By Janelle Alberts –
Over the years, I’ve heard dozens of how-to-be-godly messages for women and they regularly circle around the same theme: don’t mouth off to men. Especially husbands.
Right. Good. Unless you’re Esther. Or Abigail. And your husbands are being idiots. In which case speak up! Stand up! God wants to use you to carry out His plan!
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And as for speaking up, if only Pontius Pilate had listened to his mouthy wife who warned him not to do it, no matter all the hollering going on outside.
Instead, women are told to strive for the crème de la crème: the Proverbs 31 Woman. I just now read that passage and no wonder everyone wishes to be her – the woman had servants.
How did it happen that the “godly” woman message from the pulpit began pushing women to be docile and sugary sweet?
What about our salt?
I get it that Eve is the one who gave the apple to Adam. Eve, Eve, Eve. If only you’d had a support system and access to an online chat group.
As it stands, women feel guilty and confused. As a result, we shut up at all the wrong times.
Perhaps we have done it to ourselves, we women. We’re so competitive. Once we sink our teeth into how something is “supposed” to be, we stop reading/thinking/wondering/searching/praying and instead we’re ruthless in our pursuit to put an absolute label on those around us.
Many a righteous girl gang has cut me down to size with a look that says, “Your highlights look dull. You can’t quote the Luke Christmas verse on command. You don’t have an Honor Student bumper sticker for your minivan. You better get busy!”
It’s not as if men benefit from homogenized preaching concerning women either. No guy comes home from a Sunday afternoon of golf without penalty to pay. The shiny church glow has worn off, the house is a wreck and the kids need a bath. Just ask my husband.
Let me blaspheme here by taking liberty with a Helen Gurley Brown quote on what it takes for a woman to really be a woman. She said, “It takes guts.”
It takes guts to be an Esther. It takes guts to be an Abigail. It takes guts to approach and really know this God whom you have chosen to serve.
Take heart. Yours is the God who went to the home of Lydia, who gave Rahab a place in Jesus’ lineage and who saw it through with Sarah even though she laughed at His promise.
Yours is the God who longs for you to hear His still small voice, no matter the hollering going on outside.
Now that’s liberation if ever there was.
Janelle Alberts spent her early career managing crisis communication needs for Microsoft, UPS and Wells Fargo. Alberts joined the Akron Beacon Journal online religion page in the summer of 2010. Alberts sets out in The Bible Book Club to observe the messaging strategy of one historical icon who is consistently quoted but inconsistently represented – God and His world’s best-selling book, the Bible. You can find Janelle at http://ohio.webfactional.com/faith_folly/.
1 thought on “God’s Liberated Woman – Salty? Or Sweet?”
This is really freaky – I read Proverbs 31 this morning during my quiet time and then saw this – I wonder what God is trying to tell me? Thanks for taking some of the pressure to be perfect off!