The Four Red Rabbits of "Biblical" Womanhood

During a recent trip to the thrift store, I purchased a toy for my 18-month-old son, Maverick. The toy is designed for ages 3+, so it’s a bit above his paygrade, but he sure enjoys the challenge. It’s basically a wooden board with six different doors with varying latches and locks. Once you successfully manage to unfasten the lock, you can open the doors to discover painted animals behind them.

Some locks are harder than others to open. Some require dexterity Maverick has not yet acquired. Some, when opened, restrict his ability to access some of the other doors. But the one door he has consistently been able to open on his own is the door with the four red rabbits behind it, and when he opens it, the wide world must stop to celebrate. There must be clapping and thunderous applause, after which the satisfied locksmith will take a bite out of his cheese stick, breathe in the validation, and return to the board, where I must enthusiastically declare, “Four red rabbits,” while pointing to and counting each one individually.”

Then he will slam the door shut and repeat the cycle over and over and over again to the degree that I may end up saying and counting “four red rabbits” about a hundred times.

And sometimes, growing weary of the monotony, I may invite him to open the door of the five green frogs or the six orange fish, and once, in a great while, he will humor me, especially if I go to the trouble of unlocking the door for him. I want him to know there’s so much more fun to be had with this toy. But no. Most of the time we are stuck with the four red rabbits, and because he’s only a toddler and because it brings him so much joy, I oblige. I’ll only have these moments for a brief time, and they are precious to me. I ponder them in my heart.

Someday Maverick will outgrow this toy, and it will be little more than a cute anecdote to tell his future girlfriend, a “remember when” story.

But my mind was distracted a bit as I counted rabbits this morning. The predictability and monotony of the task reminded me a great deal of my experience navigating the topic of “biblical womanhood” in certain Christian circles, especially ones adjacent to the circles in which I was raised.

Where I see a board with many doors to unlock, it seems like most of the heavy hitters in these faith communities are only willing to open the one with the four red rabbits. There are 2-3 predicatable proof texts underscoring nearly every single sermon I have ever encountered on the topic of “biblical” womanhood. Some of you don’t even have to continue reading to know which ones I mean. Ephesians 5. Titus 2. 1 Timothy 2.

And the sum total of these messages boils down to this: Women, submit. Women, be modest. Women, be quiet. Women, stay home.

And what gets me about the men who parrot this message ad infinitum is that they so frequently seem to frame the diminishing nature of it as an act of obedience on their part, a commitment to remaining faithful to the Scriptures, as though these isolated passages are the sum total of the inspiration or instruction the Bible has to offer to God’s daughters.

I thought I’d test my bias on this, so I did my research; I started listening to all the sermons I could find on “biblical” womanhood, and so far my hypothesis hasn’t been too far off the mark:

• Voddie Baucham: Biblical Womanhood.
  Proof text: Titus 2
  Summary: Cultivate a “meek and quiet spirit.” Stay home. Wear modest clothes. Submit to your husband, even if he’s a slave driver. (I listened to a couple of his other sermons related to the topic, one of which went to dramatic lengths to talk about women’s shirts revealing cleavage and the shape of our breasts, and another reminded us that divorce is never an option, even in the case of abuse.)
  

• John Piper: The Ultimate Meaning of True Womanhood
  Proof text: Ephesians 5
  Summary: “True womanhood is a distinctive calling from God to display the glory of His Son in ways that would not be displayed if there were no womanhood.” Direct quote. Don’t ask me what it means because he didn’t really explain it other than to assert that women have different roles than men without really defining what those roles were apart from submission, staying home, and, you guessed it, cultivating a quiet spirit while having babies. He predictably used the Trinity to peddle the eternal subordination of the Son justification for keeping women eternally subordinate to men.
  

• Paul Washer: Recovering Biblical Womanhood
  Proof text: Titus 2
  Summary: Guys, this one was ROUGH. He led by informing the congregation that the real problem is not chauvinism. No siree. Apparently, the people who hate women most in this world are the feminists. He then went on to talk about how Christian women belong at home serving their families and cultivating meekness.
  Nineteen minutes of sermon time were dedicated to the topic of how women ought to dress. Nineteen minutes. That’s a lot of focus. Then he reminded the ladies that if their husbands mistreat them, the best way to respond is not with our words but with our quiet submission. Again, the sum total of our lot in life is to comply.
  

• John MacArthur: “God’s High Calling for Women”
  Proof text: 1 Timothy 2 and Titus 2
  Summary: First can we talk about the manipulative nature of the title of this sermon? You can’t make a doormat a vase simply by changing its name. Similarly, you can’t make JMac’s recipe for indentured servitude a “high calling” just by calling it so. You already know what to expect in this one. Submit. Obey. Be quiet. Stay down. Have babies. Repeat.

I could keep going, of course. There’s still Doug Wilson and Tim Bayly and Phil Johnson and a whole slew of other pastors singing the same tune and reducing the totality of womanhood to our position as their inferiors. And of course, they would never dream of calling it “inferiority.” They would use a more sophisticated word like “asymmetry” to describe the hierarchy.

And here’s the thing—While I trend more egalitarian these days and think there’s a strong biblical basis for the choice to reject the hierarchies these men try to impose (See NT Wright, Craig Keener, Ben Witherington, Marg Mowczko, etc), my gripe in this context is not with complementarianism itself. I can understand how and why some really faithful Christian people would come to hold those views, so I’m happy enough to make at least a semblance of peace with those positions pending that glad day when all our collective misconceptions are completely eclipsed by the majesty of seeing Him face to face.

My problem is that real, hearty Christian women living in an absolutely insane and pornsick world, need SO much more inspiration for our daily lives than a couple of decontextualized verses about submitting to men. Scripture is rich and full of amazing stories of bold, powerful, brilliant, and sometimes downright heroic women who could (and would) function as excellent role models for us if the men tasked with instructing us would ever stop for two seconds to imagine our “roles” outside the limited context of their ability to dominate us.

Have you ever heard a sermon on biblical womanhood using Mary Magdalene as the template? Priscilla? Phoebe? Anna? Ruth?

Well why not?

Here are some ideas for a refresh on the biblical womanhood sermon, theobros:

• Deborah: God’s Chosen Mouthpiece (How the manly men of the Bible had the humility and the good sense to let her lead and to consult her wisdom without compromising their masculinity)

• Hannah: Pray without Ceasing

• Jael: Badass Warrior Women (Are you putting tent pegs in the hands of your female warriors? Why or why not?)

• Esther: Righteous Rule Breaking (How God used a sex trafficking survivor to liberate thousands with her voice)

• Junia in Chains: Outstanding Among the Apostles (Is it possible that the reason she was arrested was for preaching the Gospel?)

• Shiphrah & Puah: Daring Defiance to Corrupt Authority

• Abigail: Womanly Wisdom (Why you shouldn’t submit to your husband if he’s an evil monster)

You get the point. It’s time for the theobros to open a few more of the doors on the biblical womanhood subject board. There’s so much more available to us females than just the four red rabbits of submission and baby making. These leaders are not little kids anymore, and neither are we. So why the resistance to unlocking the other doors and doing some exploring there? Is it because they’ll have to work a little harder? Will it require them to adjust some of the parameters on a theology they think is airtight as is?

Yesterday, I asserted that Voddie Baucham’s views on divorce are harmful to battered women. A pastor friend (a good man who I actually really admire despite our disagreement on gender roles) asked me why. So I sent him a link to Voddie’s sermon on divorce. He then asked me to pinpoint the exact time stamp of the offending quote, so I did. And I promise I’m not trying to be critical, but in that moment, I felt very much the way I do when I unlock one of the doors on the toy board for my toddler. I had to do all the work, or it wasn’t going to happen. The ratio of curiosity to willingness to deep dive was not sufficient to get the job done without my handholding.

And it seems this is often the way when earnest, faithful women present our grievances. They’re held in deep suspicion and rarely met with a curiosity compassionate enough to be willing to put in the work to know the truth we seek to illuminate. It’s much easier to not know. But not knowing is really costly, and when we say the apathy is driving countless women away, we are not wrong.

I’m oh-so-weary of men who weaponize Scripture to keep women obedient and silent. It’s gross. It’s spiritually manipulative, and it’s just plain wrong. The admonition to maintain a “gentle and quiet spirit” is a prime example. The Greek word for “gentle” is “praus,” and it has a lot more to do with being surrendered to God’s will than it does with being surrendered to the will of our fathers or husbands.

We see that same word used to describe Jesus, and it’s a position/attitude that’s to be cultivated by all Christians, not just the womenfolk.

Exhortations about biblical womanhood should not just teach girls to be small, quiet, and compliant to men. If this is all we teach our daughters, we are failing them. We are not living in a day or age where we can afford to sideline half of God’s army by shoving them back into the shadows. God’s daughters need to be equipped for boldness, not just compliance. Some of us are lion-hearted and mouthy by design. Teach us to put on the full armor and fight.