This quote is from the book Female Piety by John Angell James. It is an excellent collection of his sermons that preached for the edification of all in his congregation, but most specifically women!
"It is not to the honor of religion nor to the credit of a wife and mother for a husband to come home at the dinner hour, expecting to see everything ready and in order, and to find all in confusion, nothing properly arranged, and have his time wasted by waiting for his wife, who has not finished her benevolent rambles or her morning's attendance at some females' meeting. Nor is it much for his happiness on coming home in the evening, suffering from the fatigue and vexation of the world's rough business, and when wanting the soothing influence of a wife's sweet voice, to have to sit hours in solitude and sadness becasue she is away at some public service. This is not the way to promote connubial felicity, or to interest his mind on behalf of the objects of his wife's zeal. It will never do to serve the Lord with time taken from domestic order, comfort, and family duty. A neglected husband and family are a sad comment upon some women's religious activity; and it is a comment not infrequently expressed by those who see it in the appearance of the children and the house."
And now comes the outcry from every feminist in the land saying that the qoute just promotes every kind of evil they have fought against. "The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. IT was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Eash suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husbnad at night--she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question--"Is this all?"(The Feminie Mystique, Chapter 1)
Betty Freidan rocked the United States with her book. After reading the almost 400 pages to find out what this "Feminie Mystique" is you learn that the Feminie Mystique is the bane of all American women's existance and that it comes from being locked in your home taking care of a husband, children, home. At almost the end of the book she gives you the key to spring from the proverbial trap you have been living in as a woman. "The key to the trap is, of course, education. The feminie mystique has made higher education for women seem suspect, unnecessary and even dangerous. But I think that education, and only education, has saved, and can continue to save, American women from the greater dangers of the feminie mystique."(The Feminine Mystique, Chapter 14)
I could go on. But I think I'll stop for now and just give a few comments.
Betty Friedan makes a good point. If all women are living for is matching the slip covers and taking their children to Cub Scouts, that is a pretty depressing and hopeless existance. But so is living for education and being part of mainstream society. What makes life worth living?
Life is worth living because God created it. Being in Christ is what makes life worth living. Is being a stay at home mom glamerous? No, probably not all the time. Is being a corporate executive glamerous? No, probably not all the time. But finding your satisfaction in either of those things, apart from Christ, is not good. Being a Christian means your life is not your own anymore, whether you are married, have no kids or tons of kids, or single. Living in such a way to show the gospel through what you do(whether it is as a housewife or a corporate executive) is what matters. If you are a housewife, be a housewife for the glory of God. If you are a corporate executive, be a corporate executive for the glory of God.
It is of no credit for a woman to worhip the god of domesticity. It is also of no credit for a woman to worship the god of education or society. It's sin.
Worship the One true God and do what you do for the glory of God and do it according to his plan.
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