Topic: Eight Tenets of Feminine Graces (part 2) (Titus 2:4-5)

Radical feminism’s boorish obsession with equality has become a cancer threatening marriage, home, and family.

The Broadway musical and classic movie “My Fair Lady” is an illustrative reminder of how much western civilization has eroded in 60 years.  The plot of the musical, first premiering on Broadway in 1956, centers on a bet between two Englishmen, a professor Henry Higgins and his friend Pickering.  Professor Higgins wagers he can take a simple, “uncivilized” flower street urchin and, through lessons in speech and etiquette, pass her off as a lady.  Among the many beautiful songs in the musical is one humorously titled, “A Hymn to Him” in which Professor Higgins bemoans the differences between men and women.  Higgins, openly expressing his frustration with Eliza, played by Audrey Hepburn, finds himself falling for her precisely because of the somewhat frustrating, sometimes maddening differences between men and women.  Higgins observes the following…

Women are irrational, that’s all there is to that!

Their heads are full of cotton, hay, and rags!

They’re nothing but exasperating, irritating,

vacillating, calculating, agitating,

Maddening and infuriating hags!

 

Why does ev’ryone do what the others do?

Can’t a woman learn to use her head?

Why do they do ev’rything their mothers do?

Why don’t they grow up- well, like their father instead?

Why can’t a woman take after a man?

Men are so pleasant, so easy to please;

Wherever you’re with them, you’re always at ease.

I fear professor Higgins observations regarding the wonderful and complementary differences between men and women no longer holds true in a culture that has become so inane it entertains the foolishness of those who allow for “self-identification” with the opposite sex.  Professor Higgins’ wish that “ a woman take after a man” has sadly come true as radical feminism’s boorish obsession with equality has become a cancer threatening marriage, family, and society.

Higgins’ observation that young women learn to “do ev’rything their mothers do” is precisely the reason Titus was to challenge older women to be “teachers of good things” (Titus 2:3).  Rather than follow their peers, young women were to look to the “aged women” for instruction in eight spiritual disciplines.  We considered three of the eight disciplines in an earlier devotion.  Older women are to teach young women “to be sober, to love their husbands, [and] to love their children” (Titus 2:4).

Titus 2:5 – “To be discreet [soberminded], chaste [holy; pure from carnality; free from evil], keepers at [workers in the] home, good [honorable; pleasing to God], obedient [subordinate to; ranking under; submitting] to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed [reproached; discredited].”

The fourth tenet of feminine grace older women were to teach the younger is “to be discreet” (2:4a), literally “sober minded”.  Radical feminism has introduced into mainstream America the opposite; silliness, partying and drunkenness have become the trait of a gender that rejects discipline and discretion as a feminine grace and discipline.  Models themselves, the older women were to challenge the young women to be sensible, exercising good judgment.

The fifth tenet of feminine grace and discipline is chastity.  Granted, society has changed and the notion of chastity and fidelity has been relegated to Victorian taste; however, God’s Word has not changed and God’s will is that young women would be “chaste” in attitude, appearance and action.  Paul directed Timothy to teach women in the church to reflect in their dress and manner a modesty that is lost in our day of selfies and brazen nudity.

1 Timothy 2:9-10 – “In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness [modest, rather than brazen demeanor] and sobriety [exercising good judgment and restraint]; not with broided hair [elaborate design], or gold, or pearls, or costly [expensive] array; ¹⁰ But (which becometh [befits] women professing godliness) with good works.”

The inconvenient truth is the dress and conduct of the average young woman in our churches today is far from “chaste”.  Rather than that “which becometh women professing godliness” (1 Timothy 2:10), too many young women, wives and mothers identify more with Madonna and Taylor Swift than with the Bible’s exhortation that wives are to adorn themselves in a “meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price” (1 Peter 3:4).

To be continued….

Copyright 2016 – Travis D. Smith