Paul DeCelles looked at 1 Corinthians 11:2ff. and 14:34-36, 1 Timothy 5:9-10, Titus 2:2-7 and 1 Peter 3:1-7. He comments that this is not about “a law” but rather about exploring together what God is saying, with the attitude of “I want to be as much of a man/woman as possible.” Then he talked about giving cultural expression to the differences between men and women.
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
PAUL: We’re talking about, in these several talks, about some extremely timely subjects, evidently. Tonight, when I got here, Carol brought me some of the mail that had come in over at the office, and I was surprised to get a copy of the L’Osservatore Romano, which I don’t read, or [inaudible] very often. But it’s, you know, it’s a fine paper. [Paul and all laugh.]
And they have in here, in the centerfold for all of us to view [laughter], “Women in the New World.” And I haven’t read it yet. [All laugh.]
She also brought me something else I haven’t read yet. It’s a copy of New Wine magazine, which I myself find to be a very good magazine. This is my subscription to New Wine, and it—which I get after everybody else is through reading it, evidently. [Paul and all laugh.] It’s kind of a “community asset.”
And there’s—this whole issue is dedicated to the restoration of womanhood. And so I feel like: on the one hand, the L’Osservatore Romano; on the other hand, New Wine. And I just—I hope that some of the things that I have to say tonight will be found in some of these things. [Paul and all laugh.]
I want to continue the talk along the same kind of lines that Kevin was giving us last time, concerning the relationship between men and women in the community and the relationship between men and women in general.
But I want to start by saying that none of the coordinators . . . it’s not our opinion that we have a very big problem with problems between men and women. It does—really, we’re not so . . . like, say: “Gee, there’s just an awful problem here, and we’ve got to take care of this because everybody’s misbehaving one way or another.” It is—I don’t think that we feel that that’s what God is saying to us, that there’s a big problem that has . . . and things have to change.
But rather, I think what’s happening is that the Lord is accomplishing a lot of things in individual hearts in the community. And we need to be able to take this opportunity, the way the Lord is leading us, to say clearly what the Lord has said in Scripture about what it is to be a woman and what it is to be a man.
Because that’s—like, these two articles are not accidental. I think that the Lord is moving by the power of his Spirit to teach the world how to set these two things straight: what it is to be a man, what it is to be a woman. And what we want to do is to say it clearly so that . . . basically, so that all of us can say, “Yeah, that’s exactly right, that’s where we stand.” So that we can sense the unity which is really here. I don’t—none of us expect sort of like a big debate about this. That’s not because we don’t want to debate, particularly—that it doesn’t seem too important—but it’s rather a matter of everybody having an opportunity to kind of give their “Amen” to what the Lord is accomplishing.
And I sensed, after Kevin’s talk last week, that that happened with regard to what Kevin had to say, that it was a . . . I could sense that there was overall quite a sense of peace and that people—some people said, for example, “Well, he didn’t say anything that we didn’t already know, or that we didn’t already believe.”
And that’s right. But that was the first time that we had said that together, and we had taken that stand, and everybody could assent to that. And that deepened what the Lord is doing in our hearts individually, and made it something . . . a communitywide thing.
Tonight, I want to talk a little bit more about what Scripture has to say about men and women. I want to recapitulate very briefly some of the points that Kevin made.
The first point—I think he was really right on the mark, in locating the fact, first of all, an evident fact—that there’s a problem in the world in the way men view themselves and the way that men view women, and the way women view themselves and the way they view men.
And he located that disorder. He traced it back to, essentially, a rebellion against God. That it’s a rebellion, according to Saint Paul in the Letter to the Romans. It’s the rebellion against God, which is being expressed in an unwillingness on a man’s part to accept the way God made him. Or it’s an unwillingness on the part of—it’s a rebellion against God that’s being expressed on the part of a woman who is unwilling to accept the fact that God has made her a woman.
And what Kevin was urging us to do is to get it straight, in our own minds and in our own hearts, that whatever it may mean to us as time goes on—that whatever it means, and we’re going to, I hope, find out more about it—that each man here should say, “I want to be as much of a man as possible,” and for each woman to say, “I want to be as much of a woman as possible.”
I think that all these talks that we’re giving, as I look back over them and look forward to what else might come, . . . as we’ve in our meetings on . . . and the coordinators’ meetings and that long session that we had together—what I sense the Lord is trying to accomplish with us, above everything else, is to give us a new approach, a fresh approach, and a very strong and authoritative approach, to the word of God.
And so that one prophecy which we received tonight struck me in . . . particularly when it was—it was the prophecy about, that the enemy is on the prowl for our lives. And he’s trying even here to do some damage. That he wishes to destroy us tonight. And then the prophecy went on to say, “My word is coming on earth in a powerful way.”
And I feel that that is the chief work which the Lord wants to accomplish through these major community teachings. He wants us to kind of “crack” Scripture, to take a different approach to Scripture, to face it, to look at every page of Scripture and say, “Yes! Whatever it means, yes!” you know, and enter into a continuing dialogue with the Lord and with each other in an effort to explore and to discern and discover what it is that God is saying to us on every page of Scripture, and every dot and iota. . . .
There’s probably no doubt—there is no doubt about who is behind the confusion about what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. And the widespread common teaching, the ordinary daily experiences that we have in the world, all were working toward, very clearly, making it the case to confuse us, to enervate us, to take away our strength and our power by confusing these roles. And that’s a confusion which is caused by the devil himself. And I think that’s why we had those prophecies about the enemy tonight: because this is an area which is a key piece of the strategy of the enemy in the world today.
There are—as Kevin said last time—there are lots of things about us which are pleasant and attractive, desirable by the world. He mentioned two: the fact that we’re a community and the fact that we have a lot of experie—spiritual experience.
But there are a lot of other things that we are involved with that the Lord is teaching us that the world does not like—in fact, it hates.
Recently, I ran into a situation—many of us in the community did—where we were being attacked as a community. And as I . . . it was a long attack, long article on a talk. And my first reaction when I read this—it’s not important, many of the details of it, but— [my reaction] was, “Oh, there she goes again,” kind of thing [chuckling among the listeners].
But . . . then I settled down after a few days [Paul and all laugh], and I took a closer look at it. And I reread the article, and it’s laced with inaccuracies and aggravating things. But I began to see that there was more to it than just those irritations. That, in fact, where . . . on every major issue where we have taken a stand, others are taking a very vigorous stand opposing us.
For example: making covenants and making agreements. Where we stand, others are taking the side that that’s not right. That’s really a wrong way to proceed. That it’s elitist, it’s a “new church,” it’s “come-out-ism.” All kinds of things are attached to that. An attack on those agreements.
Another kind of thing that we are into is headship and submission. And that’s being attacked head-on. For example, in this article, headship and submission is wrong; it’s a wrong thing, according to this author. And that’s common. That’s not just, you know, peculiar to this one person.
The same thing now. The second—the next point, rather, was—the main point was that our attitudes in the People of Praise concerning the roles of men and women are all wrong. And the stands which are taken, very often and increasingly clearly, are that basic scriptural stands that we take are being confuted, they’re being put down and argued with. And what’s happening, it seems to me, is a more and more clear situation where the word of God says one thing, and where others are saying things that are against the word of God.
I think that the People of Praise is small potatoes, you know, in a certain kind of sense. It doesn’t matter that we may be scorned or humiliated or treated badly, but when the word of God itself is being argued against, then something very . . . you know, like you can see the battle kind of shaping up.
And I think that what the Lord is doing with us is making it possible for us to understand Scripture and to take it all seriously. To begin at the beginning and work through and understand, get a hold of, what God is teaching, what he has—what he has taught us, and what he wants to teach us.
We need as a whole to continue in that repentant state that the Lord is calling us to so often, and be willing to do something that is unacceptable to the present age just because it’s God’s plan. It may be very unpopular and it may cause a lot of criticism, but we have to be in a situation where we’re willing to do something unacceptable in the present age.
A lot of us, you know, hear all the time the notion of—like Kevin covered so well last time—about the whole question of, “Well, you look at Scripture, but you have to understand that that was written by a certain people with a certain mentality for a certain group of people in a certain age, etc.” You know, in other words, you kind of place it back there historically and you comment on that, and then you get around a lot of what is said there.
Now there’s—whereas, in fact, we’ve made a lot of progress, we’ve learned a great deal, and there’s no reason for us . . . for example, they didn’t know even that the sun was the center of the solar system. They thought the earth was. And there are so many things that we have learned, say, since the Scientific Revolution, the whole rationalism . . . and there’s so much now that we’ve learned from various kinds of . . . just understanding psychology and the human nature through experiments.
None of the coordinators want to say that there isn’t progress. There certainly is progress. In fact, I think that one can say that we know more about Scripture today than the people who read the letters when they were “hot off the press,” like the epistles that were sent. There’s a pretty fair chance that in some ways we understand more about what’s being said there because of so many other . . . excavations and so many other kinds of resources that are available to us. There’s a pretty fair chance that we are in a position to really understand what Saint Paul was saying there.
There is progress, but there’s a difference between saying there’s a progress in understanding and saying that what God said at that time is no longer true for us, because we have progressed and we’ve outgrown God’s teaching about, for example, the nature of man.
So I want to read some passages from Scripture. And the point here is, first of all, just as a whole community we need to draw our attention to these passages and look at them eyeball to eyeball, we have to know what God is saying in these passages.
All of us have been deceived to some degree by the spirit of the present age. We all have some kinds of hang-ups in the area of, for example, sexuality. Somebody in the prayer room ministry was telling me the other day that, something like—I forget who it was who was talking to me—but it was something like, he didn’t use to put much weight on, you know, the kinds of things which some modern psychology used to—psychiatry used to, about sex.
But after working in the prayer room ministry for a while, he began to be pretty clear on the fact that an awful lot of people have an awful big problem with sex. And I’m not just talking about fornication and adultery, which are fairly natural kinds of things, but rather the kinds of things where—not even necessarily immoral acts, but kind of wrong attitudes, and unwholesome asp—you know, reflection on one’s own personality.
It’s just kind of a problem. It’s like a problem of sex is really a big problem that is encountered all the time in the prayer room. I don’t think we’re all, by any means, as hung up on sex as Freud said, and I’m not trying to say that we are. But, on the other hand, he had a lot of insight there, and whatever . . . however he arrived at it. And he did have some things even he was able to see.
All of us have been deceived to some degree.
Now, when I read these Scripture passages, I’m not trying to read them from the point of view of, “This is now The Law, and let’s all toe the mark.” Rather, what I want to do is get them out there, sort of—this is not all of them, either; I’m going to read just a selection—but I want to get some of them out there, and it’s kind of amazing the consistency in the picture that emerges when you read these texts together.
The idea is not, in fact, to say, “Well, this is now the way we’re going to do everything in the People of Praise.” What we need to do is to begin to explore together, in a process, what it is that God is saying to us in these Scriptures. What is the spiritual truth which the Lord is teaching us in these various passages?
We need to pray about them, talk about them, talk about them a lot, and try to discover. . . . having taken the stand: “I want to be a man,” “I want to be a woman.” Having taken that stand, look at these Scriptures to say: “All right, that’s what it means to be a man. That’s what I want to do.” You know, whatever that might be, “Let me see what it is.”
“How can I, in fact, in light of that, become more of a man?”
“How can I, in light of that Scripture, become more of a woman?”
Let’s look at 1 Corinthians 11. This is 1 Corinthians 11, verse 2.
I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ. The head of a woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. Any man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled dishonors her head. It is the same as if her head were shaven, for if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair. But if it is disgraceful for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her wear a veil, for a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God. But woman is the glory of man, for man was not made from woman but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a woman ought to have a veil on her head, because of the angels.
There’s . . . I can say something about that . . . [laughter] the “angels” part. The angels, in the early church, were given a position of looking order—over the order of a prayer meeting. They were there, in the midst of a prayer meeting, to take care of the problems that might arise. They kept peace.
We ought to think of that, by the way, I think, at some of our prayer meetings, whenever there is any kind of disorder that comes up. You can have confidence that the Lord’s angels are there to minister to that.
Nevertheless, in the Lord, woman is not independent of man, nor man of woman. For as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman, and all things are from God. Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself notice?
“Does not nature itself?” He’s not . . . I mean, that word “nature” is a deep word. He’s not saying: “Isn’t it the way the Greeks do it? Isn’t it the way the Jews do it? Isn’t it, you know, the way the Romans do it?” What he’s saying is, “Isn’t it by nature itself,” that teaches us that “for a man to wear hair—long hair—is degrading to him. But if a woman has long hair, it is her pride, for her hair is given her for a covering.
“If anyone is disposed to be contentious, we recognize no other practices—practice, nor do the churches of God.”
What he’s saying there, something—toward the end, I’ll come back and comment a little bit more on some of these things—is that he’s not situating this comment about women in Greek culture, in Jewish culture, in Roman culture. He’s situating what he’s talking about in nature.
And then he says, not only is it in nature, he said, but it’s what we do in “the churches.” That is, in Christianity as a whole, this is what—this is the way it’s done. He’s not appealing to the fact that, you know, it’s acceptable to a lot of people. He’s saying this is the way we do it, and it is not, in fact, acceptable to a lot of other people.
Let me go on to 1 Corinthians 14 before saying very much more. Let’s take a look at 1 Corinthians 14, verses 34 to 36.
Again, he starts off, he says, well, you remember, this is the chapter which has a lot to do with the order in the prayer meeting. And since he’s talking now, to some degree, about the way women ought to behave at prayer meetings.
And now again, he situates this, what he’s going to teach here, in terms of what is done in the Christian culture, what is being done in “the churches.” He’s not situating it in what’s acceptable to the rest of mankind. . . .
“Just as in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silence in the churches. For they . . . ,”—now, that’s like, “. . . should keep silence at the prayer meetings”—“For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the Law says . . .” as even the Law says. “If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.”
Let me go on. [Paul laughs.] Quickly! [Laughter.]
1 Timothy 2—
MAN’S VOICE: 1 what?
PAUL: 1 Timothy 2, verses 8 to 15. “I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.”
There was some confusion recently. I was talking to somebody about that and they thought that that meant that men should be hitting their wives when they weren’t angry. [Paul and all laugh.] That’s not what that means. [All laugh.] That is, the “lifting of holy hands” is, obviously, is the way we pray, and is the way they prayed in the early church, too. And they should not be quarreling, and they shouldn’t be angry, and so on. Okay.
Also, that women should adorn themselves modestly—
Okay? They should dress right.
—and sensibly, in seemly apparel, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly attire, but by good deeds, as befits women who profess religion. Let a woman learn in silence, with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach, or to have authority over men. She is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived, and became a transgressor. Yet, woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness with modesty.
Again, he’s talking about something which sounds like . . . well, you might say, “That’s the way they did it. We want to do it some other way.” But his—he goes so far as to explain why he wants this to be the case. And the explanation is devastating, in my estimation. He couldn’t pull out, I believe, any bigger guns than he pulls out.
He says, because . . . “Go back to Genesis,” he says. This is the way that God made them. That’s the way God made man. And that’s the way he made women. And that’s a very strong statement.
You might say, “Well, Saint Paul was confused about the Old Testament.” But that seems like Saint Paul couldn’t make a stronger case for what he’s trying to say there, whatever it is that he’s trying to say.
1 Timothy 5, verse 9. Now, this is, the context here is, he’s talking about enrolling widows. And the idea is that he’s going to . . . he gives a little synopsis of what the career of a good wife—you know, looking back on her life—what she can look at, what is it that she accomplished. So these are some of the characteristics of a good wife.
“Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than 60 years of age, having been the wife of one husband.”
Now, that particular phrase is . . . is not . . . it’s by no means clear what it means to be “the wife of one husband” or to be “the husband of one wife,” which is used in Timothy. But one thing . . . I don’t know what it means, but one thing that some exegetes have offered, which appeals to me, frankly, is the idea that what that means is—it’s like, to be a . . . a one-wife husband means . . . to be the husband of one wife means that you, you kind of put all your heart into it, that she is your prize, you know, to love her with all your heart. To be a wife who has one husband is the same kind of thing. It’s—this is a very unflattering kind of parallel, but it’s like a dog who has, you know, he’s a “one-man dog.” Meaning that . . . now, I think that that’s . . . [listeners start laughing] . . . what it means is—you know what . . . you know what that means? [Laughing grows louder.]
Okay. You’re all a bunch of poets, that’s what’s wrong. [Paul and all laughing.] Okay.
“And she must be well attested for her good deeds. As one who has brought up children, shown hospitality, washed the feet of the saints, relieved the afflicted, and devoted herself to doing good in every way.”
So when you look at the career of a good wife, what you see are those kinds of things: hospitality; washing the feet of the saints, whatever that might mean, again; relieving the afflicted and devoting yourself to good works in every way; having brought up children.
Let me go on to Titus 2 [inaudible] Or, 2 to 7.
“Bid the older—” Well . . . here: “But as for you, teach what befits sound doctrine.” And then he goes on to say what befits sound doctrine: “Bid the older men be temperate, serious, sensible, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness.”
Now, there’s a characterization of what a man’s career ought to look like, though, you know, a man—those are manly characteristics: temperate, serious, sensible, sound in faith—that means, you know, okay?—in love, and in steadfastness. And the image that you get there is kind of a rock that you can lean on, that you can count on.
And then he goes on, “Bid the older women, likewise, to be reverent in behavior, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink. They are to teach what is good . . .” Now, “They are to teach what is good. And so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be sensible, chaste, domestic, kind, and submissive to their husbands, so that the word of God may not be discredited.”
And one last passage to read here is the letter . . . 1 Peter 3, verses 1 to 7.
Likewise, you wives, be submissive to your husbands, so that some, though they do not obey the word, may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, when they see your reverent and chaste behavior. Let not yours be the outward adorning with braiding of hair, decoration of gold, and wearing of robes. But let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable jewel of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. So once the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves and were submissive to their husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are now her children, if you do right and let nothing terrify you.
Then he goes on to talk about men:
“Likewise, you husbands, live considerately with your wives, bestowing honor on the woman as the weaker sex, since you are joint heirs of the grace of life . . .”
Notice he’s talking—he talks about a difference between the men and the women, and then immediately comes back and says that . . . don’t forget that you’re basically equal in the sight of God as far as destiny and dignity are concerned, that you’re “joint heirs of the grace of life, in order that your prayers may not be hindered.”
One of the things which is—I’m not going to comment on all these things. I think what we need to do—and we’re going to try to make it possible by some structures within the community to get into this in an ongoing kind of way, to explore together what it is that the Lord and the Spirit is teaching us in passages like these—what it is that we can do to live out our manliness and what it is we can do to live out our womanliness.
But a few comments I want to make. One of the things, when you take those passages, that comes through is that you get a very strong impression that women should be quiet. That is, that when you’re around women you should have an awareness of an inner state of being, of their being with God, of their being with themselves, that their being with their head, that that attitude, that way they are with themselves, God, and their heads—produces a gentle and a quiet spirit.
The first thing is that there is a sense of being at peace with herself, having it—being happy, at peace, about being a woman, being glad and peaceful about being a woman, being glad, or being peaceful about being a man. Being under authority in the right kind of way. There is a sense in which the inner peace that’s described in there comes through . . . when the person—when the woman is in the right kind of headship relationship, the right kind of attitude toward her head.
A lot of the [inaudible] of the times you can see it. I think that you sense that women sometimes are talk . . . not all women, by any means, nor is this a particularly, say, dominant problem in the People of Praise. But you can look at it and say that it is frequent that women talk compulsively, that there is sometimes uncertainty and confusion in what they say, and that that kind of belies— or, rather, betrays a lack of inner peace, that they’re not really confident to be at rest with themselves, with God, and with their heads.
All the trouble of that sort starts with rebellion against God. And it comes through the whole culture, through the whole world, and our flesh, and through any sins that we may have committed. What we need . . . is to accept being a man and to accept the fact that we’re women and take joy in that, for that’s the way God has made us.
There are some implications about the community in some of these passages.
1 Corinthians 11, when it talks about women being covered with the veils and so on, the hair. One thing for sure that it means is that women are supposed to pay deference, they’re supposed to have signs of deference, toward their heads in public gatherings. It should be clear that that woman who’s speaking is headed, that she is under headship.
Then there’s a subtle point there. There is a way for anyone to talk as though he’s talking on his own authority. And we all have sensed that, when people speak, sometimes you can just say, you know, where did that come from?
And what the Scripture is saying, what the Lord is saying, is that there ought to be—it ought to be apparent that, when a woman speaks, that she pays respect without stopping to say, you know, “As my husband told me I could say. . . .” [Laughter.] But there ought to be some kind of a way that it becomes clear that I am, in fact, in submission to my husband or, if I’m not married, that I am in submission to my head.
I think that . . . one area where we may have an ongoing kind of problem in the community is, on the other hand, in the area of men being men. I think that there’s a very strong sense in Scripture that men are supposed to play the role, a role of headship. That they’re supposed to take responsibility for all kinds of things under their authority.
And it’s not at all un-understandable that there are so many divorces, when men are so loath to accept responsibilities for their families. That men are running away from authority, running away from the responsibilities of headship.
And I think that it’s—that that, if there is a problem in the community, in this whole area as a whole—I mean, that’s kind of a discernible problem—it would be that the men need to accept more responsibility. Suppose, say, that some—suppose that we were at a prayer meeting where no women spoke. I would say many of us would sit there and say this was a pretty boring prayer meeting.
That is, did the men bring anything to this meeting? What did they want to accomplish at this meeting? What’s the purpose of this meeting? What are the goals? What are the objectives? How do we get there? Did anything happen here?
Those are all the kinds of things that are characteristic concerns of men. And men should bring those concerns to the community meeting and to the Wednesday night prayer meeting, and to all the meetings that we have.
You can see, too, that there is a different sense of women’s services that are described. They’re not all . . . the ordinary kinds of services. I also refer you to the—I guess it’s chapter 31; at least it’s the tail end of the book of Proverbs, where there’s a description of a good wife. Those are not the characteristics—these in here, like, that I pointed out, and those in Proverbs—are not the things that we ordinarily consider as being things that women should be doing. That that’s what a woman’s role consists of.
Maybe the services in the community have been structured along manly lines, and making it—have made it difficult for women to do women’s things. We are investigating that, trying to find other ways to make it possible so that the kinds of things that women are designed to do can get done as part of a community life.
I want to take a few minutes—I’m going over time a little bit. Is that okay? How much longer?
MAN’S VOICE [quietly]: [unintelligible] ten minutes.
PAUL: Okay. There are some more practical things that I think we can glean from these passages.
We need to have . . . a way to express role differences in our Christian culture, in our lives—that the role differences are not based on the culture of the times, but that the role differences are rooted in the Godhead: in God’s plan, in nature, and is the common practice and the teaching of all the churches. That’s what’s coming through there.
We need to discover what is the proper way to express the inner reality that “I am a man,” that “I am a woman.” And that [way] may vary from age to age, but that there is a difference, and that there is a real deep need to express that difference, to articulate it, to, you know, make it visible and real.
That’s true. We have to do that. We have to find some ways of making it clear that, I’m a man and you’re a woman.
One of the things that’s pointed out in Scripture, and that we ought to consider in this community, are hairstyles and clothing. Inner reality needs to have a cultural expression, or it begins to be mysterious and suddenly disappears. We need to express somehow these inner realities, and we need to be, in this community, open to what the Spirit is leading us to, to express our maleness and our femaleness.
There are lots of ways of talking about this, I think, and I want to stick with this one in particular that we’ve agreed to here. One is that some of the differences between men and women are just plainly biological. Only a woman can have a baby. And if the man tries to nurse the baby, it ain’t gonna work. [Some chuckling.]
So, that role of nursing the baby is not going to work, and that is simply biologically attached. Now, the situation here is that . . . suppose that, say, there’s not nursing going on, but rather using bottles. It’s not at all unreasonable to let that biological reality, which isn’t maybe being used there, just be extended in a natural kind of way: Let the women give the babies the bottles.
That seems very simple, but that’s a way in which women can manifest, and can express, their womanliness. And let the men not do it, except in extreme circumstances when it’s, in charity, necessary for the sake of the woman and the baby.
There are other kinds of things about biological differentiations. And that’s something which we can talk about, we will talk about, in some of the other teaching units that we have, when we have time to go into them in more detail.
But overall, when you—when you consider the situation, women are basically nurturant. They’re life support. They are helpers. They keep life together.
I’ve been marveling at [Mennonite Bishop] Nelson Litwiller’s wife. I’ve been talking to her recently, just to see what, you know, what kind of a life does she live? What kind of a person is she when they travel so much and he’s, you know, he’s—you know how he is!
Well, she’s a very strong person. And you talk to her and you get a sense of tremendous inner peace, quiet, gentle spirit, but also firm, solid. And you find that what she does is, she takes care of Nelson. She’s, you know, they go together. They stand side by side. Nelson proclaims the word of God, he works miracles in the name of the Lord. He’s doing so much of that. And she’s right with him, taking care of Nelson, to make sure that he really is well taken care of, so that the word of God can be preached.
There’s another category, you might say, of kind of “vestiges” of our biological role— vestiges from it, something like, and when we were very . . . in ancient civilization, we used to have to—the men would have to go out and do the hunting.
Now we don’t have to do the hunting. You might say, well, you know, there’s no hunting to be . . . why did they do that? Well, because they were stronger, and they would carry the deer back. But we can follow up on that kind of thing. You see remnants of that sort of behavior in men and in women. There are some kinds of things that follow on that, like, say, is . . .
Ah, women are certainly capable today, with all the power equipment around, to take care of just about everything around the house, if they know how to use the equipment. When we didn’t have all that power at the fingertip, that had to be a man’s job, because he was the only one strong enough to do it. Now, a woman could run a bulldozer, and they—in, fact they hold jobs like that.
But when we’re trying to find a way to express our femaleness and to find a way to express our maleness, let’s take these signs of ways that we could go . . . and work on—and say, “That would be good.”
Let’s let the men remember, sort of, you know—like that was kind of a natural thing. Let’s let the men take care of major maintenance around the house. Let’s let the women take care of the domestic and homemaking, the home management kind of thing, that they used to do, and that they do now. And let that become an expression . . . for us, like saying, “I am a woman,” and take joy in that.
Another area is in the area of clothing. It’s kind of purely symbolic.
Another one is, say, women going through doors first, or, men walking on the outside of the sidewalk so that, when the carriage goes by, the mud gets sprayed on them. [Chuckling.] Right? It’s . . . when . . . now[adays], you might make the case where they ought to walk on the inside, so the women won’t get mugged. [More laughter.]
Well, you can’t be protected [all laughing] . . . you can’t be protected anyway. So, why not walk on the outside? You know, it’s kind of a carryover, and it’s purely symbolic, but why not walk on the outside? That’s what a man does. That’s the way I want to express my manliness.
There are lots of other things, like: Women should not have to endure abusive language from a sales clerk when you’re with them. If there’s any rough kind of negotiation to be done, it would be a good idea to ask the woman to, you know, quietly go aside so that they don’t have to hear what’s about to ensue. [All laugh.]
You can see this also in the area—I think it’s pretty clear in the area of clothing. And again, the prayer room experience is quite good on this, that a lot of women dress in such a way that they make it clear that they don’t like being a woman, they don’t want to be thought of as a woman. And I think that women should concentrate on dressing in a womanly way, in such a way as to assert . . . whatever that might be.
I mean, again, I don’t know what that means exactly, but there are some extreme cases where it’s quite clear that you can’t tell whether that’s a man or a woman because of the way they dress. That very often, that’s a very strong statement on the part of that person, that they don’t like, they don’t honor, they don’t respect their own womanhood.
And you can say the same thing about men: the soft clothing, the jewelry, the adornments that some men wear in a very obvious kind of way are very unbecoming manhood. And they’re the kinds of things, when you look at them, you could say, why not let the men dress like men? If you’re looking for ways to be thoroughly manly, then why not dress like that?
The same with regard to hair length. Why not dress like—why not wear your hair like a man? A man’s length, you know, the way men wear their hair. Why go on with very long hair in such a way that . . . this is not a crucial thing, like, you know, there’s no sin involved or anything like that. I’m not talking about that. But when we’re trying to find ways of saying I am a man, openly, then let’s wear our hair at a decent length.
You can say the same thing with regard to the cars we drive. . . . There are just lots of—when you start looking at the way we live our lives, you know, are there areas where we can perceive that we could, in fact, kind of live out and state our manliness in this kind of way? And then there are some areas that are purely arbitrary, which I won’t—I don’t have any time to go into.
The Lord is asking us, I think, in the community, to look into especially the way we dress. The men should be men and women should dress like women.
And also in the area of hair.
And that extends to our children.
In the area of households, let’s go along the line . . . of the chores. Let the women do the chores around the house. And let the men do the maintenance. And let that be of such a character that you can say, you know, this is the way I’m expressing my manliness and my womanliness.
What our Lord is doing to us is really getting quite personal. It’s getting kind of close to the bone. And the reason for that, I think, is that the Lord is—as he’s been saying to us, he wants to move in our lives in a deeper and deeper way. He wants to make us a new creation.
A lot of what I have said is arbitrary, but most of what I said is just that there’s a difference between men and women. And let’s find ways to express those differences. The key thing is that men should accept responsibility. When you get a chance to accept some responsibility, men, take it. You know, if there’s something you can be in charge of, take it. Scripture says, you know, it’s a good thing to want to be an overseer. It’s a good thing to aspire to more responsibility.
And that’s what we need to do. That talk I gave to the Wednesday night prayer meeting a few weeks ago, a couple of weeks ago, and it seemed like I was talking to the children: I was really trying to talk to the fathers, saying that, Fathers, be concerned for your children, and take responsibility for where they spend their money! And take responsibility for when they get in, and the way they dress, and what they learn, and what they think, because you’re going to be held accountable for that.
Again, the point is that men need to look at their children and accept responsibility for their children at all ages. The men need to, for example, perhaps drive the children to school rather than let the mother drive the children to school. Let the men do much of the, in fact, the major formal teaching and training of the children at all ages.
And we can talk about that in another series. The Lord is really is accomplishing something, despite how long I talked. [All laugh.]
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