Unfading
     Beauty

          Several years ago I was privileged to be a part of the publication team for the volume produced by The Master's College administration and faculty entitled Think Biblically, Recovering a Christian Worldview (Crossway, 2003).  Shortly after its release I was contacted by the editor of The Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood requesting permission to print my chapter in their publication.  Of course I was delighted and replied with an affirmative response.  The next several weeks’ postings contain the content of the article.  It addresses the importance of a woman portraying Christian femininity so that her beauty is unfading.  Thanks for reading the postings.

PORTRAYING CHRISTIAN FEMININITY

            Holding to a biblical view of femininity is quite unpopular in our contemporary society; it is frequently perceived as demeaning, inferior, and limiting.  Regrettably, this attitude has now affected American evangelicalism so that the issue must be clarified by recovering a biblical worldview of femininity.

            Femininity, by dictionary definition, means “having qualities or characteristics traditionally ascribed to women, as sensitivity, delicacy, or prettiness.”¹ According to Elisabeth Elliot, “That word ‘femininity’ is one that we don’t hear very often anymore.  We’ve heard the word ‘feminist’ quite often in the last couple of decades, but we haven’t really heard much about the deep mystery that is called femininity.  The word has fallen on hard times, partly because of stereotypes as opposed to archetypes.”²

She then offers several thoughts that place femininity in a Christian context:

            To me, a lady is not frilly, flouncy, flippant, frivolous and fluff-brained, but she is gentle.  She is gracious.  She is godly and she is giving… 

You and I, if we are women, have the gift of femininity.  Very often it is obscured, just as the image of God is obscured in all of us…

 . . . I find myself in the sometimes quite uncomfortable position of having to belabor the obvious, and hold up examples of femininity to women who almost feel apologetic for being feminine or being womanly.  I would remind you that femininity is not a curse.  It is not even a triviality.  It is a gift, a divine gift, to be accepted with both hands, and to thank God for.  Because remember, it was His idea…

God’s gifts are masculinity and femininity within the human race and there was never meant to be any competition between them.  The Russian philosopher Bergiath made this statement: ‘The idea of woman’s emancipation is based upon a profound enmity between the sexes, upon envy and imitation.’

The more womanly we are, the more manly men will be, and the more God is glorified.  As I say to you women, ‘Be women.  Be only women.  Be real women in obedience to God.’³

Femininity’s contemporary downward spiral began in the early 1960s with the advent of Betty Friedan’s book,  The Feminine Mystique.⁴  Friedan advocated that strong women pursue power that provided the path toward self-actualization and happiness.  Her philosophy drew thousands of women into “the power trap” that eventually resulted in their cynical approach to life and disillusionment in their new found freedom.  Gloria Steinem perpetuated Friedan’s teachings in the 1970s, and moved the femininist agenda to middle-class suburban mothers.  Eventually the trickle-down effect occurred and the femininist agenda infiltrated evangelicalism; today many women in mainline evangelical churches have substituted the contemporary, cultural view of femininity for the biblical view.  However, it was neither Friedan nor Steinem who authored the philosophy that power provides self-actualization and happiness; rather, it was Satan who first suggested this lie to Eve in the Garden of Eden (Gn 3:1-8) and prompted her to challenge God’s command to refrain from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gn 2:16-17).

The woman desiring to embrace Christian femininity begins with the presuppositions that God         1) created her in His own image (Gn 1:27) and 2) designed her to fulfill specific roles (Gn 2:18).   Piper and Grudem write:

                        The tendency today is to stress the equality of men and women by minimizing the unique significance of our maleness or femaleness.  But this depreciation of male and female personhood is a great loss.  It is taking a tremendous toll on generations of young men and women who do not know what it means to be a man or a woman.  Confusion over the meaning of sexual personhood today is epidemic.  The consequence of this confusion is not a free and happy harmony among gender-free persons relating on the basis of abstract competencies.  The consequence rather, is more divorce, more homosexuality, more sexual abuse, more promiscuity, more emotional distress and suicide that come with the loss of God-given identity.⁵

 Scripture is replete with directives that instruct the Christian woman to portray her femininity by helping (Gn 2:18), exhibiting graciousness (Prv 11:16), living a pure life (1 Pt 3:1-2), dressing modestly (1 Tm 2:9; 1 Pt 3:3), developing a gentle and quiet spirit (1 Pt 3:4), submitting to her husband (Eph 5:22), and teaching the younger women (Ti 2:3-5).  Of all the Scriptures that teach on this subject, Proverbs 31:10-31 is the only one which presents a thorough literary sketch of the woman who portrays Christian femininity.  Thus, it demands our attention for this study. 

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 ⁵ John Piper and Wayne Grudem, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (Wheaton, IL:  Crossway, 1991), 33.

Next week’s posting is focused on a Biblical Sketch of the Worthy Woman.

"Portraying Christian Femininity" by Patricia E. Ennis is from the book Think Biblically edited by John MacArthur with The Master's College Faculty, copyright 2003.  Used by permission of Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org.

Matt 5:1-12 and Luke 6:20-26 are passages of Scripture that are commonly referred to as the Beatitudes.  When describing the Beatitudes, John MacArthur writes that blessed literally means happy, fortunate, and blissful.

It speaks of more than a surface emotion. Jesus was describing the divinely-bestowed well-being that belongs only to the faithful.  The Beatitudes demonstrate that the way to heavenly blessedness is antithetical to the worldly path normally followed in pursuit of happiness.  The worldly idea is that happiness is found in riches, merriment, abundance, leisure, and such things.  The real truth is the very opposite.  The Beatitudes give Jesus’ description of the character of true faith.¹

As a conclusion to this series on hospitality, I would like to share with you a word I coined to summarize its contents—hospitalitude; it is drawn from the word hospitality meaning to pursue the love of strangers and beatitude signifying the character of true faith.  It is my prayer that you are stimulated to practice biblical hospitality so that the Hospitalitudes will be evident in your life.

The Hospitalitudes²

Happy are those

              · who practice biblical hospitality, because in so doing, they are demonstrating their love for God

              (1 John 3:17-18).

              · who “pursue the love of strangers” for they are choosing to obey their heavenly Father’s command and modeling His character (Rom 12:13b).

              · in church leadership who practice hospitality for they allow others to observe them in their homes where their character is most graphically revealed (1 Tim 3:1-2; Titus 1:5-8).

            · who include people of all cultures on their guests list, for in this manner they are demonstrating the expansive love of their heavenly Father (John 3:16).

            · who develop hospitality management skills, for in this way they are capable of being faithful stewards of all that our Lord has provided for them (1 Cor 4:2).

            · who intentionally extend hospitality to “the others”—singles, widows, the grieving, and those experiencing food insecurity—for they are choosing to live out biblical compassion (James 2:14-16).

            · whose homes are both a place of refuge and a center for evangelism, for they are glorifying their heavenly Father by their actions (1 Pet 2:11-12) and fulfilling His instructions “to do the work of an evangelist” (2 Tim 4:5).

            · who do not become disillusioned in practicing biblical hospitality, for they understand that in due time they will reap if they do not grow weary (Gal 6:9).

            · who acknowledge that they are unable to practice biblical hospitality in their own strength, for by this means they learn that our Lord’s power overcomes their weaknesses and allows them to become vessels used for His honor and glory (2 Cor 12:9-10;  Phil 4:13)!

NOTES

 ² © Pat Ennis, 2006

Next week’s posting is focused on Portraying Christian Femininity.

From Practicing Hospitality, the Joy of Serving Others by Pat Ennis and Lisa Tatlock, © (2007).  Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.

Your opportunities to use hospitality as a way of displaying compassion are literally limitless, but to get you started let’s target several categories of people—singles, widows, the grieving, individuals experiencing food insecurity (low income, poverty level, or the homeless), and the elderly.

Singles

              Single is defined as “pertaining to the unmarried state.”¹  The October 20, 2003, cover story of Business Week, reports,

The U.S. Census Bureau's newest numbers show that married-couple households—the dominant cohort since the country's founding—have slipped from nearly 80% in the 1950s to just 50.7% today. That means that the U.S.'s 86 million single adults could soon define the new majority. Already, unmarrieds make up 42% of the workforce, 40% of homebuyers, 35% of voters, and one of the most potent—if pluralistic—consumer groups on record.²

As you consider your guest lists, consider the singles you know who could be included.  More than likely, their life experiences are rich, and they will enhance your social gathering.

Widows

A widow is “a woman who has lost her husband by death and has not remarried.”³  In 1999, almost half (45%) of the women over 65 were widows. Nearly 700,000 women lose their husbands each year and will be widows for an average of 14 years.  There were over four times as many widows (8.4 million) as widowers (1.9 million) in 1999.⁴

Scripture provides a clear definition of a Christian widow and specific instructions on how the church is to respond to her if she has no means of providing for her daily needs.  A Christian widow, according to 1 Tim 5:3-16, is one who is 60 years or older—in the New Testament culture 60 was considered retirement age (5:9).  The church is instructed to nurture widows by

· honoring them (1 Tim 5:3).

· providing for their daily needs if they lack financial resources (Acts 6:1; 1 Tim 5:9).

· visiting them (James 1:27).

As with the single, the widow possesses a wealth of life experiences that will enhance your social gathering—in the beginning of the grieving process she may not be the life of the party, but your invitation, extended with a heart of compassion, may allow her recovery process to accelerate.  Remember, as believers, we are instructed to be sensitive and compassionate to the pain and sorrows of others (Rom 12:15; Col 3:12)—and there is a 50/50 chance that one day you will be in the same situation (Gal 6:7)!⁵

The Grieving

Grieving individuals are an interesting dichotomy—generally they desperately need nourishment but have no desire to eat. Having lost both of my parents, I can attest to the blessing that hospitality to those grieving provides.  As we fulfill Rom 12:15, more often than not, we will find that we have provided a ministry of compassion that no restaurant or catered meal could.

Compassion and Food Security

            Food Security is a twenty-first century term that describes whether or not an individual has access, at all times, to enough food for an active, healthy life; you are more than likely familiar with terms like low income, poverty level, or the homeless—which describe food insecurity.  This term should touch the hearts of believers when they consider that the Lord Jesus, during His earthly ministry, was in essence a homeless person (Matt 8:20; 2 Cor 8:9).  According to the USDA Hunger Report, the prevalence of food insecurity rose from 10.7 percent in 2001 to 11.1 percent in 2002, while the prevalence of food insecurity with hunger rose from 3.3 percent to 3.5 percent.⁶

While our pantries may not always be filled with all of the delicacies that our palate might desire, most of us have an adequate enough food supply to be considered food secure. We can demonstrate hospitality and compassion by designating a portion of our food budget each month to those who encounter food insecurity.  You may ask, “What would I buy, or how would I begin?”  If your church has a program in place, consider supporting it. If not, begin by researching what programs your local community might have.  Conducting an Internet search should yield websites for the local agencies that can provide a list of needed food and non-food items. These lists become a helpful resource for purchasing groceries to share with others.  While you may lack the resources to purchase a full bag of groceries, you probably can manage several items—even if it means excluding the ice cream or chips from your grocery list.  Perhaps you can collect the items for several weeks and then make a trip to the distribution center of your choice to apply hospitality and compassion in a practical way—and if you have children, do include them in the delivery process. 

Sharing one’s time and/or resources at an agency whose primary purpose is to meet the needs of the food insecure is another way to practice compassion and hospitality.  Again, an Internet search can provide you with a description of some of the needs of a typical Rescue Mission.  Clearly everyone could do something to demonstrate hospitality and compassion to the food insecure throughout the year. 

            The Elderly

              Before I bring this section to a close, I want to share with you another category of the food insecure—the elderly.  I recently read an article entitled “The Driver Behind Meals on Wheels,”⁷ which paints a word picture of Helen Barnes who, at the age of 58, helped found Meals on Wheels in 1971.  At 90 she still drives two Meals on Wheels routes each week and arises each Monday morning at 4:30 a.m. to bake coffeecakes and assorted treats for the more than 50 Meals on Wheels volunteers.  As the article suggests, more than 65 percent of their clients live alone, and the volunteer may well be the only person a client sees all day.  Using the Meals on Wheels concept is a perfect way for believers to apply Matt 25:40 by providing both spiritual and physical sustenance to those who are experiencing food insecurity!

 ¹ Webster’s College Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Random House, 1997), s.v. “single.”

 ² Found at www.unmarried.org

 ⁷ Gin Phillips, “The Driver Behind Meals on Wheels,” American Profile, (Nashville, Tennessee, 2003), 6-10.

Next week’s posting is focused on the Beatitudes and Biblical Hospitality. 

From Practicing Hospitality, the Joy of Serving Others by Pat Ennis and Lisa Tatlock, © (2007).  Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.

While you may think of hospitality and compassion as inviting someone to your home for meals or lodging, a journey through Scripture introduces you to individuals who chose to extend compassionate hospitality in a variety of ways:

· Pharoah’s daughter chose to extend long-term hospitality to baby Moses (Exod 2:6-10).

· Shobi brought beds, basins, vessels, and sheep to David and his people while they were in exile (2 Sam 17:27-29).

· Elijah restored the life of the Widow’s son—a relationship that was cultivated because she chose, out of her need, to share with him (1 Kings 17:18-24).

· Nehemiah wept, mourned, prayed, and fasted for Jerusalem and its citizens (Nehemiah 1:1-11).

· Job’s friends traveled from their homes to mourn with and comfort him in his pain (Job 2:11-13).

· Job wept for those in trouble and grieved for the poor (Job 30:25).

· David displayed sympathy to those who falsely accused him (Ps 35:13-14).

· The Jews came to comfort Mary and Martha at Lazarus’ death (John 11:19).

· Paul communicated the Gospel message to all classes of people—Jew and Gentile alike (1 Cor 9:22).

· The Lord Jesus

o having experienced physical hunger, empathized with the hunger of others (Matt 4:2).

o offered rest to the spiritually bankrupt (Matt 11:28-30).

o brought comfort and encouragement to the weak and oppressed (Isa 40:11, 42:3; Matt 12:18-21).

o ministered to physical and spiritual needs (Matt 14:13-21; Mark 6:31-44, 8:2; Luke 9:11-17; John 6:1-13).

o attended to the afflicted (Luke 7:13; John 11:33, 35).

o alleviated the plight of the diseased (Mark 1:41).

o offered hope to perishing sinners (Matt 9:36; Luke 19:41; John 3:16).

o modeled the character qualities necessary for those in spiritual leadership (Heb 5:2, 7).

Putting your scriptural journey in practical terms, if you are going to exhibit compassionate hospitality, you will consider

· nurturing the abandoned.

· providing material needs.

· weeping, mourning, praying, and, when appropriate, fasting for others.

· sharing your faith with the spiritually bankrupt.

· encouraging the weak and oppressed.

· assisting with the needs of the infirm.

Next week’s posting is focused on Hospitality as a Way of Displaying Compassion.

From Practicing Hospitality, the Joy of Serving Others by Pat Ennis and Lisa Tatlock, © (2007). Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.