Blblical Womanhood

  • Carol Alwood
  • Apr 16, 2010
  • Series: Infusion Blog

pic_carol  by Carol Alwood

 

I’m going to be focusing my writing on the topic of being a biblical woman. The first thing that I have to say about biblical womanhood is that I used to hate the idea of it, but now there is nothing more beautiful about it to me. Do you want to know why? It’s because I have an amazing husband who is willing to be a biblical man in sync with my attempts at being a biblical woman. I don’t think that it is possible to appreciate being a biblical woman when you are not alongside a man who behaves as the bible suggest he ought. The problem with this thought, however, is that most women do not have a man standing beside them who behaves biblically. Or do you?

Maybe even before we examine biblical womanhood, we have to examine biblical manhood. After all, Jesus is a man. He behaved perfectly, we know that to be true because he never sinned. Maybe the most beautiful interactions there are between Jesus and people on earth are between He and women. There is the woman at the well, who he calls “woman,” which is a sign of respect in those days even if today being called, “woman” is a put down. For example, we have all heard, “Woman, get in here and bring me a beer!” That is not what Jesus meant at all when he called the woman at the well “woman.”

The scripture reference is John 4:19. I see several things that Jesus does in this interaction with her. He is honest about her faults. The first thing he does is tell her that he knows she is living in sin. Now most of the time this is where biblical womanhood stops. We hear the truth from a man, and we fly off the handle. We either order the man to leave us alone, or defend ourselves with tears. Does this sound familiar to anyone but me? Maybe I am the only self-conscience woman around and the amazing women reading this blog would not react in the same way, but at the beginning of my biblical womanhood walk, I’d rather shed tears to end the conversation quickly, or push blame onto John so that he would end things quickly. It’s simply too painful to hear the truth when it means that we are not okay. What happens if my husband tells me that I could stand to lose ten pounds, or heaven forbid thirty? If he tells me this and I don’t sob to stop the conversation or point out that he too could lose ten or thirty pounds, does this then mean that I am unlovable? Because as a woman that is my GREATEST FEAR. If I am unlovable then I may as well stop getting out of bed every morning and trying, because it’s simply too difficult.

Jesus tells the woman and she hears it, in fact agrees with it. She tells him he is right. What? Who would do this? Some crazy self abasing woman? For some reason she does not bring the conversation to a complete halt so things don’t get too ugly. There must be something that Jesus does to demonstrate the he respects her and pointing out that she is living in sin she doesn’t just dump him down the well or throw water in his face, like maybe some other woman may have done.

So ladies, let’s conclude that the first step to becoming a biblical woman is hearing the truth. Very deep. See you next time!