toward God's heart, part 3

This post is part of a series in which I’m answering a question I’ve gotten a lot lately: “Why have you changed your views on complementarian roles?” For the introduction to this series, click here.

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The second stage of change started when I became a parent, 3.5 years ago.

I remember one day, sitting at my dining room table with tears streaming down my face while my little toddler played on the floor just beyond, trying to explain to Sam how important it was to me that we make a firm commitment not to use physical punishment on our daughter. I knew he didn’t really understand, but I didn’t need him to understand; I needed him to give me his word. I needed to know my baby would be safe with him.

Thankfully, my husband is my partner, and we agreed this was too important to not both be on the same page before taking action. But I know of far too many Christian families, churches, and thought leaders by whose standards my insistence would be condemned as stubborn, disrespectful, and in jeopardy of costing us God’s blessing on our family.

A friend of mine made a point I had not yet been able to put into words: Christian complementarianism has stolen, or at least rendered impotent, the powerful maternal protector that naturally lives inside every woman. In these circles, protection is made out to be a male-only virtue: the pastor protects his flock, the father protects his family, the little boys protect the little girls.

We forget that the most terrifying mammals on earth are usually mothers with their young.

I don’t diminish that there is a masculine courage found within good men and boys that I do not have, and that I have benefitted from every single day of my life. It’s a type of protectiveness, yes, but that word doesn’t quite capture it. It’s that which animates Sam to work overtime shifts, add 700+ square feet onto our house, and build an investment portfolio. It’s a proactive campaign, an offensive strategy to protect us from potential threats, threats out there.

And, women, too, are natural protectors. We are ferocious defenders of those who are weak, vulnerable, or have no voice. Many times, it’s our children, but it can be any cause of justice. It’s what makes me weep at the dining room table over discipline strategies, create a clean and safe environment in my home, and write this series of posts that will be highly unpopular with a wide swath of fellow Christians, many of them my friends. While Sam is out on campaign to build our future, I’m guarding the walls of our present and taking up the cause of the wounded. I defend us against the threats in here.

I don’t mean to make a sweeping generalization that all men and all women naturally fall into these patterns. I’m just calling out that when women do defend their children, themselves, or others against the power wielded by those “in here”—in the family or the church—they are all too often told to be more submissive or stop causing trouble.

Personally, I was never one of those women who felt a strong calling to be a mom, but as soon as I had my first baby in my arms, I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that I had been not only called, but created and commanded to be this person’s mother—and to do so fully, without reservation or hesitation, in every sense of the word and whatever that might mean. And no matter who I would offend in the process.

The “family values” that are so important to conservative evangelicalism typically allow the mother to be a mother insofar as it encompasses handling night wakings and sickness, breastfeeding and weaning, diapering and potty training, groceries and meals, clothes shopping and laundry, toy storage and rotation, cleaning and decluttering, making appointments and keeping them, and at least starting the process of teaching basics like colors, shapes, and the ABCs. But when it comes to the big stuff—like finances, discipline, education, punishment, spirituality—the motherly instinct is so often asked to sit down and shut up, because the man of the house is the one with the direct line to God.

And thus we teach the next generation that boys’ voices matter and girls’ don’t. That men are more important to God than women and children. Is it any wonder that spiritual, emotional, verbal, physical, and sexual abuse run rampant in Christian circles—in the very places abuse should be the scarcest?

Neither Paul nor the Scriptures he cherished are on board with this line of thinking. In Genesis 1:28, when the human is created (in its male and female forms), God gives them both the following commission: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Men are called to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over the nonhuman creatures. Women are called to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over the nonhuman creatures. The roles are identical and interdependent—and neither one is asked to rule over the other.

And in 1 Timothy 5, when Paul is explaining to Timothy how to handle widows in the congregation, he says this about the younger women:

I desire therefore that the younger widows marry, bear children, rule the household, and give no occasion to the adversary for reviling.

1 Timothy 5:14

Most translations soften that verb, “rule,” to something like “keep” or “manage.” But the Greek word it comes from is οἰκοδεσπότης, which unequivocally means “head of household” or “master of the house.”

Paul did not reduce wives and mothers to mere housekeepers. They were the rulers over their households—by which Paul is not contradicting Genesis 1:28, but rather setting women in a societally shocking position of equal status with their husbands. Strong’s Concordance defines the term as “to be the head of (i.e. rule) a family—guide the house”; its root is used several times by Jesus in His parables about landowners, slaveholders, masters, etc.—men who were revered, and had the power to change lives by their actions. (Notably, it’s an even stronger word than the one used in 1 Timothy 3:4 to describe the qualifications of elders—“He must manage his own household well” as translated by the ESV—which rings more of oversight, influence, and example than actual rule.)

Complementarianism suggests that husbands are the divinely chosen heads of household, that their leadership and wisdom should supersede their wife’s in everything—that she should get smaller so he can be big. But two people can be big at once, and when they’re on the same side, so much the better! God, not man, is our Leader and our Wisdom. We can follow Him together.

We may know God only as our Heavenly Father, but He repeatedly uses maternal metaphors to describe His relentless love for and fierce protection of His children throughout Scripture. He included women as His image-bearers for a reason; He put ferocious motherly reflexes inside of women for a reason. He wants us to use them for the pursuit of kingdom justice, not bury them to shore up the male ego or our modern stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. We imitate Him when we defend our children, guide our homes, and advocate for the powerless, no matter who we offend in the process.

Learn to do good; seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, obtain justice for the orphan, plead for the widow’s case.

Isaiah 1:17