Response to "Women Were Created to Nurture."

       "Women were created to nurture. It’s the way God made us. If women don’t have children, they will nurture something or someone. Have you noticed in all this fight for women’s rights that most women choose to take on the careers that are nurturing such as nursing and teaching? Women are dominant in these fields because it is in their nature to nurture."

Lori doesn't seem to know the difference between nature and nurture (or heredity and environment). Those who believe in traditional gender roles impose on young boys and girls the idea that they must be a certain way, and then when they turn out that way, they assume it's because they were that way naturally all along! Of course, the truth is that each one of us is an individual, and if left alone to develop into who we are naturally, we will not fit into such tidy categories. 

“Men and women are not equal in many respects. If we were, we would have fifty fifty men/women as firefighters, secretaries, construction workers, nurses, engineers, ditch diggers, teachers, police officers, having babies, lawn care specialists mowing your grass, social workers, race car drivers, and lawyers. Men/women are suited for tasks that are not equal but vitally important to how we as humans can survive. But, that does not mean we don’t have equal value. Feminist seeks to throw the natural abilities we have out the window that messes up the balance that God has created.”

This was a comment on one of Lori's posts. Once again, this logic does not follow. For the vast majority of history, women were excluded from such fields, and yet somehow this is assumed to be irrelevant. 

"I love driving by construction sites on the roads or highways. If you look closely, the ones who are managing the large cranes, climbing the electrical poles, and doing the heavy lifting are always men. Sometimes I will see women holding the signs to direct the traffic but the majority of the difficult, back breaking, and dangerous jobs are held by men because they were created to do these things." 

This seems to be a strange thing to get excited over, but okay.

"Most of the careers that women are seeking outside of the home can be used at home. We nurse our children to health the best that we are able. We teach them the ways of the Lord and how best to live. We help our husband with his tasks as a secretary helps her boss."

This may be the most problematic part. Lori seems to be obsessed recently with this idea that men are "the boss" and women are their assistants. It's not enough anymore for her to refer to men as leaders, now they are must be the "boss" as well. But, of course, this idea that wives are like secretaries is the furthest thing from biblical. The idea that husbands are leaders is entirely based on the idea that "headship" in the Bible means leadership. But in Greek, "head" did not mean leader at all; it only has that connotation in English. Are we to suppose that Paul had the English figure of speech in mind when he was writing the new testament? Wives, then, are not subordinate assistants, but equal partners. 

"Teaching young women to be keepers at home isn’t something that I made up. It’s something God commands that I teach (Titus 2:3-5). If you have a problem with it, you have a problem with God’s commands. You can try to water it down all you want by giving examples of other “career” women in the Bible but I would rather trust that God’s commands are perfect and simply obey Him. God’s commands to us are clearly stated."

In Titus 2, Paul urges all Christians to live according to the social customs of their time and place in order to avoid distracting anyone from their central message. One aspect of this is urging the women to be productive in their homes (rather than lazy). But to take this single verse and stretch it to mean that all women, in all cultures, for all time, must work only in the home and never have a career, is quite a stretch. To interpret it in this way is to entirely miss what Paul was trying to say. He was concerned about the Gospel, not about who cooked and cleaned. 

       Instead of supporting her view with arguments, Lori simply declares God to be on her side and tries to scare anyone who may disagree of actually disagreeing with God. But, of course, everyone thinks God is on their side; saying so adds nothing to the conversation except revealing that she has no real arguments to make. She simply falls back on the idea of taking the words in these verses as they are. But is it possible to apply this method of reading the Bible consistently? I will close with two verses that, I hope, would suddenly cause Lori to backpedal on her stance: 

John 12:25: "He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal."

Luke 14:26: "If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple."

Did Jesus really command us to hate our life and our family? Obviously, there are some contextual as well as linguistic ambiguities here. And I'm sure Lori would agree. But that's exactly the point. Either Lori stands by reading every word as it appears and refusing to do any further study, or she doesn't. She can't have it both ways. As much as she would like to convince herself and everyone else that she simply and purely wants to know what God actually says, she has instead been caught up in the twisted thrill of a set of ideas that promise "wonderful" marriages (which, of course, are anything but!) and has tried to adapt the Bible to say whatever she needs it to say in order to support those ideas. How ironic that she accuses her opponents of doing so!

Link to the original blog: https://thetransformedwife.com/women-were-created-to-nurture/