The Real Beauty of Real Femininity

Christianity exalts femininity. It proclaims the indispensable goodness of childbearing, household building, and the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. It says the first man’s vocation was not good until God made a wife for him, the very first woman, to be his helper and the mother of all the living.

But the modern secular West holds femininity in contempt. Instead, it exalts masculinity in women. Mary is the iconic woman of Christianity. Wonder Woman is the iconic woman of today’s West.

Our culture valorizes women achieving in business, fighting bad guys with guns, and governing political structures. It sees what God made the first woman to be, a helper to her husband and a fruitful mother, as obstacles to the good life. It sees children as a heavy debit and a high-powered career as a heavy credit, which explains why it has produced the absurd evil of companies paying for women to go get abortions so they can keep working without interruption. It scorns truly feminine traits, which is part of why it has no problem with men who claim to be women. You don’t really think something is beautiful if you applaud a mockery of it. Almost nothing confirms our culture’s deflated appreciation for true femininity as much as its celebration of men saying they are women.

Our secular West despises the real beauty of femininity. It will allow the Biblical story of Deborah, but it cannot tolerate the page upon page upon page of passages like these:

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

Titus 2:3-5

Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.

1 Peter 3:1-6

I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.

1 Timothy 2:8-15

Our world despises the call for women to be gentle and quiet, submissive to their husbands, and dedicated managers of fruitful homes. But its contempt for the distinct notes of femininity as composed by the gloriously artful God doesn’t make them any less beautiful. It is a wondrous thing to be a Ruth whose faith and grace build a new family out of the ashes of an old one (Ruth chapters 1-4), or to be a tender Hannah whose tears flow freer because of a sturdy trust that God sees them, and who in turn bears children she’s always longed for (1 Samuel chapters 1-2). And when we as Christians honor and cherish such women, when we uphold their faith and their mercy and their sweat and their prayers as essential to our lives, we give the world a chance to see the loveliness of actual femininity.

As followers of Christ who believe and adore His Word, we have much to invite the world to marvel at with us in our God’s creation of womanhood. Let’s call them to see the true beauty of what He’s wisely made.