The Power of a Transformed Wife, Lori Alexander, Keeper of Home, Stay-at-home-Mothers, Working Mothers
-by Kathi
This is a book review series of The Power of a Transformed Wife by Lori Alexander. If you are just joining us, you may click on previous chapter reviews if you’d like to catch up.
Introduction & Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 – Part 1 Chapter 8 – Part 2 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11
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Chapter 12 – Keepers at Home
Do you find that women who write books or blogs about how God designed the weaker sex to stay at home are surprised to find that people may not agree with them? Is that surprise only in my imagination?
Encouraging women to be keepers at home is the most controversial topic on my blog, bar none. It seems like a lot of women want to work outside the home, which surprises me, so they give me an earful whenever I write about the positive side of being a stay-at-home-mom.
Nope, I’m not dreaming it. Why is it so “surprising” to Lori that women want to work outside the home? I think writers such as Lori feign surprise because for some reason they have a difficult time understanding that some people want to, or need to, live their life differently.
Staying home full time is difficult, I admit, but working outside the home on top of raising children, keeping a home clean and tidy, being a help meet to your husband, and fixing nourishing food is usually too much for anyone. Something will get neglected, and it’s usually the husband, who should be our first priority.
According to Lori, life is difficult no matter what decision you make, so why does it matter if a woman stays home or works outside of the home? I have run through all of these scenarios in my life so far: worked full-time and gone to school part-time with no kids at home, worked full-time with kids at home, worked part-time with kids at home, and stayed home to raise kids.
There was always something difficult that had to be tackled whether I was working or at home. There has always been untidiness because I have kids, and we live in a house. I find time to cook no matter what – and, sometimes we order pizza, too, because it’s good on a busy day (or when dinner doesn’t turn out as planned). And, there’s still time to spend with my husband, even if we are snoozing on the couch at 9 p.m. This is called being human, and life that happens when you have multiple people under one roof.
I could go on and on about this chapter. Instead I’ll highlight some of Lori’s teachings:
- “Studies have proven that children need their mothers.” – Well, yes, Lori, of course children need their mothers. Which studies? Oh, the one she states is from the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. Lori never gives us the title of the study, so I guess we are left to believe that this journal article is very clear that women must stay home to raise children.
- When children get older, mothers need to make sure they are watching appropriate TV shows and don’t go online to look at pornography. Again, every potential sinful act leads to children watching porn. Know what your children are doing at all times. Do your kids ever get a break from mom? Sounds suffocating.
- Lori worked full-time for the first two years of her oldest child’s life and then stayed home. She states she will always regret those years. If Lori regretted working full-time while having children, then you will too. Forget all those mothers who enjoy their jobs and have good relationships with their children. They don’t exist!
- Lori doesn’t think working part-time is a reasonable option either. Why? Because she didn’t work part-time when she had children. There are no options for women who need to work in order to financially survive.
- Use your time wisely when you’re home with your children. No soap operas, letting your home get untidy, or children running like wild banshees. God is order, so your home must be too. Sounds like some idyllic fairyland to me.
- Proverbs 31 teaches you what it means to be a keeper at home. Proverbs 31 is not a “to do” list!
- Lori wants you to “spend more time at home than you do anywhere else.” Women are advised to keep the home clean and organized, live within the husband’s financial means, cook from scratch, don’t put the kids in too many activities, and don’t go to a lot of Bible studies or church events. Do whatever it takes to not neglect the home. I can see staying home with a tiny kiddo, but once they reach school age everything changes. If all I had done was spent every waking hour in my house, I would have gone nuts. My kids would have, too! One of the things I loved about homeschooling was taking my kids out of the house into our community.
- Lori does encourage women to open their homes to guests. I’m okay with that. Although, it would take away time from cleaning out the closet.
- Once a woman becomes middle-aged, she is encouraged to mentor younger women. The need is real and middle-aged women fail because “most of them don’t know what submission to a husband looks like or what a keeper at home means. Most of them don’t have good marriages and haven’t taught their daughters how to cook or be housekeepers.” Lori loves to generalize the female population.
At the end of this chapter, Lori laments that the church has dropped the ball in teaching older women to mentor younger women. Churches are not teaching the ways of John MacArthur, Michael Pearl, Voddie Baucham, or James Dobson, and this is why she must blog.
I say thank goodness many churches don’t follow the teachings of these men. Thank goodness that Christians have freedom in Christ. As far as Lori’s blog goes, she has every right to put her words out there. The world, and motherhood, wouldn’t end if she had to stop writing for some reason.
Of course, Lori ends the chapter with a comment (blog post) from one of her “many readers.” It’s three and a half pages on my Kindle – a very easy way to add pages to a book. And….next chapter is all about how women are to dress. I’m assuming we’ll be talking about yoga pants!
Image courtesy of Pixabay
Spiritual Sounding Board 
I once read a comment on my blog about women emulating the example in Proverbs 31, with the commenter insisting she knew several Proverbs 31 women. Seriously? I can’t imagine someone doing all of tat all the time without fail.
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Proverbs 31 woman has a whole household staff doing the work for her! Wonder why we don’t hear more of that from the pulpit? 🙂
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I love your coverage of this Kathi!
If I don’t work I don’t eat. Nobody else pays my bills. So.
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Will she tell me how to dress for yoga? #onpinsandneedles
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Regarding:
I am sorry I cannot remember the details of it, but over a year ago, on some Christian sites (some gender egalitarian in nature), Christians were posting claims by complementarians, something or other about how FATHERS are supposedly “more” important to children than mothers.
I don’t remember all the why’s or how’s of it, only that comps were posting memes taken from singular study from years ago (or from some book) that made this claim about fathers vs. mothers.
I may be conflating things here – but it was either that, or another thing, comps were posting about how getting FATHERS into church is so much more important than getting mothers into church, because if you get a dad, then the entire family starts to go, where-as, if you just get the mother, only the mother + kids will show up.
So, there seems to possibly be a small conflict among complementarians here.
On the one hand, some of them want to trumpet fathers as being the MOST important role in a family, but you have comp women such as Lori A. insisting women are the most important, or at least most important to any kids at home.
I don’t know how to explain it, I’m just saying I am picking up on some minute, possible contradiction among complementarians on the whole moms vs. dads subject here.
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This blog post references one of the things I was just discussing above:
Fathers’ Influence on Children’s Church Attendance: What Does this Study Actually Show?
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More from the OP:
God is not a one- size- fits all God. God doesn’t cram us all into the same box and expect us to act and be the same on every facet in life, so why is Lori doing this?
My mother was a very old fashioned, traditional gender role person, she was a stay at home wife and mother. However. My mother was not as bonkers as Lori is about this stuff.
Point 1. Ha ha ha ha haaaaa. Watch appropriate TV shows?
What does that mean to Lori, nothing but “Little House on the Prairie” and TBN? (Not to knock “Little House,” I used to watch it as a kid, but watching nothing but that? No thanks).
My mom and I used to love watching cop and detective shows together, and when I got to my early and mid-teens, I loved zombie movies.
So my mother would sometimes go with me to the video rental place (like Blockbuster, remember?) and we’d rent stacks of zombie movies to watch in our V.C.R., and she’d watch those with me.
Does Lori think scenes of zombies getting their heads decapitated or their intestines spilling out is “appropriate”? LOLOLOLOLOL.
(continued in a part 2 and 3)
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This is stupid. All they are saying is mom plus kids are going and dad is the one who has to be convinced? That doesn’t mean they are the most important! (unless you only care about the men, which wouldn’t surprise me).
Also, this ‘kids need their mom’s most’ thing? How do they think that played out in ye olden days when 1/4ish of the mom’s were dying in childbirth. There were a lot of motherless kids at various points in history. They seem to have managed.
Both parents is ideal, for a lot of reasons. That doesn’t mean either of them are more important.
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More from the OP:
Point 2 My mother was a SAHM, but she lived for her soaps! Her favorite was probably “Guiding Light.” I cannot imagine my mother not having watched her soaps. So Lori can get lost on that one.
As for the “don’t let the kids run wild like banshees.”
See, Lori just assumes. Makes assumptions all over the place. She assumes everyone is just like her or her family, but we’re not.
I was always a very quiet, reserved kid. I spent a lot of time in my room, being quiet, either reading books or drawing pictures.
I gave my parents no problems. I was a quiet, obedient kid, didn’t play hooky, made straight A’s in school. So my mother didn’t have to worry about me “running wild like a banshee.”
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More from the OP:
Hunh. I sometimes see different definitions of middle aged by different people. I’m currently in my mid-40s, some consider that middle aged, some not.) Some people tend to think middle aged is at some stage in the 50s.) At any rate.
I don’t have a lot of interest mentoring anyone. Lori assumes that everyone is just as she is – married with kids at home.
I’ve never been married.
The way trends are in American culture (and in other nations), more people are either refraining from marriage altogether, or not marrying until later in life. Some are staying single by choice, and some want to get married but are unable to find an appropriate life partner.
I was taught and role-modeled this wifely submission nonsense Lori Alexander advocates by my mother and the Southern Baptist churches I went to as a kid, but my reality is, this sort of gender role teaching is (as I explain on my own blog), nothing but codependency with Bible verses painted on top, and what this does is leave an adult woman handicapped in life.
Complementarianism (better known as as codependency) also leaves a grown woman vulnerable to bullying and exploitation by co-workers and boyfriends. (I explain more in detail why on my Daisy blog).
(continued in part 2)
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Re Lori’s views:
Aside from the fact that some women like me make it to age 40 still being un-married…
Cooking and doing house-work is not “woman’s” work. It’s simply work that needs to be done. And men should know how to do that stuff too…
When young people go off to college and live in a dorm, they have to do their OWN laundry and take care of their OWN meals.
When and if they get their own apartment eventually, they have to do their OWN laundry, house cleaning, and cooking. No woman in her right mind is going to agree to run over to some single man’s apartment to scrub his dirt for him or bake him casseroles.
As I said above, more people are staying single longer, or not marrying at all, which means a lot of men and women are having to do tasks that were once considered masculine or feminine.
For example, a lot of people (such as Lori) think that taking care of an automobile is “masculine.” Well, when I had a car and a full time job, I had to take my own car into the mechanics to get the tires rotated and the oil changed, etc. I didn’t have a husband to do that for me. I didn’t have a choice.
If or when Ken (Lori’s husband) drops dead, Lori will find herself having to mow the lawn, take the car in for an oil change, balance the check book AND do the laundry and cook dinners. She will get stuck with ALL the domestic duties.
Lori’s strict insistence, with no variation to, her gender plan for both sexes, does not allow for contingencies or the unexpected in life.
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In closing (sorry to go on so long). Part 1.
One thing that dawned on me about Christian Codependency (complementarianism): it can really only work if a person is a stay at home wife and mother.
My mother was complementarian (traditional house wife, and my mother believed that the husband was head of the home…), and she was a SAHM.
My mom met my dad as a teen when they were kids in school. (This point becomes a bit pertinent in my Part 2 post.)
My mother raised me to believe in all this traditional gender role stuff (about identical to what Lori teaches, though my mother was not AS nutty about it as Lori or didn’t judge other women harshly who didn’t live life that way).
My mother passed away a few years ago.
Her passing made me stop and reconsider a lot of the things she taught me. I now realize that a lot of things Mom taught me are wrong.
My mother could afford to be a codependent (a complementarian) woman, because she had this marriage where she stayed at home all day, while my father had the 9 to 5 job. My father paid all the bills.
As a complementarian (codependent) person, my mother was an absolute doormat.
Mom believed it was “selfish” to have boundaries, it was un-feminine to be assertive, and it was mean to ever say “no” to anyone.
And you know, you will be taken advantage of living life like that – my mother was exploited and verbally abused by certain family members of mine (as was I too, because Mom raised me to be a carbon copy of herself.)
It was barely tolerable dealing with that nonsense from family members, but when I entered the world of dating and jobs outside the house, it falls apart!
You simply cannot maintain what Lori would term a “godly, feminine, biblical” gender role outside of a SAHM (Stay At Home Wife and Mother) existence. (And even in a SAHM context, it has its problems).
(continued in the next post)
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(part 2)
In the world of dating, you HAVE to be assertive, think for yourself, have boundaries, and KNOW that you are EQUAL to any man.
My mom met my dad when they were kids. My mother did not experience dating different men in her 20s or 30s like most of the rest of us do.
Because if you falter on any of those points I mentioned (being assertive, having boundaries, realizing that men are not more important than you are, etc), you are likely to end up crossing paths sooner or later with selfish or abusive men.
(I ended up being engaged to a stupid, selfish, irresponsible idiot myself, until I dumped him later.)
I ended up with that idiot jerk-o, and didn’t dump him much sooner, because Mom and Dad did not encourage me to value myself, to think of myself as worthy of respect (certainly not as an equal to a man), etc.
In other words, traditional gender role garbage (the sort that Lori teaches) kept me trapped in a lousy relationship and hampered my ability to see the Red Flags my ex was signaling when we were dating.
Same thing played out in my jobs.
I had co-workers and some bosses exploit me or verbally abuse me, and I would just sit there in silence and endure it, which only enabled the jerks.
I was taught (by my mother, similar to the junk Lori teaches) that being a girl or women meant being a forever deferential, docile, sweet, non-confrontational, submissive, smiling little doormat to everyone at all timese, no matter how rotten someone was treating me.
And that sort of behavior and mentality does not hold up on a job, if you have mean, jerky, or abusive bosses or coworkers, and you’re bound to get at least one on every job you have.
I did tolerate a lot of crap off mean and rude co-workers and bosses, but eventually, my anger popped, and I stood up for myself with a few of these jerky co-workers/supervisors, and they backed off and left me alone as a result.
You simply CANNOT be a woman in the way Lori teaches outside of a SAHM context and expect to have a healthy dating life or not be bullied on a job – because people outside your home WILL abuse you or take advantage of you.
Survival and self protection dictates that you speak up on your own behalf (which runs contrary to complementarian teachings).
Even in a SAHM context, you will get walked on by other people at times. Everyone in my family (and even church people) knew that my mother was a push-over, ripe for abuse, so people verbally abused her and used her all the time.
But I think this is ten times more the issue if a woman gets a job outside the home, or dates different men – being the sweet, submissive type of woman Lori advocates does not work in the “real world.”
My mom barely put up living this Lori Alexander complementarian crap lifestyle out because she mainly sat at home all day watching TV, when she wasn’t running a load of laundry. My mom had NO IDEA what it was like to date men in one’s 20s or older or have to put up with jerky, rude, demanding clients or co-workers at a job Monday – Friday.
(Funny thing, though, I learned that a few years before she died that my mother confided in one of her sisters (my aunt) that she was “sick and tired of being a doormat and wanted to say “no” more often.”
And in the years before she passed, my mother did start to behave in a more assertive manner.
There is NOTHING biblical or natural about a woman consistently being passive, always submitting, and never getting her own needs met, as Lori and other complementarians argue.
Even my mother (my mother, who was very traditional!) broke under this in the years before her death. It is not sustainable for any woman to live like that for a life time.)
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I think mothers working outside the home is a conscience issue. Particularly when children are young, they really do need to consider whether carrying on with a career is at the expense of neglecting their children, or is worth the price of farming them out to child-minders. I believe in the UK many working-class mothers would prefer to stay at home with young children – the career thing is more middle-class.
That said, a particularly selfish and uncaring version of capitalism has arisen in the last few decades in the Anglo-Saxon world that means that due to falling living standards/wages for the less well off coupled with inflated house prices, staying at home for mothers is simply not possible. It’s two incomes to survive, even if it means long hours. The US and UK come at the bottom of the league tables for happy family life in the advanced industrial countries. I’m sure this is much of the reason why.
I hope this is not too off topic or ‘political’, but we seem to have returned to the values and attitudes that Dickens attacked in his novels set in Victorian Britain. I wish some of the Big Names in evangelicalism especially in the States would distance themselves more from this. You bog-standard pastor in a small town where the main employer has just closed down are more than aware of the damage this is causing, and much more likely to be in tune with what is going on in the real world, where women may well have no choice but to work, or may be the only ones who can get work.
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I know people have said this before, but I want to repeat that the problems in Lori’s “bubble” world are totally first world problems. We lived in South America for many years and in most families there (including Christian families) dad, mom, and the kids ALL work just to survive. The women there don’t have the luxury of sitting at home writing blog posts all day. And I suspect that if Lori’s “bubble” world caved in she would also choose to work rather than watch her little ones go hungry.
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Yes, Mary27! Teachings such as Lori’s do not translate well outside of American/Western culture. A lot of times they don’t even work in our own culture. Lori has an easy life in terms of finances. She always has. Her parents provided everything for her and now Ken provides everything for her. She lives in a $1.1 million home, has enough money to buy all of her organic food, and recently returned from a 10 week vacation. I don’t know many of us who are able to do this with two incomes!
It’s easy for her to tell women that they should not work, however, I’m when the reality of paying off debt and trying to make ends meet each month face you, it’s a different story. If she could be accepting of letting people live their life the way that works best for them, then I wouldn’t have such an issue with her.
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Lea, I will make sure to wear my yoga pants while reading the next chapter! 😉
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Kathi, I think part of the problem is taking a verse out of context (the context of a certain situation and culture) and trying to apply it to all people everywhere. The original audience probably interpreted it very differently from Lori. I suspect that the verse was really telling women to keep busy providing for their own families so they would have no time to be meddling in other people’s lives :-).
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Mary said:
Mary, you’re right, and it’s not only Lori, you can hear the same thing from pastors/leaders in Evangelical Christian circles. It makes me roll my eyes. They have tunnel vision and think the whole world is the privileged US. Ugh!
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The Prov. 31 woman couldn’t have been at home all the time since she was out buying fields and making clothes to sell. She was a busy woman at home and in the community. Most SAHMs that I know are similar, and I think that what they do is much more work than my “day job.”
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The problem is that conservative evangelical Christians read Proverbs 31 through the lens of Christianity. It is a Jewish text that is a poem. It should be read from this perspective. It is a not a “to do” list for today’s modern Christian woman!!!
Here’s an interesting read about Proverbs 31. I share it because pretty much everything that I have read from a Jewish study perspective says the same thing.
http://www.oztorah.com/2011/08/the-two-wise-women-of-proverbs-chapter-31/
“Chapter 31 can also be viewed as an independent appendix to Proverbs, characterised in this way by RBY Scott:[14]
1. 31:1-9: A Queen Mother’s Admonition
2. 31:10-31: The Ideal Housewife
“Scott’s use of the term “housewife” is quite inadequate, since the eshet chayyil is no stay-at-home “domestic duties” woman. She deserves a better sobriquet and has acquired it in the high estimation which the passage has developed in Jewish history. It probably provided the precedent for the custom in some places of the husband concentrating on his studies while the wife ran a business.
“Eshet Chayyil entered the Sabbath eve home liturgy, where it was popularly understood as a gracious tribute to the Jewish woman. It helped that the poem was an alphabetical acrostic, a remarkable aid to memorising its content, though the Sabbath eve table probably uses it more for song than for substance.”
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I think the Evangelical church ignored Proverbs 31 for the longest time because it didn’t fit their mold for what the purpose of a mother was. I remember being shocked the first time I read through the Bible and found that passage, because it was so squarely opposed to what was being taught from the pulpit.
Now, the church seems to have adopted the Microsoft “embrace and extend” methodology, where they render the passage useless by parsing it into micro-duties instead of taking the passage as a whole. As a whole, this is one accomplished women in the midst of a backwards patriarchal society. It probably doesn’t have the shock value in “feminist” (cough) America that it would have had in Israel.
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Does she think ‘good marriage’ and teaching ‘daughters’ (because sons should be slobs who eat ramen?) how to cook or be housekeepers are the same thing? My mom cleaned like crazy, but her cooking was mostly the same easy stuff over and over (spaghetti, tacos). Which is not to say she can’t cook, but she doesn’t care about it. {So I didn’t learn a lot of cooking from her, I learned from my grandmother because she was fantastic. And also, from cookbooks and practice} She still has a ‘good marriage’. Funny enough, my dad has started baking pies and stuff which I find amusing.
You should! I don’t actually think I have any of the ‘yoga pants’ that sparked all this outrage. I usually wear athletic leggings.
On Proverbs 31, I think it would be more helpful to think of the Proverbs 31 HUSBAND than anything. He tells everyone his wife is awesome, trust her to do all her buying and selling fields, is proud of her and not controlling. I want to hear that sermon.
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Lea –
I have tried to get my kids in the kitchen, but they don’t show any interest in cooking. When they do ask for help to learn something I’m more than happy to be there beside them. I consider myself self-taught when it comes to cooking. My Mom is a fantastic cook. She teaches cooking classes and is very good at what she does. That being said, when I was in the kitchen with her my role was “stirrer.” I love to cook and that came from being from a family where food was made with love and never treated as a source of contention. (Meaning we were not forced to finish what was on our plate.) It didn’t come from standing by my Mom, whom I love very much, and stirring.
My husband has shown an interest in learning more about cooking. He has taken on the task of cooking on Sunday nights. And, he recently tried to make a cake – which is a good story all on its own! And, don’t tell Lori, but he does his own laundry too! Gasp – I know!!!
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The Proverbs 31 Woman was business savvy. She ran 2 or 3 part-time gigs between managing her household. She also had maid servants so much of her household chores were administrated. And she had to spin, weave and sew everything to clothe her household in purple and scarlet–in those days they didn’t just hop over to Kohl’s or Osh Kosh or wherever.
Would her family have even had a television if they had had the technology? I don’t see her just plopping in front of the tube to veg out for 3 hours of soaps. Lori obviously has the TV on a lot or she wouldn’t have to worry about what the kids watch.
Because we are no longer an agrarian based society, it’s hard to apply the 31st chapter of Proverbs to the modern housewife/soccer mom. As a single, childless woman it obviously doesn’t apply to me.
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What I sense in this and other chapters is a legalistic arrogance to ascribe her personal choices to God and then make them rules for all other Christian women. I have homeschooled and lived very frugally….no million dollar home as my husband has a humble occupation. I work part time now that my children are in their late terns. My house is usually messy as my husband leaves everything everywhere and refused to put stuff away so I gave up asking him about it. But people feel welcome here anyway!! We have a handicapped child with thousands of dollars of medical care needed monthly….partly why I work. I do not sense any compassion or empathy from Lori as to my lifestyle or why I live it this way. Would she welcome me into her million dollar home? Do my second hand clothes or beaten up car bother her?
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“Something will get neglected, and it’s usually the husband, who should be our first priority.”
I think this is simply false. Husbands get “neglected” because they’re adults and expected to be self-sufficient. I have a real problem when some authority figure, usually many authority figures, say “first priority”. My church says volunteer more, my school says do more homework, my soccer coach says practice at home, my wife says fix the leaky faucet and my children want me to read to them and help them with their homework.
I think life is about making wise choices with how to spend our time and energy and picking the “one thing(TM)” that we should put above all else is simply idolatry. Lori wants your husband to be the idol. Saying “first priority” makes it sound appealing, but it’s simply not true. It’s not surprising that she bought into the heresy that somehow women were less than men.
“Lori obviously has the TV on a lot or she wouldn’t have to worry about what the kids watch.”
I doubt it. She probably doesn’t let the kids watch TV at all. She is just trying to set standards for other people that she can easily meet and feel superior about. We have a TV, but the last time we used it was during the Olympics last year. That doesn’t mean we don’t have to deal with content. The kids watch Netflix and there are a lot of kid-oriented shows that are just mini-soap-operas. The kids have access to the Internet on tablets and computers, and we simply can’t screen that because the school gives them homework that has to be done on websites we can’t selectively filter (GRRRR!!!!). As much as we try to limit screen time we have a really hard time being able to limit school use of devices vs. non-school use. I honestly doubt that Lori, being so busy managing her social media, has enough time and energy to manager her children’s device usage.
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Abigail, situations like yours are why the ‘one size fits all’ proclamations just don’t work. It’s great when the husband is the wage-earner and the wife wants to stay at home, but the implications of this are pretty severe. What if the wife has a Ph.D. and the husband has a high school diploma. Does God say the family has to survive on his construction work income? What about a husband who is perpetually drunk, but still wants to live with the family? The church says NO DIVORCE, but then where does the income come from if the church/Lori commands the wife to stay home?
There aren’t two versions of the truth. Either God commands wives to stay at home, or he doesn’t. So, if there are situations where the Bible allows wives to work outside the home (e.g. deadbeat father) then it’s not an exception. The command does not exist. Maybe it’s a “best case”, but we shouldn’t turn best cases into moral imperatives.
Also, Lori is a complete hypocrite if she is preaching this. She writes books and then she travels around and participates in seminars and conferences. I assume that means she leaves her house, hops on a plane and spends a few days away from home. That is the very thing she’s preaching against. Maybe, though, she has an RV and travels with the family, but even then, when she is at the conference, she is not keeping her house.
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Mark – I don’t think Lori travels to speak. At least I haven’t heard her talk about it and I haven’t seen her advertised anywhere. She did, however, recently return from a 10 week vacation. Who has that kind of luxury?
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I think they always ignore the concept that you can HIRE help if you buy and sell enough fields eyeroll
I notice Lori didn’t say anything about women sitting on the internet all day. Might have hit too close to home 🙂
OT (ish): Nicole Kidman won an Emmy and talked about domestic violence as an issue during her speech (which was a story in the show).
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Lori also thinks that women have modern day “slaves” that do work for us. Washing machines and dryers, electric/gas ovens, dishwashers, etc. Her idea of slavery is warped.
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@JulieAnne:
Not just “the privileged US”.
“Pastors/leaders in Evangelical Christian circles” — at least the ones who write the books and make such Christian Living mandatory — are a privileged class even within the First World US. Evidence from @Kathi:
This isn’t Proverbs 31.
This is Commander’s Wife Serena Joy lecturing the Handmaids.
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@Kathi:
Doesn’t “Eshet Chayyil” mean something like “Woman of Valor” or “Woman of Honor”?
And Jewish husbands sing the Proverb to their wives on Shabbat as a COMPLEMENT?
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@Mary27:
In the words of the prophet Alfred Yankovic:
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And yet, people like Lori and co use it as another way to tell women what to do.
If I compliment someone I know, in life, for all the wonderful things they do, does that mean everyone in the world that doesn’t do those things is lacking???
People like this look at things all kinds of wrong. Anyone can misuse scripture if they come at it with the wrong attitudes and the wrong heart. This is just example number 1387428740298374 of that.
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HUG,
Good point on the Hebrew word “Chayil” in Proverbs 31—literal translation in modern English is more like “powerful woman.” Bible translators couldn’t handle that so they translated “chayil” along the lines of strong and powerful when it applies to men. Then in all the verses that applied to women, suddenly they changed the meaning to be “virtue.” Clear case of inserting their own opinion into the text!!
Proverbs 31:10—”Who can find a powerful woman, for her value is far above rubies.”
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Someone needs to tell Little miss muffet that the book of proverbs is just that, a collection of sayings. This whole proverbs 31 woman stuff has just gotten out of hand.
Oh and I can clean a bathroom better than any woman on here. A foaming toilet cleaner & steamer is the key. If I ever marry I will still zap the bathrooms every week.
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Here’s a comment from her 9/19/17 post about working mothers saying that husbands sin by asking their wives to work:
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What? Lori lives in a 1.1 million dollar home? Lori has servants cleaning her home? Lori had the privilege of a 10 week vacation? Lori makes money selling her books?
(And Lori dares to call the dollar the “almighty dollar?”) What? What? Another What/Huh?
Seriously? And people listen to this woman’s teachings? LORD have mercy on those who choose to give Lori any merit whatsoever! It appears she is not walking her own talk; another case of a “double minded man (or woman) is unstable in all of their ways.”
In my neck of the woods, some of the most amazing women operate the combines, drive semi trucks and haul/unload grain, man the drying systems to bin the grain, operate computers for statistical recording purposes, drive tractors/grain carts, operate 4-wheel drives and diggers/chisel plows for fall tillage purposes, and work the farm equal to a man (including doing the bookwork, marketing the grain, and conducting business in a worthy manner)……thus, I have a huge problem in trying to define exactly what feminism is for I wasn’t raised in a “complementarian home” nor attended a male chauvinistic church in my youth. And did I mention, that I see both men and women, and their children of BOTH genders walking the fields pulling weeds by hand…..hiring no slaves to do their work, but choosing to do the work themselves for they are perfectly capable of this task at hand. And many of these same women also work out in the marketplace in providing for their families, with no shame or guilt, but with the joy of the LORD living in their souls!
And I sit in churches and listen to the self righteous women (Lori, I believe fits right in with these critical/judgmental souls) condemn those “other women” who are working hard, getting dirty and stinky, and minding their own businesses whether in the home or outside of the home, and ministering to others by HOW they live their lives. It’s so easy to twist and turn the Holy Scriptures into a list of rules, do’s and don’ts according to the foolishness of thy own soul regarding the “roles of the genders,” and frankly I find it repulsive to the Body of Jesus Christ.
If there’s a job to do, our LORD will send His people to do it, for His gifts are gender-less and they are absolutely free. One doesn’t even need to purchase one of Lori’s books for that “almighty dollar,” imagine that!
And Jesus did say that His burdens were/are light…….Lori bogs us down with such heavy burdens. I have a pretty good idea where she’s getting her information from, and it’s not the Christ of our Bibles.
Great commentary here……and if anyone has a clear, concise definition of “feminism,” I would be open to learning and trying to understand exactly what it is because I find it quite comical how the Christian industrial complex states that “feminism is destroying our society!” I just don’t see it.
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Avid Reader, according to Proverbs 31 she makes her arms strong. Most likely her arms are strong because she’s not afraid of hard manual labor.
If Lori A. were to interpret this literally she would encourage body building among housewives. Don’t see that happening soon! Piper would likely have a fit, since he thinks “feminine” (aka airheaded) women should carry on flirtations with guys who stop to ask for directions.
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In other words, I flirt with strange men who ask me for directions so that I can end up in the trunk of their car?
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Kathi, “I don’t think Lori travels to speak.”
I guess I misunderstood when the pastor canceled her appearance at his church over the ‘women are not created in God’s image’ controversy.
“Lori also thinks that women have modern day “slaves” that do work for us. Washing machines and dryers, electric/gas ovens, dishwashers, etc. Her idea of slavery is warped.”
I actually agree with her on this one. Not exactly slavery, but as mechanization and automation replaced the need for manual labor, wealthy families were able to buy machines to do certain jobs and that eliminated the need to hire servants. This has been a constant theme in economics. Agricultural industrialization has eliminated large swaths of the labor force – the cotton gin, cotton pickers, combines, seed drills, etc. Now one farmer can accomplish in a day what took a hundred workers a few weeks.
There’s now a huge debate about Artificial Intelligence. Certain technologists are saying that virtually all of the current jobs could be replaced over the next 50 years by robots with enough intelligence to more and more sophisticated jobs.
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@Kathi:
Again, Serena Joy lectures the Handmaids.
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Katy, Nancy Pearcey’s “Total Truth” is a very interesting read in that regard.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the family was a unit that worked as a whole. She talks about a store. If you came into the store at different times, you might see the mom or dad or older child running things.
During the IR, there was some pushback because it was taking men out of the houses and farms where they were needed, and that was, if not contrary to the current understanding of scripture, it was at least not the recommended situation. However, economics and necessity filtered down to the pulpit and now pastors got the idea that the Bible really taught that the men were the bread winners who went to the city gates and the women kept the house. So, cultural practice got baptized in prooftexts and now we have the moral impetus for the man to go off to work and the woman to stay home and keep house.
Interestingly, Pearcey has gotten a lot of complaints, even though she’s done extensive research on cultural norms during this time. She’s been labeled as a feminist because she’s trying to justify the now-Biblical-mandate that women stay home.
I think Total Truth is along the lines of the book Kathi has been talking about on Sundays – that we read the Bible with eyes to justify the decisions we’ve already made and alternatively condemn those who have made different decisions. So, obviously the upper-middle-class churches are going to condemn the lower-class families where both parents work 50+ hours a week to feed their families and they don’t homeschool or take the kids to all of the weekly youth groups, etc. Yet, no one will lift a finger to help them.
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There is something unreal and strange about the evangelical trend to insist that women do not need to get an education, training or have any substantial work experience. The evangelical leaders who push those ideas are trying to sell fairy tale thinking to women…
Girl meets Prince Complementarian, becomes Princess and never has another (big) problem again
They want us to believe that if a woman is a Christian, then she should expect the “stay at home” formula to bless and protect her and her children.
This is not so, nor is it scriptural. The kind of lives that women lived in the Bible were often terrible due to the oppressive culture, slavery, frequent wars, famines and tragedies.
Women are never guaranteed a protected life. Some women never marry and must provide for themselves (and possible other family members). Many married women have husbands who cannot function as providers due to disability, or are married to spendthrift, lazy, incarcerated, addicted, adulterous, abusive or abandoning husbands, and some become young widows.
For myself, I would encourage all young women to get the kind of education and training that best suits their talents and abilities, and go to work. Build a work history and career. If someone can take a few years off to raise children, that is great, but I would caution any woman against becoming obsolete in her work skills because you never know what tomorrow may bring.
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“There is something unreal and strange about the evangelical trend to insist that women do not need to get an education, training or have any substantial work experience.”
I know a church where that backfired spectacularly. There were a bunch of upper-20’s single women who barely had a high school education and couldn’t get jobs to support themselves, and all the eligible bachelors were already pairing off with younger women. That included the pastor’s own daughter. So, all the sudden the tune changed, and now the young women are being encouraged to go to college and have careers until they find ‘prince complementarian’.
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Linn, now I’m wondering if there is a polite, Piper approved way to turn down men asking to give you a ride randomly…#mighthavejusthappened
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SongofJoy, we even see examples in the bible like Ruth, whose husband, BIL, FIL’s all died, leaving she and her MIL without resource except to go glean things out of a field. I love how people find ways to bop over all the stuff actually in the bible that doesn’t fit their worldview.
Nothing says women should not be educated. Nothing says they should not work. Women have always worked, unless they were wealthy. Keeping the home doesn’t mean never leaving it. All of Lori’s nonsense is built on a lie. I agree with you, they try to sell a fairy tale and they seem to do it because it benefits them, as far as I can tell.
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@Mark:
“Certain Technologists” as in Twentysomething Silicon Valley Guys living on vitamin pills, herbal supplements, and almond milk until they can shed their meat bodies and upload themselves into the Cloud at the Singularity?
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/elon-musk-billion-dollar-crusade-to-stop-ai-space-x
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I have some former co-workers that have bought the hype, too. I’m pretty skeptical.
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Very happy I didn’t move to Silicon Valley, although it’s hard to do cool stuff elsewhere. I visit there occasionally and it’s pretty depressing.
The impression I get is that SV is fueled by the 20-something college grads who have no concept of what life is all about and are essentially cannon fodder for the big companies. The big companies spend pennies on the dollar in terms of free meals, free dry-cleaning and free childcare to keep the cannon fodder at their keyboards coding for 12+ hours a day. At 30 when they’re married and have kids, and start questioning what life is all about, they realize that they just burned 10 years of their lives accomplishing nothing. They’re washed-up in terms of the silicon economy, so they can either suck it up and return to 12+ hours furiously coding to keep up with their 20-something peers, they quit technology altogether and buy a farm somewhere, or they take some more mindless gig where they’re not expected to work crazy hours for one of the big names.
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If I had been lucky enough to marry before 23 (As I still wish I had! There comes a point where there’s almost no reason to marry. Most marriages after age 32 end in divorce according to statistics.) and had a family of 4-6 children by a solvent husband willing to pinch pennies I probably would have become a WAHM and found jobs on the computer. Not all women are this lucky. I am not!
And even in the above scenario, there’s enough not a surfeit of luxury like Lori has. Amy Dascyzn who authored The Tightwad Gazette is a much better role model for an aspiring SAHM than Lori, IMHO.
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“I can clean a bathroom better than any woman on here.”
Scott1235, will you marry me? Lol!
How many male chauvinists does it take to clean a toilet?
None. That women’s work!
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Re:
It depends on which studies you look at.
Some of them say younger marriage ends in divorce, and the older a person is, the longer the marriage will last.
I find the that sort of conversation (about age at marriage) sort of pointless, though. You cannot really plan on when you marry (if you marry).
Even if some egg-head publishes a story saying age 26 is the optimal age to marry, what if you arrive at 26 with no prospects, so you hit age 27+ and are still single. There’s nothing you can do about that.
I had always wanted to be married since I was a kid, but I was waiting until mid to late 20s to actually get married.
(There is no way I would’ve married pre-age 25, even had I met a decent guy. You have no idea who you are before age 25. I’d argue you don’t really know who you are before age 35, either.)
The best age to marry is when you meet the right person by Lisa Bonos – Washington Post
Rush to early marriage feeds Utah’s higher-than-average divorce rate – Hardnews Cafe site
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And:
College Women, Don’t Listen to Marriage Concern Trolls – on Rewire site
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Most women outlive most men in the USA. I hate to sound morbid, but I’d say Lori’s husband, Ken, will die before she does. If that is so, and unless he bequeaths a ton of money to her, how does she plan on paying her bills?
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Song of Joy said,
I sort of discussed that very point here:
Gender Complementarianism Does Not Adequately Address, or Address At All, Incompetent, Loser, Or Incapacitated Men
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I have a number of friends who have married for the first time in their 40s-60s, and they are very happy. There are always statistics, and then there is what people actually do.
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Scott said,
You need to marry me so you can take care of my bathroom!
No matter how much and how hard I scrub, I can never get 100% of the soap scum and build-up off the stupid shower / tub!!!
(The closest I ever got was with my current shower, I got maybe 98% removed, due to using a brand new pet brush with rounded metal tips – scrubbing with that gets much of the soap scum off – my current tub is a plastic type material, so it’s not scratching any porcelain.)
My dad is pretty good at scrubbing and cleaning stuff, especially tubs or showers.
Even though he and my mother had a traditional marriage, in the last few years as her health declined, he and I divided up their house – I would clean the guest room/ bath, and my father would scrub their shower out.
My dad was always able to get 100% of the soap scum removed. I did not inherit his talent or skill at that.
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Scott, I think if you do dating sites, you have hit on the magic selling point lol! #alsohatescleaningbathrooms
(Seriously, if I do get around to getting married, I’m using part of my salary to hire a housekeeper. )
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No soap operas, letting your home get untidy, or children running like wild banshees. God is order, so your home must be too. Sounds like some idyllic fairyland to me.
Perfect order? Doesn’t sound like fairyland to me! Sounds like a prison or a totalitarian dictatorship.
I don’t care for soap operas, but our house is never 100% tidy, and the children continually run around like banshees. They also yell like banshees and battle imaginary monsters. It’s good exercise! If things get too wild, we take them outside. Oh, wait a minute. I probably shouldn’t take them outside, ’cause I’m a woman so I’m not supposed to go out of the house 😉
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My mom turned 69 today and she still works full-time. My dad is “retired” (he works part-time for a mission’s organization) and does all of the house cleaning. He does a great job – plus it’s just the two of them so there’s not much to clean up after. I told my husband that I have expectations and he has something to look forward to! 🙂
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@SongOfJoy:
Don’t comp teachings tend to attract those very types of men?
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Kathi,
Happy 69th Birthday to your Mom! She’s a wonderful model for the rest of us! Please greet her from your commenters here!
And Mark, thanks for the reading tip. I’ll track down a copy of Nancy Pearcey’s “Total Truth” for a good winter’s read as I find history fascinating!
And I ascribe to the belief that after The Fall in the Garden of Eden, as sin entered into the world and life a whirlwind of work and survival, it is my understanding that BOTH Adam and Eve, or Eve and Adam, had to WORK to provide daily sustenance for their existence. I haven’t read anywhere that Eve sat around the house eating bon bons and going to the nail parlor living “the dream.” Smile!
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I did the suggested route. Home schooled my 3 (usually) delightful children. Did my very best to make life easy and loving for my professional husband. My children are all married now and I do not regret the time I was able to spend with them. I do regret marrying their father. After 31 years of marriage (and 2 years of intense personal and attempted marital counseling) I divorced the abusive narcissist. Nothing about my life is better except that I can breathe again and my heart is coming back to life. No matter how hard I tried, the husband was never satisfied. At one point in the separation, he asked me to move back home because ” my contempt and disdain for for you has mostly dissipated over the last year.” I really wanted to be a loving wife but that was an offer I refused. I have not found formulas to work well but I have found the heart of the Lord to be so tender and faithful even in the most painful places.
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I’ve heard so many stories like yours, Ann. That is a lot of years of investing in a narcissist 😦 I’m glad you are out now!
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[This may not belong in the comments section when you review this. It got much longer than I expected! ]
Thanks, Juli Anne! I had no idea what I was dealing with until a skilled Christian psychologist started helping me see the obvious after meeting 3 times with both of us jointly. I am trying to get up the gumption to tell you my story which also involves the abuser skating free, destroying my reputation, getting our small rural home church in the divorce,his being seen as the victim and an incredible smear campaign against me by the pastor who knew about the marital rape, and emotional and physical abuse of the children and me. We were the first divorce of 2 regularly attending members in the 85 year history of this church which was started by my great grandparents along with many other settlers on the plains. This pastor declared my divorce unbiblical, now believes that there was no abuse and has trashed my reputation to the point that life long friends will not speak to me and even turn and walk away when I greet them. The pastor has smeared me to my adult children and refuses to address the issues when I have attempted to confront him directly and also appeal to the church board. They believe the ex is a godly man they know well who could never be abusive in any way. It has been an incredible slow motion train wreck that is still in the making. I have 86 minutes of 2 recorded meetings of this pastor actually slandering, defaming and lying about me along with several examples of breaking pastoral confidentiality. He has gone around telling people in the church that I am “completely irrational, “out of my mind” and a spiritually dangerous woman. And the congregation believed it without ever coming to talk to me directly. The one couple that challenged him on being warned away from me made the 2 recordings. They started recording when he opened his computer and started reading to them emails I had sent him. They were told by the chairman of the board that if they left and I quit trying to meet with the board, all the issues would be resolved. Not so much. I have know this pastor since I was 8. I have never seen a situation like this…The pastor also has shown my ex all the emails I sent to him trying to resolve the issues. The pastor also told a young woman in the church that I was a narcissist and my own counselor had told him this directly. My psychologist is incensed at this lie. The board wrote me a rebuking letter based solely on the report of my ex and the pastor who have become fast friends since the separation 2.5 years ago. I described the pastor as a “destructive, faithless shepherd” in an email to him describing the behavior that I thought justified that description. In this whole mess that has been the horrible thing-that I would speak disrespectfully to the Lord’s anointed as he refers to himself. If I were not able to distinguish the Lord’s character from the behavior of those who claim to be his children, I would have despaired long ago. It has been an additional nightmare on top of the intense pain of the implosion of our family. I wish there were a way to put it on the web as a case study for pastors, church leaders, and those in seminary to learn about how this happens. I hope some good comes out of it all eventually. My relationship with 2 of my adult children has not fully recovered from the damage done by this pastor when they met with them to describe the abuse they had experienced from their father. He turned it all on me and told the church that I had planted the idea of abuse in the kids’ minds. I only knew of one instance of abuse of one child which I addressed strongly not knowing that the husband just went underground with the abuse, I did not know about the other situations until the separation. I know this all sounds crazy. I don’t know how to explain the dynamic where if I speak the truth about these men I seem crazy while they get off scott free. So mind bending!
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Ann – I am glad to hear you that you are out of this abusive marriage yet so sad to hear of how much more abuse you have experienced from those outside of your marriage. You are a prime example of how Lori Alexander’s teachings are so damaging to victims in an abusive marriage. She would have told you that you need to keep fighting for your marriage and your husband’s soul. Never mind your soul and sanity or the safety of your children. I hope you are on a path to finding peace in your life.
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The pastor told me before I filed for divorce 2 contradictory things: “Your husband will never change so it is up to you to make this marriage work.” “You just need to forgive and trust the Lord to change your husband’s heart.” 31 years seemed long enough trying those approaches as the abuse got worse rather than better. The teachings like Lori’s were a tremendous burden and created such confusion in my mind.
Yes, I have found great healing and peace even as my life has blown apart. I consider it a divine rescue as I have seen the Lord reveal truth to my confused and battered heart, hold me steady through great heartache with my children, give strength in spite of the rejection and losses. I am grateful!
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Kathi– Awhile back you said we could make suggestions of books for you to review. I would like to suggest Household Gods by Ted and Kristin Kluck.
I hope this doesn’t seem like i am too anxious to be done with The Transformed Wife!
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It is easy for men with no hearts to sound sane and rational when discussing evil things. That is at the heart of this, i think.
I am so sorry for what you went through Ann but I’m glad you are out of it. If your pastor was right that your husband would never change, why stay?
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That is a helpful thought, Lea. The ability to know about evil but be unphased or disressed by it. And able to continue in it with no signs of conviction or remorse. I was to stay because abuse is no grounds for divorce. When I stated that I believe marital rape (which the pastor knew about) is a unique form of unfaithfulness, the pastor sat back with a sneer and said, ” So you’re hanging your hat on that, huh?” I said I wasn’t hanging my hat on anything but I was praying for clarity and direction. I also never had another face to face conversation with him either…
Off to a much healthier church. It took 18 months to not weep through most of the service but now I go with the joy of the rescued. The Lord is good. I love that He has not one atom of evil ever!
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Lea, lest you think the pastor is an ignorant country bumpkin, he has an mdiv from a reputable seminary, a doctorate in history and has been a university professor for over 35 years. He considers himself an expert on cults and the American church. He has been interviewed by World magazine. Please don’t let the hour and a half of recordings where he clearly lies, slanders me, breaks pastoral confidentiality and portrays himself as the victim cause you to think less of the “Lord’s annointed.” Argh!
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I want to say…a lot of unprintable things here. Honestly, I am amazed that people can actually continue conversations when they hear things like this, because I feel like I would be gone.
It doesn’t matter how much education you have, you can still be an A******.
I am very glad you’ve found a healthier church!
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Irene – Thanks! I am not familiar with that book. I’ll take a look.
Seven more chapters to go in this book….You’ll have to be patient. 😉
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Ann – I hope this “pastor” isn’t teaching pastoral students. ::Shudder::
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There has been lots of sin leveling and insistence on forgiveness despite no repentance. So a little outrage from a sister helps my heart! The new church has been great. When I told my story to the new pastor and his wife(whom I have known most of my life), he was so compassionate and kind. He apologized for all the damage done to women in abusive situations by churches. He followed up in a sermon inviting people to come to the front who have been judgemental and burdensome to those whose life didn’t look as tidy, who have suffered abuse or divorce. Most of the church went forward to repent. I sat weeping on the back room and welcomed another layer of healing. The good things are as real as the bad…Thanks for your supportive words!
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I meant row…not room. They let me sit in the sanctuary with the normals.
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What also baffles me about the patriarchy world is:
1) A teen male can live inside mom’s house one day, totally controlled and obeying his mom and she deciding what he watches on TV, and getting beaten when he does wrong. Then he leaves to marry and suddenly can lead a family with no input, not even the co-leadership of his wife.
2) A teen girl can go from being completely controlled by Mum to completely controlling her own children, with no time in growing independence in decision making in between.
That struck me again when Lori said women have to control what their children watch. Are children in her world never taught any internal self-motivation for doing right? Does the Spirit not lead her children?
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Kathi shared another Lori quote higher up which goes like this: “…wives are called to live in subjection to those husbands who are disobedient to the word…”
In her understanding, that means “God says [x], husband says opposite. Then do as husband says.”
When I was still a comp, statements like that put me on an egal-searching road. I can understand: “Husband say something of which God did not exactly say something, like what to make for dinner. Obey husband.” But “When God and husband disagree, God wants you to listen to husband” – that is not even Christian or OT Israelite religion.
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Daisy, studies show ideally you should marry between 25 and 32 or you probably won’t stay married. At 44 I am too old and worn out to benefit from marriage. So, if Mr. Right doesn’t show up in time you can quit dating–and reject all prospects that may materialize. As a 44 year old virgin I don’t see anything to be gained by marriage. I am used to living alone and doing things the way I like. Why change?
And I’m no more selfish in saying this than the guys were when I was 20 and they passed over girls like me for the hot blonde numbers. Now, she’s left them for some richer/cuter/younger guy. Or maybe just got fed up with emotional neglect or abuse. Now they’ll deign to court me. Wow! Sorry, I’ll pass.
And why start having sex at my age? Would it really be tolerable–forget enjoyable? I don’t think so!
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Statistics are just averages. They shouldn’t scare you. I know several that had terrible first marriages and lovely second ones. I know someone who just got married for the first time in her 50s and they are very happy.
Maybe you should try it 😉
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