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Raising joyful children in an angry world, a podcast dedicated to faithful parents navigating their families through a stormy culture

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Initiating young girls into godly womanhood. This is raising joyful children in an angry world. I'm your host, Paul Osborne. Last week on the podcast, I shared some experiences around initiating young boys into the manhood that is involved in the kingdom of God. And the focus was on how to get beyond linear or lectionary methodology and move into story and activity. And proclamation and all of these things hold true also for young women. I think the activities and the stories have to be different. And I think women need to lead young girls in this, but there is a, there's different angle, I guess, That I want to talk about this week, particularly when it comes to young women, because I'm concerned that there is a challenge for young girls that is so prevalent in this culture. And I want to talk about, how we approach that first. And I want to focus on that rather than just kind of giving the female version of what we talked about last week. There is this debate, that has been going on for decades, and I believe this debate causes women and young women, it draws them into a confusion, it takes the eyes of the heart away from the kingdom of God. And what it means to become a woman in the kingdom of God. And it draws them into these worldly arguments. Often arguments that cannot even be truly resolved. There's this whole thing around the matriarchy and the patriarchy. These are poles, opposite poles. The matriarchy is that, you know, women's single mothers and they're running their homes and, and there's this whole honoring of that. And then there's also this criticism of homes without a father and, and all these anecdotal stories that talk about the chaos that result in boys particularly, or even girls being raised in homes without dads. Lots of anecdotal stories and arguments that go around that. And then of course there's this, the patriarchy, right? This more traditional understanding supposedly, and then there's this criticism of the patriarchy and his argument that men have been abusive to women and that women are victims of this antiquated family structure. Every work abuse story, every, Harvey Weinstein story, every betrayal of men towards a woman, it becomes a criticism of this structure. And the problem with these arguments is that they leave women without a clear vision, a biblical vision of what it means to be a woman in the kingdom of God. It misses this complementary role of men and women. because it injects ideas that cloud the issue. Nobody is going to get a vision for their life from God by defining themselves as victims. Or pretending to be what they are not or joining into these massive political angry arguments and, and particularly moms and dads, but moms especially are going to have to help their girls turn their eyes to God to see the vision for their life. Because when women look to the world as we see, As in lots wife, the pillar of salt, right? When the focus of their visions on the world, it freezes them. It freezes all of us. We, get into these arguments. We hear them all the time. Either believing they need a man to be significant. Or they don't need a man to be significant or date like a man or fight like a man or fight like a girl. All of these arguments go on and on. Rachel Platten's famous fight song, right? This is my fight song. Take back my life song. I may only have one match, but I can make an explosion. Right. That song. But then what? One match or turn your eyes to a God who is a consuming fire. The issue I think for most, most of us in the culture, particularly young parents, is A lack of understanding of how our enemy, the adversary, the devil works and his strategies and his techniques. There's a lot of teaching in the Bible about putting on the armor of God and the, you know, the sword of the word and the, how to battle spiritually. But what's generally lacking is an understanding of how the devil works and our sin nature. So where, what happens is, is that, Women get pulled into these arguments, these distractions, all of this feministic argument or traditional arguments talked about this before the trad wife versus the feminist. And there's this all going going debate and how the devil actually uses these divisive unresolvable arguments. is because our sin nature, we don't want to hear what God has to say. We have this morbid, resentment towards criticism that comes from the law. And so we prefer to silence God and not listen to it. We want to run from it. And the devil knows that because that's part of our sin nature, which is exactly what Adam and Eve did. They tried to hide themselves once humanity fell. And then the invite comes and says something like, Oh, you don't like the You don't like what God's saying about human sexuality. You don't like about sexual preferences or you don't like about, you know, how to live. And the devil says, well, I've got this club over here. You can come join them. They don't like it either. In fact, there's a whole group of us and we've got our own rules and our own, our own way of handling things. And you can come join us. And when you get into all this, that the problem is, there's, there's this great line in the movie Cabrini, Who is a nun, a very famous nun, who began building Italian immigrant orphanages in New York. And in this movie, which is a true story, she's about to try and build a hospital. She has opposition from two men, the Archbishop of New York and the mayor. And she finally manages to get the funds to build the hospital and she, she meets the standards that the mayor was using to try and prevent her. And the mayor says to her, Cabrini, you should have been a man. And sister Cabrini responds, Oh no, you could never do what we do. It is the recognition of her feminine creation, its unique ways of expressing courage and achievement, a virtuous accomplishment, and she shares the notion that every battle is fought by God for us. I mean, this is the, this is the vision that we want women to grasp. Go back to the story of Moses when he is a baby, the Pharaoh now 300 years after Joseph has gone, he sees all the Hebrew babies and he says, Oh my gosh, these boys are going to grow up and gonna be warriors are gonna want to take over. I want every Hebrew baby boy killed. He instructs the midwives and the midwives don't do it. And so he says, everybody killed the young boys. And so Moses's mother and Miriam devise a plan to put Moses right in the basket and get him over and they play on the feminine heart of Pharaoh's daughter. And then his mom becomes the nursemaid and Miriam becomes the helper and Moses becomes Pharaoh's daughter's child. That courageous put your life on the line plan could only be accomplished by women. This is what I think we have to try and point the eyes of our daughters to. It's in the Virgin Mary's prayer. My soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God, my Savior. For he looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, now, from now on, many generations will call me blessed. For he who is mighty has done great things for me. This is where we've got to try and change the direction. For In Dante's Divine Comedy, Beatrice is the one that points Dante to the Paradiso in which she tries to explain everything depends on God. See, Miriam recognizes that every battle is fought by God. She has her own fight song. She describes how God takes Pharaoh's best soldiers, his chariots and horses, and throws them and drowns them in the Red Sea. And, and so this is the direction I think that's important. And this can be done through activity and biblical stories and stories like the story of Cabrini. You cannot see this with your heart though, if you're caught up in unwinnable arguments. There's, there's an old song, an old movie, I can do everything you can do better. I can do everything a man can do. And I should not have to change my name. This is one of the famous ones. I should not have to change my name. The man should have to change his name in marriage. I don't need a man to have a family. In fact, I can be a man if I want to. That's how far we have gotten to. In John 9, the disciples who see a man who is blind from birth say, well, who caused his blindness? Was it the sin of his parents or his sin? See, the world pulled us into an unwinnable argument. And of course, the answer that Jesus gives is that neither of those are right. This man was born blind so that the glory of God might be displayed in his life. And this is, this is kind of how we have to see it. I want to go, let me go back to this argument on who's going to change their name in marriage. If you see this as, well, why should I change my name as the woman? Well, you would be correct. I mean, what is the reason? And it, is it just a social construct? Because if that's all it is, then it goes along with this argument. But if you see this, if you actually understand, regardless of how you do baptism, when you're baptized, God puts his name in the water. We are baptized in the name of the father. And of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Those are the names of God We are renamed. We are given God's name to be in God's family when we're baptized and your marriage reflects Christ and His bride, the church, and the name change is a testimony to Christ changing our name. When you see it as a testimony for God, who is mighty, who has done great things for you, who has invited you to participate in the proclamation of the gospel, as demonstrated through the means of grace in the sacrament of baptism, now you're seeing the complementary roles of men and women in the kingdom. And you and I have to help our girls get past these turbulent arguments of the world that they start on the playground and they never end. And I'm not saying we don't recognize that there's injustice in the world regarding women. Yes, there are men who have horrible ideas about women, but those things are not going to define me. I want to be free. To be the woman God has called me to be, and I have to turn my heart to the Lord as to advance in his kingdom. There's an old, old word for women called dames. And it became kind of a slang word that was not usually expressed with the best of intentions in the fifties and the sixties. Broads, dames, chicks, that whole thing. But the original use and one still in existence in the UK, a dame is that of a female knight. It is a title bestowed upon someone by the king or the queen for having served the kingdom. This is, is what I believe we have to be striving towards raising dames in the kingdom of heaven. Our Bible has plenty of stories. Miriam, Deborah, Ruth, Mary. They show us what courageous women living for God who understand their femininity. How to use it in a courageous, feminine way is a gift from God, and when we turn their hearts to see that, then we will move our girls into womanhood, serving God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The ultimate battle for the heart and soul is a fight for identity. Our king invites our kids to know who they are, what to believe, and where they belong. Until next time, let's remember the words for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.