biblical worldviewing

How the Lord got my attention and showed me biblical worldviewing in a waiting room full of pregnant women.

My pastor from my church in Greensboro greatly blessed me by giving me a stack of books along with the books he was lending me for my short stay at Reformed Theological Seminary. It is to my own detriment that I have not begun to go through these books until just recently when I started this one during a period when our internet went out (which tells me something about my priorities/bad habits):

Sinclair Ferguson’s exposition on the book of Ruth has been opening my eyes to some of the great dramatic and narrative aspects of God’s Word. Reading Ferguson’s comments on Ruth has allowed me to take Ruth slowly enough to really ruminate on what’s happening in the book–I mean, how hard is it to be an old widow with no one but a foreigner for a daughter-in-law with no job in today’s world? Imagine a few thousand years ago! These women had fallen upon desperate times during a famine–a time that was already desperate enough in the land. If it wasn’t for God’s wisdom in restoring these women according to his plan, they would surely perish.

I took Sarah in for her scheduled check-up at human services on Friday. It really breaks my heart that we can’t afford to go to a private doctor’s office and get good, personal care for our first baby, but the quality of medical care at the county human services is no less than any good doctor. Human services lacks that personal touch and comes with a lot of waiting–but it’s free. The other day, as I sat in that waiting room crowded with all these pregnant women, I was praying with my eyes open. About 70% of the women are Hispanic and don’t speak English; the rest are mainly African American with a couple Vietnamese and other Asians here and there. There are little children running around everywhere, presumably because they would have no one to look after them if the mother did not bring them in, and maybe because they too have appointments with human services. There was no way for me to know if those women were married or unmarried, or even if the fathers who were not present (there was probably 1 man for every 7 women) are even part of their lives at all, but I was centered on one verse from Ruth. It is a benediction that Naomi spoke over Ruth and Orpah when Naomi was telling the women to depart from her.

Ruth 1:8,9 But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go, return each of you to her mother’s house. May the LORD deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The LORD grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband!” Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept.

Naomi’s prayer is answered later in the story of Ruth. We see how Ruth makes a decision that is much like a profession of faith (”your God will be my God”) and becomes included in the Covenant of God, and experiences the blessings of the Covenant. I found myself looking around the room at those women and praying for each one, saying “May the Lord grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband!” As we have seen from the story of Ruth, it is well within God’s power to see that every one of those women are brought into the Covenant and given the blessing of a worthy husband.

This quote is just great, on so many levels. It’s from the introduction to his new book Future Men.

At the beginning of his life, a boy does not know what century he was born in, and consequently exhibits to many of his politically correct and agast elders some of the same traits exhibited by the boyhood chums of Sennacherib and Charlemagne. He doesn’t know any better–yet. But in our day, many of these designed masculine traits are drilled or drugged out of him by the time he is ten. Faith resists this ungodly process and defines sin by the Scriptures and not by pietistic traditions.

I remember one day when I was teaching a lesson to college students in an Asian country, the English exercise took the form of a discussion question. The book told of a shipwreck, and 9 survivors left in a liferaft. The 9 people spanned demographics, including the middle-aged, the elderly, a young college athlete, and a pregnant woman. The liferaft could only hold 8 people, so supposedly, one person must be thrown over and the book asked the students to decide who. I was so surprised and a somewhat disturbed when I heard the students almost unaminously say that the pregnant woman should be thrown over! When I asked them why, they said that the boat has a population problem and the pregnant woman should be thrown over because she is really like two people.

I told them that in America, most people would say that the pregnant woman should be saved even if it meant the death of every other person on the boat. I told them that most Americans would say that the oldest person should probably be thrown over… and that maybe even some would say that the college athlete should volunteer to jump because he is the strongest.

After reading something like this–an article on a teenage girl who did not know she was pregnant until she gave birth–I am not so sure. When she realized what had happened, she immediately panicked and stabbed the baby 135 times, before throwing it into the garbage. The whole issue of abortion makes me wonder how well I represented Americans and American values to those Asian students, afterall. The most depressing thing about it is, if she had murdered the baby only a few short hours before its birth, maybe she would have been convicted of some minor crime and not 1st degree murder. Maybe.

Isaiah 49:15 Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.

Sarah is reading an article by Peggy McIntosh for her 102 English writing class. Her professor is highly liberal and feminist, and Sarah often asks me to help her defend what she believes against this radical feminism. Just today I heard her say sadly, “I wonder what it would be like to take a regular English comp class where the professor wasn’t a feminist with an agenda?”

In the article, Peggy McIntosh makes a claim that males take advantage of their place of power, and compares it to white privilege. It is a tour-de-force of White guilt combined with Feminist propoganda. McIntosh says:

“I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege”.

First of all, I don’t know who is “carefully” teaching their white children to be oblivious of privilege (”No, honey! Don’t tell little Junior that, he might realize he is privileged because he’s white and our plans will be ruined!” And I’m just going to leave affirmative action alone right now). This quote covers a lot of aspects of privilege, but I believe an underlying assumption is that leadership is related to privilege. As a girl, Sarah would say her experience in a patriarchal family and church has never once made me feel under privileged or inferior because she did not have the option of being a leader over men. Just as Sarah does not feel inferior to a college professor even though professors stand at the front and lecture in a leadership capacity while students take on a learning, following role, both groups are entirely equal in dignity and they are complimentary. The same is going to be true when I am married, and I will be the head of our family, but not unequal to Sarah—in fact, I view Sarah as coming before me in importance and as more valuable than me while I am exercising my patriarchal authority.

Patriarchal authority is something that is very foreign to much of today’s culture, but it is interesting how the Bible describes itself (God’s Law) as something that we should submit to as if it had patriarchal status to us. It is not surprising, then, that with the rejection of the Bible as a standard of morality and society, that the male leadership of the family and church would soon be rejected as well. We would all do well to remember that the Bible has an authority that is like (although much greater than) our earthy fathers giving us their sternest commands for us to obey as little children.