Hear Me Roar: A Day Without A Woman

I am strong. I am invincible. I am woman.

Lying in bed one night, the words echoed insistently in the mind of Helen Reddy, as if they were “divinely inspired.”1 Caught up in the force of this single, repeated thought, she let her mind wrestle the impetus into lyric.

I am woman, hear me roar.

She proclaimed these words on the stage in 1972 amid the welcome acclamation of hundreds.

In numbers too big to ignore
And I know too much to go back an’ pretend
‘Cause I’ve heard it all before
And I’ve been down there on the floor
No one’s ever gonna keep me down again.

The shouts erupted – the vision was empowering: vulnerability eroding into glory, brokenness reverberating into strength, the oncoming army of the ‘weaker sex’, rising up against the enemies of female injustice and roaring a final declaration of our dignity.

Today, International Women’s Day, all across the United States, hundreds of thousands of women are protesting in a labor strike, to prove to the nation what A Day Without a Woman really looks like. Computer monitors were shut down, the keys silent, the screen a black void. Cashiers clanged their registers shut, waitresses hung up their aprons, baristas turned off their coffee machines. Classes were skipped by both students and professors. Shopping was kept to a minimum. As much as possible, all forms of paid and unpaid labor were put aside. The roar is silence. It is deafening.

The Abolition of Woman

Fully supported by the organizers of the Women’s March in January, the website proclaims: “Women’s rights are human rights, regardless of a woman’s race, ethnicity…sexual identity, gender expression…age or disability” and should be available to every “gay, lesbian, bi, queer, trans or gender non-conforming”.2

In an effort to embrace the beauty, glory and dignity of womanhood, the feminist movement is eroding it into an androgynous obscurity. As one Christian woman put it so well, “The irony is that after a century of fighting for women’s rights, we don’t even know what a woman is anymore.”3

Over a century ago, C.S. Lewis wrote a famous argument on The Abolition of Man, in which he asserted that when we strike at God and the moral laws that He created and define, then everything falls apart – including man himself. In a desire to reach up and claim the forbidden fruit of autonomy, in an effort to set ourselves up in God’s place, we annihilate the exact human glory we were trying to uplift.

If we remove the God who created and defines manhood, scoff at the virtues of masculinity, and shove man into a light he was only meant to reflect, the man himself is lost. Lewis summarizes: “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”4

It is the sin of Adam that leads men to this lust after autonomy. But the deception of Eve came first (Genesis 3). It was the lie from the forked tongue of the devil that led her to believe that beauty, pride and power were the tenets of the goddess on earth, that she could be deified and perfected in one loud, glorious roar. We have exchanged the beauty of the Lion of Judah in whose image we were created, for an echoed distortion of His voice.

How ironic that when we claim the empowering autonomy behind the roar, the disembodied fragment of an image we are left with has lost The Lion. It is vulnerable now. It is oppressed. It is broken. And we have successfully gutted all we have been trying to glorify.

Here is the ghastly simplicity of removing The Lion and demanding the roar: we allow women to parade as men and demand respect, we wear obscene, vulgar hats and declare our dignity, we claim a strike on the men we claim strike us, we give mothers the right to murder their babies, and humans the ability to choose their gender or remain without one.

We assault God ordained standards and laws and demand love and respect, we pull down the societal infrastructure and demand order, we erase the differences between men and women and yet demand distinction. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.

The feminist movement has effectively killed feminism. But I know a God who raises from the dead.

The Beauty of Women

The fact that some men abuse some women is horrifying and disgusting. There is no excuse for such sin, and the earthly consequences of their crimes have filled abused and forsaken hearts with bitterness, shame, grief and despair. They have destroyed trust, purity, marriages, families, and countless lives. Human sin, in both men and women, is utterly condemned by God (Romans 6:23), and we are commanded to fight and despise it (James 4:1-4), even as we live in hope of our future deliverance (Romans 8:18-23).

But we women are trying to deliver ourselves. To yank ourselves up by our own bootstraps, overcome the evil we see in ourselves and the world around us (Romans 3:10, Mark 7:7-23). We have forsaken the only One who can give us the beauty, dignity and strength for which we are searching (Jeremiah 2:13, Isaiah 55). We, for good or for ill, can use the differences and the duties God has specifically given our gender, to lift up, or to tear down.

The Demolition of America did not start in the White House, or in the politician’s pen, or in the oppressors that faced the suffragettes. The Demolition of America began in the sinful hearts of men and women, striving to save themselves, claiming the power and glory to be theirs when it was meant to be God’s. It began in minds and souls that were lusting for satisfaction in the temporal, empty caskets of fading glory (Jeremiah 2:13). It began in husbands and wives, sons and daughters, men and women, who have rebelled against sin by embracing sin.

God has said that it is not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18). We are the complement, the helper suitable, we have the power, in an earthly way, to save and to destroy. We have rejected the perfect order of creation – with men leading and loving, not domineeringly, but as Christ leads and loves His Bride (Ephesians 5:25-27).

We have planted our feet on the rubble, stuck our petty flag in the soil, and told God to be silent: I am woman. Hear me roar. How much beauty can be found in that echo, which brings the walls of our house down upon our heads? (Proverbs 14:1).

The Savior of Women

Christ has come to do what we cannot (Acts 4:12) . He has come to save us from God’s just wrath, from the power of sin, from oppression, from abuse, from weakness, from despair, and from ourselves (John 3:16-17).

We complain that we feel vulnerable, belittled, attacked. We are. We are vulnerable – we are broken and shamed from sin, and are in the hands of a powerful God. But He offers us His love (Romans 5:8). Trust Him. We are belittled. We feel we have no worth; we may be persecuted verbally or physically by those around us and turn in despair to ourselves because we don’t know who to believe anymore. But don’t. He offers us His truth (Hebrews 9:28). Trust Him. We are attacked – by this world, by our flesh, by those around us, by this careening chaos of sin we call a lifetime. But He offers us salvation (1 Peter 1:8-9). Trust Him.

He was made flesh, the perfect Man (John 1:14), to come and embrace our weaknesses, our struggles, our pain, for our sake (Isaiah 53:4, Hebrews 4:15). He bore our sins – our sins against Him – and died to deliver us (Isaiah 53). He has sought His Bride, has paid the price, has redeemed her, is making her perfect, and will one day glorify her in all the splendor and beauty for which she was created (Isaiah 54:5, 62:5, Ephesians 5:27).

It is a joy to build upon the rubble under the King, and to look for a day when His kingdom will come and men and women will be joined together in marriage to Him (Revelation 19:7-9, 21:2).

Let us hope in the Lion.

Soli Deo Gloria,

 

 

 

 

 

1 “The Anthem and the Angst”, Sunday Magazine, Melbourne Sunday Herald Sun/Sydney Sunday Telegraph, June 15, 2003, Page 16.

2 Unity Principles, www.womensmarch.com

3 Merkle, Rebekah, Wise Women Build: The March to True Dignity

4 Lewis, C.S. Abolition of Man (online pdf)