THE GLORY OF WOMAN

 

The feminists are mad and they have good reason for it.  For thousands and tens of thousands of years women have been oppressed by men.  Unfortunately, feminism has responded to this by trying to make women become like men.

 

Women are encouraged to dress like men, think like men, work like men, and become selfish, sexual predators like men.  Women are even encouraged to make their way to the abortion clinic to become killers like men.

 

The one thing our culture does not encourage women to do is to be womanly, to be feminine.

 

Femininity has come under the most remarkable assault in recent generations.  At the core of this assault is an effort to eradicate everything that is life-giving and life-nurturing about women.  The rapidly rising popularity of lesbianism in the last decade or so is not an arbitrary fad.  It fits in perfectly with the history of our last hundred years.

 

At the heart of this history is the message to woman that her mystical and miraculous power to become a mother is no longer a good thing.

 

Women are marched off to the contraception doctor, the abortion mill, the divorce court, single-motherhood, and then forced to try to compete with the dehumanized creatures on the covers of the magazines as they seek some sort of solace in one more so-called relationship.

 

In exchange for enduring all of this abuse, women are promised equal opportunity to use the men who are using them.  Women are promised that if they'll just be more diligent in their use of contraceptives, abortion doctors, plastic breasts and sleazy dress then the odds will get better for them, and they'll be able to hold their own in this no-holds-barred war of using between the sexes.  Sadly for modern women, and for the children they do have, this reciprocal using just doesn't tend to work out in their favor.  In the end, men get to go on using women in much the same way as always, but now there are so-called feminist leaders to give their seal of approval to this modern incarnation of the ages-old oppression of women.

 

Against this culture of using and its assaults upon the real values and virtues of womanhood stands the God of life-giving love.  This God of life-giving has told us from the beginning, as his first commandment, to be like him, to be fruitful.  God told us throughout scripture that children are the greatest possible gift he can give us.  God still tells us this today, though it's hard to hear him at times over the din of those proclaiming the horrors of overpopulation.

 

Thomas Malthus is certainly among the most discredited scientists in history, and his supposed "population explosion" has been as thoroughly debunked as any science ever.  The entire world, including its most habitable climes, is almost empty.  Get in a plane and look out of the windows at China, or at the Eastern United States.  They're almost empty.

 

There is no population explosion.  It is a lie propagated by the great Enemy of Life.  Every human being in the world could fit in the state of Texas and have over a thousand square feet each.

 

There is no shortage of resources.  Thanks to technology and innovation free enterprise, we have more of the resources needed for life per person than we've ever had before--by far.

 

What we have is a shortage of charity--a shortage of the feminine qualities of empathy and compassion which make sharing possible.

 

What we need is not to eradicate femininity.  We can't possibly abort enough babies or make sexual predators of enough women in order to wind up with a society that loves and shares.  To attempt to do so is insane.

 

We need to recover and to restore the truth of the glory and dignity and splendor of woman.  We need to redeem the truth of feminine beauty in all of its manifestations.

 

God made women beautiful and he did it on purpose.  Women need to recognize the whole truth of feminine beauty, and celebrate that, instead of trying to reduce themselves to pieces and parts like meat on display at a butcher shop.

 

It is the whole truth of who a woman is, including the truth of her body, that makes her beautiful, and reveals the image of God.  The effort of the evil one to dis-integrate women from their sexuality is well illustrated by the story of the little boy in the checkout line at the grocery store with his mother.  He pointed at the woman on the cover of one of the magazines and said, "Mommy, she looks like she wants to eat me."

 

That woman had been made over into a sexual predator.  There was nothing truly womanly about her, no true feminine beauty.  Her sexuality had not the remotest connection to the whole truth of her as a bearer and nurturer of life.  This is the aim of the evil one.

 

Let's not leave this topic of modesty having only discussed the temptation to be too provocative.  It's important for us to address the confusion of those who would go to the other extreme, allowing excessive prudery to deny and reject the true gifts of feminine beauty.

 

This is the difficulty into which so many committed Christian women fall.  Many women, quite understandably, turn away from the ugliness of the predatory women on the magazine covers.  But many times they go to the other extreme of entirely denying, repressing and covering up the gift of feminine beauty they've been given.

 

Many times the motive is a good one, simply to be moral and modest.  But modesty must be raised to the level of real integration with all of the gifts of femininity.

 

God has given every woman the gift of feminine beauty, and he's done so for very good reasons.  Woman is the highest paradigm of beauty in the created world.  God made women beautiful on purpose.  It is only fitting the tabernacle of life should be resplendent, bedecked in beauty surpassing that of the grandest sunset.

 

It is not right for women, this includes Christian women, to turn their backs on this beauty and try to hide it.  Some women settle for dressing like men.  Some wear the plainest burlap sack style dresses they can find.  [Let me be clear here that I'm not talking about women living celibate lives, who have consecrated their lives and their sexuality entirely to God.  That is a different matter.  I'm speaking of women who are open to making a reciprocal gift of their lives and their sexuality to a man, or women who have already done so.]

 

We must not allow the world to dis-integrate women from the feminine beauty and gift of sexuality which they've been given by God, and which is to be cherished, recognized for what it is, and for its purpose, and celebrated.  The great challenge for men and for women is to neither exploit nor repress the gift and the great significance of feminine beauty.  We're now casting blame on any woman for how she dresses.  We have no right to do so, for our whole society has gone nuts in this area, and it surely isn't easy to navigate the middle road between the prudish and the provocative.

 

We're also not laying down any rules here for hemlines and widths of shoulder straps and all that stuff.  There are cultures in the world where nudity is fine.  And there are places, such as beaches and track meets, where very little clothing is fine.  The amount of clothing is not the point.  What is important is the full integration of the person, the entire truth of the body and the spirit melded into one whole expression of God's glory.

 

And there's no point pretending that this modesty and beauty issue is as important for men as it is for women.  We all know better than that.  And we all have a lot to gain by helping build a world in which women are comfortable expressing the truth of the beauty of they've been given.  To do so, we'll have to overcome lots of confusion from members of both camps, the overly prude and the overly provocative.

 

Still, the principle challenge in this arena, and the principle reason we don't understand feminine beauty in this culture, is because we have so little appreciation for motherhood.  Every woman is a mother at some level, because womanhood itself is life-giving and life-nurturing.  Every woman shares in a unique way in the gift of life brought forth into the world with the gift of every child.

 

Every woman is a participant at some level in the single greatest act ever performed by any purely human person.  One young woman said yes to God, and brought forth into the world the giver of all life.

 

God chose to come into the world through a woman.  He chose to have a mother.  And his mother chose to give him life.

 

Each of us was given the gift of flesh and blood from a woman.  Each time she gives birth, a woman lays down a significant piece of her life to do so.  Life itself is truly the gift, the sacrificial gift of a woman, accomplished in a partnership between her and God.  Eve stated this perfectly on the occasion of the first birth, "Behold, I have begotten a man, with the help of the Lord".

 

God does not use the bodies of women as objects in order to bring forth new human beings.  Women are not quasi-mechanical incubators, machines made for giving birth.

 

Women are real partners with God not only in bringing forth life, but in making that life human, in imparting to children the love which is the fabric of our humanity.  The glory of women does not stop with birthing and loving children.  Women have an enormous capacity to care for and about others. 

 

Women have hearts that are as miraculous as are their bodies.  Women have the strength and the courage to love when men do not. 

 

It has been written that, "in the Biblical account, the words of the first man at the sight of the first woman are words of admiration and enchantment, words which fill the whole history of man on earth."

 

MEN AS LEADERS OF WOMEN

It is also written in the Epistle to the Ephesians that men are to be leaders of women, that wives are to submit to husbands.  How are men to understand that call to leadership given all that we've been discussing?

 

We don't have to look far beyond that call to submission for wives in order to find our answer.  Paul tells the Ephesians that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the Church, and gave himself up for her. 

 

Men, we mustn't wait until marriage to apply this standard of leading by laying down our lives.  We must apply it throughout the dating and courtship process.  We recognize that we must take the lead and try to earn the love of the woman we are courting because so much greater a sacrifice is to be asked of her.  We're asking a woman to consider laying down her life in a profound way, giving her body and her blood and then giving up her sleep and her freedom in order to nourish and nurture our children.  We're asking her to pour forth endlessly from the wellspring of feminine love in her heart the tenderness required to forge the great treasures of home and family.

 

No matter how much we may give, we'll not be able to match her in what she will be called upon to give and sacrifice.

 

And so, men, we court.  We accept the role of leader, and we try to show that we recognize the value of a woman, and we try to win from her the gift of the priceless treasures of her mind, her body, and her spirit.

 

The leadership demanded of us is heroic, noble, and sacrificial in the extreme.  It far exceeds our power as men.  And so we must climb the hill to the only place where the power we seek may be found.

 

We climb the hill to Golgotha and "BEHOLD THE MAN!"

 

There upon the cross is the example of leadership we require.  But it is not enough for us to watch him there.  We must join him there.

 

We must share with him in his death if we wish to rise with him in the resurrection which will make it possible for us to truly love.

 

As we share in his death we have the opportunity to learn the greatest lessons there are about the nature of what it is to be a man, and what it is to be a woman.

 

We must prefer to be crucified rather than to use or abuse or look upon any woman as an object, as a thing. 

 

We must look out from the cross as we hang there with Jesus and see what he saw as he died.

 

Here on the cross we learn the truth of women's heroic love.  All the men save one have run away.  Jesus as he dies is surrounded by the undying love of faithful women.  Look out from his eyes and see them there.  Mary Magdalene is there.  Mary the wife of Cleopas is there.  All of the holy women who followed him from Galilee ministering to him are there.  His mother is there.  The promise made to her by Simeon so many years before is drawing near; the sword is soon to pierce her heart even as it pierces her son.

 

Men, BEHOLD THE WOMEN!  They are the glory of God, the women who participated with Christ in the act of our salvation--the women whose love would not die.

 

And listen, men, listen to the words of our savior, his last words before he tells us that "It is finished."  Watch him raise himself upon the nails, and gasp through drowning lungs the breath to speak to the one man who did not run away.  Listen as he speaks to the beloved disciple, the one who was later to write the great Gospel which bears his name, the epistles of love, and the very crown jewel of scripture, its final revelation of paradise.  Listen, men, as Jesus speaks to the gentle one who laid his head upon his breast at supper the night before he died.  Listen as Jesus speaks to the only man with the courage to remain steadfast in his love.

 

"Behold your Mother."

 

Women, learn what it means to be a woman from the one who gave him life and remained faithful to him until the time had come to hold his lifeless body in her arms.

 

Men, let us learn what it means to be men as we lay down our lives in love and follow the model of the one man who was faithful to Jesus until the end. 

 

"From that day he took her into his home."

 

John, the beloved disciple became a protector and defender of Mary, the mother who gave Life Himself to us all.  Let us join him in being protectors and defenders of life, of womanhood and femininity in all the ways that they bear the fruit of life-giving love in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Men and women, brothers and sisters, it is good that we desire one another.  And as we do, we pray this prayer. 

 

In this desire I experience toward your creature, Lord, I lift up my heart to my true desire which is only you, the creator of all love, and of all desire.  God of desire, I desire only you.  I desire to share the fullness of your life, your love, your passion, and your death.  I desire resurrection with you into the great wedding feast in paradise.  My God, I praise you, and I thank you, for desiring me so much that sent your son for me, to give Himself for me, and to bring me home.  Amen.