Keep her Barefoot and Pregnant

I'm not one for blog hype, but when Christians start talking about sex, I'm all over it. Donald Miller's blog posts about love this week have set the blogosphere on fire, from angry feminists to angry conservatives; every one of them was pissed, and every one in between was in love with Miller's Eldredge-meets-Driscoll brand of romance.

Now I was offended too, not because I didn't agree with Miller, but because I did. I am easily lulled into the new-reform movement's ideas about love: boy is in charge of the love story, boy woos girl, girl stands back and lets it happen, making sure that she doesn't get too power-hungry and spoil the whole thing. And I was that girl that wanted too much, that did too much, that thought too much and talked too much. I was all wrong inside that model, and now I'm bearing the fruits of my sin, of my lack of desire to be submissive, to be invisible.

Now I'm all for submission in marriage, but by teaching that women must submit to their husbands in all things, we perpetuate a culture and gender-promoted view of men-on-top. It's not as easy as "The bible says it...that settles it." Submission is bigger than "Do what you're told." Submission is about trust in a relationship, and trust can never be established when we initiate a relationship in this inegalitarian way. Maybe at some point, the relationship can handle that kind of restructuring, but for a woman to make herself less to be attractive to men is to take away her God-given identity in order to conform to a chapter and verse.

As a good friend reminded me yesterday, we Christian women love to talk about being a Proverbs 31 woman, but we like to forget how strong that woman is: "The heart of her husband trusts in her...(v. 11)."

That's all for now. Don't trash yourself.