What children need at age one, five, six, fourteen, eighteen is simply amazing, and so is what those needs call forth from a woman’s creativity and heart and mind, personally for each one of these little ones that are coming along.
And, just being able to focus on the home where ministry can happen—not being enslaved by anybody’s clock—you can say, ‘I want to work my tail off for King Jesus, but I don’t want anybody to pay me for it. I’m going to do it right here in this neighborhood with my husband’s connections and my connections. We’re going to lavish grace on people’s lives.’
So, I’m calling for ministry full-time when I say ‘don’t work full-time if you have a family.’ Turn your family into ministry. Turn your family into a global dream for what this family might become, or what this man might be, or what we might be together as we are home.
— John Piper, Is It Okay for Mothers to Work Full-Time Outside of the Home? June 22, 2010
Ah, well, he didn’t mean me, I was one of those heretics–with complete spousal support–who didn’t have children. Of course the main reasons we didn’t have them were lack of interest (him) and depression (me), and q sure neither would be validated as a legitimate reason by the Fundagelicals.
The thing is Karen that Piper would be pleased with you, because you aren’t producing new atheists. When he refers to women providing children he actually means, and only means, evangelical women.
I hate that whole concept of design – that women are designed to stay home with kids and men are designed to work outside the home. In my family, we decided that my husband (a trained educator) was better suited to be home and I was better suited for working outside. Plus my husband has his own business and can work evenings. We always joked that if I stayed home the babies would be clean and fed but I wouldn’t know how to interact with them. Whereas with dad they were fed and mostly clean but did a ton of fun activities. We believe each parent should serve their kids through their respective strengths, not through assigned gender roles.
When we decided to have children in the 90’s, my wife was earning more than me and loved her work as a teacher in Ontario, Canada. So I stayed home. I was not eager; I was scared but those years I spent with my two children changed my life, opened my heart as never before and made me a fuller man and human being. As I see it now, the children taught me how to really love and my wife was brave enough to support me as primary caregiver at home even though she was an abuse victim as a child and had good reason not to trust men. Instead, she spent thousands of dollars on good, feeling therapy and was able to overcome her deep suffering, the baggage of the harm done to her by her father and uncle and even a brother.
Assigned gender roles are rubbish bully talk and biblically supported because the religion touting them is designed to harm us even while calling itself perfect love. We can be as free as our children!
Great! If that’s what a woman wants and can afford, stay home, have babies, and work part-time if she wants to. But no man should be able to tell her that is what she must to do. The same applies to men. If a husband is better suited than his wife to stay home with the kids, and the couple can make that work financially, then that is what they should do–even if sets John Piper’s hair on fire.
“But no man should be able to tell her that is what she must to do.”
I understand you don’t think men should be saying things like this, but they are free to say whatever they feel like saying. They don’t have any power to make women do anything though. As you pointed out, it could set John’s hair on fire if they have a different opinion, but so what? lol
I think probably most in his congregation do what they decide themselves to do, using their own common sense. It’s like the Catholic Church being against birth control-most Catholics simply smile and ignore, don’t they? Women can do the same thing.
No, people don’t go against the man in charge. They go to church to have someone tell them how to live and believe. Sure, the pastor is free to say whatever he believes. But words have power and can be dangerous when they create the wrong type of influence.
People do go against the man in charge. People ignore their preacher All the time.