Be Still and Know?

The following post contains excerpts from a chapter in my new book, The Private Side of Leadership: An Honest Guide for Leader's Wives.

He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul.

—Psalm 23:2–3

Still waters.

      Silence.

      No distractions.

      Does such calm sound like a lovely but impossible dream?

      Is divine peace really attainable amid noisy days filled with overloaded

schedules and technology’s relentless demands?

      We often desire one life but live another.

Guilt traipses after us like an unwelcome companion.

      How do we get so overloaded?

      Does God understand the stress of modern life?

      Can we organize our lives to deal with time pressures so that we

put him first?

      The hard-pressed activity of life often keeps us from accepting

God’s invitation to spend time with him. Author Carol Mahaney tells us:

Surely we only have to be realistic and honest with

ourselves to know how regularly we need to turn to the

Bible. How often do we face problems, temptation and

pressure? EVERY DAY! Then how often do we need

instruction, guidance and greater encouragement?

EVERY DAY! To catch all these felt needs up into an

even greater issue, how often do we need to see God’s

face, hear his voice, feel his touch, know his power? The

answer to all these questions is the same: EVERY DAY!

Like Carol, we are deeply aware of the ache in our hearts, the crushing burden

of sorrow we frequently bear, the

knowledge that we need daily to

be in the presence of the Lord. Despite

our awareness, we just can't make

spending time with God happen.

It’s difficult to dismount the activity

merry-go-round that often spins

our lives into a dizzying cycle. With all

of life’s demands, is it really possible

to be still and know God?

(Psalm 46:10)

We long to be liberated from the crushing responsibilities and schedules that overload us, but such liberation requires that we better understand the God who seeks relationship with us.

A Radically Different Man

The One who invites us into his presence, our Creator and Savior,

the Lord Jesus Christ, does understand a woman’s life. He was, in fact,

the initiator of the first feminist movement! However, Jesus didn’t

advance the cause by the launch of a protest march, a fight for equal

pay, or sponsoring male-bashing sessions. To the contrary, he

possessed a completely different strategy. He elevated women. He set

them free!

One of the legacies of our Judeo-Christian heritage is freedom

for women. Christianity was birthed from the Jewish religion.

Since Jesus grew up in a Jewish household, he lived in a culture

under the Mosaic Law. Yet his attitudes and actions toward the

women in his sphere contrasted greatly with the typical ways in

which Jewish men viewed and treated them. The pharisaical rabbis

often blamed the fall of mankind on Eve, even though in the Genesis

account God clearly puts the curse of sinful disobedience directly at

Adam’s feet (see Genesis 3). Due to this distorted view of the fall,

the Pharisees held that women were, as stated by the Jewish

historian Josephus (who was a contemporary of the apostle Paul),

“basically inferior to man in every way.” And the Pharisees were

the most influential Jewish group during Jesus’s day. Bible scholar

Emil Schürer explains:

The decisive influence upon public affairs was in the

hands . . . of the Pharisees. They had the bulk of the

nation as their ally, the women especially were in their

hands. They had the greatest influence upon the

congregations, so that all acts of public worship, prayers

and sacrifices were performed according to their

injunctions. Their sway over the masses was absolute

so that they could obtain a hearing, even when

they said anything against the king or the high priest.

Typically aligned with the Pharisees, the rabbis held the following

views:

*Men think rationally (Adam chose); women think

   emotionally (Eve was deceived).

*Men escape temptation by avoidance of women. Since

   females represent the origin of sin for humankind, it is

   logical, therefore, that they are the source of temptation. As

   Rabbi Jose ben Johanan (ca. 150 BC) said, “He that talks

    much with women brings evil upon himself and neglects the

   study of the Law and the last will inherit Gehenna [hell]!”

*Women are incapable of learning religious subjects. Some

   rabbis actually forbade instruction for women. Rabbi Eliezer

   stated, “If a man gives his daughter a knowledge of the law,

   it is as though he taught her lechery.” Further, women could

   not teach anyone but their own children.

*The sexes must be segregated, and women should not

   participate in public worship. Many rabbis felt females

   should not be taught the law at all as they might be comforted

    in the forgiveness of sin and become all the more emboldened in it!

*Men can divorce their wives for any cause that displeases

   them—including infractions such as going out in public with

   their hair unbound, spinning in the street, speaking with

   another man or being alone with another man.

These distortions came not from Scripture but from the religious

establishment, from the pharisaical tendency to “build fences” around

the law given by God. Many Jewish leaders and teachers aspired to

eliminate even the contemplation of sin. Furthermore, the twelve men

Jesus called to be his disciples were all Jewish men, who grew up in

Jewish homes and synagogues and were surely influenced by the

pharisaical view of women.

Enter into that world a new sort of man—Jesus Christ! He

challenged the disciples’ and Pharisees’ attitudes and beliefs,

especially their views toward females. For Jesus’s perspective was

profoundly and radically different. He exalted the women in his world,

creating a new standard for how to respect them.

Scripture provides many examples of Jesus turning established rules and traditions upside down as he confronted the people’s misguided beliefs. My new book,

The Private Side of Leadership reveals how Jesus liberated women and turned their worlds upside down!