What is the role of women?

By Denice M. Orr

In our church culture we have greatly honored wifehood and motherhood.

We have realized the great influence women have on society and culture and their special giftedness to do so. The church has emphasized the tremendous value of children and the need to personally care for preschool children when their brains are developing at the fastest rate they ever will.

We have emphasized the need to take care of our families' physical health through nutrition. The church has emphasized that it is not good for man to be alone, and that wives have a special ability to strengthen husbands and help them achieve their potential.

It is true that if we have children, they are one of our ministries, a ripe mission field. These are wonderful responsibilities with great rewards, and at one time I would have felt there was no higher calling. We were correct in emphasizing their importance.

In our legalism we so greatly emphasized these things that some did not understand several important precepts. We didn't realize we were answering a different question.

The primary, chief role of a woman is to be a Christian. God has called her to eternal life and a relationship with him. Her salvation is worked out between her and her Father in exactly the same way a man's is. (There is no Jew nor Greek, male nor female--Galatians 3:28).

She is not less "qualified" for eternal life than a man. And if she is not married, married but childless, widowed or divorced, she is not less important nor neglecting her role as a human created in God's image (Genesis 1:27).

Her primary purpose is to model Christ to those around her. Just as we have examples of unmarried men and women serving God in the Bible, some women may fulfill their God-given role best as single women.

As a Christian a woman becomes responsible to discover her gifts and develop them. She seeks her special calling, purpose, ministry if you will, that God has uniquely designed her mixture of personality and gifts to fulfill. She decides and is personally convicted as to what that calling and ministry are. And as her life progresses through its varying stages, she may be involved in several different ministries.

One woman who faced choices involving the new covenant said to me, "I will let my husband study the new covenant and whatever he decides, I'll do too." She was an Ambassador College graduate who had been taught that husbands were responsible for the spiritual life of their families.

Over the years emphasizing this teaching led some women to feel they weren't responsible for studying and developing their own relationship with Jesus. This led to spiritual laziness.

This is not to say a husband's leadership isn't important in the family, it is. But there is not a hierarchical layer between the wife and God, or a replacement for her responsibilities as a Christian. A husband and wife can mutually encourage each other in their spiritual lives. They are motivated by love to do this, not law. And a woman can help a man realize his potential by letting him know she believes in his abilities. But her salvation is not his responsibility, it is hers.

Yet, we have seen how an overemphasis on a husband's responsibilities can lead to a misunderstanding of a woman's spiritual relationship with God and her role in life. We can sometimes check our logic by turning the situation around: Can a man achieve his potential and gain eternal life without ever having a wife? Of course. And so can a woman without a husband.

Let's develop our relationship with Christ, fully realizing it is the most important relationship in our life. Our primary role is to be a Christian.

June 24, 1997, WN, page 15

Copyright © Worldwide Church of God,1997