We spend the majority of our lives at a job instead of in the home, where our work is plenty yet simply ignored. We send our kids off to day care or public school where they are raised by strangers and influenced by friends who have absolutely no vested interest in seeing them grow into men and women of God, and hope that in the few precious moments we have with them between school, sports, clubs, and bedtime, we can somehow manage to undo all the damage done in a day and even do some good in helping them become the individuals God has called them to be. (More on homeschooling at a later time.) For now, I am simply going to let the book speak for itself, because I feel the author has done a wonderful job of outlining the dilemma we as women have gotten ourselves into. The following quotes are from p. 124-131 of Lies Women Believe:
"Half a century ago, a handful of determined women set out to achieve a philosophical and cultural revolution. Convinced that women needed to throw off the shackles of male oppression, they wrote books, published articles, taught college courses, marched in the streets, lobbied Congress, and in a myriad of ways succeeded in capturing the minds and hearts of millions of women.
They redefined what it means to be a woman and tossed out widely held views of a woman's priorities and mission in life. Concepts such as virtue, discretion, domesticity, submission, and modesty were largely eliminated from our vocabulary, and replaced with choice, divorce, infidelity, and unisex lifestyles. The daughters and granddaughters of that generation have never known any other way of thinking.
One of the most devastating objectives and effects of this 'new' view of womanhood has been to demean marriage and motherhood and to move women- both physically and emotionally- out of their homes and into the workforce...
In determining our priorities as Christian women, we must first ask: Why did God make women?...(emphasis mine) In Genesis 2:18 we find the first and clearest statement of why God created woman:
The Lord God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.'There you have it- God created the woman to be a helper to the man- to complete him, to be suited to his needs. Her life was to center on his, not his on hers. She was made from the man, made for the man, and given as God's gift to the man...(emphasis mine)
Together, they were to populate the earth with future generations of men and women who would love God and seek to fulfill His purposes in the world. There is no greater measure of [the woman's] worth or success as a woman than the extent to which she serves as the heart of her home." (emphasis mine)
I will stop here for now before this turns into three posts in one. There is much to be said about what exactly the role of the wife and the mother should look like in the home, and there are large portions of Scripture dedicated to both of those topics. So, I will simply leave you with a reminder to turn to God's Word when ordering ALL areas of your life. This seems to be where we fall away from our purpose in life, when we try to take modern cultural beliefs and values and integrate them into what God originally intended our lives to look like. In everything that we do, we need to open up the Bible, read the instructions given to us, and ask, "Does my life line up with the LITERAL instructions given here? Am I THIS kind of wife? Am I THIS kind of mother? Am I raising my kids in THIS way?" In order to answer that last one honestly, you really have to be the one raising your kids, not the babysitter, not the public school system, not even their grandparents. Are YOU the one discipling your children full-time, or have you left that up to the world? They ARE being discipled into some belief system. Are you sure it's the one God wants them to have? Where are your priorities? What are your kids learning as they watch you (or don't watch you) live?
Paul has this to say about widows and the lives they lived as wives and mothers:
"A widow who is put on the list for support must be a woman who is at least sixty years old and was faithful to her husband. She must be well respected by everyone because of the good she has done. Has she brought up her children well? Has she been kind to strangers and served other believers humbly? Has she helped those who are in trouble? Has she always been ready to do good?" 1 Timothy 5:9-10
Does this describe the kind of wife and mother you are right now?
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