Podcast: https://bit.ly/3Zx9Ttf
As I was working on this week’s posts, my wife came in from working in the greenhouse. The eight-year-old girl who lives on the property was stuck in the mud. And she was really stuck! After I lifted her out of her rain boots and set her on a board I had brought, it took a good deal of my strength to pull her boots out. She probably could have gotten her feet out of her boots, but what then? Her next steps would have cost her her socks, and she would likely have become stuck again.
The situation is an apt metaphor for why I am spending a week ranting about how we treat women. Far too many women are stuck in the mud of culture, sin, and male selfishness.
I should clarify I don’t think the men reading this are horrible people. The kind of men who make the world more difficult for women don’t read blogs about doing marriage well. But not being part of the problem isn’t enough; we are called to be part of the solution. And to be part of the solution, we have to understand the situation.
There are women in the world who are dismissed as angry, raging feminists. No guy is going to listen to a woman who says the solution to women’s problems is to castrate all men. But here’s the thing: that rage is a wrong reaction to a very real problem. Most men don’t hear about the truth of being a woman in our society. The women around us don’t share the truth because they don’t want to be put in the same category as castration-advocating radicals.
Another reason we don’t hear the truth is female acceptance. It’s the world she lives in, and there is no reason to think it’s going to change, so the best thing to do is to accept it and live within it as best you can. Some women go further, to a place that looks a lot like a Stockholm Syndrome situation.
I’m sorry for how the world treats my wife. No, I am ANGRY about how she is treated. But I can’t change the world. I can listen to her and agree it’s wrong. I can choose to make our home a place where she is not a second-class citizen. I can honour her for who she is and for the gifts and calling God has placed in her. I can further make an effort to help her use those gifts and callings. And I can commiserate with her and comfort her when she is not allowed to do that. What I will not do is tell her to pull herself up by her rain boots when she is stuck in cultural mud!
Have you gone along with culture treating women in ways that do not honour God? Have you laughed at jokes that make God’s daughters things for male pleasure? Have you remained silent rather than speaking up? Have you ever risked your position or reputation for a woman because it was the right thing to do? You know, like Jesus did with the woman taken in adultery or the woman who washed His feet with her tears.
How can you advocate for women? How can you protect them? How can you make them feel safer and be safer?
~ This is Paul, and pulling a little girl out of the mud is the most important thing I did today.
The driveway needs more rock!
But at least we are getting nearly a dozen eggs a day.
Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly created with ideogram.ai & Paul Byerly
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