Video Transcript: Christianity and Women

There was a law at the time called Patria Potestas, which basically meant that a father had total authority, a man's wife, and his children were legally his property. So you imagine yourself wife at that time, your husband has absolute power of life and death over you, he can kill you, and there is no law against it, he could kill one of the children if they were insubordinate, and he would not be in line for any punishment, he had a father's and a husband's complete authority. 

Now your husband had the right to kill you if you committed adultery, but he could have as many mistresses sleep with as many prostitutes go to as many temple orgies in the pagan temples as he wished, because that's a man's right. But if you as a woman messed around with anybody, he had the right to kill you. He could divorce you for any reason, if he was tired of having you around, you couldn't divorce him for any reason, no matter how atrociously he might treat you, you would need to wear a veil, if you were in the presence of other males, you couldn't sit down and eat with male guests or be in their company, those were just some of the things and that's if you survived, if you were born female, there was a pretty decent chance that you would only live a few hours, and you would be placed outside to die from the weather or to be killed and eaten by wild animals, because a lot of people wanted a male child, but not a female child. 

Live males in the Roman Empire outnumbered females by at least 30%. And that's even with a lot of the males getting killed in wars. So you can imagine how many female babies were being killed. Now today, in China, in India, in other places where there had been a history of not very much Christian influence, a lot of girl babies are aborted, our technology is better. So people can snoop around in a mother's womb, see if the baby is a boy or a girl. And if it's a boy, it may live. If it's a girl, that gets aborted. Back then some men didn't value women as precious property they on record. There's a man who said, Well, my wife has produced some strong, healthy children for me, and I've got enough kids, I'm willing to loan her to you for a while, because she could produce some excellent children, for you too, hey, it wasn't a great time to be a woman. And it was not in spite of the wisdom of the intellectuals, but partially because of the wisdom of the intellectuals that women are regarded this way. And we're treated this way. 

The Greek philosopher Aristotle said, females are malformed males conceived under the harmful influence of a moist Southwind. Boy, it's helpful to have those experts around this. The Greek politician to master knees renowned throughout history is one of the greatest speakers and orators of all time have this to say about women, the prostitutes are for our amusement. Our slave women are for our personal service, and our wives are to Baris children. Here's a smart guy, he knows what women are for either to fool around with or to give orders to or to have kids for you. And these are the brainiacs and the great leaders of the ancient world. Christians were different. Christians didn't kill baby girls. They didn't try to abort children. They didn't kill baby girls once they were born. In fact, they adopted babies that were being thrown away by others. They didn't allow men to have prostitutes or mistresses. The Christians insisted that as a man you had to commit to one woman and be faithful to that woman for life. Christians also told husbands how to treat their wives to love them, to sacrifice for them, to not be harsh with them. 

The Romans might have had the love Patria Potestas. You can do whatever you want to your wife, the Christians had the law of love and of not being harsh. The Christians even told the fathers that they didn't have the right to provoke their kids or to drive them crazy or to treat them unreasonably or cruelly. And this the Christian scriptures told fathers don't Don't provoke your children to wrath but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. They didn't make women hide their faces in public. The Christians didn't withhold teaching from girls, the ancient pagans and even the Jews of that time often withheld teaching from the girls and withheld the teacher, the scripture from the girls in the case of the Jewish people, but the Christians wanted girls and women to know the great truths of the faith and understand the gospel of Jesus Christ very thoroughly. 

And as the women flourish, the Christians found that it was actually good for the men too the pagan Celsus said that any religion that attracted so many women must be wrong. That was one of his big blasts against Christianity. It was a religion that attracted lots of women, and it attracted a lot of slaves, and any religion that attracts women and slaves. And not smart men like me, said Celsus can't be much of a religion. Well, Celsus may not have liked a religion that attracted women, but it turned out to be good for a great many men, many Christian men found that if you were in a loving, faithful one woman marriage, you were just way better off than being a sexually promiscuous guy who was always running around but never knew what it was really like to be really loved by a real woman who was flourishing in Christ. They found out that a joyful, intelligent, active life turned out to be a whole lot better than having some little doormat. With stifled talents, and a stunted personality. 

One pagan writer kind of grudgingly exclaimed what women, these Christians have. Well, it was good for women that Jesus Christ came into the world and it was good for the men who were able to enjoy such liberated and joyous women in their lives. Christianity spread a lot of important changes and counteracted much of what had gone before. Patria Podesta is that law that men could do whatever they wanted with their wives and children. That law was repealed shortly after Christianity was accepted in the Roman Empire. And it was no longer lawful for a man to harm or to kill his wife or children. Women could own private property, they could have custody of children, which previously had been outlawed for them. 

There were fewer child brides, Christian women tended to marry later than the pagan women. That didn't mean they were 30 or 40. All of them, many of them may still have been, you know, in their late teens or early 20s. But there weren't nine year old and 12 year old brides, there was a lot more choice of a spouse, you could pick who you wanted to marry. It says in the scripture, she can marry anyone she wants, but he must belong to the Lord. So you couldn't just marry any old pagan you wanted. If you were a Christian, at least not if you were trying to follow Jesus Christ, but you could follow your choice of a Christian. Now sometimes Christian parents did try to do some matchmaking or kind of hid who they wanted their kids to marry, but they usually didn't force a marriage on their child and arranged marriage. Everywhere progress in the free choice of a spouse went along with progress in the spread of Christianity.

The turning point for all this was the coming of Jesus Christ into the world. There's an expert scholar who says the birth of Jesus was the turning point in the history of women. The gospel has been the turning point for women in various cultures reached by missions, cultures that didn't know of Jesus, have been transformed by the gospel of Jesus and discovering how Jesus related to women and how he teaches us to relate to women. 

Now, there are still some cultures in our world today that have child brides that have female genital mutilation, that mutilate the bodies of young girls that require veils to appear in public or in front of men who you're not married to, that deny education to girls. These are not just ancient problems. There are still cultures today that have these practices, but they generally are not cultures that have been deeply influenced by Christianity. Women's situation has improved the most, where Christianity is impact has been the greatest. 

There may be exceptions. There have been times throughout history where some Christians had a lower view of women than they should have, where they didn't treat women with the dignity that they rightfully should have recognized. But overall, it is a fact that we're Christianity's impact has been greatest women's situation has improved the most. The Bible is a female friendly book, a non Christian woman said to a Christian missionary, surely your bible was written by a woman. Well, why would she think that? When the Christian asked why she said that the woman replied, Well, because the Bible says so many kinds of things for women, our tea teachers never refer to us women except in reproach. 

The Bible says that God created women as well as men in his image, that Jesus Christ paid with his blood to purchase women for himself and that in Christ, there's neither male nor female, that He sent His Spirit to live inside of women, that Jesus himself personally involved women in his mission, as did his apostles, and that the Lord God loves women with an immeasurable love. Now, a book that contains all of that is a female friendly book, Jesus in His time off and went contrary to attitudes that were quite common around him, even among Jewish teachers and rabbis who should have known better. The Old Testament part of the Bible revealed God's image and women it revealed that adultery was wrong. It revealed that widows rites were to be respected and women who were widows were to be helped. It spoke of woman being a gift from the Lord, a good wife was beyond price worth more than rubies. 

The Scriptures said all of this, and yet somehow, some of those who are studying the scriptures and the great Jewish scholars were missing. what was being said about women. Some of the rabbi's said let the words of the law be burned rather than committed to a woman. If a man teaches his daughter the law, it is as though he taught her lecture a look. The Rabbi's also said he talks with a woman in public brings evil upon himself one is not so much as to greet a woman. What did Jesus do?

Well, his disciples were mighty shocked when he found him talking alone with a Samaritan woman at the well. John foretells about that, and this was a woman who didn't even have a very good reputation either. And yet Jesus was speaking to her teaching her showing her the gospel, teaching her how to have living water through faith in him. He taught his friend Mary, Jesus taught many women, the ways of God and this was very contrary to the attitudes common in his day. Jesus was a friend of women, he spoke against adultery. 

And remember that time, adultery was punishable by death if you were the woman, remember the story of the woman who was going to be stoned for being caught in adultery, that demand wasn't going to be stolen. But Jesus spoke out against all adultery. And he said also that adultery includes lustful looking. So he told one man a It's not okay to go around looking at other women. It's adulterous to be always scoping out the other women who aren't married to you. And Jesus also said that it was wrong to get a divorce even if you had all the paperwork, even if the legalities were all fine. If you divorced a woman unless she had been unfaithful to you, you were committing adultery and forcing her to commit adultery. And so Jesus spoke against adultery. And in a day when men had all the say, to tell men that they had no right to commit adultery and no right to divorce their wife for frivolous reasons. 

Jesus was doing a great service to women still today in our world. And in North America, in particular, most poverty among women is among single mothers who've been abandoned by their man. So you're doing women a great favor when you're urging men and commanding men to remain married and to remain faithful. Of course, Jesus was a friend of women also in healing women of their diseases. The Bible gives many examples of that. He drove demons out of various women, Mary Magdalene was the most famous, he drove seven demons who had been torturing her and ruining her life. And he gave these women a new future in him and eternal life in Him. 

Jesus taught women and he didn't just teach them, he made them partners in mission, we read in a number of places where women traveled with Jesus and the apostles and contributed to the ministry out of their own money, and did other things to serve as support personnel for the mission of Jesus and of His apostles. Jesus also made women the first witnesses of His resurrection. And keep in mind that the rabbi's did not even allow a woman to testify in court in that time. And yet Jesus, when He rose from the dead in the greatest event in human history, decided, well, who should my first witnesses be of this? I think I'll show myself to some of the women who have loved me and have been faithful to me, and have been my followers. And so he made women the first witnesses of His resurrection.

Now Jesus followers to have followed in the way of the master and treated women in a godly manner, and we're dear friends with women Paul honored single women, now against the wall. So what? Well, if a woman was valuable only as a bearer of children, or only as somebody helps out her husband, that she's not worth much if she's single and childless. And yet Paul said that single women can be mighty in their devotion to the Lord. Paul's letters often greet females as CO laborers. You know, you might yawn your way or speed your way through some of those late parts of Paul's letters that say, well say hello to so and so. And hi to sevens on greetings to so and so. But you learn a lot from those greetings, including the names of a lot of women who Paul called co laborers or gear sisters in the Lord or people that he worked with. Lydia was a woman who hosted a home church that was planted by Paul it met in Lydia's house, Priscilla and her husband, Kyla hosted a home church that had been planted by Paul. Phoebe was a deacon in the church yet sin, cray. 

And Paul sent the epistle to the Romans, that great letter full of truth of God, by the hand of Phoebe and delivered it to the Romans, Paul and Peter called on each husband to love to nourish and sacrifice for his wife to be considerate toward his wife. When they had to summarize it, they said a husband wants to treat his wife as Christ treats his church loving, and laying down his life for her and doing everything he could to make her a radiant and flourishing bride that was the Christian pattern for how men ought to treat women. And that was the Christian pattern for what women could do in God's kingdom and women spread Christianity. 

Now, it's a fact that some Christians were too influenced by the anti woman attitudes around them. But the overall impact was that women were dignified and empowered. Churches met in homes for 300 years, there weren't really any church buildings, they would meet by a river or out in the open or in people's homes. And some of the wealthier folks would open their larger homes if they were Christian, wealthy folks. And so churches met in homes. And you know, something that happens in homes hit depends on the hospitality of godly women to make things go well, I know in my own home, when we have people over, it's not my generosity, and my all around wonderfulness that makes it go well. It has my wife's gifts of hospitality, and making people feel at home that really makes hospitality effective when we have people over and the same is true of a Bible studies of home gatherings. And for the first 300 years of church history, churches were meeting in these homes. 

Now, women weren't allowed to be the official preachers or to have the rule of an elder over the church, and that had roots in the Scripture itself. But far from squelching women, it just recognize that there are some differences between men and women and their roles may play out somewhat differently. But even so women could still speak in public and prophesy with proper decorum according to the Bible. And according to later Christian writers, in evangelism, sometimes women were known as gossiping the gospel because they would talk to their friends, and they would tell others about Christ and win them to Christ. 

Another way they spread Christianity was they actually had babies and raised them instead of aborting them before they were born, or killing them after they were born. And that meant that women who were Christians were having larger families in the pagans, and they were teaching their children. And this has a huge impact in the spread of Christianity, Christianity spreads by evangelism. And by outreach, certainly, but it also spreads by simply having lots of children and raising them, right. And Christian women played a vital role in that. They didn't dump girl babies. And so what does that mean? Among other things, it means that a lot more baby girls grew up in Christian homes and became Christian women. 

And that meant you had more Christian women to have more babies and the outreach produced the pagans. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not sending the message that the only importance that women have is their ability to bear children. But it certainly is one important ability and in a pagan environment where, where many were killing their babies, the Christian women who had babies and brought them up in the ways of the Lord enabled Christianity to outnumber the pagans after a while. Jesus blessed women, and women called into fellowship with Jesus and in His salvation through Jesus bless Jesus mission, and were a huge part of the expansion of the Christian faith in the early centuries. And in all the centuries since then. Now let's do a little bit of contrast. Again, we've seen some contrasts with the treatment of women in the pagan world and in the pagan cultures of the Greco Roman world. 

Let's just look at widows in Hinduism for a minute and contrast that with Christian treatment of widows. So today is a Hindu practice, which basically means burning widows. Sound good? Well, when a husband dies, his wife has no right to go on living in So under the older Hinduism, it was simply the common practice to burn a man's widow when he died. Christian missionaries to India led the opposition to the burning of widows. And even though Christian missionaries were not that powerful in the views of the government, and even though Christians were a small minority, yet, eventually widow burning was outlawed, and it still is practiced occasionally among some Hindus. But it was the Christian teaching, which led even Hindus to stop burning widows. Some Hindu leaders complain about that the foundations of Hindu society would be shaken if widows were not burned alive. That's a direct quote from a Hindu leader. There was a Hindu saying if her husband is happy, she should be happy. If he is sad, she should be sad. If he is dead, she should also die.

It wasn't just Hindus, by the way, among many peoples in North America, widows would die or be killed after their husband died. This was true in China, among them era of New Zealand, it was true in many parts of Africa, it was true in Scandinavia, it was true among Eskimo people, they wouldn't burn them. In the case of the Eskimos, they would put a widow on an ice floe to float off by herself and freeze to death or starve to death. And so there have been various cultures who dealt with the problem of widows, by getting rid of them. How did Christianity deal with widows? Well, Jesus helped widows, he healed some widows, he raised the son from the dead of a widow so that he could take care of his widowed mother again. 

And he rebuked mistreatment of widows. He told some of the religious leaders of his time that they were robbing widows in this treating widows and Jesus spoke against that 88 times the Bible speaks about widows, and it doesn't do so negatively. The Bible says just to take one example Psalm 68, verse five, a defender of widows is God and His holy dwelling. James one verse 27, says that religion that God the Father accepts as pure and faultless is this to look after widows in their distress, quite a difference between looking after widows in their distress, or just killing them and getting rid of them. Take a few more examples. In Christianity, younger widows not only weren't killed but they were encouraged to remarry. 

The apostle Paul said that a young widow could remarry anyone she wants, but he must be in the Lord and belong to the Lord. The Christian faith also made provisions for relatives to care for widows. In Paul's letter to Timothy, he says that family members should take care of a widow first of all, if she has close relatives. In fact, he goes so far as to say that if anyone does not take care of his relatives, and especially his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. Paul says that in the context of urging relatives to take care of a widow. And so that's how highly widows were raided in Christianity, if you didn't take care of a widow who was a close relative, you had denied the faith and were worse than an unbeliever. 

And if there was nobody to take care of that widow, if all of her relatives were pagans who weren't gonna take care of her, or if all of her close relatives had died, then the church had provisions to care for a widow. widows were considered valuable workers. First Timothy five seems to speak of an order of widows where people could enter this order of widows if they were at a certain age and had certain qualifications. And then they would work on behalf of the church and help others the church would help them. And then they would help the church. And this valuing of a widow is again proof that women matter, that they matter, even when they don't have a husband anymore, even when they don't have children to care for anymore. 

They matter just because they are daughters of the King, and they're precious them, and they should be precious to us. Polycarp, who wasn't a was a follower of Jesus, personally discipled by the apostle John preached this, let not the widows being neglected, be thou after the Lord, their protector, and friend. So that's the status that widows had in Christianity. And that's how the Christian faith taught that widows were to be treated, that we've seen a contrast between Hindu treatment of widows and the Christian approach. 

Now let's take another religion, the religion of Islam, and let's look at Muhammad and his treatment of women. Muhammad saw a widow not a widow, but a woman who was a wife of a dear friend, and his dear friend because he honored Muhammad so much I'm doing well. You may marry my wife, I'll divorce her and you can have her if you want. And she was an extraordinarily beautiful woman. But Muhammad said, No, she's your wife. I won't take it from you. But then Muhammad had a dream. 

And in the dream I lost said, do not refuse what Allah has offered to you. And so Muhammad accepted the gift of his friend's beautiful wife and married her and she was divorced from her husband. Mohammed also married another woman, a Jewish woman who was extraordinarily beautiful. And this woman had just seen her husband, her father and her brother beheaded by troops under Muhammad's command, there were 800 Jewish men who had surrendered to Muhammad's forces, and all these unarmed men were beheaded. And then one of the captors was picked out as a wife from Muhammad, and she had just seen her husband, father and brother beheaded, but according to tradition, she considered it a great honor to be a wife of the Prophet. Another marriage was to a daughter of one of Muhammad's colleagues, the marriage was arranged when she was age nine, it was consummated, or they it was arranged when she was seven, and consummated when she was nine years old. 

Now, I'm not digging into anti Muhammad history here, you need to understand that these are statements from Islamic tradition itself. I'm not trying to bad mouth Muhammad, I'm trying to tell in a straightforward manner. What Islamic tradition says about Muhammad and his relation to various women. Muhammad had at least 14 wives if you add up the different accounts in the Muslim traditions, Muhammad struck his favorite wife once when she left the house. without his permission, he struck Asia. The Quran itself tells husbands to beat wives who don't obey them. Okay. We've seen a little bit about how Muhammad treated women and how the Koran suggested that women be treated. 

Now this does not mean that every Muslim man is cruel to his wife, or that all Muslim women are chronically mistreated, just as it doesn't mean that every Christian man always treats his wife the way he should. It does mean, however, that at the root of the Christian faith, is the Bible. And Jesus in his treatment of women, at the root of the Islamic faith is the Quran, and Muhammad and his treatment of women. And Jesus and Muhammad, were quite different. When we think about Christianity and women, there's a few things that I just want to draw to your attention in closing. One is beware of the multicultural claim that every culture or religion is equally good. 

Would you rather be a woman in Greco Roman times in that culture? Would you rather have someone say that your husband had the right to kill you if he wished or to kill your children if he wished? Would you rather live in a culture with female genital mutilation? Would you rather lives in cultures like that? We're in a culture where women are treated as daughters of the King of heaven, where they are considered as created in God's image, and where Jesus paid for them with his own precious blood. Not every culture is the same in every respect, not in its treatment of women, and not in a whole bunch of different ways either. Beware also of the radical feminist claim that Christianity has harmed women more than any other force in the world. 

That's just a lie. Christianity has done more to liberate women than any other force or religion or intellectual tradition in the history of the world. And beware of those radical feminists who claim to bring liberation, what they do, they return you back to the old days of abortion. The old days where girls are getting bored and much more often than boys are, is that women's liberation? Is it liberating women to kill the babies that they bear? Or to make them like bad men?

I mean, that's what a lot of so called feminism does, is it makes women into bad men who are career crazy and promiscuous, like bad men tend to be, it is not liberating women, to turn them into lousy men. So beware of multiculturalism, which claims that everything's equal, and it really doesn't matter. Because all religions teach pretty much the same thing. Hey, tell that to a Hindu widow who is going up in flames, that her religion teaches the same thing about widows as Christianity does when it tells the family and the church to care for the widow.

Tell the Muslim woman who has just been beaten by her husband and who just quoted the Koran while he did it, and tell her that her culture and religion is exactly the same as the religion that says Husbands love your wives and do not be harsh with them and lay down your life for her as Christ laid down his life for the church. Not all religions and cultures are the same. And the secular culture and the quasi religion of radical feminism is of no great advantage to women either. Jesus said, I have come, that they may have life and have it abundantly. And he meant that for everyone. And it applied to women too. When Jesus came into the world, life, for women became so much more abundant, so much more joyful, so much more free and dignified. 

And as the Holy Spirit worked in those women who were called as Jesus disciples, they gave back and they became mighty women. Some of them became martyrs for the cause of Jesus and died a terrible death because they loved their Jesus so much, and many of them not only died for Jesus, but lived for Jesus and brought many other children into the world and taught them the ways of Christ led many other women and men to Christ by their testimony. And still today, Jesus gives abundant life to women, and women bring abundant fruit for the kingdom of God.