a birth canal, and enters the curse. He uses the curse in order to turn it on its head.
The second is found in this well-known (because of how hard it is) passage from 1 Timothy:
“Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.” (1 Timothy 2:15 ESV)
How? How will she be saved through childbearing? I’m not a scholar, but I am mother. Could it be that part of how childbearing is redemptive for mothers is not that it is the atoning sacrifice that puts her in right standing with God, but that it is a means by which God keeps his daughters cemented to himself, humbled and reliant, as they care and pour out for children? This is a gift, a reversal of the curse, a privilege and nothing to scorn.
I read from the ESV study notes that the word “saved” is also frequently used to show perseverance and endurance in salvation. It need not mean that childbearing is the cause of salvation, which we know from all over the Scriptures is in Christ alone by faith alone through grace alone, but rather a means of an ongoing keeping, sanctifying, saving.
And childbearing has the connotation, not of mere birth, but of the ongoing care and raising of children–which applies to all women, mothers or not, by birth or adoption or some other connection. Childrearing is part of womanhood–aunts, friends, teachers, and on and on have incalculable roles in rearing the children around them. Which isn’t to say men don’t, but there is a distinction found here in the Scriptures and experienced in real life that we can all see in regard to a woman’s special role in the life of an infant and child and the reliance it produces in her on her God.
I’m in awe this Easter of our Savior who became curse and promise for us and who turned the curse directed at us into a means of painful, hopeful, miraculous redemption, even as I don’t fully understand it all–the glimpses are breathtaking.