Zeal For Truth

If you embarked upon a quest to discover the role of women in American society today, you would find many answers: career-women, mothers, wives, single, married, sisters, daughters, grandmothers, artists, coaches, teachers, and entrepreneurs to name just a small portion. As time marches on, women have taken on many additional roles to the traditional gender roles of past eras. Many women today are left striving to be super-mom, juggling the conflicting expectations of career and motherhood. In fact, 70% of women in the United States in 2005 worked outside the home, juggling the demanding expectations of industry and family life which can be overwhelming.

According to a survey conducted of 1,124 mothers employed full time, 25% are dissatistfied with their work-life balance and 23% report that they missed three or more significant events in their child’s life in the last year, 44% reported they would take a pay cut to spend more time with their kids.

The newest media label for highly educated, professionals who are also mothers is “Alpha Mom.” The Washington Post describes her, “She wields a BlackBerry in one hand, an additional cell phone in the other, and when she’s not sitting behind the wheel of her SUV (a Hummer fits the image nicely), she’s parked in front of her laptop doing “consumer research” (aka shopping).

The responses of women feeling torn and dissatisfied trying to balance home and life comes as no surprise. In fact, it begs the question, are we better off with a dual focus? Has feminism (You’ve come along way, baby!) brought us to a more peaceful and fulfilled place in the lives of our families? Pondering these questions often leads to the confusion for today’s modern Christian women, because the biblical perspective goes against the grain of what society currently expects.

The Bible provides both a challenging and balanced approach for gender roles, both male and female. Evidence of these gender roles are more than societal norms, they are seen in the very first creation of life. He created them, male and female, with complementary roles and specific purposes and designs in all areas. God’s master plan had balance and harmony in the first family. In his essay, Male & Female Equality & Male Headship, Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr. explains:

But the very fact that God created human beings in the dual modality of male and female cautions us against an unqualified equation of the two sexes. This profound and beautiful distinction, which some belittle as “a matter of mere anatomy,” is not a biological triviality or accident. It is God who wants men to be men and women to be women; and He can teach us the meaning of each, if we want to be taught.

When we examine the meaning of what God’s design is for women, it becomes clear that women have the equal calling of serving with a focus on home and family. Women are built physically as nurtures of life. Moreover, the woman praised as virtuous in Proverbs 31 is commended for watching over the affairs of her home, and working eagerly with her hands and mind inside and outside to help her family prosper. However, the main focus of her efforts is trained on managing her household, not her career.

Paul instructs older women to teach younger women how to love their husbands and children, and how to be homemakers. The bible is clear that God’s role for women is to be helpers and nurturers of life. As Christian women, we need to remember our divine calling, not to be alpha-mothers, or dazzling career women, or burnt-out housewives. Our calling is greater; we are to be the caretakers of all that is cherished in family life and home. We may need to work and be helpers outside of the home, but at least we can rest assured and know where our focus lies. We don’t have to be adrift in the sea of self-doubt, guilt, or depression when we embrace God’s call on our lives as women—we triumph! Home is where our hearts should return. Here are some resources for encouragement that have encouraged me to focus my heart in the right direction:

Being Virtuous Women

The Homekeepers Heart

Noble Womanhood

Biblical Womanhood

A Virtuous Woman