Rachel Held Evans’ “A Year of Biblical Womanhood” and the Heart of the Matter

Tamar joins a storied troupe of crafty and courageous biblical women who used trickery, sexuality, and manipulation to work the patriarchal system to which they were born and survive to change the course of Israel’s history. In fact, Tamar holds the rare distinction of being one of only four Old Testament women mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus. The others include Bathsheba, (a mistress), Ruth, (a foreigner), and Rahab (a prostitute).
God, it seems, prefers chutzpah [“extreme self-confidence or audacity”] to status. – Rachel Held Evans

I’ve been slowly discovering that Rachel Held Evans is pretty awesome. I’m loving her writing style, and the way she views things. She seems to have a view of ‘Christian Feminism’ that doesn’t come across as condescending as some posts do, and I find this thoroughly refreshing.

I discovered her book A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband Master about two hours ago and it’s been a wonderful two hours I must say. When I first read the title I sat for a second and though “ugh, not another one.” I’ve come across countless books touting ‘biblical womanhood’ and while they vary in their stances, a common topic of discussion among these books is whether a woman’s role remains solely at home or not.

This book has a slight hint of sarcasm constantly sitting there in the background and is incredibly honest and I love it. Basically, to sum up the book, Evans does a lot of research and decides to take the whole ‘biblical womanhood’ thing very literally for an entire year. Submit to your husband, have the house as your number one priority etc.

She basically questions whether basing the entirety of a woman’s role today in society on a sacred (albeit wonderful) text which in some ways is extremely culturally out-dated, is a wise decision. She questions whether we should take every single scripture referring to woman one hundred percent literally.

The above passage struck me as I neared the end of chapter two (I think – it’s harder to tell when you’re new to this whole ebook thing) for many reasons. It took me back to my days at bible college and reminded me of one of the great realisations I had during that time. One of my subjects was Old Testament Survey which was basically an overview of that section of the bible and it’s actually an incredible story. A lot of people discount this part of the bible because of the new covenant that Jesus brings in the New Testament, but I think that the new covenant is exactly why we need to know the story of the Old Testament, because when you take a step back and look at the entire story of the Old Testament you see the story that was carefully planned by a loving Father to bring this world the Saviour that they needed, and you come to understand the value of the new covenant some more.

You see those that contributed to Jesus’ blood line and you see that they were thoroughly imperfect. You do not need to be perfect to be a part of Jesus’ family, and that’s an essential fact worth remembering.

The above passage lists the women who are noted in the genealogy of Jesus and I think their imperfections are what make the story of Jesus even more beautiful than it is if you simply start at His birth.

What this passage really highlighted for me though is that God isn’t looking for you to fit the cookie cutter mould of the perfect woman, because it’s just not possible. If you were to attempt to describe the ‘perfect woman’ you would struggle due to the conflicting opinions thrown at us today anyway. If you managed to narrow it down and then decided to attempt to live your life that way, you would fail. We are imperfect and that’s okay.

There are qualities in the bible that are mentioned and we are encouraged to be Christ like but I think one of the most important things we need to do, and something I certainly need to work on, is making ourselves available. Reading and reading and reciting rules to ourselves isn’t going to do anything if we’re not making ourselves available to God, simply by being willing to listen and learn. He’s not a harsh teacher, he’s not the boring teacher you encountered in high school. He’s a teacher who is in love with what he teaches and teaches because he wants us to be closer to him, not because he wants us to have a life which we feel is riddled with rules that pin us down.

Besides, what else was Jesus doing if he wasn’t making himself completely and one hundred percent available to God? He spent so much time searching to find the Father’s heart, the Father’s desires.

I want to be a person constantly searching for God’s heart in every situation.

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