Should women be cardboards, the glue that makes them stick together may be a lot of things with love relationships, with the opposite sex, somewhere on top of the list.
Should women be cardboards, the glue that makes them stick together may be a lot of things with love relationships, with the opposite sex, somewhere on top of the list? Sadly, but true even for women in the church and women who’d rather not talk about it. It lurks somewhere in the mental checklist. I am a woman, currently, I have more friends who are women and so this isn’t a clever hypothesis. This is as real as it gets. The glue gets thicker and thicker as the age shoots up and expectation of family and friends, who often are also women, grow. Then at a certain age, should one not find a group of singles to hold you up and keep you going, and this age starts from the thirties up, the glue thins and you start to stick out like an orthodox in a charismatic congregation. I am orthodox too. I am not too old, well not too old to cut down salt and pepper, but I’m growing and being feminine, I’ve been thinking about this fancy box women are put in – this fancy box women put themselves in as well. I’ve been wondering about the society’s checklist for a female, at least an average modern society – my society (my Ghanaian people and my Ghanaian Church people).
Get a degree
Get a job or Get married
Get married and start a second degree
Nothing to display unless three is checked.
Who put up this checklist? Why is a woman’s honor so tied with having a man to hold her hand at a dinner party? Who told females, you have to live life in the meantime, using all of that life to prepare for your actual life which only starts when a man finds you worth pursuing and brings you to his home as a wife – however he goes about it, whatever his definition of pursuing and marriage is? I don’t have the answers. I think somewhere along the line, we (my church society) glorified marriage to mean more than what it is and made life only meaningful in the context of marriage.
Marriage is good. Marriage is actually better than good. Marriage is godly. Marriage is actually better than godly. Marriage is a mystery.
Marriage is good. Marriage is actually better than good. Marriage is godly. Marriage is actually better than godly. Marriage is a mystery. Marriage is a symbol of the mystery between Christ and the church and through the eyes of marriage, we see glimpses of what the actual relationship between our Lord and his bride looks like in this fallen world and what it will look like in the world to come, the perfect world. I buy this. It is true and it is beautiful. But I don’t buy the current interpretation of this. Somehow, we seem blind to the argument throughout scripture (and even by Jesus, our Lord) for singleness, for people made for singleness for a brief time as well as for a lifetime and those who will give themselves up to singleness for the sake of service to God (Matthew 19:12 reading from verse 1 clarifies context) And about those who are made or will give themselves up for singleness, I do not mean Catholic Priests. Somehow, we seem blind to the fact that no believer was called for marriage (first. If we even ever were called for marriage), rather every believer was called to be conformed to Christ, to learn to be part of the real bride that’ll last all of eternity (Romans 8:29).
When we glorify marriage above learning to live and becoming part of the bride of Christ, we do ourselves and especially women a disservice. I don’t think the church and believers interested in marriage and the whole world of boy girl relationships have ever set out to make our minds so full of desire for this thing that’ll last only a lifetime. Their motives are right, their motives are true. We need better marriages actually modelling Christ’s headship and the church’s submission. We need functional homes to raise godly offspring. I am part of the church and yes of course I’m very interested in male female love relationships. I’m interested in marriage at large. I write about them. I talk about them. I desire to be in one should the Lord desire that for me. Should he not, I desire what he desires. I dare say, we need believers setting our hearts on more than what is earthly. And yes — marriage is earthly. Marriage is an example of such a wonderful divine union but is it only for here and now, just as the body is a wonderful cover for our soul and spirit but is only for here and now. Even our bodies shall take on new spiritual forms. Marriage will also take on its true form in Christ and the church when he returns.
We need better marriages actually modelling Christ’s headship and the church’s submission. We need functional homes to raise godly offspring.
It isn’t wrong to pray for marriage. It isn’t wrong to seek God’s will for something that is as important as who you become one with. But I find it disturbing that women will spend fortunes travelling and seeking help and praying and fasting to be found by a man and some of these same women have never bothered do even a quick morning fast about their growth, calling in life, etc. We have come to think we are only as good as the kind of man who finds us as a wife and so we spend our whole lives making sure we’re found by a man with whom our bond will end here on this earth rather than grasping on to the man with whom our bond is eternal. A woman, especially and still in Ghana may be stopped by well-meaning older women in the church to discuss why they aren’t finding a man yet (my friend was recently invited by her pastor and some leading men and women of her church for such a discussion. According to her, they’ve never once asked her how her walk with Jesus, her ministry, her startup business is doing. Never). This desperation to mean something more than just a woman, to become a wife has led godly women into the hands of men outside of the church. I wonder how many will make it back to the church.
I find it disturbing that women will spend fortunes to be found by a man and some of these same women have never bothered do even a quick morning fast about their growth, calling in life, etc.
Is raising women who are living fruitful lives not enough without making every woman feel like biblical womanhood only shows itself in the context of marriage? Was our Lord himself not single and yet complete and yet the model for us all? And, let me ask, if woman was taken from man and Adam well exclaimed after seeing Eve, shouldn’t our focus be on our men and grooming them to desire to find their missing ribs. Why should a woman be careful not to be too much of herself lest she won’t be found by a man who has no apologies of being himself? Even in the church (not the building, the fellowship). As a church, why won’t we teach the whole truth offered in scripture when we discuss love relationships? The truth is not everyone was made for marriage (1 Corinthians 7 and if we don’t teach the whole truth and empower women to live full lives whatever the category they are in, however long they stay there, we risk raising a church with wounded help-meets and lost women.
Was our Lord himself not single and yet complete and yet the model for us all?
There is no such thing as living in the meantime. Every day on earth is a day to live, male or not, married or not. And if anyone should be desperate for marriage and dreaming it up, I say it should be the men whose ribs have gone missing.
©M’afua Awo Twumwaah 2018
Afua Awo Twumwa 