His or Her?

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about leadership. Between studying the presidents, taking government class, Generation Joshua, and some different talks and sermons I’ve heard, the Lord has been giving me a clearer view of Biblical leadership. We live in a culture that had basically turned away from God’s plan and created its own formula. This has affected practically every aspect of the way we live. This year, I am the president of our 4-H club. I didn’t run for election, in fact, I had told people that I didn’t want to be the president. Our club leader personally asked me to please be the president because no one else would. 4-H is not a Christian organization. When I serve our club, I look at it as a ministry out in the world, but the very sad reality is that this is happening even in the Christian circle. Today, we have a great lack of true leaders. Why is this? We find the answer in Genesis.

            When God created the world He created women to be the helpers of men. Adam was created to care for God’s creation and Eve was created to help Him. When they disobeyed God and ate of the forbidden fruit in Genesis chapter 3, God told Eve that she would desire to be over her husband.  (Genesis 3:16) Since that day, women have had a desire to be over men. And just as Adam was persuaded of his wife to eat the forbidden fruit, many men today have been persuaded to just let the girls handle it. As history has progressed, the gender war has only worsened. Our current culture has done a 180 degree turn from away from the Biblical pattern of leadership. Even the church has let Biblical guidelines go. We have women preachers, divorced pastors and elders, perverted leadership, and the church often stands back and lets it go. (1 Timothy 3:1-7) Why? Because it isn’t politically correct and today’s society is all about being politically correct. We can’t say women shouldn’t be pastors, because that would somehow be putting men above women. We can’t say a woman can’t be President because that would not be giving equality to all people. This is a very sad reality that we live in.

            This political correctness has led to a decline in more areas of life than we may even realize. Even our language has been destroyed because of sexism. How?  Study the rules of pronouns for instance. Personal pronouns are supposed to agree with the gender of the person. No problem that is, until you have to use a pronoun for a type of person – meaning their gender is unknown. In the proper rules of English we would just use the masculine. But we can’t do that anymore because that would be putting the man above the woman.

For example: When the worker comes to our door, they will give us some paperwork.

In the old proper form: When the worker comes to our door, he will give us some paperwork.

We now use plural pronouns to replace singular nouns just to be politically correct. When we turn from a Biblical format for leadership suddenly everything has to change because we are going against God’s plan.

            Now, I know this next paragraph is going to be rather controversial, especially as election time nears, but for the sake of not being politically correct I am going to share. I personally do not believe that it is right for a woman to hold a position of governmental leadership. Leading the nation was not and is not the woman’s role. I know what some may be thinking, “What about Deborah?”  I think a key issue to understand about the story of Deborah in Judges Chapters 4 & 5 is that it wasn’t a good thing. Chapter 4 starts by saying, “And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, when Ehud was dead.” The children of Israel were not following after the Lord during that time. I get tired of people using the story of Deborah as the reason why women should be in public office. In truth, when people begin talking about Deborah, we should be waking up and saying, “This is not good. We need to find some Godly men.” We should not be saying, “Just like in Deborah’s day there are not enough good men to lead so therefore the women need to take charge.” At the very mention of Deborah, we should be falling on our knees and begin begging God to raise up men that will be good and Godly leaders.

            All of this is not to lay blame on men or on women, we are both at fault. And this is not to say that men are better than women. Scripture tells us that in Christ, men and women are equals. The difference is we were given different roles. The person that cleans the dishes at a restaurant is of no less value than the person who cooks the food. If either one of them were gone the whole restaurant experience would be very unpleasant. So it is with men and women. We were created to complement each other with our God given roles. Yes, I am the president of a 4-H club, and the reality is, it saddens me. I would much rather have the young men in our club step up and take charge. We ladies need to be helping and encouraging the men in our lives to be leaders, and men, we need you to step up. This means standing alone. Now being that I am not a man, I can’t speak for you as well as I can for a woman, but let me share something with you. I have a leader, first-born personally. I always have, probably always will, which is why I notice so acutely the lack of manly leadership. Because I am a woman with a leader mentality I see how easy it can be for a woman to just pick up the slack where men leave off. It is a struggle, I know, for a young woman who has the “desire over him” sinful nature to submit to manly leadership, but ladies, we need to learn to submit and guys, we need you to lead.

            So what are ladies to do? Take the role that God has given and be help meets, whether that is to your Dad, brothers, or spouse – if you’re to that stage in life – and serve to the glory of God. They say the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Think about it. Behind ever great man there is at least one woman. I would rather be a mother like Mary Ball Washington, or Susannah Wesley that raises and trains her children to be the great leaders of history, than a Susan B. Anthony or others that I could name. These women were great, not because they were the first woman president or women’s rights activists, but because they were the mothers of great men. I wonder how many great men we have lost simply because women have left behind their God given roles. We, as the body of Christ, need to start taking a stand for what is right according to the Word of God, not what our culture says is right, but what Scripture says is right.

God Bless!
Kaila