“Why can’t I?” is the wrong question, sisters.
As Christian women, it’s important that we ask the correct theological questions. Sadly, many of us don’t. Too many women define their Christianity by the culture rather than the fullness of Scripture. But to do so makes us become unfruitful because we have become unfaithful.
Elisabeth Elliot once said that the fact that she was a woman didn’t make her a different kind of Christian but that the fact that she was a Christian did make her a different kind of woman. When a woman is defined by Christ, everything about her will be different. Even the questions she asks.
“Why can’t I?” is the wrong question for Christian women to be asking, rather our question should be, “Does this bring glory to the Lord?”
James 4: 4, Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
Why can’t I…dress as I’d like…pursue a career over marriage…hang out with these people…go to this party…put my children in daycare? Or whatever the question is. “Why can’t I?” do anything other than that which is most pleasing to the Lord. Seeking to please ourselves becomes far more important to us than asking “Am I pleasing God?”
Seeking to please ourselves leads us to seek to fit into the world around us and to enjoy as much of it as possible. It is then we ask, “Why can’t I?” and “Did God really say?” These exact same questions were asked in the Garden of Eden.
“Why can’t I?” put Jesus on the cross.
1 John 2: 15-17, Do not love the world nor the things in the world If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.
When we let our culture interpret our Christianity, we get a me-centered philosophy that isn’t Christianity at all. God isn’t what matters to us at that point–we are. We claim to be serving Him but our lives belie that.
Unless we are becoming more and more holy with the sweet aroma of Christlikeness permeating all that we do, then the opposite is true–our lives are becoming more and more worldly with the accompanying stink to prove it.
The questions we ought to be asking are not “Why can’t I?” and “Did God really say?” but “Does this glorify my Lord?”
We must stop trying to blend into a culture that hates the One we say we follow. The world won’t like us one whit more for being a religious version of themselves. They will see through it and mark us as the hypocrites that we are.
When we seek God’s way, we will be hated by the world but loved and accepted by the Lord. When we seek our way above God’s, devastating failure isn’t far behind.
Colossians 3: 5, Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
We look for ways around what God has said. Unhappy about restrictions on our “freedom in Christ” or possible reductions of our “Christian liberty” we avoid “thus saith the Lord” like the plague. “God didn’t really mean that” answers many an argument at that point–not well but often. “Paul was a chauvinistic pig” answers many others. “But that was cultural…or for the first century only…or, it was a Jewish custom” fills in the cracks.
This isn’t Christianity, sisters, and it doesn’t befit a daughter of God.
We must ask the right questions, sisters, if we are to find the answers that glorify our Lord.
