On Friday I posted about eighteen things I had been taught about women as a young Christian–things which impacted me for decades of my life. To be honest, even as I wrote them down, I found myself angry (hopefully with a righteous indignation) at the cage I had been trapped in. Thankfully, Tony, my husband, is a wonderful and gracious husband, but even today, I remember well him trying to explain to me why I had been removed from a leadership team because of my gender–because our church had just come under the influence of teaching that didn’t allow women in leadership, but that it was okay because I could exert an influence through him.
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I’m not blaming the guys, They were taught these things as much as I was, and for some of them, the strain of trying to live up to this view of the man’s responsibilities must have been just as difficult as it was for us as women. What about the man whose wife is naturally more outgoing, where he is more content to be in the background? Or the man who is more pastoral and less apostolic than his wife? Is it fair for one person in a partnership to be responsible to always make the correct decisions? Tim Day had a thought-provoking post on this over the weekend too–well worth pondering.
I’d be very interested to hear how this teaching about women has impacted the men. What stories do you have?
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