Authority, Influence, and a Godly Mother

According to the late Alice von Hildebrand, “women have less power and authority than men, but they have something much more important: influence. Authority commands action but influence changes your being.”

After first laying some biblical groundwork, I would like to share some memories of my mother. As a woman of courage, she lived in submission to authority and enjoyed a peculiar freedom that had a positive influence on others.

Many Christians today accept female leadership in churches and support this position by a simple reading of Galatians 3:28 which says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” One argument goes like this: Paul gives instructions on how slaves and masters (bond and free) should treat each other but he makes no immediate effort to overthrow the practice of slavery. Over the centuries, Christian values and theology have permeated society and have overturned the wide acceptance of slavery. The case is then made that Paul didn't correct the cultural inferiority of women, instead, he instructed the church on how women should conduct themselves in that setting. Over the span of time, Christ's work is restoring a right understanding of the value of women just as it abolished slavery.

Another argument is that the disparity between men and women is a result of Adam’s fall, and through the work of Christ, this is being corrected. While aspects of that are true, gender distinctions did exist before the fall, nor are we promised a return to Eden. Eating meat, wearing clothes, and getting sick are examples of conditions that are both post-Eden and post-Resurrection.

We must acknowledge, though, that outside of Christ’s reign, women typically are treated terribly throughout the world and throughout history. It is significant that Jesus appeared first to a woman after His resurrection and, in a real sense, that contradicts fallen humanity’s demeaning view of womanhood.

However, the arguments in support of female leadership in churches seem to miss Paul’s depth of revelation. While men and women both have their spheres of authority and influence, created order gives men a seat of authority and women a special seat of influence. A misuse of authority is abuse, and a misuse of influence is seduction.

Notice how authoritarian, authoritative, and influence-led cultures are distinctly different from each other. In an authoritarian culture, it is an exercise of futility to influence those in leadership. In an influence-led culture, leadership must eventually acquiesce to the prevailing influencers. But in an authoritative or authority-led culture, leadership invites the voice of influence while retaining control of direction. Variations may occur. For example, a church could be authoritarian in matters of theology, while influence-led on matters of culture and lifestyle.

Philosophers have long explored the essence of truth, goodness, and beauty. Genesis 3:6 describes fruit that appears to contain all three. Satan engineered the tragedy in Eden by disordering the power of influence through seduction. Alas, what deeply pulls on us as true, good, and beautiful must be compared against the Word of God, for what else is temptation? Oh, the depth of Genesis 3! All this matters, because when Paul forbids women to teach in the church in 1 Timothy 2, he appeals specifically to Genesis 3.

Perceptions of gender roles vary significantly among Christians that agree that women are not to be teaching publicly in the church.  When Aquila and Priscilla took Apollos aside to correct his doctrine, do you imagine Priscilla, mousey and withdrawn, furtively glancing up at her Aquila? If a man wants a wife so submissive that she doesn’t have a brain of her own, he does this to his own diminishment. Furthermore, if women are supposed to be covered when prophesying, what exactly does a woman prophesying look like?

My father was a family doctor and my mother a homemaker. Daddy often worked more than 70 hours a week in my boyhood years, frequently leaving in the middle of the night and during weekends to go to the hospital for a baby delivery or to check on a sick patient. There were six of us boys and two girls and Mother’s role was to tend the home fires, which she did well. Dad was not a pushover and yet, when a spanking was needed, Mother’s rod was the more to be feared. Despite her strong personality, my mother always deferred to my father. When Dad’s schedule prevented him from being home in the evenings, Mother kept a bedtime prayer ritual with us, and I know this kept my heart soft.

My father had excelled academically, and his level of achievement was shrouded in mystery because of my parents' concern about pride. Once, as a teenager when I inquired about his level of academic success, the conversation was quickly shut down. The most evidence I could find was in his college yearbook tucked away in their bedroom. My parents believed that there were different types of abilities, and one kind should not be elevated above another.

Mother was faithful in reminding Dad of his need for humility as a doctor. She was dubious about the morality of “making money off of people getting sick.” Mother grew up on a poor farm and would remind us that, “The farmer feeds them all.” She was uncomfortable dining out because paying another woman to serve her food made her feel like she was occupying a position of superiority. It was Mother who encouraged Dad that if they didn’t start tithing the small wage he was earning during his medical residency training, they would probably never get around to giving in the future. If I were to describe Mother’s choice of home furnishings, one word would suffice: Kmart. Mother’s faith was many things, but in my memory, it was never vogue.

Mother’s bookshelf spanned from the evangelical to the monastic, but her wardrobe mostly spanned from tiny dark green to tiny navy-blue printed dresses. I wasn’t allowed to wear lettered T-shirts because “we don’t use our bodies to advertise for other people’s businesses.” She did not allow my sisters to wear red because it was the "preferred color of harlots." She was uncomfortable with women wearing long and flowing hair in public and called it "bedroom hair."  She insisted her daughters braid it or cut it to shoulder length when they became young women who had not yet chosen baptism. She believed that experience and Scripture taught that a woman's hair was a natural glory and not a spiritual glory and that Paul's argument was structured to make sure Christian women concealed their hair. Mother was not prudish, and her hearty laughter was good evidence of that, but rather, her carefree spirit objected to the self-focus of fashion and social expectation. Although Mother was not prone to “going with the flow,” both her and Dad placed a high priority on submission to their church, especially in practical matters.

One afternoon when I got home from school, Mother took me into the garage and lifted a blanket where underneath the family dog lay dead. She explained how she had accidentally backed over his aging body while he was sleeping behind the wheel of the station wagon in the shade beneath the maple tree. He had writhed in agony, and so she had run to the garage to get a sledge hammer to end his misery. To her relief, our dog had passed by the time she returned with the sledge. We wept there together. That was my mother, tender enough to weep with me at the loss of our dog and yet possessing the strength to put an end to the dog’s misery if the situation demanded. My siblings could fill a book with such stories.

Mother loved her grandchildren, but sometimes to her children’s chagrin, she didn’t prioritize them above the mentally disadvantaged she often cared for in her home. Her sense of social justice was practical. When our newspaper printed an inappropriate picture on the front page, the editor respectfully accommodated her written objection. Dad tells us that on another occasion in their elderly years, Mother took a walk in their quiet neighborhood and was gone longer than usual. While out walking, she had passed someone’s home garage and overheard a loud dispute between a husband and wife. After passing that home, she became unsettled, turned around, and on entering this neighbor’s garage, asked the feuding couple if she could help.

When Dad and Mom became engaged to be married, Dad promised he would make her happy, to which Mother replied, “That’s not your job.” One advantage to her less than doting approach was that Dad had the joy and challenge of pursuing her most of his life, that is until Alzheimer’s overtook her.

As this affliction came on, her memory degenerated by the month. My father waited on her hand and foot. Having rarely cooked in his life, he has learned to enjoy the kitchen in recent years. One Saturday evening my father went to a four-hour long communion service. He was able to leave Mother at home at that time because she safely kept the house by habit. Upon his return, he asked her if she knew where he had been. She looked up and sweetly replied, “No… but I knew you were somewhere good.”

Compared to the stories of many women, Mother’s life was not dramatic. However, she, along with many other Christian women, demonstrates to us in our modern age it is possible to have lives that are more of a reflection of the promises of God than a display of American privilege. May our prevailing female influencers be women who know Christ well.