Submission or Settling?

I wrote this a while back in March/April in an email and was cleaning out my email today, stumbled upon it, and thought it was may hap good enough to share with my general reading audience of... well... the 4 or 5 people that I know of. :)

What is the role of women in the church? Post-feminism, it has been talked about so much, and not a whole lot in healthy ways for Christian women. We are told by society we are men's equal. We are to have a career and be loving mothers/wives/sisters/friends - especially friends with other women - to uphold "the sisterhood". We are expected to break through the glass ceiling and "go where no woman has gone before." We are looked down upon and judged - ironically more harshly by other women than men - when we choose a profession that is seemingly iconically "female" - like teaching or even (gasp!) being stay-at-home-moms. "It's like the women's revolution never even happened," say some. Others, especially in my mom's generation, become vehement, "We didn't fight so hard for you to end up taking care of your kids and cooking dinner like the mom from Leave it to Beaver!!!"

So how does all this reconcile itself with the submission expected of women in the Bible without just settling for what we are told is right? A perplexing question to say the least. Especially in the oft-quoted passages from Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3, women are commanded to submit; not suggested, the word "submit" is in the imperative here. I myself have cringed (probably visibly) when I have heard this. Some of the trepidation women feel is concerning the fact that as you said, many men have taken the benefits of their authority (in the church as well as the household) without serving and following the example that Christ set. Slowly but surely, my own mind and heart have been opened (mostly after I went through my tiny feminist phase in middle school) to see the beauty in the example of the Christ and the Church and the roles men and women are called to individually fulfill. There is a huge discrepancy between that and being told, "you and men are equals," because that implies we are the same, which is definitely not true in any sense. What an identity crisis! Submission for women isn't being a wilting flower blowing where the wind wills, but rather finding their identity in Christ and above all, taking direction from him. I found a really great quote on submission (not necessarily just for women):

"Submission is the key concept to understand, for everyone is called upon to submit to God (James 4:7-10; Hebrews 12:9), and all at one time or another must submit to human authority. Believers who cannot submit to human authority do not know how to submit to God, for it is God who demands submission within human relationships. Conversely, believers will be ineffective leaders, incapable of fulfilling human authority roles until they learn to submit to others. Submission is for everyone." - Mary Kassian

Great quote, huh? Actually it got me very excited about my devotions today! So there's some deep thinking straight to you from the mind of Abby with no alterations except in the case of spelling corrections. Hopefully it's not as mixed-up as it felt coming out of my mind and fingers.