Feminism: Resisting The Urge To Leave Your Post

This article was originally published in Issue One of the Keeping the Citadel Magazine

Feminism. An idea that has been rearing its ugly serpent head since the garden of Eden, when the serpent told Eve, “‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate’” and we as women have been eating of this fruit ever since. We have been giving the envious glance to another thing or person longing to be “equal” when in actuality we are just taking one more bite of the fruit that we think will make us happy and wise. Instead it destroys who we are and seeks to remove us from the post God gave us. In order to resist the temptation of feminism, we need to understand why feminism is a temptation and only then can we determine how to proactively fight against it and man our posts.

One of the reasons that feminism is such a temptation is that it capitalizes on the ungratefulness that women have about who they were created to be and where God placed them. Like Eve, we fail to recognize all that we have been given. We focus on what we think we “don’t” have: a significant role to play in the story we are living in. We once again desire to be like someone else instead of thanking God for the role He gave us. We desire to be like the men, and step into their role of leader, therefore making us equal to them. “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16) 

Another reason that feminism is such a temptation is because it takes advantage of the fact that women do not know the God-given mission that they were created for, and feminism gives them a pseudo mission to follow. Feminism tells us that only unambitious women are homemakers; it tells us to abandon our post at home to chase after “bigger and better goals,” and strive for equality with the men in the workforce.  Even good, Godly women sometimes buy into the lie that the home is not valuable by believing that being a good homemaker equates to being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, or by saying things like, “I just want to be a mom.” Ultimately, we are being fed the same Edenic lie of “Did God actually say” being a homemaker is what women were created for. 

The third reason that feminism is such a temptation is because it gives women an excuse to be selfish. The first form being the “just a mom” crowd who embrace the stereotype of being uneducated, unambitious women because it is the easier option. They do not want to put in the work it takes to be a Proverbs 31 woman because it requires much from them, and they would rather be self-indulgent and choose the path that is “a delight to the eyes” when in actuality it is the path that leads to destruction (1 Timothy 5:6). The other form involves those women who pursue selfish ambition. They strive after their own glory and greatness longing to be known and valued for their achievements. As a result, we are left in a world “where jealousy and selfish ambition exist,” and there is “disorder and every vile practice.” (James 3:16) 

“You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem [our home] lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision.” (Nehemiah 2:17)

Therefore, in order to combat feminism and to fight the temptations that lead us to abandon our posts, we have to understand what our mission is and why it is so important that we don’t come off of the wall. Our mission is to imitate Christ by obeying God (Ecclesiastes 12:13).  We as women are designed to be homemakers (Titus 2:5), to be the glory of the glory (Proverbs 31:23, 1 Corinthians 11:7) , to turn a profit on what we have been given (Proverbs 31), to lay down our life daily (1 John 3:16), to make disciples (Matt. 28:19-20), and so much more. We as women get to do this day-in and day-out as we interact with our children, our extended family, our community, our co-workers, and our church family. We have been given a mind and body to use either in a selfish way for ourselves, or in servitude to God and the other immortal souls around us (Philippians 2:3). When we abandon the wall, we are leaving our homes defenseless and susceptible to invasion which leaves our warriors and our arrows with no haven to come back to. But if we man our post, it creates a space in which there is true peace, true rest, and true joy where our people are fed and nourished to go back out and take ground and dominion for God’s kingdom! 

 One of the biggest ways that we growing up were taught not to abandon our post was seeing our mom not pursuing her own desires but embracing her duty with joy! We were taught that the woman’s duty on earth was one to be respected and rejoiced over. She gave us a biblical example to imitate as she imitated Christ. So let us be the kind of women that the next generation can look to in order to see what true feminine glory looks like. We have been given the wonderful opportunity to stop looking to the fruit, to stop partaking in the envious, ungrateful, and selfish fruit and instead, to look to our Maker Who modeled for us how we should live. “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2: 6-8) Let us rejoice in the tasks we have been given and do them to the glory of God! Let us not look to be equal to the men, because our missions look different and the difference is glorious. Pursue ambition, but let it be a Godly ambition that takes the time and talents you have been given and returns them glorified to God. Let us not exchange our glory for “that which does not profit” (Jeremiah 2:11), but let us be the glory of the glory that God created us to be and build our homes with wisdom. “The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down.” (Proverbs 14:1)

Written by Esther and Lydia Edmonds