Queens of Mean
by Denise Sproul

We Christian women are especially vulnerable to the nice/weak bait and switch. We easily waffle, when confronted, into equating being firm with being mean. We feel strongly the temptation to be wimpy sometimes —we're more concerned with being popular than with doing the right thing. We want others to like us, which means we want to be nice, which means we are often weak when we should be strong. We tend to think of aggressive behavior as a masculine trait, and for good reason. The man's call is outward —taking dominion 'out there,' taming the jungle, while a woman's call is more inward —being fruitful in the home and ministering to those there. But an inward call isn't the same thing as embracing passivity. It doesn't, or at least shouldn't, equate with weakness.

Watching feminists seek to obliterate the differences between men and women, we notice that they often do so by acting aggressive. It's not so surprising, is it? It makes sense that since they are undertaking an impossible task, they might think they'd be more successful if they put more 'umph' into it. Or maybe they think that if they raise enough of a ruckus, the rest of us would be so distracted that we couldn't think straight and we would just agree in order to calm things down. Their tactics are ironically insulting to women as they don't give all of us credit for being able to think logically. But because feminists do so often act aggressive and domineering, we Christian women tend to flee the other way; we adopt the languishing Victorian woman as our model of femininity. We, as conservative, antithesis—thinking women miss the boat here, or fall off the other side of the horse.

Our call is indeed inward, to guard (as well as to beautify, as we talked about last issue) the garden while our husbands expand it. We are called, as Paul says, to be keepers at home. But this isn't a call to passivity and weakness, to being 'nice,' but a call to aggressive care over our flock. To twist the metaphors a bit more, from garden to fowl (and you're not likely to trust my knowledge about fowl, given our very public failure with chickens) to bears —we ought to be like mother bears are with their cubs. If someone is messing with her cubs, a mother bear isn't going to sweetly entreat that person to stop. She doesn't seek to appear non-threatening, but rather shows that she is indeed threatening. She's going to aggressively make sure that the threat to the cubs is dispatched, and in such a way that it won't want to return.

We need to protect the center of our garden, our children. This is an active role and one often overlooked. It is also one where we can extend that sphere beyond where we should, seeking to protect our husbands too. This is often done out of love, but is wrong nonetheless. We don't have authority over our men. This means we are not responsible for their protection either. As much as we might like it, they weren't meant to hide behind our skirts.

In the right exercise of protection of our children, there are several areas we need to focus on. We need to protect them first from themselves, from their sinful inclinations. Haven't you seen a child out of control, wallowing in his sin, and he seems to be screaming, "Somebody please tell me 'NO!"? Our children need us to rein them in, to put a stop to their sinning when they are unable to. This of course is done not only with our instruction and discipline, but with the Holy Spirit's aid.

Be careful not to confuse this protection of our children from their own sin with the desire we sometimes have to protect our sons from skinning their knees. Our friend Monique told me once, when her son had climbed so high in a tree that we could see him from their second story window, that she had to just not look. She didn't want to stunt his masculine growth by causing him to be timid.

We also need to protect our children from our own sinful inclinations by not allowing ourselves to blow up at them. "I've had it!" and "I can't take this anymore!" are things they need to be protected from hearing. We don't become bears to our cubs, but for our cubs. That means we need to pray for self-control and zip our lips! And we all know that the latter is not a nice, languishing activity; it takes major strength! We need to protect them also from the roving lions out there by bathing them in prayer. And we need to protect them from the world around them.

Protecting them from these various dangers will sometimes mean being the bear. We don't act 'nice' when our next-door neighbor offers to take one of our children off to an inappropriate-movie-laced sleepover. We don't act 'nice' to the salesman who comes around wanting to sign our daughter up for Teen magazine or our son up for Rolling Stone. In short, I do not protect my reputation as a sweetheart of a person, as the Queen of Nice at the expense of the protection of my children. As we have talked about elsewhere in this issue, we have to be 'nice' enough to be thought mean by those around us who do not and cannot understand the convictions we have. Remember that we are blessed when we are persecuted for righteousness' sake and don't let the pagans get you down.

We are called to act on our convictions with firmness. We don't need to roar like a bear at the neighbors who are trying to get at our kids. All we need to do is always stand between them and those who would seek to hurt them. All we need is a quiet strength from the Lord that is undeniable and that will make others think twice before messing with our cubs.