blogging women and R.C. Jr.

I have resisted the temptation, really I have, to even suggest that someone ought to check out R.C. Sproul Jr.'s blog. I do not like celebrity blogs....as a matter of fact they were my pet peeve of 2004. Alas, this week I found myself not only reading his blog but sending others there, too.

Weary of him being referenced so often I asked myself one day how many Presbyterians it must take to change a light bulb and the only real answer I came up with is one, but he has to check out R.C's blog first to see how it is done!

Then last weekend someone, not a woman preacher, not even a feminist by any stretch of the imagination, directed me and several friends to his latest comments on women and blogging, nearly rolling her eyes as she suggested I read it. So I did and found myself rolling my own eyes and wondering just how much smaller R.C.'s slice of evangelicalism will get, how much more narrow you must become in order to fit into his personal basket of orthodoxy. Especially if you are a woman.

I have no masters degree, no Phd, though if I were to be awarded an honorary doctorate for life experience, it certainly would be for Laundry Control. "Dr. Karen Campbell, T.I.D.E., received her award following her dissertation entitled "OxyClean and the Great Grass Stain Controversy." I am a fairly simple person, though not necessarily simple-minded.

However, I can open my own Bible and along side it use a Strong's concordance and numerous other study aids in our nifty Bible reference software package. I could make a Biblical argument for any number of convictions I hold. Some of my children went to AWANA, for crying out loud. But somehow, because I am a woman, I and the rest of my fair sex ought not to be allowed to express our thoughts, share our insights, or publically write about anything the Lord has shown to us because we are women, unless it is, of course, a good crock-pot recipe or an essay about submission for the womenfolk. This is teaching and women teaching outside of the Titus 2 parameters, as we all know, is forbidden.

Sorry, but I think Dr. Jr. has painted with a brush the size of the side of a barn.

Let's look at those parameters for a moment and let's begin with women teaching men. How am I to handle the homeschool teaching of my own teenage sons, since I firmly believe that all subjects ought to be taught with a bibical worldview presented. Is this forbidden?

What about teaching my grown sons, sons who are now heads of their own households? They often call and talk to me, wanting to know what I think, what I have been learning, what my perspective is on some current event. Must I respond, "Well, fiddle-dee,dee, boys, I reckon you'll have to talk to your pa about that?"

What about sharing something I learned from Scripture with men across the table from me at a fellowship dinner? What if that man is an elder in my church and I tell him something I learned from a Bible commentary? Is it appropriate for me to comment or interject my thoughts in a discussion that includes my husband and other men? (I'll pass on the cigars thank you.)

What if I am teaching a woman and she goes home and teaches her husband what I taught her?

Can I teach my own husband about anything more than when to use the oxyclean?

Can I write an article or a book or even a letter to the editor if there is a chance that a man might read it?

What about the women in the homeschooling co-op who teach sons other than their own? What about my sons reading books written by Jane Austen, Nancy Wilson, Mary Pride, or even Dorothy Sayers? Do I have to tear out articles by Andre Seu in World Magazine just in case my husband or my son might be tempted to read them?

What about men attending a homeschooling convention and sitting in a workshop taught by a woman?

What if I read something on R. C's blog and share what I read in a group that includes men and women? Am I sinning by "teaching" a man? As has been stated, "conversation is education" so it must be sin.

I found myself wondering all of these things while washing my hair because that is when I have all my really great ideas (unlike Grant Wood who got all his really great ideas while milking a cow). I was in the middle of preparing a speech I am giving at a Mother-Daughter banquet this weekend. (I am assuming Dr. Sproul would not approve.) The topic I was given was angels and I was left scratching my clean-haired head until I started looking at what the Bible actually said about angels.

As I read various accounts of angels and their interaction with men, I also read about Mary Magdalene and Mary at Jesus's empty tomb in Matthew 28. And do you know what literally jumped off the page at me? God chose the two Marys to be the ones to tell the Good News of the resurrected Christ to the apostles! They were told to run and share the information, to be the first to teach the doctrine of Jesus risen from the grave. Imagine, the most powerful, life-giving doctrine in the Bible taught to the leaders of the church by two women!

But then I paused...was I reading too much into this passage?

So I turned to a sermon that was preached by C.H. Spurgeon on that very passage. This is what he said, "They were the first to see their risen Lord, and we will try to learn something from them tonight. It should be an encouragement to those members of the church of Christ who are neither pastors nor teachers that, if they live very near to God, they may yet teach pastors and teachers. Get clear views of our Lord, as did these holy women, who had no office in the church and yet taught the officers, for they were sent to bear to the apostles the tidings that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead. Not first to them who were the heads of the church, as it were, but first of all to lowly women did the Lord appear, and the apostles themselves had to go to school, to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to learn that great truth, "The Lord is risen indeed."

Said quite well I would say.

The other point that R. C. makes is this....women are to teach the Titus 2 curriculum to younger women, which is pretty straight forward and would get no arguments from me....being sober, to love their husbands and children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that God's word would not be blasphemed. However, he is assuming that considering doctrine, church history and polity, government policy etc. is NOT teaching women to do those things.

Again I disagree with Dr. Sproul. There are many men, strong Christian leaders in their homes, churches, and communities, who not only want their wives to think and express themselves, but they actually encourage it! These are the same men who have rejected the hyper-patriarchial views that are imposing lifestyles and views of a bygone era on to women who have been placed by God to serve and glorify Him in the 21st century. These men realize that to be salt and light in a culture that is increasingly influencing the church and especially the young people, women must also be prepared to articulate the "hope that is within us." Biblical womanhood and modeled femininity go beyond ruffled dresses and stock pots.

Some of my favorite places to read on-line are the blogs written by women. There is a gentleness, a sensitivity to others, especially their children, and the attitude of a servant's heart that is missing in so many of the blogs I have read by men. Lord-willing and the laundry pile don't rise, I will include links to those blogs very soon!