Proverbs 31 Woman 

Proverbs 31 Woman

The woman described in Proverbs 31 is remarkable for her entrepreneurial spirit. She saves what she earns and buys a field, and keeps up a sideline in manufacturing:

Was she in line with her culture or counter-cultural? How about the larger world? In New Testament times, this passage with its devaluing of idleness would not necessarily have seemed counter-cultural, in the larger world. Livia, the wife of the emperor Augustus, wanted it believed that she devoted her time to spinning wool for Augustus' toga. At least that's what they say: "He [Augustus] seldom wore any garment but what was made by the hands of his wife, sister, daughter, and grand-daughters." (Suetonius, Life of Augustus, Chapter LXXIII). There was no thought that women were intended to be idle, under-occupied, or unproductive.

Maximize Income

The Bible does not contain any general command  for people to maximize their incomes. In some specific cases, people are instructed not to do that, but to do just the opposite:

"Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me." (Matthew 19:21).

Proverbs, however, tends to assume that people will want to maximize their incomes, though without making that goal into a moral imperative.

The virtuous woman of Proverbs 31 is praised as a blessing to her family, because she makes use of the opportunities presented to her to maximize her, and thus their, income. What we see in the present day is the paradox of people who think they are imitating the Proverbs 31 woman by minimizing their income, by ejecting their children from the middle class. You would think this woman is being praised for her willingness to sacrifice her children's welfare and comfort, rather than what she is praised for, maintaining a high living standard for them.

What's worse, some people have convinced themselves the Bible commands that make-work should fill a woman's day. She has to work indoors, right, doing the housework? Even if Roomba is busy doing the cleaning? Since there is not enough work to do, they 'find' work, making bread from scratch for example, though there is no need. Thus they make a full-time job out of leaf-raking: piling up the leaves, scattering them, then raking them up all over again. This wasn't her idea, not the Proverbs 31 woman; this is their idea. Again and again, the standard of achievement and efficiency will prove the dividing line between the Proverbs 31 woman and her far less successful modern imitators.

Braids

Does her habit of putting on the Ritz run counter to Paul's view? Is she violating the New Testament injunction to avoid ostentatious display?:

Not that it says she has braids, but rather what is described, silk and purple, is the type of ostentatious display that Paul seems to be frowning upon. Again, dislike of ostentation was not necessarily counter-cultural in the context of the first century Roman empire. Ancient Rome had sumptuary laws, like the Oppian law, limiting the amount which could be spent on, for instance, gold jewelry worn by women. So long as Rome remained a republic, its people had a dislike of ostentation. While these old habits were sinking beneath the weight of the decadence of the empire, some still spoke up for the simple life. Not that they lived it, but they spoke up for it:

The thought process that led to a negative evaluation of luxury and unnecessary expense cannot have been the same in both cases. In the case of Republican Rome, the simple life was also the Spartan life of the military camp. On her rise to world domination, Rome had conquered many nations that, in their day, had been military powerhouses. How had this happened? Why had they declined? One answer is that they took to sleeping on feather beds rather than on the cold, hard ground of the military camp. This is part of the answer, but only part.

Another part was, in the interests of social harmony, not wanting to shame the poor:

"To be debarred of a liberty in which another is indulged may perhaps naturally excite some degree of shame or indignation; yet, when the dress of all is alike, what inferiority in appearance can any one be ashamed of? Of all kinds of shame, the worst, surely, is the being ashamed of frugality or of poverty; but the law relieves you with regard to both; you want only that which it is unlawful for you to have.

"This equalization, says the rich matron, is the very thing that I cannot endure. Why do not I make a figure, distinguished with gold and purple? Why is the poverty  of others concealed under this cover of law, so that it should be thought that, if the law permitted, they would have such things as they are not now able to procure? Romans, do you wish to excite among your wives an emulation of this sort, that the rich should wish to have what no other can have; and that the poor, lest they should be despised as such, should extend their expenses beyond their abilities?" (Cato the Censor, In Support of the Oppian Law).

Again, the preference of the Stoic philosophers for the simple life did not come from quite the same place as either the Christian notions nor old Cato's. Nor did it lead to any common destination; the monasteries of the Middle Ages were opposed to luxurious living, but to much else besides. In this present era, there are many women who think they are doing what the Proverbs 31 woman did, even though they are doing just about the opposite. She did not do the things she did in order to make herself and her family poorer. The main point, the reason why she is doing all this, has escaped them. Her activities are directed to an end. They sink lower into poverty while she zooms by them in a Mercedes Benz.

When opportunity knocked, she opened the door. They do not. They make her achievements into limits. They have been taught women must remain at home. There is a Biblical basis for this idea, though they carry it far beyond the Bible,

"That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed." (Titus 2:4-5).

This they turn into an iron-clad mandate, so that the Proverbs 31 woman can only do handicrafts, not manufacturing. Not only are women to be the guardians of the home, they may not leave the home. Thus she is limited to activities which might be remunerative, but only on a small scale, although if you jack up the price past all reason, small-scale handcrafts can be highly remunerative. But that's a stretch; that's not how humanity has built a better life for itself; to achieve economic results, you ought to make things as efficiently as they can be made, which rules out handicrafts.

But is this approach correct in the first place? No one turns 1 Thessalonians 4:11 into a mandate requiring men to do only manual labor: "And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; that ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing." (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12). You see? All Christian men are henceforth restricted to manual labor! No doctors, no lawyers, only men who work with their hands, because it says right there in the text that men are to work with their hands! But this is not a limit or a mandate. Most men at that time did work with their hands. And such work was always available; if nothing else was in the offing, you could go down to the port and carry some heavy jar, with your own two hands, back up to town, and get enough to live by.

It's true that some knowledge workers, like those who practiced divination, were not welcome in the church, not until they changed professions. But what would have been the harm in an architect, say, joining up? Or a teacher, or a clerk? It would be obtuse to insist this passage means men must, by divine command, work with their hands, changing job category if need be, permitted nothing but manual labor in the future. And no one does force such a misunderstanding when it comes to men. Why do they impose this very misunderstanding in the case of women? For instance, these folks will explain that young women should be barred from higher education, because all they are expected to do is housework. But is that what the Bible says? Jesus encountered a women who sought a theological education:

"Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house.  And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word. But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:38-42).

He did not rebuke her or drive her away. 'Sitting at the feet' of so-and-so does not refer only to posture, it means to receive instruction, "I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye all are this day." (Acts 22:3). Yet they are so caught up with their own ideas about women's mental and moral inferiority, that Biblical precedent just doesn't matter to them.

Job Requirement

In the Bible, there's discussion of the desiderata for an important job, that of overseer of a congregation. The language used to describe the ideal candidate is not inclusive:

"If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly.  For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God; not self-willed, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre;  but a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate; holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers." (Titus 1:6-9)

We do know, from the New Testament, that there were women deacons and women evangelists in the early church, so this barring from office is not total. But the explanation for it is not circumstantial or culture-bound but fairly basic. It is not a question of intelligence or ability, but past history:

"But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.  For Adam was first formed, then Eve.  And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression." (1 Timothy 2:12-14).

The snake, much like any other travelling salesman, did not try the man of the house first, as if he might have better luck with him; he went straight to the preferred target. It should be understood that the context we're dealing with is a job requirement, not moral excellence in general. Not only all women, but most men as well, as excluded by Paul's list of desiderata. Most men, then as now, are not apt to teach, indeed, many in that day were illiterate. So they're out. They did nothing wrong, but they're out.

These criteria, in fact, are almost never exercised according to instruction, because the churches insist on moralizing them. Is it the man's fault that his wife is an alcoholic? While there may be some men that drive their wives to drink, we certainly know of some cases where he was as if struck by lightning. But this is not desirable, says Paul. They don't care; they think it's unfair to do what Paul instructed, so they don't do it. It is assumed that the job requirements for overseeing bishop are a list of moral excellences and cannot be anything else. That some of these circumstances require the cooperation of others, like that the children must refrain from being juvenile delinquents, is simply unfair in their individualistic eyes, so they omit those.

In the Middle Ages, they divided the body of believers up into categories, graded as to worthy or unworthy, on the basis of certain instructions given in the gospels. Now they were not dreaming when they noticed that the gospels commend voluntary celibacy and voluntary poverty, though these are two plain gospel teachings that have fallen by the wayside in the modern era. But the intention was never to use these criteria as the rungs of a spiritual hierarchy; this was their own invention. So here: they think the bishop is the crown of humanity, and so those who cannot be presiding bishop must be inferior.

I think it's a matter of common observation, that need not be controversial, that, if you go to the mall accompanied by your husband or male friend, and you say, 'sit down here and I'll be back in five minutes,' you can come back and find him just where you left him, like a bump on a log. This would not happen with a female friend. A characteristic we might call 'immotility' or 'stolidity' seems to pertain more to men than to women, dealing, of course, in generalities. Generalities are not false, they just are not granular.

One can readily think of contexts in which this could be viewed as a draw-back, but there happens to be one in which it is a huge advantage. What is looked for in a preacher of the gospel is to hew to the same message, in sunshine or in rain, in good times or in bad: "Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints." (Jude 1:3). What is looked for in a preacher of the gospel is to reiterate what he was told, to the letter, to pass along the message unedited and 'unimproved.' Innovation is not a good thing in this field, but a bad thing. It was never God's intent for the gospel to be a continuously growing body of literature and doctrine. Contrast this picture with, for instance, a designer of silicon computer chips. It would be no commendation to say that he continued making the chips just exactly the way his father taught him years ago. He would end up being pretty much out of date if he did, because in this field, innovation is considered a good thing.

Or fashion, or art; creativity is valued, repetition of what one was taught is not specially valued. So in some contexts, women's restlessness and desire for innovation might be perceived as a good thing not a bad thing. These are not fundamental moral categories but rather job requirements; a fashion designer who kept doing the same thing her whole working life would not be a good fashion designer but a bad one. Creativity is not a moral flaw. So devaluing one half of the human race because God observes, correctly, that they are more prone to innovation and thus less valuable in a job position which must at all costs avoid innovation, is over-generalizing and drawing the wrong conclusions.

There is a way of looking at this commonly observed behavior, which is, I think, differently distributed to the two genders, which seems to be plucked from thin air. That is, the question in the mall, 'Should I move off in search of novelty or should I sit here like a stone,' is a puzzle, a rebus, to be solved by sheer intellectual fire-power, and women, you see, just don't have it. It seems rather to be a disposition than a problem. The Bible nowhere suggests women are unintelligent. This is the whole misogynists' case right here, and it is anything but convincing.

That God Himself views an open-minded willingness to innovate as a positive thing in some cases is shown in Genesis,

"And his brother's  name  was Jubal:  he  was  the father  of all  such as handle the harp and organ.  And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron: and the sister of Tubalcain was Naamah." (Genesis 4:21-23).

Mankind did not always have the technologies of making musical instruments, or blacksmithing. So does God say these innovators were wicked, easily deceived, because of their willingness to go in a new direction unknown to their fathers? No, their contributions are mentioned to memorialize them, because they did something positive, they rolled the project of civilization forward. It depends on context whether open-mindedness is a good thing or a bad thing. It is not a global state of mental and moral inferiority. Where no improvement is to be looked for, as with the gospel, it is bad; where improvement is possible, as in metal-working, it is good.

It's an old saying that if you drive nature out the door with a pitchfork, she will come back in through the window. To give a fable as illustration, there once was a prince who fell in love with a beautiful cat named Fair Grimalkin. He went and asked the wise old wizard to transform Grimalkin into a human female so he could marry her. The wizard hemmed and hawed and temporized, 'you really don't want to do that.' But the prince would not be put off and so the great day came: the prince and Grimalkin, now a beautiful young woman, tied the knot before the dancing, celebrating crowd of peasants. But that very night, a scurrying was heard in the corner of the bridal chamber: a mouse! Grimalkin pounced and devoured the helpless creature right before the shocked eyes of her prince. So, you can drive nature out the door with a pitchfork, but she'll come back in through the window!

Thus the feminists seemed to believe, in the 1970s, that women in large numbers were likely to sign up for high-paying jobs in the construction trades. But not many women really want to do those jobs. More women will apply for jobs in child care, as a day care attendant for example. Certainly one can concede to the feminists that these should not be low-paying jobs, merely because they are women's jobs; but for the foreseeable future, they will be women's jobs in the main, by choice and not compulsion. Why chase nature out with a pitchfork? These misogynists, likewise, seem to have no actual faith in nature; they seem to expect little boys will not display masculine behaviors at all unless they are continually clamped down on a bed of Procrustes, forcing them against their natural bent. But it is their natural bent, or what's the point? Both groups of ideologues should have some faith in nature. Are masculinity and femininity unstoppable forces of nature, which will put in an appearance no matter how hard society tries to stamp them out, or are they hot-house productions only seen at the cost of continual prodding, encouragement and superintendence? You would not think the same people could answer 'both,' but it seems they do.

Observing what actually happens when half of pastors are women, as here in New England, it is what might have been expected: you see more doctrinal drift. Not to say all men suffer from lack of imagination; for every Mary Baker Eddy there may be a Joseph Smith, an innovator, for every Helena Blavatsky, a TheoBro. And certainly some women are stick-in-the-muds to rival the most immobile man. But if you do not want innovation, you also do not want a female episcopate. Women are creative. God knew what He was doing.

The Pharisees thought they were doing well to erect a fence around the law. They added regulations to those Moses had given, thinking moving back compliance a step or two was the way to make double and triply sure no violation could occur. But Jesus did not commend them for their zeal. They took the Sabbath, a generous gift to man, a guaranteed day off, and made it into a challenging burden that was very difficult to keep. That kind of 'help' God does not need or want. Similarly, here, some people have taken the Bible's disqualification of women as candidates for overseeing bishop, as well as the instructions for male leadership in the home, and turned them into the pretext for a full-scale diminution of women's opportunities in life. Does the Bible say she cannot be a bishop? We'll go one better, we'll say she cannot be hired to do anything above menial work. Does the Bible say the husband is head in the home? We'll go one better, we'll say any random woman must be subservient to any random man who walks by. They add their own 'insight' to the Bible, explaining that women's general mental and moral inferiority makes their program beneficial. But the Bible does not teach this, it's taught only in Opinions 2:16. They have added to God's word and stand condemned.

They do this by reframing the issue as if the Bible had said that women are stupid and men are smart. Here is a typical reframing: "I think the Christian church is very vulnerable because, well, as the Bible says, women are gullible." (Rachel Jankovic, 'Why Women Need Emotional Self Control,' Doug Wilson & Rachel Jankovic, posted to Twitter by Examining Moscow). Cults not infrequently practice nepotism, and although they discourage women from studying theology, the daughter of the founder or of an influential personage will likely count as an honorary man. Now, if the Bible actually had said, 'Women in general are stupid and men are smart,' then why would you want a woman in charge of anything? But the issue is nowhere so framed in the Bible; that is their own unique understanding and contribution to the discussion. The Bible does not say, 'women are gullible.' The Bible does not say, 'men have closed minds.' Those are tendentious and self-serving ways to describe what the Bible does say.

What is undeniably true, and what the serpent had noticed, is that women in general show more openness to new ideas than do men. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It depends. Innovation in some spheres is good. Innovation in other spheres is bad. Instead of assigning a positive value to one sex and a negative value to the other, realize that one complements the other; both make a contribution to the world. The world needs both fighters and peace-makers. The world needs both creators and also conservationists.  Leave it where the Bible leaves it.

I once heard a middle-aged couple being interviewed, and the man said, 'my wife is the creative half of this duo.' I suspect that is often the case,— remember, we are talking in generalities,— and the contributions of both sexes should be valued at their true worth. We would not want a stand-pat world where nothing ever changes. On the other hand, in the field of the gospel, what is wanted is precisely that, a preacher who will deliver the message in its purity, just exactly how it was delivered to him. In fields where creativity is not wanted, you can banish it by discouraging women from participating. Realize, though, that in other fields, creativity is perceived as a good thing, and not only by people who are deceived.

In practice, the churches who take this tack elicit an attitude of arrogance on the part of their men, not servant leadership. Outside observers can readily credit the reports coming out of these groups that domestic abuse is rife, which should not even be thought of among the saints. Whoever or whatever they are patterning themselves after in the 'Manosphere,' it is not the God who took on the form of a servant.

If the Bible does not say that men are smarter than women,— and it does not,— then where did these people learn that information? Perhaps from the usual suspects:

"The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man’s attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can woman—whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands. If two lists were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music (inclusive both of composition and performance), history, science, and philosophy, with half-a-dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear comparison." (Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, Part III, Chapter XIX).

It's not like the thought was original to him, though. Misogyny has a long history, just not a Biblical one. The latest fad this crowd has latched onto is idol-smashing:

Efficiency Expert

Some people seem to think that the key to living Biblically is to labor as inefficiently as possible. After all, most labor processes back in Bible times were not optimized for efficiency by modern standards, so it's a 'gimme' if "Trad wives" grow their own food and make everything from scratch, that they're on the Bible bus, right? But did the Proverbs 31 woman aim at maximal inefficiency, or was she results-oriented, i.e., pro-efficiency?

Mohandas Gandhi spent a portion of his working day spinning in the belief it was virtuous, not wasteful, to spend his time this way. In the world of classical antiquity, making cloth was women's work. It's a rational and basically fair distribution of labor for women to do the tasks which require attention to detail and finesse, and for men to do the heavy lifting. After all, humans must be clad, for the sake of modesty and against the elements; it would have been a reproach to the Proverbs 31 woman if her children were dressed in rags. But if clothing can be made more cheaply when dark, Satanic mills dot the country-side, isn't that an improvement? The best bet the impoverished masses of India had of being decently and attractively clad lay in mass production, not in Gandhi sitting at his spinning wheel. Efficiency is a boon to mankind, not a Satanic pitfall.

For most of human history, most people were of necessity employed in farming. Men did the outside work, the plowing, the sowing, the reaping. Women did the inside work. It's a rational and mutually beneficial division of labor. Nor were women being given the short end of the stick; how many men perished of heat-stroke, working out in the hot sun all day? But once productivity gains have been realized to the point where only a tiny fraction of the labor force works on the farm, is there reason to continue to insist that men plow the fields, because that is what they did in Bible times? No, and no one does; it's only women who get that treatment. Many jobs in the modern era are desk jobs that involve no heavy lifting. They have no 'natural' gender assignment. The Bible says nothing about who should be doing them. Some readers, unfortunately, seem to think the Bible praises the Proverbs 31 woman because she is doing inefficient work that garners only a very low rate of return. They've got it inside out and backwards. Her efforts are geared toward maximal production.

The Stay-at-Home Wives recommend sewing, canning, making bread, and similar activities. Some of these activities were an inescapable part of running a household 100 years ago, or even in Bible times. Canning, of course, was not a thing in Bible times; it was not invented until the 19th century. Even then, at first it was a military technology primarily. The Mason Jar was patented in 1858, inaugurating the era of home canning. Given that the Del Monte factory is able to can produce at a lower unit cost, and better quality, than you can, the decision to take this procedure up as a handi-craft sideline is not so much a rational economic decision. Rather, there is a sort of anarcho-survivalist mindset that permeates this viewpoint. Once civilization crumbles, canning will be a valuable skill, they explain. Uncracked and unbroken Mason jars will be worth their weight in gold, they predict. Might as well get ready now.

But what is gained by baking bread rather than purchasing the store-bought product? If you evaluate labor at its true cost, the home-made bread is certainly not cheaper. When you question whether these activities are necessary or desirable, they turn hippie and start to explain that the preservatives in store-bought food will kill you, or turn you gay. Really, if they have information that specific food additives are deleterious, they ought to share than information with the FDA; however, if they found out about this through FaceBook pages that tout the benefits of Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine as cures for COVID-19, they ought to stuff a sock in it.

Just imagine for a moment if everyone followed their advice, and half the labor force leaves productive employment to take up inefficient handi-crafts. The economy would crater; the GDP would collapse. If everyone did what they say, they would turn the clock back 200 years to the living standards that prevailed in an earlier state of the economy. But what if it is actually desirable to produce as many goods and services as possible for the least input of human labor? What if God is not against improving productivity, but all for it? What if the Bible is even suggesting this, in the example given of the Proverbs 31 wife? The Bible does commend voluntary poverty, for example in the case of the rich young ruler, but I am not aware of any instance where it is suggested that someone with the care of small children ought to subject them to a lower living standard than is otherwise available. For middle class people to sentence their own children to grow up in poverty is sad, and it is not Biblical.

But what if the Bible mandates that these specific activities are what should take up a woman's time? It does not, as least not intentionally. And by the same standard, what does it mandate for men? There are Bible passages that seem to assume most men, most of the time, will be involved in agriculture: "And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon." (1 Kings 4:25). "Every man" dwelling beneath "his vine"? He's a farmer! And this undoubtedly was the case, not only in Bible times, but for most of human history, for most people. But nobody ever tries to turn this into an ethical imperative, as if God demands that all, or most, men must be farmers. Last I heard, about 3% of the American work force are involved in agriculture. That's it, 3%. Moses' law with its strictures on land tenure is geared toward making sure that farmers will be tilling their own inherited plots, not toiling for a feudal landlord. Agriculture is back-breaking work, certainly for the men, who do the outside chores in the blazing hot sun, and God's concern is to see that it is not also exploitive work. He does not insist that everyone has to do that particular thing.

An example of this kind of misapplication is 1 Timothy 5:13, "And withal they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not." So that means Paul is imposing Purdah, that women must remain within their own homes at all times? If they are not to go "house to house," then they must remain locked inside their own home, right? No, he is not talking about women who work outside the home; these women are idle, they are not doing anything useful, they are just gadding about. A woman like Lydia (Acts 16), a dealer in purple, whose work of necessity took her outside the home and to the markets and bazaars, does not fall under this condemnation, because she is not "idle." They have turned Paul inside out and upside down. He is complaining about women who are idle, whose work is not getting done because they spend their time socializing. And they use his words as an excuse to be idle and perennially under-employed, sponging off an over-worked husband!

Another misapplied verse is Titus 2:5, "To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed." The keeper is the person who has the key, not one kept prisoner in the house. Women can guard their homes without being locked inside.

If somebody tried to invent a 'farming-mandatory' Bible doctrine, the folks in the pews would patiently explain that there is no need, in the modern era, for all or most men to toil in the fields. If all or most men reverted to farming, what would we do with the mountains of excess crops that would accumulate? Pile them into compost heaps and let them rot? No one is trying to control men or micro-manage what they can do, so we do not see 'You-must-farm' promoted as a Bible doctrine. We do see 'women-must-work-at-home,' even though the specific things women were doing at home mostly do not need to be done. Nowhere does God commend busy-work or make-work; certainly the Proverbs 31 woman never stooped to that level. Why do they assume it's a good thing?

To give a concrete example, long ago it was realized it is inefficient to teach the alphabet, every man or woman in his or her own home, to one child at a time. A more efficient approach is to have one teacher standing at the front of the room drawing the letters on a board. And so they did. While antiquity is not like our period in that universal literacy was nowhere within hailing distance, those people who did know how to read and write had mostly learned at school. There were sizeable schools; here is one which made it to the pages of history only because of a terrible accident, where the roof caved in, killing 119 children:

“Likewise, about the same time, and very shortly before the sea-fight, the roof of a school-house had fallen in upon a number of their boys, who were at lessons; and out of a hundred and twenty children there was but one left alive.” (Herodotus, Histories, Book VI, 27.2).

The enrollment in this school had been 120 children before the disaster. Plainly the roof should have been inspected by some knowledgeable person, but that did not happen. What you will hear from certain quarters is that home schooling was universal before the nineteenth century, at which time the Marxists invented the idea of public education. That's entirely fanciful. What is the point of inventing fables of this sort to justify home-schooling? Children in antiquity, like children today, marched off to school to learn how to read and write:

You can agree with Aristotle or you can disagree with him, but when Aristotle advocated for free public education in the fourth century BC:

"Again, for the exercise of any faculty or art a previous training and habituation are required; clearly therefore for the practice of virtue. And since the whole city has one end, it is manifest that education should be one and the same for all, and that it should be public, and not private — not as at present, when every one looks after his own children separately, and gives them separate instruction of the sort which he thinks best; the training in things which are of common interest should be the same for all." (Aristotle, Politics, Book VII, Chapter 1).

. . .he cannot have been motivated by any 'worldview' centering around Marxism, which had not yet been enunciated. Plato, too, was an advocate for public schooling, that it should be the responsibility of the community, not just of the parents, to educate the citizen-child. Nor was Aristotle any voice crying in the wilderness; he was the tutor of Alexander the Great, who conquered a wide swath of the globe. While it's true that nothing like universal literacy would be achieved until thousands of years later, when big yellow school buses plied the roads of the countryside, nor even majority literacy, the ideal had been clearly enunciated in antiquity. So it is really lunatic-fringe material to trace the invention of public schooling to nineteenth century communism, as Douglas Wilson, for example, does.

In real life, not fantasy recreations, why do we have universal public schooling in the United States? To defeat the wiles of the Old Deluder:

How is it possible to prey so far upon the public's gullibility as to market the idea that we have universal public (government-funded) education in the United States because of Communism? Enter that old reliable, the Communist Manifesto: "One of the interesting features of the Communist Manifesto was the demand for free public education. . .At least the communists admitted what they were trying to do. A little later, when they got to their list of demands, we find that the first part of the tenth demand insists upon free education 'for all children in public schools.'" (Douglas Wilson, Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, p. 180). This form of argumentation should be familiar, because, for example, people who are opposed to the progressive income tax will point out that the Communist Manifesto demands a progressive income tax, etc. They never mention that the Confederate States of American had one, instead they say that the Communist Manifesto called for one. If the Communist Manifesto were the first to call for an income tax, this might mean something; you could at least try making the genetic fallacy fly.

Of course, it was not the first. And New England already had taxpayer-funded public schools at the time of its first publication. The Communist Manifesto was a blend of the old and the new, long-familiar demands that had been advanced for decades by other political parties, combined with their novel idea that the state should confiscate the means of production, a very new, and very bad, idea, for which they can claim sole credit. Incidentally, Douglas Wilson is aware that Plato and Aristotle advocated free public education. In his mind, this does not count, because they were crafting utopias, and, as everybody knows, 'utopia' means 'no place,' heh-heh. But at least Wilson is advocating for Christian schools; the "Trad Wives" will often insist that everyone at all times prior to the publication of the Communist Manifesto was schooled at home. This just isn't so.

Certain cults make such a point of rewriting history, you wonder if their agenda isn't simply to control women. Certainly parents who are appalled when their children come home carrying a 'Pride' flag have every right to educate their own children at home. In an emergency, one makes do. But where this is their communal plan, not an improvised emergency measure, that the women of the community should each individually teach her children exactly what every other mother is teaching, one can hardly avoid pointing out this is needlessly duplicative. Which is more efficient: to have one teacher standing in the front of the room tracing out the letters of the alphabet before a roomful of children, or to have the whole town full of stay-at-home moms repeating the same lesson at home? Where did they get the idea the Bible intends to mandate inefficiency?

What you gain by public schooling is efficiency. Instead of every mother in the community going over the same lesson plan, one teacher stands at the blackboard and forms the letters. Efficiency is not the Christian's enemy. It's why we enjoy a standard of living higher than people were able to attain in the past. Mass schooling saves labor. Efficiency is the Christian's friend, not an enemy. There is nothing wrong with enjoying a high standard of living, and nothing especially virtuous in living in such a circumscribed manner that few could be truly prosperous. Setting one half of the human race to contrived make-work is not the path to prosperity.

Back when Martha Stewart was in the news, someone wrote a parody magazine, in which, among other things, she proposed making water from scratch. I suppose you can combine hydrogen and oxygen if you really want to, and don't forget the spark for ignition, but why bother? What is gained by making everything from scratch? It's make-work to make everything from scratch. And much of the "Trad Mom" movement is basically just make-work. At best, the children are learning what other children learn; at worst they learn, in some of these circles, that the moon landing was faked, that COVID-19 doesn't exist, etc.

In the 1960's Betty Friedan, a writer for women's magazines, captured the mood of some underemployed women by pointing out that suburban moms of that era were frankly bored. People no longer live on homesteads, and the amount of labor it takes to maintain a home isn't what it used to be. Why not go back to work once the kids are in school? How not to eat the bread of idleness, which the Proverbs 31 woman wouldn't touch? Isn't it to do some sort of useful work, whatever comes to your hand, not to insist you're going to do, redundantly, what does not need to be done? While there is much that was Satanic in the women's movement, the idea that one half the human race ought to be underemployed and bored, with no useful work to perform, is not an enlightened nor a Christian ideal. Whatever the case to be made for voluntary poverty, sacrificing the living standard available to two-income families in favor of an imagined Biblical norm, the Proverbs 31 woman says no, she will not have her children shivering.

I used to describe myself as a 'complementarian,' because I agreed that women cannot serve as pastors, although there are other roles in the church, such as deacon, open to them, consistent with the Bible. This lasted up until they started calling for repeal of the 19th amendment, which gives women the vote. If they want to take away my civil rights, I'm not with them; how could I be? You might as well ask an African-American to join arms with the KKK. One can hope the "Trad Wife" approach is not embraced too widely, because if it were, it would mean, not a surge of holiness, but a giant step backward in terms of living standards. This giant step backwards is in no way mandated by the Bible. Affluence is not ungodly.

What was the literacy rate among Jews in the early church era? How were their children schooled? Why not emulate what works, not what doesn't?:

Misogyny

Unfortunately, there are 'teachers' in the church today who go well beyond anything taught in the Bible, beyond distinct roles for men and women, well into the territory of misogyny:

You can take it to the bank that when some people say the Bible does not say such-and-so, it does say just that. Were there women prophets in the New Testament church? Why, yes, one man had four daughters who prophesied: "Now this man had four virgin daughters who prophesied." (Acts 21:9). Mary's Magnificat and Hannah's Song made the cut into the Bible. Mark and avoid these false teachers. Operating a megachurch is a very profitable business and unfortunately the people drawn by that pot of honey are not always persons of good character. This particular false teacher has attracted a great deal of attention to himself by putting out public health statistics that are made up out of whole cloth, like that those who contract COVID-19 have a 99.99% chance of recovery. They don't. No doubt the belief that they do keeps attendance high, though.

A lot of their material reflects an Andrew Tate kind of mentality:

“Why, if a woman sleeps with a hundred men, is she slut-shamed, but if a man sleeps with a hundred women, he can get away with bragging about his 'conquests'? Well, consider this factor. A key that opens a hundred locks can claim to be a master key. A lock that opens to a hundred keys can only claim to be pretty much worthless.” (Douglas Wilson, Blog & Mablog, 'So You Married a Feminist,' July 18, 2018).

Misogyny is not an available Biblical option, in spite of its current popularity, because of verses like,

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28).

The problem is not with anything Paul says, or any other Bible author. The problem is that the TheoBros take a well-defined system of misogyny, invented by themselves, and attach it at various points to the Bible. They believe women generally are unintelligent, compared to men, and so this is the reason their services are not wanted as bishop. Owing to their lack of intelligence, women cannot discern between truth and error, they explain. If you've ever encountered them online, you've seen them defend this viewpoint with halting grammar and misspelt words. It can hardly escape notice that, as with white supremacy, one of the attractions of this system is compensation; the system awards them what nature's lottery omitted to. But their beliefs do not come from the Bible, nor can they in the end be defended against the Bible.

There is however a rival world religion that has invested in it. Unlike Christianity, where misogyny can be found festering in this or that corner, but cannot be found in the founding documents, in Islam, misogyny was baked into the mix very early on. Not to say that there aren't nominal 'Christians' who hold to views nearly identical to these Muslim views, but that those who do are improvising, on their own authority:

The misogynists as a rule take over intact from feminism a version of the history of the world according to which all prior states of society have been organized to oppress women, and so therefore they believe their values and concerns dovetail neatly with all prior human history. This strikes me as beyond fishy. Whatever can be said for or against the civilization that invented the Birkenhead Drill, they do not seem to have shared the misogynists' contempt for women. I say that, realizing the Birkenhead Drill was not perfectly realized in practice; there are women down in the hulk of the Titanic, though not so many as might be expected. The world I grew up in was a world filled with small courtesies directed toward women; you could expect the door to be opened for you, the chair to be pulled out, your meal paid for,— with all that was expected in return the pleasure of your company. Large courtesies too; women who commit crimes can expect lighter sentences, for some reason. This was oppression? There is a disconnect here. In any event, the misogynists have bought into the feminist scheme of history; they believe that, in pursuing their agenda of hostility and contempt toward women, they are continuing the trend of all prior civilization.

Be that as it may, these people are violating basic Bible teaching, which is by no means contemptuous of women, joint heirs with men of eternal life: "Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered." (1 Peter 3:7). Misogyny is not Biblical and is not compatible with Bible teaching on human nature; those who promote it do so on their own authority.

The intended end for accumulation in many cultures is leisure. This is the pearl of great price, what economic activity seeks as its final end and goal. Many women held this as inalienable possession in the America of the 1950s and '60s, there being some odd accumulation of ideas surrounding the British aristocracy according to which more affluent women were not expected to work outside the home. Most women, of course, never enjoyed any such luxury; but large numbers of women in suburbia did not have to go to work; no one expected them to, nor required them to. So what did they do with this great treasure? Did little Athens spring up all across America, little centers of art and culture, where their free, liberated energies buoyed and lifted the level of civilization? No, they complained and demanded redress.

One of the weirdest books I've ever read was a Marxist analysis of how exploitive it was, against women, to expect them not to work. What could be a greater assault on the dignity of a human person! We object to slavery because the slave does all the work, while the parasitical master enjoys leisure at his expense. Now that's exploitation, I'll grant. How it's exploitation to tell people they don't have to work I could never figure then, nor now. Certainly people who do not like that regime are free to express their discontent, but the language of exploitation is a spectacularly poor match for the problem, if there is a problem. Karl Marx complained that women in England were expected to haul barges:

"In England women are still occasionally used instead of horses for hauling canal boats, because the labour required to produce horses and machines is an accurately known quantity, while that required to maintain the women of the surplus-population is below all calculation. Hence nowhere do we find a more shameful squandering of human labour-power for the most despicable purposes than in England, the land of machinery." (Marx, Karl. The Capital (Vol. 1-3): Including The Communist Manifesto, Wage-Labour and Capital, & Wages, Price and Profit (Kindle Locations 5973-5976).)

Hauling barges? Let's give it to him. Being forced to live at leisure? or not really even forced, just expected. Not so much.

Here we come full circle. The "Trad Wives" want to stay at home, even if there is not much for them to do there. This isn't Biblical, in the sense that under-employment and inefficiency are not specifically Biblical mandates. Back in the 1960s and '70s, the worldly were headed in the opposite direction: they wanted out of the home and into a job market which was assumed, for some reason, to be fulfilling and deeply meaningful, not itself productive of soul-destroying boredom even if some participants reported just that outcome. These groups are, as it were, ships passing in the night, headed in opposite directions. The "Trad Wives," however, have reverted to what has to be identified as the more normal historical pattern. If the wife and mother working both in the home and out in the work-force is over-worked and over-employed,— and there is good reason to think she is,— then the "Trad Wife" without small children, restricted, she imagines, by the Bible to home work, is under-employed. Why would anyone choose such an outcome? Like they say, 'Il dolce far niente.'

Going back to the Bible, both groups seem to have been taken with a mirage and would do well, I think, to view the matter through the lens of rationality and efficiency rather than sentiment. It has taken humanity long enough to struggle its way up the slope to where adequate provision is available to all, don't turn back now. Given the opportunities open to her, is a mother with children at home able to earn enough to pay for child care? If not, then the decision to return to work is plainly not an economic one, but rather motivated by cultural imperatives, ideals, and dreams. Of course, in this post-COVID world, there are many opportunities to work at home; I do closed-captioning myself, to make ends meet. If the 40-hour work week is inconveniently long for many women, then that's a legitimate complaint, whether lodged by feminists or stay-at-home-moms. It would be nice to see more flexibility on the part of the employer. There ought to be some compromise solution available which will satisfy all legitimate demands of all parties.

But judge by the circumstances. They are mistaken in thinking placing the focus on efficiency is unbiblical; let the Proverbs 31 woman serve as your guide, go where she went. Her goal was not to artificially limit her family's income but to provide an abundant life.

The misogynists have not taken up the public defense of wife-beating, at least not yet. But their teaching does produce an atmosphere in which such atrocities can flourish. Their whole intent is to devalue women. If you've noticed, they are continually talking down women's intelligence, character, and capabilities. Because, as with white supremacy, the appeal  of this system is based largely on compensation, of supplying what nature withheld, these complaints are often delivered in screeds full of misspelled words and flailing grammar. If your nouns agree with your verbs, you're obviously either female or woke.

This ends up being reminiscent of the situation of women's rights with Islam. Rape is not legal under Islamic law, so what is the problem? Well, the standard of proof is daunting, and women's testimony is of lesser value than a man's, always. So if she says he raped her, offering DNA proof, he says it was consensual. He wins the day by design of the system, and she is left having confessed to a crime, adultery, for which she can then be punished. In a similar vein, the woman who complains of abuse against herself or her children under this patriarchalist system is simply not believed; the man who denies it is believed.

The Bible does recognize the husband's authority, but human authority is never absolute. Romans 13 explains that Nero Caesar, who then governed the Western world, had a legitimate sphere of authority. He can demand that you pay your taxes, for instance. He cannot, however, hand you a sword and demand that you execute an innocent child who has been hauled in off the street. You would be in the right to refuse, even if there is a cost to be paid. They are wrong to make the husband a tyrant who can mistreat his wife however he chooses, with no price to pay. This is in effect what they do.

They brag that they spank their children, not for wrong-doing, but simply for being insufficiently joyful to see them. Of course, spanking a child does not make him happy to see you; it just makes him realize there is a cost to be paid if he would show his true feelings. They start from the assumption that children are "vipers in diapers," as Voddie Bacham puts it, or if you like, "little bundles of sin:" "My father affectionately refers to infants as 'little bundles of sin.'" (p. 73, Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, Douglas Wilson). Their faith in corporal punishment to improve these little bundles of sin into saints knows no limits, which is why this lifestyle is always only one generation away from a expose.

Same Nature

One of the strangest things you hear from the "Trad Wives" and their enablers is the idea that men and women are of different natures. They are fairly consistent about this and seem to sincerely believe it. I wonder how they can persuade themselves that this is so; have they never noticed women giving birth to male children? What they are going against is Western Civilization, which says that women and men are of the same nature, albeit different genders:

"In all animals which can move about, the sexes are separated, one individual being male and one female, though both are the same in species, as with man and horse. But in plants these powers are mingled, female not being separated from male." (Aristotle, Generation of Animals, Book 1, Chapter 23).

There is no other way you could possibly do biology, though they would not care about this, given their tendency toward anti-science hysteria against vaccines and the like. It is so important to their ideology to emphasize the differences between the genders, that they are willing to let go altogether any concept of a shared, common, human nature. This impacts their reading of the Bible, much of which is addressed to humanity, not to one gender alone; but not in their view, because to them, there is no common human nature shared by the sexes.

Here is an example, where someone makes a fairly anodyne comment about Jesus taking on our one human nature, and getting in response, not "Of course, but--" rather, getting instead, it would appear, what is intended as a plain denial:

Jesus did, for the record, save women as well as men by taking on our one, common human nature; a second incarnation was not needed. As is so often the case, this is an instance where the worst of 'liberalism' meets up with the worst of sectarianism, and the two kiss. Bart Ehrman agrees with the "Trad Wives" than the ancients thought men and women were just different species, that's all there is to say about it:

How such a system could work, how medical science or biology would even be possible under such a regime, they do not explain. And, yes, biology was a topic of study to the ancients. Aristotle has his ups and downs, but give the man credit, he invented numerous branches of the study of nature, and pursued them in a rational fashion. You'll notice above one of our Twitter commentators blames Aristotle as the culprit behind the Trad Wives' two discrete natures. But it really wasn't him; while no progressive on women's rights, Aristotle cannot in the end to be numbered alongside the "Trad Wives" who wish to deny men and women share the same nature, because he realizes that these are actually two different genders sharing the same specific nature.

'Bald men' and 'men with hair' are a binary, no one is both, though some might be borderline; Jesus was not bald, but he assumed, and healed, the nature of bald men, because human nature is held in common by bald men and their hirsute cousins. They are not in the end different types of things. Both are human beings, just as men and women are both human beings. If you've never encountered this group, you might be surprised when you do to disccover that many of them will outright deny this. No one denies that baldness is real; no one is alleging that bald men are indistinguishable from men with hair. Just that bald men and hirsute men, both, are men.

If they really want to go with two different natures, how could that possibly be made to work? Why do women give birth to male children if they are of different species? Neither the 'liberals'  nor the "Trad Wives" will answer, because they are both fundamentally irrational, but the question demands an answer. That is the older definition of species, a community which breeds true. Sexual dimorphism is geared toward reproduction in the first place. Reproduction of what, an alien species? Stop and think: under the rubric, what was not assumed was not healed, if the "Trad Wives" are correct and men and women are not of the same nature, then Christ's incarnation and death on a cross cannot have saved women, because He became a man, male not female. In fact there must be a common human nature, or women remain unsaved.

In antiquity, several ways of analyzing such a problem were proposed. You could, encountering some unfamiliar item, ask 'Is it?' (esti). Then 'What is it, (ti esti), what kind is it, etc. You start at the top with a fairly generic answer ('a human being'), a Platonic ideal if you will, but then at the end you get down to specifying male or female, bald or with a full head of hair, and look, it's our friend Socrates, or Alcibiades, or whoever. Another way is to rappel your way down the great chain of being with Aristotle, asking is it plant or animal, specifying living things by genus and species, moving the marker until you arrive at the end at the very thing you are looking at. This way, the "different natures" approach that Bart Ehrman and the "Trad Wives" suggest, was not one of the ways of analyzing the problem of being, known and available to the ancients, nor would Western Civilization ever have been possible if they did it this way.

Partly this happens because they read the liberals and it never enters their mind the liberals could just simply be wrong. They don't read the ancient philosophers; they do read authors like Bart Ehrman who will tell you what the ancients thought, reducing it to a hopeless jumble in the process. This is similar to the way they study the Civil War, for example. If you read Marxist historians, they will explain to you that the Bible endorses slavery and so therefore Christians in the ante-bellum world were pro-slavery. North or South, it doesn't matter. But if you read the abolitionists,— I don't mean those abolitionists whose concerns were primarily secular, political or economic,— but those abolitionists whose concerns revolved around the Bible and the Christian faith, they were quite firmly convinced the Bible condemns slavery. Why? What were they looking at? They can't ask these questions, because they assume the atheist Marxists cannot be mistaken.

Part of the problem here is that they lack any ontological vocabulary by which one could say, men and women partake of the same common nature of humanity, but have different characteristics and functions. If you say men and women share a common nature, then you have said, as far as the capabilities of their vocabulary and thought process go, that men and women are indistinguishable from each other. This has consequences. When they read the Bible, they do not think the exhortations addressed to mankind in general have anything to do with women; only statements specifically mentioning women pertain to women at all. If you ask them, 'If the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, does that apply to women as well?' the only response you will get is a furrowed brow; the notion of a common, like, shared human nature is just alien to them.

This approach opens up opportunities in reading the Bible text that you probably never thought of. Here is another instance of the same phenomenon. Are there really, as some people think, two salvation plans laid forth in the Bible: one via faith, the familiar centerpiece from the preaching of the Reformers, and the other by child-bearing, reserved for the distaff side? Some people think so, namely, again, the same two culprits we've encountered before, 'liberals' and sectarians:

Heresies

The notion mentioned above, that men and women do not share any common human nature but are just different sorts of entities, might be classed as one of the heresies which have grown out of this patriarchal teaching, which is at a minimum a question of misplaced emphasis. But it is not the last; this unbalanced teaching has been productive of a fund of heresies, including the deprecation of singleness:

You might think this is just one individual ill-informed about the Bible, but it's not. It's actually fairly common to hear from the 'Trad Wives' that any women outside of their camp live lives of relentless misery. Puritanism has been defined as "The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be having a good time," and this group seems to be afflicted by this debilitating terror more than most. I would categorize the view that singleness is a"curse" as a heresy because it directly contradicts plain Bible teaching:

What is commended in scripture, by Paul and Jesus, and represented as a gift, cannot be recast as a "curse." According to their system, it is a curse, which only goes to show their system is not scriptural.  Their narrative about the nature and purpose of human life is incomplete, because, "For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven." (Mark 12:25). If that's a miserable life, then eternity will be unending misery. Certain of the cults which have adopted this 'patriarchal' view are quite remarkable for their willingness to toss scripture aside, with no more than transparent evasions to cover their tracks.

Some in the present day are willing to call themselves 'patriarchs.' This might be better avoided. Patriarch = 'patria' (clan founded by male progenitor) plus 'arche' (rule). Where does 'patria' come from? From 'pater,' father. So these men are calling themselves, simplifying, 'father rulers.' Well, who said not to call any man father?: "And call no man your father ('patera') upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." (Matthew 23:9). Now, I'm sure they don't care about this point any more than they care about anything else in the Bible, which is not at all. But the fact remains, not only are they not necessarily the founder of a tribe or clan, because their rebellious offspring might not carry on the line, but they shouldn't be addressed as 'fathers' at all; God wants sons and daughters, not co-Fathers.

Others should be aware that willingness to confute 'the culture' does not necessarily equate to a defense of scripture; you can be against both. It seems part of what led to this train wreck is the perception that feminists are hostile to marriage, as some may well be, and that this outlook must be contested, because: "Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." (Hebrews 13:4). But instead of making note of what the feminists say and then saying just the opposite, they ought to crack open that big old, unused book on the shelf; its contents might surprise them. If they got more into the word and less into worldviews, they could not make such blunders. Christian doctrine is what the Bible teaches, not 'the opposite of feminism:'