I realized that the Ask Pastor John answer that I responded to last week basically comes right out of his teaching in Chapter One of RBMW. So I decided to skim over the chapter again. It has been shocking for me to reread this as a more mature woman. Some parts were actually quite unbelievable. For instance, John Piper asserts, “Mature masculinity expresses its leadership in romantic sexual relations by communicating an aura of strong and tender pursuit” (40). After affirming that this is very difficult to put into words, he does just that. And it gets weird.
I married fresh out of college. I was a mere 21 years old. My husband and I found a church, and I was eager to be the perfect Christian wife. So I began reading books from trusted authorities in the church on this matter. One was Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. I remember my young, impressionable mind learning and underlining, and later even quoting from this book. There is plenty of helpful teaching in it. I embraced this word complementary, and wholeheartedly agreed that we live in a time where we need to respond to the new waves of feminism in our culture and affirm the beauty and distinctiveness of male and female.
But I was also confused at some of what I read. Was it my own sinful proclivity, or were some of these distinctives being taught in the book taking it too far? As a young wife, I gave the benefit to the authors, who were much more educated and experienced than myself.
But here I am, no longer a “young” wife, finding myself tripping over some of the teachings in that same book. I’ve been noticing more and more strange teachings on femininity and biblical womanhood in the last couple of years. Every now and then I decide to publicly respond on the blog. I do this because I know there are many young, impressionable women who want to be good Christian wives like me. And even though the teaching may be behind good intentions, it is damaging.
I realized that the Ask Pastor John answer that I responded to last week basically comes right out of his teaching in Chapter One of RBMW. So I decided to skim over the chapter again. It has been shocking for me to reread this as a more mature woman. Some parts were actually quite unbelievable. For instance, John Piper asserts, “Mature masculinity expresses its leadership in romantic sexual relations by communicating an aura of strong and tender pursuit” (40). After affirming that this is very difficult to put into words, he does just that. And it gets weird. But for the sake of brevity, I’ll focus on the part where he says a woman wrongly “attempt(s) to assume a more masculine role by appearing physically muscular and aggressive”