Beloved, these are perilous days when your culture is so set in its ways. That you will listen to salesmen and thieves preaching other than the truth you've received. Beloved, listen to me. Don't believe all that you see. And don't you ever let anyone tell you that there's anything that you need--but me. - Derek Webb
Sisters, we deal with a lot. Like our brothers, we hear messages daily about what we are supposed to be, who we are encouraged to model our lives after, and what success looks like. We receive these messages from the world, but also from the Church. What it is to be a woman of God. Of course there are things that are unique to females and other things that are specific to males, but I think we often forget that most things we deem “feminine” or “masculine” in our society are only social constructions and vary from person to person a great deal. I am feeling compelled to share a few thoughts on this because of a few experiences in the last year that have caused me to take a critical look at messages we receive at Christian retreats for women.
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to go on a retreat offered by a local church with a few of my housemates. I’ve been to several women’s retreats/planning meetings in the last few months. While women’s retreats aren’t bad and certainly do a great deal of good for a great number of people, I have come to see a few unnerving characteristics they seem to have in common: they are geared for polished married/marriage-material women who typically like to have their nails done, love to go shopping, and are stressed out with trying to accomplish too much. These retreats focus on mind-body-soul problems and seek to help women tap into the inner peace that is ours in seconds if we mutter the right prayers and think the right thoughts. We are taught to be 31:30 women, unconcerned about charm and beauty. These things are good and they speak to so many women which is why I have felt so hesitant to offer my honest opinion. Nevertheless, they are incomplete because they leave very little--if any--room for diversity of opinions and priorities and preferences in all women of God. They are dangerous grounds for perpetuating lies and can sell us short of our God-given potential, trying to put us in boxes of “Christian perfection”, speaking to only part of the wonderfully made creations we are, being yet another place where some women feel “in” and other women feel “out”. Have we stamped “Christian” these worldly ideas we are taught to disengage?
I’m going to have a few words of honesty with you: I am tired of the subliminal and sometimes obvious messages relayed to women in our culture--and specifically in our Christian culture. We have far too many books trying to tell us that we are all princesses waiting for gallant princes that will sweep in and defend and protect us. We have far too many books teaching us how to achieve inner-peace in our noisy lives, subconsciously teaching us to take on more, depend on others less, and keep our hair trimmed and stylish regardless. We are told to be gentle and submissive, in order to have right relationships with husbands. We are told to be gentle and submissive in order to get husbands. Indirectly, we are expected and therefore taught to love chocolate and luxuries like painted nails, massages, excessive amounts of shoes, the right makeup and skin-care products, and frilly things that are elitist (and happen to conflict with my interpretations of biblical perspectives on wealth). And because of these things, there are so many women who can’t (or won’t) measure up to these strange expectations and are suffering behind plastic smiles, trying to look like they have it all together. No one has it all together. Let’s be honest.
I am discouraged by these things because they completely undermine what Jesus says of us and asks of us. He liberated us from a stratified society that kept women below men and freed us from cookie-cutter Christianity. Jesus cares far more about completely eliminating unfair expectations and burdens than about how much is too much make-up. He offers deep healing to the places we are most broken, which isn’t always from suffering marriages or difficult pasts. He releases us from erred thinking and makes us new creations, which typically does not include a makeover for our faces. He teaches us to be salt and light, to love our enemies, to take care of our needy sisters and brothers, to be rooted deeply in prayer that we need not worry about anything, to not judge, and to ask, seek, and knock with faith. Never once have I heard these messages given to us at women’s retreats, perhaps because these are messages for all sisters AND brothers.
Our brothers get left out of this conversation a lot, I’m also discovering. (Can you, brothers, attest to this?) In our culture, they have been encouraged to be “masculine” and to be unemotional and maybe take interest in sports and cars. I don’t know what happens at men’s retreats, but I do know that the Bible written out of patriarchal society by men (initially written for men) is often used to reinforce these stereotypes. Do our brothers hear messages about taking care of their bodies and learning about how to reduce stress? Do they see themselves mostly in relationship to their spouses? Are they told a lot about how to deal with their personal emotional issues or how to juggle housekeeping and caring for their children? I can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for me: Brothers, you don’t have to be macho and it’s okay for you to not like sports. I will let you hold the door for me, but please let me hold it for you sometimes. Jesus freed you from a bunch of unfair expectations, too.
I am not speaking from a place of bitterness or hurt; I am speaking from a place of frustration. I am not exempt from stereotypes or these social constructs I try to deconstruct from time to time. I am saying this because I am not the only one out there who feels like this. So, sisters, let’s not forget to read the whole chapter of Proverbs 31 and read the whole Bible that has much wisdom about right living and right relationship--far more than breathing exercises and stress-busters can offer us. In our effort to find something we all have in common and cling to the uniqueness and mystery of Womanhood, let’s not limit ourselves to 31:30. Let’s defend our right to have a more complete picture of what a “wife of noble character” should be--and all women, single, married, and widowed. She considers things, she works vigorously, and she opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy. She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come. She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue. Let’s not forget these things in the midst of other messages. Yes, we’re all beautiful and we’re all different, so let’s just be that and join in being sources of support and affirmation for one another and our brothers.
