Rose Marie writes about the pressure women feel to live up to the standard for perfect womanhood. She begins by talking about women from the southern US.Record building for these women meant living for the approval of family, church, and community. Always trying to look good is a terrible burden to bear. The problem is that your conscience condemns you because you must do everything perfectly. You mentally make a list of how to be the perfect wife, mother, or daughter. If you do fairly well, then you become the judge of those who don't make it according to your lists. If you don't measure up, you either try harder or give up...From Fear to Freedom, 102-104.
What had happened to these southern upper-class women? They were heirs to a tradition that values courtesy, authority, the family, and the church. Their social life was conditioned by an emphasis on outward performance and appearance...They were tying to be perfectly moral, perfectly dressed, perfect mothers, and perfect housekeepers. ...People pleasing had become an enormous burden for these women...They saw that the end of this awful struggle is a righteousness bought for them by Christ...
These church women were different in so many ways from the non-Christian women in our northeastern part of the U.S. I was surprised how these traditional family women were so much like the women dedicated to their 'liberation'. Both sorts seemed to me to be entangled in a web of rules. It's just that these women were mentally burdened by the old rules while the women's liberationists are loaded down with the new rules...
An oppressive load of guilt can come on the conscience if the deeper needs of the heart are not met by a powerful Christ.
image is by Canine Girl at flickr
5 comments:
I have just ordered From Fear To Freedom and looking forward to it arriving. Thanks for recommendation!
You may already know this, Jean, but her son, Paul Miller, wrote a good book called The Praying Life.
No, I didn't know, thanks Valori! Does his book share the same emphasis on spiritual warfare through prayers of power - believing and claiming and rebuking - as Rose Marie's does? This was my only big quibble with her book (and odd to find in a book that is otherwise so very gospel-centred), and almost stopped me recommending it. But perhaps her son doesn't share this emphasis. This review by Challies would suggest not. Thanks for the recommendation, Valori.
No, his book does not speak of prayer in that way at all. I have not read Rose Marie's book, but I was looking it up after you mentioned it and noticed that Paul Miller was her son. A lot of people I know have really benefited from his book.
Thanks, Valori, I'll have to read it! It sounds great.
Post a Comment