The Confident Woman: Start Today Living Boldly and Without Fear Page 3
You know that Mr. Wesley had to possess perseverance—and a healthy sense of humor—to keep pressing on in the face of rejection and failure. He ultimately succeeded because he had a classic case of confidence. A refusal to give up is one of the symptoms of confidence. I encourage you to keep trying, and if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again!
Chapter Two
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
God never intended for women to be less than men in anyone’s estimation. Neither are they above men. Both genders should work together for the common good of all. The competitive spirit that exists in our society today between men and women is downright foolish. When women began to realize they would have to fight for their rights, some of them became extreme in their attitudes. It seems that we imperfect human beings always live in the ditch on one side or the other. Like a novice driver, we start to run off one side of the road, then over-correct so severely that we end up careening off the other side!
The key to peace between the sexes is balance. Let’s see what God has to say about this subject.
A God’s-Eye-View of Women
God created women, and He said that everything He created was very good. Learn to believe about yourself what God says about you, not what other people have said about you. God created you, and He looked at you and proclaimed, “Very good!” You are one of God’s works of art, and Psalm 139 states all of His works are wonderful. Therefore, you must be wonderful!
Because Eve initially disobeyed God and tempted Adam, women have gotten a bad rap ever since. I believe Adam should have stepped up to the plate and refused to do what Eve was tempting him to do—instead of doing it and then blaming her for the mess they were in. After all, God did create Adam first, and it was to Adam that He gave the command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
I am sure Adam told Eve about God’s command, but it certainly was not her fault that he didn’t use discipline when temptation came. Actually, the Bible states that sin came into the world through one man, Adam (Romans 5:12, 1 Corinthians 15:21, 22). I am not making excuses for Eve here. She made a bad choice and needed to take responsibility for her part, but she was not the sole cause of a great sin. It was a team effort.
You know the story: Satan tempted Eve initially and then used her to tempt Adam. Each of them is responsible. Unfortunately, men and women have blamed each other for creating problems since the Garden of Eden. It is time for a change.
Have you ever wondered why Satan approached Eve with his lies, instead of Adam? It may have been because he thought he could play on her emotions easier than Adam’s. Although it’s not always the case, women are usually more emotionally driven, while men are more logical.
In any case, Satan was successful in getting Eve to do what she knew she was not supposed to do. He lured her into sin through deception, and he’s still doing the same thing today to anyone who will listen to him.
When God dealt with what Adam and Eve had done, He dealt not only with them but with Satan also. God said to Satan, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her Offspring; He will bruise and tread your head underfoot and you will lie in wait and bruise His heel” (Genesis 3:15).
Loren Cunningham and David Joel Hamilton make an interesting observation in their book Why Not Women?: “Ever since the Garden of Eden when God told Satan that the Seed of the woman would bruise his head, the devil has been ferociously attacking women all over the world.”1
Genesis 3 makes it clear that Satan and the woman are at odds with one another. Why? Satan has hated women almost from the beginning, because it was a woman who would ultimately give birth to Jesus Christ, the defeater of Satan and all of his evil works. Just as God said, her offspring bruised his head (his authority).
Looking Back at Women
In ancient Greek mythology and literature, women were often depicted as an evil curse that men must endure. The philosopher Plato, for example, taught that there was no Hades. He said the true punishment of men was to endure women. (Wouldn’t you love to see him interviewed on Oprah?) He said men could not get into the world without women—but they didn’t know how to put up with them after that. Plato is regarded by many as a great philosopher and many of his ideas have influenced our culture. Could it be that some of the lingering attitudes of women can be traced back all the way to 400 B.C.?
In one of the oldest documents of European literature, Homer’s Iliad, he contends that women were the cause of all strife, suffering, and misery. They were possessions to be won and had no intrinsic value whatsoever.2
The poet Hesiod is another guy that wouldn’t be invited to speak at a N.O.W. convention. He contended that Zeus, the supreme god in Greek mythology, hated women.3 Hesiod also claimed that Zeus created women from one of ten sources: a long-haired sow, the evil fox, a dog, the dust of the earth, the sea, the stumbling and obstinate donkey, the weasel, the delicate and long-maned mare, the monkey, or the bee. Not exactly “sugar and spice and everything nice,” is it?
To make matters worse, Hesiod painted women as the source of all temptation and evil. To him, women were a curse, created to make men miserable.
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Here’s the bottom line: Men need women, and women need men.
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From the three examples above, you can see that Western misogyny—the hatred of women—has deep roots. I believe that Satan has methodically taken centuries to build wrong thinking about women into the minds of society. This wrong thinking has caused women to be mistreated, and in turn, has caused women to lack confidence. It seems that women either have no confidence or they are radical feminists trying to correct a real problem in an extremist way that creates more problems than it solves.
Here’s the bottom line: Men need women, and women need men. This does not mean that all men and women have to get married, but it does mean that the world needs both men and women in order to run smoothly. God created us to need each other. The radical feminist has the same attitude toward men that men have had toward her in the past. She hates them and feels she can get by without them just fine.
Certainly, women have been abused, maligned, and treated with contempt and disrespect throughout history. But, a bitter, vengeful attitude is not the way to correct this wrong.
Let me take this to a personal level: I was sexually abused by my father for many years. I also suffered abuse at the hands of other men throughout the first 25 years of my life. I developed a hardened attitude toward all men and adapted a harsh, hard manner. I acted like I didn’t need anybody. I developed a phony personality that I actually hated, but I played the role because I was terribly afraid of being hurt again—or taken advantage of. Many radical feminists have been abused in ways that are unspeakable. They are hurt, wounded little girls trapped inside adult bodies, afraid to come out for fear of being hurt more.
I understand the feelings of these women. But I want everyone to know that, through God’s Word and the help of the Holy Spirit, I was healed in my spirit, emotions, mind, will, and personality. It was a process that unfolded over several years, and I have enough first-hand experience to highly recommend God’s ways of restoration and healing, rather than the world’s ways. It is much better to let God heal you than to spend your life being bitter about the past.
Shocking Statistics
Around our world, horrible crimes and unspeakable acts happen every day to women and children who are powerless to stop them. One disturbing trend that seems to have increased in strength over the last ten to twenty years is the sex trafficking industry—human beings kidnapped and sold into the sex trade, usually into prostitution rings or worse. The U.S. State Department estimated that in 2004, out of the estimated 600,000 to 800,000 men, women, and children trafficked across international borders each year, approximately 80% are women and girls and up to 50% are minors.4
Neary is one of those statistics.5 She grew up in rural Cambodia. Her parents died when she was a child, a
nd,
in an effort to give her a better life, her sister married her off when she was seventeen. Three months later they went to visit a fishing village. Her husband rented a room in what Neary thought was a guest house. But when she woke the next morning, her husband was gone. The owner of the house told her she had been sold by her husband for $300 and that she was actually in a brothel. For five years, Neary was raped by five to seven men every day. In addition to brutal physical abuse, Neary was infected with HIV and contracted AIDS. The brothel threw her out when she became sick, and she eventually found her way to a local shelter. She died of HIV/AIDS at the age of twenty-three.6
It gets worse. It’s estimated that between 114 million and 130 million women around the world experience female genital circumcision (FGM), an ancient practice still used today to keep young girls “pure” and controlled by their families. The ritual, which is often life-threatening, makes sexual intercourse or childbearing extremely painful and traumatic experiences. It’s mostly practiced in Africa and the Middle East.7
Let’s bring it closer to home.
Every two and a half minutes, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted and one in six American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape. Two-thirds of the rapes that occur are carried out by people that the victim knows.8
Ten percent of violent crimes in 2003 including physical assault and battery were committed by the victim’s intimate partner and women were typically victimized by intimate partners at a greater rate than men.9 In the same year, 9% of murder victims were killed by their spouse or intimate partner. The majority of victims, 79% to be exact, were female.10
It’s important to note that each of the sad, shocking statistics above affects the life of a precious person, created in God’s image. We must never see only numbers; we must see people.
We were recently ministering in Africa, and while we were there we visited an outreach program for children affected by the AIDS pandemic. During our visit, we noticed a row of huts on a main street, and one of our hosts pointed out that if a female child could not find food or lodging for the day, she might go to one of these huts to be used as a prostitute in exchange for enough money for food and a bed to sleep in. Many of the girls reduced to this horrible lifestyle were as young as eight and nine years old.
The degradation of women is a worldwide problem. And this problem is at its worst in parts of the world that have no Christian heritage. This tragic situation violates God’s standards of fairness. Jesus said there is no more male or female—we are all one in Him (Galatians 3:28). The total sum of our worth and value is based on who we are in Christ, not whether or not we have a Y chromosome.
Our gender does not determine our value; our God does.
The Women’s Rights Movement
We should appreciate the women who have fought for women’s rights. The positive changes that have come about since 1848, for example, are wonderful. The women’s rights movement began when five women met for tea. Their conversation turned to the situation of women. One of the women, Elizabeth Stanton, poured out her discontent over the limitations placed on women under America’s new democracy.11 After all, she wondered, hadn’t the American Revolution been fought seventy years earlier to win freedom from tyranny? The women had taken equal risks as the men, yet they gained no freedom. They still weren’t able to take an active role in the new society.
So, these five women decided to convene the world’s first Women’s Rights Convention. The gathering took place in Seneca Falls, New York, at the Wesleyan Chapel on the nineteenth and twentieth of July in 1848.
In the resulting Declaration of Sentiments, Stanton carefully enumerated areas of life where women were treated unjustly. She used the pattern of the Declaration of Independence and stated, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women (emphasis added) are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Stanton’s version read, “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.” Then it went into specifics:
Married women were legally dead in the eyes of the law.
Women were not allowed to vote.
Women had to submit to laws when they had no voice in their formation.
Married women had no property rights.
Husbands had legal power over and responsibility for their wives—to the extent that they could imprison or beat them with impunity.
Divorce and child custody laws favored men, giving no rights to women.
Women had to pay property taxes, but had no representation in the levying of these taxes.
Most occupations were closed to women, and when women did work they were paid only a fraction of what men earned.
Women were not allowed to enter professions such as medicine or law.
Women had no means to gain an education since no college or university would accept women students.
With only a few exceptions, women were not allowed to participate in the affairs of the church.
In other words, women were being robbed of their self-confidence and self-respect, and were made totally dependent on men.
However, change was in the air, and Stanton and her colleagues were hopeful that the future could and would be brighter for women.
Of course, history tells us that the battle for women’s rights was long and grueling. Initially, people were shocked and outraged that women were demanding to vote. Even many women were aggressively against it. The newspapers launched a vicious attack on the movement; nevertheless, it continued to grow rapidly.
Where Are We Today?
As we know, women have come a long way, and I personally appreciate those who fought the good fight and paved the way for the freedom I enjoy today. Sad to say, though, discrimination against women is still apparent in many areas. I recently read that in the United States, women still earn only 77% of the salary a man does for doing the same job.12
As a woman in ministry I have dealt with my share of criticism and judgment for no reason other than because I am a woman, and according to what many people believe, “Women shouldn’t preach or teach God’s Word and especially not to men.”
I will respond to this contention later and show that God has always used women in ministry. In fact, Psalm 68:11 says, “The Lord gives the word (of power); the women who publish (the news) are a great host.”
Because of the lingering discrimination, many women still lack confidence. They live in fear of stepping beyond what they feel is acceptable “female” behavior. I can remember feeling that I wasn’t“normal” because I was aggressive, had dreams and goals, and wanted to do great things. I kept trying to settle down and be a “normal” woman, but it just never worked for me. I am glad now that I found courage to do something radical and chase my dreams.
It is time for the truth to be told and for people to realize the attack on women is actually from Satan himself. He works through people, but he is the source of the problem. And his handiwork litters our history. Women have been habitually discriminated against, contrary to God’s will. In Genesis, the Bible simply states
“So God created man in His own image, in the image and likeness of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it [using all its vast resources in the service of God and man]; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:27, 28)
It certainly sounds to me as if God is speaking to the man and woman equally, giving them both rights and authority and telling both of them to live fruitful lives.
We see in other parts of God’s Word that He did establish how authority s
hould flow from Him to man and then to woman. The Bible states that the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the Head of the church. The woman is to submit to her husband as is fitting in the Lord. However, in my estimation and understanding of God’s nature, that was never intended to include abuse, control, manipulation, or mistreatment of any kind. In fact, man is instructed in God’s Word to love his wife as he loves his own body; to nurture her and treat her kindly and tenderly (Ephesians 6:21–33).
God is a god of order, and He has established lines of authority that allow an orderly, peaceful existence. He expects us to submit to and respect one another. If a married couple can handle themselves the way God intended, their relationship will be wonderful and unbelievably fruitful. However, pride destroys most relationships. It’s the great “I” factor. Selfish, self-centered people do whatever they must to get their own way, including abusing those they were intended to nourish and protect.
If a person with authority administers it in a godly way, it becomes a protection and safety net for those under it. But, if an authority figure abuses his or her position, using it for power and personal gain, then those under the authority will resist and rebel, or, at best, they will be filled with resentment. I have a lot of authority, and I have learned that “the boss does not have to be bossy.” People admire authority and actually want someone to look up to—as long as they are treated well.