I am a product of my generation, a generation of women who grew up believing they had something to prove. The media gave us the message and we were happy to go along. I was one who thought I could do it all. Perhaps that’s why the apostle Paul adjured his protege Titus:

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good,  and so train the young women to love their husbands and children,  to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

Titus 2:3-5 (ESV)

I think many of us “older women” had to learn Scriptural roles the hard way, as in “Younger women, everyone is an example. I am an example of what not to do.”

There was a real problem with this 1980 image of superwoman femininity, and we had no idea it would lead us to this:

I’m kind of old (lol) and I remember the popular narrative in the 70s and 80s that a woman being independent was still kind of a new and refreshing experience. Women had the vote for some time, women were able to own property, act in their own behalf on a legal basis and so on. All right and proper things- for a woman to have autonomy and equality under the law, especially in the left hand kingdom. No longer did being born female assure one an uneducated and unstimulating life of being barefoot, pregnant, behind the stove, and a thrall to your husband’s every whim. You could have it all- independence, career, marriage, kids, and the sky’s the limit.

Then the feminist/social justice narrative turned ever so subtly through the 80’s and 90’s. Career women were getting burned out on trying to be everything to everyone. Men were tired of coming home to disheveled homes and absent wives. Divorce rates skyrocketed because of the many disincentives in today’s culture for couples to tough out tough times and stay together. “Why stay together if money isn’t an issue,” or, “Gee I think that girl/guy at the office is a lot hotter than my spouse,” to, “Who needs kids?,” and, “Who needs a man, or who needs a woman?”

Or, “Isn’t a same sex couple the same thing?” Isn’t “love, love?” The lines between feminine and masculine became so blurred that we have finally come to the point that there are people who believe one doesn’t have to be male or female as God created us but that “gender is fluid” and all other sorts of nonsense including same sex “marriage” that defies the created order.

I understand full well that it’s necessary for most families to have two incomes- many dynamics are involved in that, including our tax codes and the myriad disincentives for couples to be and remain married- but the truth is that men and women were made to complement each other and work together for the aim of raising families. Encouraging women to view the vocation of growing families as a secondary or unnecessary vocation rather than a primary vocation has further devolved our culture into narcissism and egregious self love to the expense of all else. And history goes on to repeat itself as people are rejecting God’s plan for humanity and substituting self satisfaction over the sacrifice involved in having children and families.

Often people are shocked to realize that both the Greek and Roman empires fell because they became more focused upon their own personal wealth and gratification than upon their posterity. Ancient cultures such as the Mayans and Aztecs fell into the practice of sacrificing their children to their idols in the hopes that in sacrificing their children they would somehow appease the idol and the rains would fall and the crops would grow.

And what is the abomination of abortion? Is it not Molech worship by a different name? Sacrificing a child to the idol of convenience?

Today we don’t really see the old Enjoli commercial or the Virginia Slims “You’ve come a long way, Baby,” tagline as being revolutionary. What we see today is laissez faire or non-existent parenting when people do choose to have children. Children growing up with both parents being active in their lives are in the minority. Very few children are being taught the Christian faith at home or are in Sunday School and Divine Service on Sundays, but there are plenty of high schoolers who identify as cats (even to the point of using litter boxes at school.)

We encounter the angst of mollycoddled, super sensitive “gender queer” individuals who want to be referred to as “we” or “they” rather than “he” or “she” and who believe that being attracted to an 83 Ford Escort while wearing checkerboard pants, and being covered with maple syrup is one of a plethora of “genders.”

But Lord, where should we go for the truth?

Simon Peter answered Jesus, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” – see John 6:40-69

Scripture- the inspired, inerrant Word of God- tells us that we are created male and female. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” – Genesis 1:27 (ESV)

God made me a woman whether I agree with it or not. That does not mean that God wills for women to be uneducated or to eschew vocations outside the home. It does mean that as a woman I too am made in His image, but I am not a man. It means that my vocations are different than those of men. Society may want to say there is no difference between women and men and that we can pick and choose and define our own gender, but God’s assignment is what is real and true.

The apostle Paul is pretty cut and dry regarding the roles of men and women in Christian life, the roles we were created for. Women were created not to be inferior to men but to complement and complete them. Ephesians 5 gives us God’s plan for not only how we regard and treat our bodies, but how sacrificial love in marriage mirrors Jesus’ love for His Bride, the church.

We are not to be deceived by the gender-bending craze (and there is no new thing under the sun) but to understand that those who think they are wise have indeed become fools – see Romans 1:16-32 – and pray that we will not serve the creature but look to the Creator.

There is a comfort to women, especially to women of my generation who were sold the lie that “equality” means that women are the same as men. There is comfort in knowing that we are covered by our Heavenly Father and if we are married, that we are also protected and covered by our earthly husbands. It is not good for a man or a woman to be alone. We are never alone because we are Christ’s, but the earthly marriage between a man and a woman is meant to be a foretaste of the joy of heaven.

When the apostle Paul wrote on the roles of men and women within the church this is what he had in mind. A woman covers her head in church to acknowledge that she is under the protection of her husband if she has one, and that she, being the weaker vessel, is also under the protection of her heavenly Bridegroom, Christ. 1 Corinthians 11:2-16

Whether her head covering is literal, like it had to be in the days of the apostles for propriety’s sake, or figurative-a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head for the sake of the angels, (v. 10.) We are covered by the faith that we are under the protection of the Lord- Paul reminds us of the importance of seeking the Lord’s authority and protection and understanding the complementary nature of men and women.

We know today’s times are getting darker, but we also know Who is greater than our fallen world. May our Lord return soon.