Womanhood lost
The church and her people, having sold out to feminism, no longer seem to comprehend biblical womanhood. This has led to the destruction of women’s lives, our homes, our churches, and our society. When feminism, not Scripture, defines truth, we no longer have truth. Lies become the unstable foundation that crumbles under its own weight.
Proverbs 11: 22, Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without discretion
There is such emptiness in many women’s lives, a barrenness that speaks of losing our place, of misunderstanding our calling. God created us as a helpmeet, a keeper of our home, a caretaker of our family, a nurturer and teacher for our children, a servant of our church, and a guide to younger women once we are older. We’ve sold our birthright for less than the cost of a bowl of porridge.
There is a God appointed distinctiveness to manhood and womanhood and as God designed it, it is a beautiful thing. But the truth of this has long been misrepresented, misinterpreted, and misapplied to the point that few women are able to discern where truth ends and lies begin.
Christianity is not a cultural thing, bending to society’s rules and blending in. God’s Word has something to say about every aspect of our lives. Feminism sought to destroy women’s purpose, without which we wither and die. Our purpose destroyed, we have sought to destroy ourselves.
Proverbs 14: 1, The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down.
Bought and sold openly
Much more is black or white in Scripture than we have been led to believe. The truth of our identity as women has been twisted beyond recognition by those who hate the Lord and His Word. It’s been painted over, paraded around, and sold on the open market until now there’s little left to sell.
When women started buying into the lies that they ought to be discontent with the calling of being a wife, mother, and homemaker, we willingly stepped onboard the “American Success ride” and lost ourselves. Amid the clamor, the sights and sounds of worldly callings, we lost our understanding of truth, of reality, of womanhood, and indeed of God. Not content to destroy only ourselves, we invited our mothers, daughters, and sisters to come join us in the maddening call of supposed yet elusive freedom.
We can’t have it all
Promised that we could have it all, many were surprised to find our lives rapidly destroyed as the truth that we actually couldn’t began to unfold. Still many hold onto the lies. Women have believed the lies for so long, we’ve invested so much, many of us simply cannot give up now. We’d have nothing left to hold onto.
So the madness rushes on. Spinning round and round on the dizzying tilt-a-whirl of our lives, as kaleidoscope colors flash in our brains, our uneasy minds are for a time put to rest by the sheer beauty, the excitement, the fulfillment, the supposed fun, of the out of control ride. That we’ve been lied to doesn’t enter our numbed consciousness.
Seduced by the idea that God–along with our husbands, society, and our churches–withheld that which is good from us, American women plunged headlong into a boiling cauldron of excess: having more, we must yet have even more. More success, more money, more beauty, more clothes, more excitement, more fulfillment, more, more, more…. Always more, and always about me.
Content in our discontent
Content in our discontent, we continue to strive. Something is missing but we can’t identify it. If only we can do more, achieve more, exercise more, be promoted more, have more, be more, then, one day we’ll find the elusive ‘it” that will, at last, bring our broken and empty lives fulfillment. So we’ve been told and so we believe.
Our striving after the wind has proven fruitless. Without our God-given call to anchor us our lonely hearts ache, our spirits are desolate, and our misplaced prayers remain barren. Rushing through our days, toiling through exhausted nights, delaying marriage and family, putting aside our needs to meet the demands of the job, all that once defined us as women is left dying in our wake. Focusing on self only leads to emptiness. We’ve been lied to and in our gullibility, we believed the lie.
“What do I want? need? deserve? What is good for me?”
No talk of duty to husband, children, parents, the church, or the lost. All that matters is me.
Womanhood destroyed
What happens when, in pursuit of self we realize we’ve thrown away true womanhood?
What will we do when the maddening music stops and the worn out roller-coaster ride of our lives comes to a screeching halt?
When we look around us and realize that what had appeared so bright and shiny from our brief stop at the ascent now appears as it truly is: dull, tired, and broken? When we find ourselves desperately in need of believing new lies in order to keep up the facade?
What happens when the façade fades into nothingness? When all those we poured our lives into are strangers? When our only rewards are ugly cold plaques on dusty walls?
Or when husbands and children, no longer heed our pleas to come back for one more ride? A ride, we promise, will somehow end differently…this time.
What happens when the lights go up and the show of our lives is over and we have nothing of true value to offer to God–what then?
Drowning in nothingness
We’ve lived the lie of feminism long enough. We’ve swallowed its poison even as we were drowning in nothingness.
There is a Way and most of us have missed it. The terrible price is the destruction of our souls, our lives, our families, our churches, and our society. Husbands have been dishonored and disrespected. Children prevented, murdered, or tossed aside. True womanhood and femininity dried up like a rose in the desert. All that’s left is us. Alone. Broken. Angry.
Once secure in our cultural identities, now with nothing, no one, alone at last, reaping bountifully what we’ve sown so very, very well.
What now? What can be done when we listened to lies and the result is nothing but carnage?
Culture or truth?
Too many women have defined and interpreted their lives, womanhood, everything, by culture rather than by God’s Word. We must repent of lies told and believed, of lives wasted and destroyed. We must rise up and reclaim our calling, our womanly heritage, as women of the Word.
It won’t be easy. Most of what is right is not easy. But right is right even if everyone believes it is wrong. Just because so many for so long have believed the lie doesn’t make it true. Just because our pastors refuse to, our denomination supports it, our culture demands it, doesn’t mean we have to blindly accept it. A lie believed out of ignorance is still a lie believed.
Proverbs 14: 12, “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
Soli Deo Gloria!
Photo by Stephen Hateley on Unsplash
