Does God ‘Care About Women’?
‘Yes!’ answers the writer of this real-life experience
“A FEW years ago I had come to a point in my life where I felt I really needed God’s help. But could I go to him with confidence that he would care enough about me to help? I must admit that I had my doubts. Why? Because I am a woman, and I had bitterly decided that God didn’t really care that much about women. What gave me such a negative view of God? My experiences as I grew up led me to feel that way.
“You may know that, at one time Mormonism, the prominent religion in Utah, U.S.A., encouraged the practice of polygamy. Then, in 1890, the policy was changed, and polygamy was no longer permitted for mainstream Mormons. However, not everyone went along with the change in policy. Some fundamentalists began to organize their own sects, secretly continuing the practice of taking many wives.
“Thus, when I was a very young girl, my father decided to investigate some of these fundamentalist sects to see if they had the truth. Following his investigation, he decided that polygamy was indeed God’s will for mankind.
“That was quite a decision! My mother had already borne him four children and was expecting a fifth. She was confused and bitter. She argued and wept, and when she went into a hospital to have her fifth child she wanted to die. In fact, she almost did die, but finally rallied. Eventually, she came to believe that perhaps polygamy was God’s will, but she never felt that my father was the right man to live this ‘high law of God.’
“As my father became more and more involved in polygamy, he was constantly reminding us that he was doing ‘God’s will.’ Those words ‘God’s will’ stuck in my mind whenever I watched him prepare for a courting date, ‘righteously’ doing his duty by going out with women other than my mother. Whenever I would wake up at night and see my mother in bed alone because my father was with another woman, I could not forget the words ‘God’s will.’ I began to feel that God was very unfair to women.
“Yes, I blamed God for our unhappy family situation. Of course, I know now that it is not God’s will for a man to take several wives. God’s will is that men should be ‘husbands of one wife,’ and that ‘husbands ought to be loving their wives as their own bodies,’ not causing them grief and insecurity. (1 Timothy 3:12; Ephesians 5:28) However, at that time I did not know these truths. My father’s misrepresentation of God sowed seeds of bitterness in my heart.
“My mother knew the whole thing bothered me, so she tried to console me. She reasoned: ‘After all, polygamy is much better than adultery, and men are natural-born polygamists who cannot stay with just one woman. That seems to be the way God made them.’ However, these words merely gave me a sense of hopelessness. ‘Why did God make men this way?’ I wondered. ‘Why must a woman share her husband with other women? Are women merely possessions of men so that they can bear children for them?’ I believed in God. But I accepted my father’s teachings and began to feel very disadvantaged because I was a girl.
An Effort to Break Away
“In my father’s sect it was the custom for girls to be married off at an early age. However, when I became a teenager I could not face giving myself to any man to become just one of his wives. I felt it would be better to marry someone with no beliefs at all. My father was busy with his other wives, or with trying to obtain other wives, so I was free to go my own way. I kept as separate as I could from the members of my father’s religion, and my life became more and more ungodly. I got involved in the hippie life-style, and eventually married a young man involved in the same way of life. But my problems were not solved.
“I discovered that men can mistreat women even without doing ‘God’s will.’ It seemed to me that women were disadvantaged without religion as well as with it. My new husband did not give up his free-living ways after our marriage. I figured men were not only natural-born polygamists, but were natural-born adulterers. Almost every man I knew was cheating on his wife, so I felt it was something every woman had to put up with sooner or later. Additionally, I discovered more about the physical problems of being a woman. A painful miscarriage, among other things, made me feel that men had all the enjoyment out of living together while women had all the problems.
“I went for a while to meetings of a group interested in the Women’s Liberation movement. I learned from this group more reasons to be resentful at the plight of women, but soon stopped attending when the group did not seem to accomplish anything of real value to me. I continued to blame God for being unfair to women. Yet soon I found out that I was the one who was being unfair. I was judging on insufficient evidence. Before long I learned of another side of the picture.
A New View of Matters
“I badly needed help. But where could I go? I started to read the Bible on my own and to pray to God. Would God answer my prayer, even though I was ‘only a woman’?
“Soon two young Christian women visited me. They offered me the latest issues of the Watchtower and Awake! magazines, two publications that discuss the meaning of the Bible and the reasons for the problems we face in this world. I had no money, but they gave me the magazines anyway. I did not read them, or the succeeding issues that the young women returned with. But eventually I agreed to study the Bible with one of the young women.
“At first I was not very interested. Soon, however, my interest grew. I started to view in another light the stories from the Bible that my father had told me in order to justify his actions. I saw the reason why people—both men and women—suffer. I learned God’s viewpoint, that he does not consent to the oppression of women by men. It is not ‘God’s will’ for men to multiply wives, or to do other things that cause them pain and suffering. I found that, in truth, ‘God is love,’ and I began to warm to his love.—1 John 4:8.
“However, fragments of doubt remained about how, really, God views women. I prayed for more help.
A Deeper Understanding
“One day I read the history of Jacob in the book of Genesis. Previously, I had always avoided this account because it involved polygamy. However, I now got down to reading it.
“Jacob was in love with Rachel, and he had worked for seven years in order to be able to marry her. However, he was tricked into marrying her older sister, Leah. The father of the two girls, Laban, claimed that he had deceived Jacob because it was the custom that the eldest girl in the family should be married first. Seven days later Jacob married the girl he really loved, Rachel—although he had to work another seven years to pay the bride price for her. Now Leah began to feel the pain of being a wife who was not loved.—Genesis 29:16-30.
“As I read this story to myself, it began to take on a new meaning. It was not God who caused Jacob to take two wives. A man, Laban, tricked him into it. And it certainly was not God who made Leah to be an unwanted wife. In fact, Jehovah was the only one who comforted her in her sorrow. Time and again Leah acknowledged Jehovah’s help. Not only that, but when Rachel became unhappy, Jehovah helped her too.—Genesis 29:31-35; 30:22-24.
“My heart was moved as I read of Jehovah’s kindness and concern for both of these women. He did not treat their problems as insignificant or ‘just feminine emotion,’ and therefore not really important. He truly cared.
“After that I found many other accounts in the Bible that showed beyond doubt that Jehovah God cares for women. I became confident that, just as God listened to the prayers of Leah and Rachel as they endured a situation that was far from ideal, God would listen to my earnest prayers too.
“Moreover, the account of the creation of Eve showed me the value of and the need for womankind on the earthly scene. (Genesis 2:18) Woman was a complement of man. Hence, her different qualities enriched the human race. I devoured the advice and encouragement that the Bible contains especially for women.—Proverbs 31:10-31; 1 Peter 3:1-6; Matthew 26:6-13.
“I noted that, while showing that ‘the head of a woman is the man,’ the Bible counsels men to deal with women respectfully and with consideration. (1 Corinthians 11:3; 1 Peter 3:7; Proverbs 5:18-21; Ephesians 5:28-33) And I was particularly touched by the way Jehovah remembered widows, who in earlier days—and often today, too—were poor and helpless.—James 1:27.
“Once I had felt that men have all the fun and women all the suffering in matters of sex. But through having three children, I came to see childbearing as a great blessing given to women by God. Even through the pain, many women will agree that it is one of the most exciting things that can ever happen, a joy that men can only wonder at but never really know.
“That is not to say that one sex is better or more important than the other. The apostle Paul sums up the matter very nicely: ‘Besides, in connection with the Lord neither is woman without man nor man without woman. For just as the woman is out of the man, so also the man is through the woman; but all things are out of God.’—1 Corinthians 11:11, 12.
“Thus I came to realize that God does care about women. And the best refuge for women who feel oppressed in this system of things is with him. I would like to invite everyone to investigate the Bible and its unprejudiced God, Jehovah. As far as salvation is concerned, he is an ‘equal opportunity’ God. We can all love—and be loved by—Jehovah.”—Contributed.
[Blurb on page 14]
“Are women merely possessions of men so that they can bear children for them?”
[Blurb on page 14]
“God does not consent to the oppression of women by men”
[Blurb on page 15]
“My heart was moved as I read of Jehovah’s kindness”
[Blurb on page 16]
The best refuge for women who feel oppressed in this system of things is with God.
“As far as salvation is concerned, Jehovah is an ‘equal opportunity’ God”
“[Box on page 15]
“My father told me that one example he was following was that of Abraham. Abraham had children by two women, his wife Sarah, and a slave girl named Hagar. However, the reason for this was that God had promised the childless Abraham that his offspring would become a great nation. When Abraham’s wife, Sarah, became too old to have children, she gave him the slave girl Hagar, thinking that perhaps the promised child would be born through this one. Notice that it was Sarah who gave the girl to Abraham. Abraham was not multiplying wives for himself. And, as it turned out, this was not God’s way to fulfill his promise. Later Jehovah miraculously restored Sarah’s childbearing ability, and the promised son was born through her.—Genesis 12:1-3; 16:1-4; 21:1-5.”
[Box on page 16]
The publishers of this magazine would be delighted to help you to respond to this person’s invitation.