A Beautiful Cage

Here is a sleight of hand that has fooled millions of intelligent women, and I want to show you how it is done, because once you see it you can never un-see them.

You take something ugly. You take the old, crude idea that men are above women, that a woman is a lesser creature made to obey, the kind of thing your great-grandmother heard from the pulpit and your grandmother half believed and your mother quietly resented.

No one wants to say it out loud anymore, because it sounds exactly like what it is. So you do not say it out loud. You give it a new name. A soft name. A churchy name. You wrap the cage in velvet, hang a needlepoint blessing on the bars, and call it a gift.
And then, this is the genius part, you convince the woman that the cage is for her protection, that the lock is an act of love, and that wanting out is a sign that something has gone wrong with her heart.

The New Word That Means Everything and Nothing
The word you will hear most these days is complementarian. It sounds lovely. It sounds like two puzzle pieces, like a duet, like a marriage where each person brings something the other lacks. Complementary. We complete each other. Who could be against that?

I am not against that. I believe men and women are gloriously, wonderfully different, and that those differences are a gift. If complementarian actually meant what it sounds like it means, I would print it on a tote bag.

But watch what happens when you ask the one question that matters.

Ask what specifically a woman is not allowed to do that a man is allowed to do. Watch the answer come back. She cannot preach. She cannot teach men. She cannot lead. She cannot be an elder. She cannot stand in the pulpit. She cannot, in the strictest rooms, even read the announcements or hand out the bread.

Notice that the list is not a list of differences. It is a list of restrictions, and they all run in one direction. A true complement goes both ways. There is no parallel list of things a man cannot do in the church because he is a man. There is no role reserved for women that a man is told, with sorrow and Scripture, is simply not for him.

A relationship where one person has a list of things they may not do, and the other person holds the pen, is not a complement. We have a word for that arrangement, and it is not a flattering one.

So complementarian turns out to mean equal in worth, but unequal in everything actual worth would get you. You are precious, dear, infinitely valued. Now please sit down. It is the theological equivalent of telling someone they are the most important person in the company while quietly removing their name from every door.

Separate but Equal Had a Cousin
If equal in worth, lesser in role rings a faint and uncomfortable bell, it should.
We have heard that exact sentence structure before in this country, applied to a different group of God’s children, and we rightly recognize it now as a lie. Separate but equal. Equal in dignity, the argument went, simply meant to occupy a different and lower place. Different water fountain, same humanity. Back of the bus, same value in the eyes of God.

We see through it now. We are ashamed that anyone ever said it with a straight face, let alone with a Bible in hand. And yet the very same logic, equal in essence, lesser in place, is preached from respectable pulpits every Sunday about women, and we are told it is not discrimination, it is design.

Servant Leader?
The second phrase you will meet is servant leader, and it is my personal favorite, because it is so beautifully constructed to end every argument before it begins.
Here is how it works. A man is given total authority. Final say. Headship. The deciding vote in the home and the only vote in the church. And then, so that this does not sound like the raw power grab that it is, you staple the word servant to the front of it. He does not rule you. He serves you. He leads, yes, but humbly. He has all the authority, but he carries it like a cross.

It sounds so holy that to question it feels like questioning Jesus Himself, who, after all, washed feet.

But notice what the phrase quietly protects. If he leads well, the system is proven good. And if he leads badly, if he is harsh or controlling or simply wrong, then the answer is never that he should not have had that authority. The answer is always that he failed to be servant enough. The structure is never the problem. The man just needs to hold the unquestionable power a little more sweetly.

That is a system designed to never be wrong. And any arrangement that can never be wrong is an arrangement you should examine very, very closely, because that is precisely how abuse protects itself.

In my counseling office, the most dangerous homes are not the ones where the man admits he is a tyrant. They are the ones where everyone agrees he is a wonderful servant leader, and the wife cannot understand why she feels like she is slowly disappearing.

A real servant does not need a title that reminds you he is in charge. Jesus, when He knelt with the towel, was not running a leadership seminar. He was on the floor. The “servant leaders” I have known in the worst marriages were never on the floor. They were on a throne, while their wives did all the actual leading and serving.

Biblical Womanhood, a Costume Sold as a Calling
Then there is biblical womanhood, which is presented to you as if it were lifted whole from the pages of Scripture, timeless and fixed and obviously God’s design.

The specific picture of biblical womanhood you were handed, the soft voice, the deference, the supportive smile, the gifts pointed safely toward children and casseroles and never toward a pulpit, is not a snapshot of the women in the Bible. It is a snapshot of a particular culture’s preferences, dressed up in Scripture and sold back to you as the will of God.

Because the actual women in the actual Bible will not fit in that frame, and the people who coined biblical womanhood know it, which is why you were quietly steered past them.

Deborah led a nation and commanded an army, and the man in charge would not go to battle without her. Huldah was the prophet the king’s own priests ran to when they needed to hear from God, while male prophets were alive and available. And, let’s not forget Jael who drove a tent peg through the head of an enemy.

Priscilla taught the great preacher Apollos his theology, and her name is often listed first, before her husband’s. Phoebe carried the letter to the Romans, the most important piece of mail in church history, and almost certainly read and explained it to them. Junia was called outstanding among the apostles, until centuries later some uncomfortable men decided she must have been a man and changed her name in the text. And it was women, every Gospel agrees, who were the first preachers of the resurrection, commissioned by the risen Christ Himself to go and tell the men.

That is true biblical womanhood.

It is bold, it is public, it is leading, teaching, prophesying, carrying the gospel into rooms full of men who needed to hear it. The version you were sold is not biblical enough.

The Tell
Whenever a teaching about your place comes wrapped in language so nice that questioning it feels like sinning, stop and look for the lock. Ask the one question. What can he do that I cannot, and who decided? If the words are true, the answer will be reciprocal and gentle and go both ways. If the words are a costume, the answer will always, every time, leave you holding less and them holding the pen.

Patriarchy learned long ago that it could not survive being seen. So it changed its clothes. It put on the vocabulary of servanthood and partnership and design, and it walked right into the sanctuary. It sat down in the best seat, and it told you the seat was yours, dear, you just have to move so a man can use it.

1. Complementarian means lesser.

2. Servant leadership means authority over you.

3. Biblical womanhood, as you were taught it, means stay small.

You are allowed to call these things what they are. Naming the trick is not bitterness. It is insight.

You did not fall for something because you are foolish. You trusted holy-sounding words spoken by people you loved in the house of the God you adore. That is not gullibility. That is faith, twisted into something God never meant to be.

The shame belongs to the ones who built the cage and called it a gift, not to the woman who believed them because she wanted so badly to obey God.

The same Spirit who is making their words feel suddenly hollow is the One who inspired Deborah and Huldah and Priscilla and Phoebe. He is not asking you to become someone new. He is calling you back to who the women of God have always been, before someone renamed them.

The cage was always a cage. They just got very, very good at decorating it for you.

Open the door and step into your free life with Christ.

If what you have read has piqued your interest I invite you to take a look at my book, “Leave Your Church - a guide for women done with churches that treat them as inferior.” You can find it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H5FJGCSY