A Christian Response to Women in Combat

The old insult, “Your mama wears combat boots” may reflect an out-dated sentiment pretty soon. With Leon Panetta’s approval of women in combat we are forced to ask if mama ought to be issued those boots? Or, have we now pushed a supposedly good idea beyond its useful application? Some people want to make this about equality (though surely they want those boots in smaller sizes). For decades we have been using a steam-driven pile-driver to smash home the concept that men and women are able to do the same things. The mailman has been re-termed the mail carrier. Handy-men have become handy-persons, girls graduate from college at higher rates than boys, and female preachers are no longer a scandal in evangelical circles. God has even gotten in on the act, having His name feminized in some translations, I have been told.

Some of our brethren, and a whole lot of conservative commentators, have argued as if the main issue has to do with pragmatics. They have pointed out that men are stronger than women, they have tougher emotional sinew, absorb pain more easily, and are less dainty about certain necessities in the field. These kinds of arguments are generally true. However, they miss the heart of the matter. For Christians this question should not be primarily about how much a soldier can lift. The main question in this situation should be, what is the mind of the Lord?

We American Evangelicals have gotten ourselves in quite a fix. Over the past few decades we have come around to agreeing with the enemies of the church on almost every point relating to the proper role of women in the culture. It used to be normal for Christian people to agree with Scripture on what roles were correct for the sexes. Long attention to Biblical instruction had informed the church, and by osmosis the larger culture, that men and women were created to do different things. Their primary duties were not the same, although their common allegiance was to the God of the Bible and to the building of His kingdom. We all used to know that when Scripture forbade women to be teachers of men that women, therefore, could not be pastors. We knew that when men were commanded to provide for their families or be, “worse than an infidel,” that God was serious about what men, in particular, should be doing. When women were told to marry and bear children, we understood that women should aspire to marry and bear children. Those roles were not fixed because men are mean. They were fixed because God Himself ordains what culture should look like. It is His prerogative to determine what proper cultural practices are, and how His people should live.

It has been popular lately for our wayward brethren to assert concerning those types of commands in Scripture, “Oh, those are just cultural.” At first it seems so disarming. Why, who would expect a society where people have computers, cars, and ceramic teeth, to live just like their ancestors had 2,000 years ago? We are not Neanderthals any more! But, the state of our technology is hardly the point, is it? Here is an interpretive observation. The Biblical story spans about 4,000 years. It transverses the creation moments, Adam in the garden, the division of mankind into two lines, the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Included are the generations of the nomadic patriarchs, 400 years spent as slaves in Egypt, 40 years under the law of Moses wandering aimlessly in the wilderness, 360 years living under the government of the Judges, hundreds of years living under kings in two kingdoms, North and South. There were 70 years spent in Babylon where they hung their harps by the river and sang songs of Zion. Some of those people returned (now speaking Arabic) to their ruined city and re-built, surrounded by lethal enemies. The invasion of the Greeks changed their language and made Greek the trade language of the entire Mediterranean area. Finally, the Romans defeated the Greeks and imposed their iron rule and wicked law over Palestine. Now, do we really suppose that the general culture in which the chosen people lived never changed? Do we think that the surrounding influences remained static for all those centuries? We would be less than Biblically informed to believe so. The fact is, that the cultures in which God’s people were immersed were often changing and were regularly luring them away from God’s desire for His righteous culture.

When we arrive at the New Testament we find the writers re-asserting Old Testament commands and values. This was not because they wanted Christians to be like the surrounding culture. Rather, they were reminding the church that they were to continue to live out the cultural commands of their never-changing God. He had given them their best instructions for right culture centuries before. Right culture never was a product of changing technology or outside influences. Rather, it was an obedient response to the commands of God. Those commands were given through the law of Moses and the words of the prophets. It was God’s law that determined right culture not the whims of His often drifting people. Now, we have become the drifters.

We naively assert that commands concerning women’s roles are just cultural. Somehow, we are convinced that the very direct instructions God gave us for His righteous culture do not apply to us. We think we are free to invent an assortment of disobedient behaviors baptizing them with the waters of our own approval. We have determined to judge God’s revealed and commanded culture as wrong for us. We think we have better ideas. Now those indefensible better ideas are imprisoning us who thought we were free. After all, what can we now say if they come for our daughters? Do we proclaim that our religion forbids women to go to war? On what basis? We have already informed the world with great vigor that those Biblical commands for women to be keepers at home, bearers of children and so on, to be for a different people and a different age. We have already thrown off the law and wisdom of our God and told everyone that those old-fashioned ideas are just cultural. The proper doctrinal and interpretive defense we ought to have been able to muster has been undermined by our own resistance to Biblical commands. Here we find ourselves naked before our enemies. There is nowhere to run. We have absurdly driven spikes through our own feet.

The answer for us is not to prevaricate. The American church needs to repent. We need to repent publicly and not just with words. It is imperative we recognize, as have our brethren in previous ages, that the cultural commands in the Bible are there to define for us what pleases God, what is morally best for His people. Yes, those commands are cultural. And, if we desire to rebuild Christian civilization, it is imperative we obey God’s will for our culture. We should be consciously building Biblical culture. The happy result would be that our wives and daughters would never be eligible for the draft. Everyone, once again, would understand that this is a practice we do not allow. As long as we continue to announce, with the megaphone of our lives, that ungodly culture is acceptable to us, we may expect that the world will believe us and treat us as the pagans we are becoming.

May God save the church and our daughters.

For Christian Culture,

Don Schanzenbach   2-2-13

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