The 4 Pillars of Biblical Womanhood
Are you familiar with the 4 Pillars of Biblical Manhood created by Robert Lewis in his “Men’s Fraternity” curriculum? They define authentic manhood by the condition of the heart rather than by what society has deemed the defining characteristics of manhood (athletic ability, sexual conquest, and economic success).
The 4 pillars produce authentic, Biblical manhood as God intended, and they are:
Accept Responsibility - do your part and don’t blame others
Reject Passivity - provide, protect, and disciple rather than shrinking back
Lead Courageously - be a servant leader who compels rather than coerces others to follow
Expect the Greater Reward - know that the reward is from God regardless of whether others admire, affirm, or applaud you
The challenge is for men to be in pursuit of these godly character traits that may not come naturally to them. And the goal is for the lives of men to be more aligned with God and his will for them. These 4 pillars are phenomenally insightful and powerful, giving men a true vision of Biblical manhood.
The 4 Pillars of Biblical Womanhood
If we could define 4 pillars of Biblical womanhood, what would they be?
Let’s start by determining the false pillars that we would have to dispel:
sexual objectivity - it is a woman’s honor to allow herself to be used by men for sexual pleasure
domestic duty - women are responsible for keeping a house and taking care of men
and familial success - a woman’s worth is determined by whether she is able to make her husband happy and raise successful children
The truths that corresponds to these false pillars of womanhood are that
God intended sex to be the fruit of your relationship, not the basis for it (read my article on sex in marriage)
Your responsibility to your household is relevant to the extent that you are contributing mutually to the wellbeing of your family
And the success of your marriage and children has little to do with you and more to do with the dynamics of what is occurring within those relationships
How then are you to pursue authentic, Biblical womanhood?
The curse of Genesis 3: 16 is that your desire would be for your husband and, subsequently, less-so for God. The result of this is that you may be placing your husband and his will above God’s will for you or, alternately, believing that God’s will for you is to do your husband’s will. Both of these misunderstandings of God’s design for marriage can lead you to make an idol of your husband. [Click here to read my article on what God’s will is for you]
True biblical womanhood is antithetical to the curse and is a demonstration of your pursuit of God. For many women, this means intentionally seeking out what God’s will for you really is in the context of marriage and shedding the narrow view that is often perpetuated in Christian circles.
These, then, could be the pillars of authentic, Biblical womanhood:
1. Reject Over-responsibility
Too often we see our role as women as needing to be mature, supportive, and affirming to the extent that you:
take responsibility for things you are not responsible for
rescue people from the natural consequences of their own actions
and try to do more than you can reasonably accomplish
The anecdote to that is to:
stop doing more than you should
stop rescuing others from the consequences of their actions
stop enabling others to be irresponsible by picking up their slack
and reject the idea that you are responsible for the actions of others in your life
Just be responsible for yourself. And be true to who you are.
2. Accept Reality
Don’t try to pretend your way to better relationships as though pretending makes it so
Don’t be fake (e.g. acting like you aren’t angry when you are, or like you aren’t hurt when you are, or like your spouse is a good person when they’re not)
Whatever reality is . . . accept it. Tell yourself and others the truth. Many women spend too much time trying to shape reality and not enough time letting reality shape them.
3. Submit Courageously
The word “submit” has been taken drastically out of context.
To submit means to put your mission under someone else’s mission: sub-mission. To be consistent with the second pillar of “accept reality,” it is to submit not to someone’s declared mission but, rather, to someone’s displayed mission as dictated by what’s really going on.
For example, your husband might declare that his mission is to have a good marriage, but his character and behavior might display that he isn’t at all interested in doing what it takes to have a good marriage but that, rather, his mission is to get what he wants out of life and “love.”
To submit courageously and to your husband’s mission might mean that you put your mission of having a good marriage under your husband’s mission of getting what he wants - and bravely allow him to pursue his mission at the risk of the natural consequences that may create distance between himself and the wife he claims to love. [Read my full article on submission]
4. Surrender to the Greater One
Since the Fall of Adam and Eve, the human heart has been inclined to try to control situations rather than surrendering situations to God and allowing the results to speak for themselves. Here are some examples of how you may be trying to control results:
You try to say things in such a way so that someone does what you think they should do
You behave in such a way so that someone loves you back or stops hurting themselves or you
You try to
take on responsibility for their behavior
rescue them from their bad choices
pretend that things are different than they are
submit to selfishness over submitting to God in hopes that the other person will learn, change, grow, or love [read my article on suffering for doing good]
But despite all of the above efforts, the fact remains that you can’t control the outcome. (And if you try, you might end up depressed when it doesn’t work out.) You can try to say all the right things and do all the right things in hopes that you will help your spouse see your perspective or do something your way for once or not get angry - but when all of your efforts don’t produce the results you want, the best you can do is to seek out how God wants you to interact in your relationship, then do the best you can to do what is right and allow the results to be up to God.
Is that all?
For sure these 4 pillars are not comprehensive of all that we are to be as women. Scripture has a lot to say about women and our roles. But when we begin to live out these pillars, we start to take responsibility for ourselves and our role in the relationship, and that’s when we realize that . . .
hope isn’t found in our situation changing; it is found in our situation…
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