Retaining Honour--Post 6

Let me direct you to the book of Judges, chapter 4, in the Bible.

 It’s the vivid and gruesome story of how Sisera, the ruler who “cruelly oppressed” Israel for 20 years, met his end.

Most of the Old Testament war stories are entirely full of men and their exploits, but this one features two women—Deborah, who was leading Israel, and Jael, who let Sisera believe she was an ally and who very decisively proved otherwise.

Actually, rather than retell the whole story, I’ll let you read it for yourself here.

The narrator is so matter-of-fact.  We see Deborah riding off to battle with a timid commander and 10,000 men.  And we see Jael, calmly inviting Sisera into her tent to rest, covering him up with a blanket, and giving him milk to drink.  And then just as calmly driving in that tent peg—of all the weapons...

Nowhere does the story imply anything but that they did what they did entirely as women.  They didn’t dress up in men’s uniforms or armor.  They are not described as being like men or of having man-like qualities of bravery or cleverness.

They did what they did fully as women.

“Certainly I will go with you,” said Deborah. “But because of the course you are taking, the honor will not be yours, for the Lord will deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman.”

In the next chapter, Deborah and Barak sing a song of celebration.  In it, they refer to Deborah and Jael in the most female roles possible—wife and mother.

Most blessed of women be Jael,
    the wife of Heber the Kenite,
    most blessed of tent-dwelling women.

Villagers in Israel would not fight;
    they held back until I, Deborah, arose,
    until I arose, a mother in Israel.

I think we would all agree that fighting was generally the men’s domain.  But, in this case, when the need arose, the women did what needed to be done, and their success was celebrated.

The land then had peace for forty years, so we assume that Deborah went back to judging and Jael went back to her tent and was a good wife for Heber and milked the cow twice a day and ordered a new tent peg off of Amazon.

We don’t read that they went around trying to change women's roles in society and spoke at high schools and told girls they can be anything they want to be, including warriors going to battle.

Conclusions I think one can draw from this without stretching the lessons too far:

a)      Some roles, duties, and exploits are normally the domain of men, and that’s ok.

b)      If the occasion calls for it and they have the skills, women may and can do them as well, and that’s ok too.

c)      The reverse is also true.

d)  Doing the occasional task of the other gender doesn't make you less of yours.

Tomorrow: a few Biblical examples of gender role reversals and a few that differ from our culture

Retaining Honour--Post 5

Yesterday I wrote about identity.

If we (conservative/Christian folks) are going to insist that:

a)      Gender is intrinsic, and

b)      There are only two genders and

c)      Your gender was given to you by God

d)     Denoting both gift and purpose and

e)      It is not to be changed or altered. . .

Then: it is a serious –dare I say—sin! to challenge someone’s birth identity as male or female.

And: we have to make room at the male/female tables for all men and women, regardless of their talents, size, interests, giftings, choices, or behavior.

To imply that someone is somehow less male, not quite a woman, a bit off, not quite sure, unworthy, or not enough is to say that you don’t really believe that gender is a God-given trait, but that it has to somehow be chosen and earned and maintained.  Like you did.

We could all think of fifty examples of potential or actual troubled identities.  My sister’s big, raw-boned friend who enjoyed farm work and somehow landed in a batch of charming, flouncy-skirted Southern girls in her youth group, and who always felt like she wasn’t quite the right gender.

The small, shy man who never married.

The woman who hates to shop and feels out of place at Tupperware parties.

The man who is terrified of spiders and snakes.

You're thinking of a few right now, I'll bet.

 

If you have issues with cultural identity, as my dad and brother did because of being studious Amish, and a shaky gender identity as well, maybe by being a Mennonite woman who hates to sew and bake but likes to study forestry,  then God have mercy on you.

If you really believe the Bible on this, then the woman I met who worked for her brother and fixed small engines in his shop: she is fully a woman.

The guy I know who enjoys decorating for events and making rooms beautiful: he is fully a man.

We who believe in gender as God-given and unchangeable need to affirm the men and boys in our lives as fully male and the women and girls as fully female.*  No arched eyebrows, no nudges, winks, implications, hints, closed circles, suggestions, exclusions, or faintly-innuendoed jokes and comments.

This is not to say that you can't more fully realize your potential as a man or woman.  But first you are what you are.

 

Tomorrow: surprising Biblical women

*to the inevitable anonymous commenter: transgender issues are outside the scope of this post and this is not addressing how—beyond being kind--you should or should not treat people who wish to be identified as another gender or none at all.

Retaining Honour--Post 4

Identity has to do with who you are, a complicated soup of innate traits, family history, personal choices, others’ responses to you, and much more.

If your identity is solid and healthy, you don’t have to spend your life trying to figure it out, and you have the emotional energy for meaningful work and happy family relationships and making good choices because you don’t have to prove anything.

I was born into an Amish family.  We were the real deal--the Pennsylvania German language, horses, buggies, thrift, shame, the Lob Lied, hired drivers, big gardens, hooks & eyes on mutza suits.

My dad and my one brother were, by nature and gifting, scholars.  They would both have made fantastic researchers, spending years deep in dusty volumes, exploring obscure threads of history.

But they were Amish, and the Amish had no slot for scholars.

A good Amishman was a farmer--a good farmer, with grade-A milk and all the weeds trimmed around the outbuildings.  If you couldn’t farm, then you were a carpenter or something equally physical.

This isn’t something I discuss with my dad and brother, all of us still being at least half Amish at heart, but I think it messed with their identities.

Here they were, driven by deep curiosity and intelligence and God-given talents.  That was who they were.   And born into, and deeply identifying with, this closed, unique culture.  That was who they were, also.

But the other Amish made them feel like they somehow weren’t really Amish, they couldn’t be, because they weren’t ambitious farmers or efficient carpenters.

I wonder: why was there no room for them?  This was not a Biblical issue.  Surely there would have been some way for them to be wholly who they were--fully Amish and fully studious and impractical.

It did not do good things to their identity.

Tomorrow: more on identity—what do we do to the woman mechanic, the man who is afraid of spiders?

Retaining Honour--Post 3

Sometimes people expect me to be some version of feminist because I'm a Mennonite lady who writes.  But I don't identify as feminist because:

2^nd reason: I don’t have the energy for sustained outrage. 

I ran across a Christian feminist post a while back where the author listed a bunch of Christian blog posts that were disgustingly sexist.  Look at this!  Terrible! These people need to be held accountable for their words!!

I read a few of them, expecting a rant about keeping wimmin in their place via daily beatings.  There was nothing of the sort.  Finally I figured out that the writers had referred to women as “girls.”

I decided I don’t have the time or energy to be upset about this.  Maybe when every orphan has a home and Beijing’s air is breathable and the national debt is paid off, then we’ll talk about referring to women as girls.

3^rd reason:  Feminists re-write history.

In my experience, this shows up most in literature courses and articles.   There’s this unquestioned “fact” that in the past all women were forced by an oppressive male-dominated culture into weak, passive, narrow roles.  And all women in the church have always been oppressed.  So the modern prefaces to all kinds of literature, from Little Women to The Easter Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, exclaim about how amazing it is that this early example of feminism and these strong female characters showed up way back then!  Back when women were all powerless and oppressed!

Never mind that this “fact” of past oppressed womanhood bears no resemblance at all to your own experiences, or people you knew, or your great-aunt who homesteaded a South Dakota farm with her husband and shot rattlesnakes in the root cellar with a six-shooter.

One last reason I don’t identify with feminists:  I think it’s a kindness to warn people not to swim in shark-infested water or to put raw meat in their backpacks on a hike through grizzly country.  A while back Emily Yoffe wrote an article on Slate telling college women that they shouldn’t get drunk at parties because it increased their chances of getting raped.  She was flooded with criticism from feminists for “victim-blaming.”  I realized that it's a free country and they can say whatever they want, but I simply don’t have a slot in my brain for that way of thinking.

But enough about feminism, since most of us aren’t that extreme.

Tomorrow: thoughts on identity.

Retaining Honour: Post 2

Let me be up front about this: I believe in creation, in design, in intent.

Your gender is not an accident.  There’s something sacred about it.  “Male and female created he them,” Genesis says.  “In the image of God.” 

God created you to be you.  He knit you together in your mother’s womb, Psalm 139 says.  That design includes your eye color, your height, and your hair texture, and lots more that you didn't choose.  And your gender.

For someone born with normal body, brain, and and chromosomes, to attempt to change this essential part of yourself seems to me to be rejecting a precious gift and to take control of a part of your soul that isn’t yours to alter.

Here’s the first area where the feminists and I part ways.  According to Wikipedia, “At the core of these theories [feminism/women’s studies] is the notion that however one identifies, gender, sex, and sexuality are not intrinsic, but are socially constructed.”

And that, as I said, is one way we differ.

In our women’s Sunday school class, we’ve been studying the women of the Bible, which got me thinking along these lines.  It’s a fascinating study.

I also recommend Elisabeth Elliot’s Let Me Be a Woman, and Rick Rhodes’s Created with Purpose.

Next time: Another reason I’m not a feminist.


Note: Dear Anonymous commenter: Obviously I am not an expert on transgender or dysphoria issues.  The operative words here are "seems to me." I am not advocating violence for anyone who disagrees.  You can email me at letterfromhburg@juno.com. 

Retaining Honour: Post 1

We are confused about gender.  “We” meaning society in general, the church far too often, and me in particular, at times.

Today, someone posted a picture of one of the Duck Dynasty guys supposedly saying, “Listen up ladies, if your man doesn’t know how to hunt and fish, you have a girlfriend.”

Is that really what it means to be a man?  Maybe it’s no wonder people wonder if they were born with the “right” gender.

Meanwhile, news feeds and radio programs offer updates on the latest contrived ways to make women realize their potential.

I heard an NPR program the other day in which they interviewed a woman who devised programs to get girls into STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, Math] classes.  She sounded quite ambitious on behalf of females, but in glaring dissonance, she spoke in that terrible irritating “uptalk” so prevalent among young women, where almost every phrase sounds all uncertain, like a question requiring affirmation before she can continue.  “And I worked with a professor?  Who was almost entirely lecture based??  And I was like, developing more hands-on technical material???”

“How can we encourage our daughters to try STEM fields?” said the interviewer.

“The important thing?  Is to teach them?  Not to be afraid of failure??” replied this shining example of confident intelligent womanhood.

Confusing.

Sheryl Sandberg says women should lean in, and girls should be bossy but we shouldn’t use that word.

A young man from a conservative Mennonite church in the Midwest told me how much he likes to hunt, thereby qualifying as masculine by the Duck Dynasty standard.  And, interestingly, by his church’s gauge as well.  “Do girls in your church go hunting?” I asked him.  He said, “No, we actually have a rule that they can’t.”

I thought but did not say: A—Nothing would make me want to go hunting like knowing there’s a rule against it.  And B—I hope you also have a rule that men can’t crochet.

Confusing.

I don’t have a lot of answers but writing things down helps me to figure out what I think.  So I plan to write a series of short blog posts cogitating on various aspects of what gender in general and femaleness in particular mean.

I was intrigued with this format when a Facebook friend named Bethany Eicher used a series of short posts to explore the subject of submission in marriage. [ http://bethany-aboutmyfathersbusiness.blogspot.com/] Unlike her, I am not brave enough to discuss submission at this point.  In fact, I am not into controversy and will shut things down if too much controversy erupts.  

Also, I am not an expert and there are plenty of issues I will not cover.  This will be just me talking so take it as such.

Tomorrow: design, creation, and sources for ideas.

Proverbs 11: 16--A gracious woman retaineth honour. . .

The New Cleaner

Paul's grandpa Orval built the warehouse that is now ours.  Paul and his dad got to be experts at fixing the cleaners, augers, and other parts of the process.

However, if something is installed in 1948, by about 2014 it becomes obvious that you can fix so much and then it needs to be replaced.

So a new cleaner was ordered.

A cleaner, in this case, is a machine about the size of your average espresso stand.  It is full of motors and chutes.  You can insert these big screens about 4 feet long and 3 feet wide.  The holes in the screens are  made to let specific seeds through and keep specific weeds out, or vice versa.  Seed [or grain or corn] comes in the top and flows down over the screens, which shake shake shake and sort sort sort and then the good stuff goes down in the hopper to get bagged by Steven, and the bad stuff goes into a big wooden box to turn into cattle feed.

After many delays and frustrations the new cleaner arrived, and on one of our snow days of last month, it was installed.

To my inexperienced eyes, it seemed to defy all the laws of physics--this long arm extending out from the big glorified forklift with 5000 pounds of new cleaner sitting on it, getting hoisted 20 feet in the air.  I kept thinking it was going to crash down and take the warehouse with it.

But of course it didn't.

Paul stood up there and yelled, and his nephew Keith slowly maneuvered the new cleaner in place in a very dicey and delicate operation.

I took some videos and posted them on YouTube for the sake of former sackers who might enjoy watching.

Here.

Here's Keith and his adorable daughter Isabella, in matching scarves.

 I don't think these machines are required to coordinate their colors and names, but they did, in one language or another.

Quote of the Day:
"Is there seed spillin' out of the cleaner-hopper??  Is the auger rattlin'??"
--Paul, at my birthday dinner last year when a warehouse emergency interrupted our meal