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My wife, Kay, and I addressed the matter 26 years ago in our first book, When You Both Go to Work, published in hardback by Word Inc. in 1982 and re-released in paperback earlier this year by Hannibal Books. In 1982 we appeared in numerous newspapers and on TV and radio coast to coast, including the then-popular Jim and Tammy Bakker Show, discussing the issue of married Christian women in the workplace. Most interviewers and commentators zeroed in on Chapter 3, which spells out the what the Bible says on the issue. Even though the chapter is lengthy, given the current national interest, I offer it below as my blog today. The topic is as fresh today as when we wrote it more than a quarter century ago.
When You Both Go to Work
By Louis & Kay Moore
Chapter Three
Some Biblical Dimensions
I could hardly wait to get Pastor Jones on the telephone. In searching for two-paycheck families to interview for our book, we often contacted pastors such as Jones to get the names of active members of their churches whom they believed coped well with the two-paycheck lifestyle. I had zeroed in on this pastor because he was known in his community for his theologically liberal stances on a variety of matters.
He was affiliated with the United Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), a denomination noted for its stand on the equality of women. I assumed he would quickly spiel off the names of several employed couples among his membership. Then Kay and I would be in business to start our interviews.
I couldn't have been more shocked at his answer to our request. He was quiet a long time, muttering, “I’m thinking. I’m thinking . . ..” Finally, he blurted out, “I just can’t think of a single two-paycheck couple in this entire church.” Furthermore, he seemed to have some trouble even understanding why two-paycheck families in the church could possibly be an appropriate subject for a book.
Just the converse was true in the case of Pastor Smith.
I had dallied around for days before I contacted this minister because he was pastor of a Southern Baptist Church and was noted for his heavy fundamentalist leanings. Every time I picked up the phone to call this minister to get the names of two-paycheck couples in his congregation, I would put it down and tell myself that I just wasn’t ready to listen to what I was sure would be a sermon on “why women should stay at home where they belong.”
Finally, I bit the bullet and contacted him. Again, as with Pastor Jones, I couldn’t have been more surprised, but for an entirely different reason. Instead of the lecture I expected, this pastor tuned in immediately with our project.
“Why, that’s an excellent idea,” he said. “I know lots of couples in our church just like the people you are seeking. I am sure people really have a need for a book like yours.” He then rattled off a long list of names of employed couples—far too many for us to use from any one church.
What a reversal! The theological liberal couldn’t tune in with our project, but the fundamentalist almost bowled me over with his enthusiasm. And I had thought just the opposite would occur. After we completed our interviews and research, I continued to mull over these two contradictory conversations.
Finally I realized that another highly significant factor was involved besides the theological leanings of the ministers. The Presbyterian church was situated in an affluent section in its community, near a neighborhood populated by prosperous bankers and oil-company executives. The Baptist church, on the other hand, was situated in an economically and socially changing neighborhood. In the wealthy sector in which the Presbyterian church had its ministry, the right of women to work outside the home was more of a philosophical idea. In the Baptist church’s neighborhood, two paychecks were an economic necessity for many families.
These two phone calls also shed some new light on the way church friends had responded when Kay first returned to her newspaper job after our son was born. We had been members of a conservative Baptist church which was not far removed theologically from the fundamentalist church whose pastor eagerly helped with our book project. But it was situated in the same type of neighborhood as was the Presbyterian church whose pastor could barely tune into our subject matter. Suddenly we could see why Baptist residents of this affluent neighborhood had responded in the same way as did the reluctant Presbyterian pastor.
The two-paycheck issue is often presented as a theological one. The women of the church who prayed that Barbara would not follow Kay’s example of returning to work after her child was born did so, they thought, for theological reasons. They believed God’s will was for a mother to stay home and tend to her husband, children, and house. But, as our experience with the Presbyterian and Baptist ministers taught us, the issue often transcends theological lines. It often has as much to do with the culture in which people live as with their theological bias.
Cultural Attitudes Vary, Too
Before we go further, reflecting on how cultural attitudes toward two-paycheck families have varied during past centuries is important. The concept of working couples is not a new idea developed in the 1980s. Centuries ago the Industrial Revolution brought women out of their homes and into the marketplace to work alongside their husbands in business and industry. In 19th century England, for instance, the two-paycheck marriage was a matter of class: having a wife at home instead of in the factory was a luxury Englishmen of the poorer classes could not afford.
Too, no one today can accurately compare the lifestyle of farm couples during the last century or early in this century with the “husband at work, wife at home” model emphasized today. The farmer and his wife were much more akin to the employed couples of today than to the housewife who “stays home” in the suburbs while her husband goes off to earn the family’s living in the city.
The modern notion that the wife belongs at home all day with the children while the husband goes off to work to provide an income is largely a product of the post-war 1950s. During World War II, wives made the bombs and the airplanes and staffed the plants and watched the homefront while their husbands went to fight in the war. Rosie the Riveter became a national symbol of women at work in wartime. When the GI’s returned home, they wanted to repay their wives by retiring them to the luxury of new homes equipped with the latest in modern conveniences.
In that box of old pictures and memorabilia my mother recently gave me was a letter my father wrote to my mother from the Pacific, where he fought in Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s gallant effort to regain the Philippines and other territories seized by the Japanese during World War II. In the letter, Dad pledges to Mom that when the war is over, he will return home and get a job and that she will never have to be employed again. My father, I believe, was expressing an attitude that prevailed among many servicemen during World War II. Those men looked forward to a postwar prosperity that would enable their wives to give up their war-enforced duties and stay home with the “baby boom” babies of the late 1940s and early 1950s. In the 1950s, the men went off to the offices or factories to get ahead. They often left their wives with small children and with a new life that was much easier than earlier generations had known.
This cultural background is important to observe as we look at today’s struggle between those who believe (based on their concept of biblical premises) that a wife shouldn’t work and those who think a woman has a right to be in the marketplace.
Economic Necessity or Personal Fulfillment?
Another experience just after Kay returned to work served to affirm for us this dichotomy of culture and Bible. About the same time Kay went back to her newspaper job, another young woman in our Sunday-school class put her small child in a day-care center and took a clerical job.
Unlike Kay, however, this woman, named Jan, made it clear to one and all that she was working strictly for economic necessity. Career goals had nothing to do with her decision.
She and her husband needed the money. Her going to work at an outside job was the only answer for them. Curiously, Jan said she never felt the same type of criticism from other church members Kay had felt, although her circle of friends was the same as ours. In fact, we recall that Jan experienced only sympathy and even pity from other members of her Sunday-school class. For several weeks during that time, no one referred to Jan without calling her Poor Jan—poor almost becoming a part of her name. If the groups that criticized Kay had attacked Jan for working, Jan probably would have chimed right in with their criticism. She preferred to be at home but could not financially afford to be. So she took the only route open to her.
For members of this affluent church we attended, economic need seemed to be the only “valid” reason for a two-paycheck family. Although Kay’s course of action was no different than Jan’s was, somehow the women in the Sunday-school class implied that God looked less kindly on us because Kay returned to work for reasons of self-fulfillment rather than financial need. Jan became the “good working mother” because of her motivations, while Kay was pegged as the “bad working mother.” Therefore, Jan did not hear implications about God’s will, but Kay did.
Kay and I realize that this story of Jan reflects the broader issue of hypocrisy in churches, but it also shows how theological issues are used—not always consistently—against the two-paycheck family.
We were not the only couple who encountered opposition to their lifestyle based on theological grounds. And, as in the cases we cited, the opposition did not necessarily occur along denominational lines.
Bracing for Theological Battles
I called long distance to set up a personal interview with Rita and Jack Newton. But the moment I explained our project, Rita began pouring out her troubles over the telephone lines. She had been an elementary-school teacher before their child was born; she wanted to return to outside work as soon as the child was in grade school. In the meantime, she wanted to enroll in graduate study.
But Rita was alarmed by some hair-raising tales she had been told about what had happened when other mothers in the Church of Christ congregation she attended resumed their jobs.
According to Rita, women in their California congregation who returned to work with children at home were visited by elders of the congregation and were instructed not to continue their outside jobs. In one case, the elders even visited the babysitter of a woman who had just taken a job and told the sitter she was doing wrong by keeping the children of women who work outside the home. The elders claimed the church teaches that a woman who sits with the children of other women who work outside the home become something akin to an accomplice to a crime.
Just before I called, Rita had stopped attending the church’s women’s Bible class because of her teacher’s statements about the role of women. The teacher, wife of one of the church’s elders, went to visit Rita after the two had had a disagreement in the class. “She (the teacher) left in a state of shock at what I said,” said Rita. “I disagreed with several things she mentioned about the role of women. I told her so. She said it was a pity that I didn’t realize how great motherhood is and what woman’s role should be in the world.”
Rita said a woman at her church who is a employed wife and mother was offered a management position in her company. A few days after news about the promotion got out, two women from the congregation arrived to tell the friend that she should refuse the job. They claimed the Bible teaches that women should not be in a supervisory position over men.
Rita refused to return to the women’s Bible class at her church. At last report, she and Jack were frantically reading the New Testament, especially the letters of Paul, to better equip themselves to answer criticism and to counter arguments about employed women in the congregation.
Gay McFarland, a writer, says one of the main reasons she stopped attending her Bible church before her marriage to writer John Scarborough was the church’s teachings on employed wives. The large church she attended taught that the Bible says women belong at home with the children and not in the workaday world.
At the time we interviewed them, John and Gay were “sitting out” church for a while. Like many other couples, they were not sure how they would deal with the churchless situation when children arrived. But one thing was certain for them: a tolerant attitude about two-paycheck families likely would be their strongest criterion for choosing a church when they do reach a decision. “I’m just not going to belong to a church where I feel I’m a second-class citizen for working,” said Gay. “There are too many stresses already associated with working. The church shouldn’t add to them by making women feel bad when they earn a paycheck.”
Linda and Eric King, both attorneys and parents of three children, say they have received criticism of their lifestyle at their Church of Christ in Oklahoma. “Many people, including our present preacher, still believe a woman’s place is in the home. They view it as a religious matter. Thus, to some extent, a woman is usurping a man’s place when she leaves her domestic domain. We have had sermons intimating this, along with paeans to housewives,” said Linda.
Since the matter is so often bandied about, let’s look at what the Bible truly does say about the two-paycheck family and whether it really teaches that the woman’s place is always in the home. But before we look at some key Bible verses on this matter, let’s first review our understanding of what role the Bible should play in our lives and how it is to be interpreted.
Understanding the Bible
The Bible is our record of God’s revelation of Himself to humankind. It contains the truth about God. It was written by people whom God guided. We like the way Christianity Today, the evangelical fortnightly publication, described this revelation to the biblical writers: “No evangelical scholar defends the idea that God dictated the Bible by a method analogous to the way a businessman dictates a letter to his stenographer. The few who (unwisely, we think) use the term dictate mean only that the end product is just as much the word of God as though the whole Bible had been dictated by God.”1
The Bible is also our guide for living. It is divine authority. With the help of the Holy Spirit for interpretation, it is the most important book we have to help us understand God. We believe the Bible should be read, studied, and followed.
But we must not make the Bible more than what it claims to be. It is not a scientific textbook. According to that same article in Christianity Today, “Inerrancy does not mean that the Bible always uses exact language. It does not require that the Bible employ up-to-date scientific terminology. Evangelicals are not trying to make the Bible into a science textbook; they mean only that it is true.”2
We also understand that the Bible was written in the context of its culture. No one (at least in our circle of acquaintances) believes that, because King David had many wives, men today should be polygamous. By the same token, no one we know believes that, because Abraham fathered a child by a mistress, men today are free to pursue such activities. The Bible records the actions of sinful people who lived in various cultures—some that are alien to our present way of Christian living.
We must take care that we do not remove the cultural patterns which provided the environment for the writing of the Bible and superimpose them indiscriminately on our culture today.
So how then are we to we read the Bible? We can approach our study with an attitude of prayer and seek the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. We do not need any key, such as Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures or Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormon to unlock the Scriptures. Modern commentaries can help us understand the background of the Bible. But such commentaries do not take precedence over the Bible.
Let the Bible Speak to You
We have two ways to read the Bible: (1) letting it speak to us in ways that were intended, or (2) making it speak to us in ways that we want to hear. Theologians have two fancy words to describe these methods: exegesis and eisegesis. Exegesis means to understand what the Bible is saying to us. Eisegesis means to read in the Bible things we want it to say. Be careful that you do not use the Bible to say what you want it to say.
In Oklahoma, where I was reared, an uneducated Baptist preacher seemed to fall into the second category. This preacher strongly disliked a popular hairstyle of the day—the topknot, formed by wrapping a woman’s long hair into a bun on top of her head. In order to preach against the topknot, this preacher studied the Bible intently and looked for the key verses. He found what he was seeking in Mark 13:15, although he had to adjust his spelling a little. In the verse, Jesus was speaking about turbulent time ahead. Jesus said, Let him that is on the housetop not go down into the house. By adding the letter “k” to the word not and by doing a little surgery on the verse the pastor had the text of his sermon: “Top (k)not go down.”
He projected onto the Bible what he wanted to find. We can read the Bible in context to avoid making the same error.
The Working Couples in the Bible
The central theological question working couples need to answer is this: What does the Bible say about the two-paycheck lifestyle?
Our answer: The Bible is essentially silent on the matter. Working couples were simply not an issue when the Bible was being written. Scripture, however, has two important examples of working couples—Priscilla and Aquila in the New Testament and the “virtuous wife” in Proverbs.
Acts 18:3 says Priscilla and Aquila, a husband and wife, were both tentmakers. Paul stayed with them in Corinth because, the Scriptures say, he was of the same trade. Besides their work with tents, Priscilla and Aquila also worked together as teachers. They were instrumental in the doctrinal education of Apollos. Acts 18:24-26 describes Apollos as a Jew . . . a native of Alexandria . . . an eloquent man, well versed in the scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John. The Scriptures say that Priscilla and Aquila heard Apollos, then they took him and expounded to him the way of God more accurately.
From the story of Priscilla and Aquila, we know that at least one working husband and wife were actively involved in the early church.
The other example of a working couple is found in the Old Testament. The description of the virtuous wife in the 31st chapter of Proverbs seems to describe an ideal woman of early Bible days who does the same kind of balancing act between home, family, and career that many modern working couples do. According to Proverbs 31:10-18:
Who can find a wife with strength of character? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will never lack profit. She does him good and not harm all the days of her life; she seeks wool and flax, and works with willing hands; she is like the merchant ship; she brings her food from afar. She rises while it is yet night, and gives food to her household, even a portion to her maidens; she considers a field and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard. She girds her loins with strength, and makes her arms strong. She sees that her merchandise is profitable; her lamp does not go out at night.
(MLB)
Whether the virtuous wife described here was an early real-estate person, a produce grower, or a garment-maker who sewed for the public, we do not know. But clearly she seemed to be engaged in a business of some sort. She also was capable of performing superior intellectual tasks. The Scripture does not seem to view this capability as an indication of masculinity in a woman.
Except for these two brief examples, we see little direct biblical reference to two-paycheck couples. Jesus does not address the issue of working couples directly; neither does Paul, nor do any other biblical writers. But while the Bible is essentially silent on the issue of working couples, it does offer some pertinent teachings on several related companion issues—the use of God-given talents, the role of women, Christian marriage, and how Christians are to treat each other.
The Use of God-Given Talents
Christian vocalist Cynthia Clawson had just returned from one of her frequent out-of-town engagements when we met. At home in their living room, she and her husband, composer and actor Ragan Courtney, who are Baptists, discussed their hectic and unorthodox lifestyle. Several weeks out of each month, Cynthia travels to various American cities and gives vocal concerts. While she is gone from home, Ragan stays home with their toddler son, Will, and writes and composes.
How does Ragan feel about his wife’s travels and about her being in the spotlight so often? Ragan’s answer was simple and straight from the teachings of Jesus. “The biblical parable of the talents teaches that you do not bury talents,” said Ragan. He believes God has given Cynthia talents he wants her to use.3
The story of the talents is found in Matthew 25:14-30. Although the word talent in the parable actually refers to a coin, the implication is wider and could also refer to God-given abilities. In the story, Jesus encouraged His followers to use wisely what God has given them. In this parable, the follower who failed to use God’s gifts was punished.
Both men and women are given talents by God. Those talents are not limited to what any one culture labels as male or female. Some men have a special knack for cooking. Some women have a talent to manage business matters. God was no respecter of gender when he distributed abilities.
The Bible makes clear what happens when special gifts are allowed to lie dormant; this admonition was not merely directed at men.
I was especially impressed with Ragan’s response about his wife’s talents, because I identified heavily with his feeling. I encourage Kay to pursue her writing career because I believe her ability is from God; that’s the way I feel about mine, too. If we did not use our talents, we would be like the servant in Jesus’ parable who ran and hid his talent for fear of losing it. When questioned by his master, that servant replied,
“Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not winnow; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground” (Matt. 25:24-25).
Then the master said to him: “You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed, and gather where I have not winnowed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest” (vv. 26-27).
Then the master took the servants talent from him and gave it to another, casting “the worthless servant into the outer darkness” (v. 30).
Employed Women in the Bible
Another companion issue to that of working couples is the issue of working women. A couple today usually becomes a two-paycheck family when the wife joins her husband as a breadwinner. The idea of employed men is neither new nor controversial; the idea of employed women is the one that generates controversy in some quarters today. Our purpose here is not to argue the whole feminist issue of equal pay, equal opportunities, or equal rights. We are specifically interested in what the Bible says about women—especially wives—being employed outside the home.
We recognize that many of the women in the Bible were homemakers and not business women. But contrary to popular misconception, several career women are mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments.
Deborah is described in Judges 4:4 as a prophetess. She was the wife of Lapidoth. She also was a judge of Israel, which means she was the ranking Jewish leader of her time. We could call her the Golda Meir of the Israel of her day. Judges 4:5 says Deborah sat on a hill under a palm and the people of Israel came up to her for judgment. Deborah became a great military leader when the leading Hebrew officer, Barak, refused to go into battle without her at his side. According to Judges 4:8-9, Barak said to Deborah, “If you will go with me, I will go: but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” And Deborah said to Barak, “I will surely go with you; nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory. For the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.” Of course Deborah won the battle and gained fame as a leader in battle.
One of Paul’s first converts was an employed woman, Lydia, from the city of Thyatira. Paul met her while he visited with some women who had gathered for prayer outside the gate to riverside of Philippi, the leading city of the district of Macedonia. The story of that encounter is told in Acts 16:11-15.
Lydia is identified in the Scriptures as a seller of purple, which is generally interpreted as meaning purple cloth. Although the Bible does not state whether she was married, Lydia clearly seems to be a prosperous woman, because she maintained a household and had her own home.
Acts 16:15 says, And when she [Lydia] was baptized, with her household, she besought us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.” And she prevailed upon us.
Paul must have been impressed with Lydia, for he returned to her home after his time in the Macedonian jail. Acts 16:40 reports, So they went out of the prison, and visited Lydia; and when they had seen the brethren, they exhorted them and departed.
Phoebe was another leading woman of the New Testament. We do not know what career she pursued, but we know that she played a key role in the early church and had duties beyond that of homemaker. Several scholars believe Paul entrusted his letter to the Romans to Phoebe for deliver. Austin H. Stouffer, in a Christianity Today article on the ordination of women, calls it a “task many of our churches would delegate only to men.”4 Stouffer and others also point out that Phoebe was a deaconess in the early church—possibly the only female deacon in the church.
In Romans 16:1-2, Paul says, I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deaconess of the church at Cenchreae, that you may receive her in the Lord as befits the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a helper of many and of myself as well.
What Did Jesus and Paul Say About Employed Women?
Any biblical discussion about working women must include a discussion about what Jesus and Paul said and taught about women employed outside the home.
Jesus never said that a woman’s place is in the home.
Nor did He say a woman’s place is in the marketplace. He did not speak directly to the question of two-paycheck marriages. But Jesus, in both words and deeds, did say much about the value and worth of persons male and female.
From these teachings we draw our understanding of what He might say today about employed women.
Many writers and theologians have pointed out that Jesus’ attitude toward women stood in sharp contrast to the customs of His day. A clear example of this is John 4:7-42, in which Jesus tells the woman at the well in Samaria that she had five former husbands and a current live-in boyfriend. For two reasons, the woman was shocked that Jesus would speak to her: (1) she was a Samaritan, and Jews had no dealings with these people, who were actually their relatives; and (2) she was a woman, perhaps of ill repute.
Jesus treated this woman of Samaria with respect, understanding, and forgiveness. Her testimony later served to tell the people of her village about Jesus. Jesus knew and respected the worth of this woman and violated traditional customs in winning her admiration forever.
The Mary, Martha, and Lazarus story in the New Testament also gives us a clue as to Jesus’ attitude where women were concerned. As Jesus went to visit this brother and two sisters who lived in Bethany near Jerusalem, Martha became so busy preparing the meal for her houseguest that she could not listen to all that Jesus had to say. Mary listened intently. Finally Martha asked Jesus to tell Mary to leave His side and to help her with meal preparations. Jesus scolds Martha and reminds her that values greater than a well-prepared meal exist. Here, Jesus had the perfect chance to lecture Mary on the role of women and to tell her to stay at home and tend to the culinary and domestic arts. Instead, He told Martha that she, too, should be listening and using her God-given thinking and reasoning abilities.
In Luke 8:1-3, we learn that women as well as men were instrumental in Jesus’ ministry. After this he [Jesus] went journeying from town to town and village to village, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. With him were the Twelve and a number of women who had been set free from evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, known as Mary of Magdala, from whom seven devils had come out, Joanna, the wife of Chuza a steward of Herod’s, Susanna, and many others. These women provided for them out of their own resources (NEB).
The use of the term own resources indicates that the women did more than just offer their talents and physical labor. They offered funds.
Apparently, these were women of some means who shared their financial resources with Jesus and His disciples.
Later, at the time of Jesus’ death, some of these women were standing near the cross. In Luke 23:49, we learn that His [Jesus’] friends had all been standing at a distance [watching the crucifixion]; the women who had accompanied him from Galilee stood with them and watched it all (NEB). Then, after Jesus’ body was removed from the cross, these women were the ones who followed . . . took note of the tomb and observed how his body was laid. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes (vv. 55-56, NEB).
Two days later, on that first Easter morning, these were the women who reported the resurrection. So their role in the conclusion of Jesus’ earthly ministry was crucial.
Could some of the first bearers of the Good News of the resurrection have been businesswomen? We don’t know for sure. The Scriptures only tell us about Joanna’s husband’s job. The idea that Mary Magdala was a reformed prostitute is merely conjecture. We don’t know whether she had a husband or how she supported herself. We also don’t know any of these details about Susanna and the “many other” women who traveled with Jesus. The fact that these women traversed the country freely with Jesus and His disciples and had their own money to underwrite the journeys indicates that these were not typical homemakers of Jesus’ day.
We might speculate that these were businesswomen, or maybe partners in some two-paycheck lifestyle.
We won’t commit the same error the Oklahoma preacher did and try to read too much into Bible verses. But one thing is certain: Jesus did not encourage these women to hide their abilities and intelligence; He associated with them freely.
Paul was the bridge between Jews and Gentiles in spreading the gospel; he took the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and interpreted them to the world outside of Judaism. Paul was “the man most responsible for carrying Christian faith to the Graeco-Roman world beyond Palestine,” says one source book. “Beginning his career as a fierce persecutor of the earliest followers of Jesus, he experienced a miraculous conversion, and from that time on he practiced Christian evangelism so zealously and successfully that he went down in history as the revered ‘apostle to the Gentiles.’”5
An entire book could be written on Paul’s views on women. In fact, Paul’s is the name that usually pops up when the discussion turns to women’s roles. In an editorial on “Women’s Role in Church and Family,” Christianity Today says, “The role of women in the home is more difficult to determine because of the interlacing of scripture and cultural patterns both in ancient and modern times.” Every example the editorial used after that statement is from the writings of Paul.6
We have neither the time nor the space to go into every detail of what Paul said about the role of women. We want, therefore, to concentrate on Paul’s attitude toward women working outside the home.
Paul is like Jesus was on the issue of working women. He never said a woman’s place is always at home, nor did he say that a woman’s place is never in the marketplace. Some people read certain passages from Paul and conclude that he was opposed to employed women. We believe these are only interpretations of people who set out to prove a certain premise.
When Royce Smith was preparing to take her job as truant officer, she and husband Skip, a purchasing supervisor, decided to enroll in a seminar on financial management offered at a neighborhood Baptist church.
To Royce’s shock, the Baptist pastor who taught the course kicked off the opening-night talk by attempting to “prove,” using two verses from Paul, that women should not work outside the home. Part of his text was 1 Timothy 5:8: If any one does not provide for his relatives . . . he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
The other part of the minister’s text was Titus 2:3-5: Bid the older women likewise to be reverent in behavior, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink; they are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be sensible, chaste, domestic, kind, and submissive to their husbands, that the word of God my not be discredited.
Royce said that pastor’s words at first made her apprehensive: “I felt like my decision (to go back to work) had been God’s will. My first reaction was, ‘Maybe I didn’t pray hard enough.’ So I prayed again and got the same answer—that this was the right step for me.”
The two verses from Paul quoted by the pastor at the financial seminar in no way exclude women from working outside the home. We believe modern women can use their talents outside the home and still meet all the requirements of the two verses: loving their husbands, caring for children, and being sensible, chaste, domestic, kind, and yes, even submissive —terms that get tossed around a lot in discussions about working women.
We’ll pick up on the subject of submission in a few pages when we explore the meaning of Christian marriage.
Back to Paul’s specific comments about employed women: We have already cited two passages that indicate Paul had golden opportunities to lecture employed women about their lifestyles—the cases of Lydia and Priscilla. But these passages concerning Paul’s relationship with Lydia contain no indication that would indicate he frowned on her career. In fact, one could argue that he willingly accepted the hospitality that her income and status allowed her to offer him. Lydia is, moreover, immortalized in the Scriptures as the seller of purple, just as professional women today want to be remembered as journalists, doctors, lawyers, real-estate brokers, and so on.
In his relationship with Priscilla and Aquila, Paul had the perfect opportunity to lecture or scold Priscilla about working alongside her husband in the tent-making business.
Paul never seemed to hesitate expressing his disapproval of other customs or behavior he considered wrong. Yet we see no indication whatsoever that Paul disapproved of this two-paycheck marriage.
In both cases, we believe Paul’s silence on the issue of employed women is significant.
Several other women played key roles in the life and ministry of Paul. We do not know whether all these women pursued careers outside the home. But we do know that women were not excluded from a vital role in the early church. Said Austin H. Stouffer in his article on the ordination of women, “Of the twenty-nine people Paul greets in Romans 16, many are women he addressed by name, contrary to Jewish custom: Phoebe, Tryphaena, Tryphosa, Julia, Mary.”7
Though Paul is often placed in the role of an opponent to modern employed women, we believe that image is unfounded. Our study of Scripture does not show Paul to be opposed to women being in the marketplace, as some would have us believe.
What the Bible Says About Marriage
Another biblical issue that relates to the two-paycheck family is that of Christian marriage.
Reflecting on two passages from Genesis in the Old Testament which set forth the principles on which Christian marriage is based is important. In the Genesis creation story, we find: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them . . .. (Gen. 1:27-28). Then, a few verses further, we find the second creation story of man and woman, in Genesis 2:7, 21-24:
Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man became a living being . . . So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh: and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.
In these beautiful verses which tell us of the first marriage and the first couple, we see that God created each of us—male and female—in His image. That means we each have value and worth, regardless of whether we are male or female. Many people have pointed out that God did not choose to remove a portion of Adam’s foot to make Eve, to show that woman is beneath man. Nor did he remove a portion of Adam’s head, to show that woman is above man. God instead chose to remove a portion of Adam’s rib to show that woman stands beside man. Man and woman are to be together, side by side.
We believe this side-by-side partnership is essential for a two-paycheck marriage—and any marriage—to work.
In a successful two-paycheck lifestyle, husbands and wives must see themselves as involved in a partnership in which both persons benefit from the relationship and the marriage, just as Adam and Eve benefited from each other. A husband and wife must work together—side by side—to make the lifestyle work.
Understanding Submission
Now, back to the verses from Paul on submission. These verses continually pop up like a jack-in-the-box as the theological basis for opposition to women working outside the home. The key verses on this subject are found in Ephesians 5. To understand Paul’s teachings on the roles of husbands and wives, reading these verses in context and in their entirety is absolutely essential.
Paul wrote, Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and himself its Savior. As church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. At this point, many opponents of the two-paycheck lifestyle stop reading their Bibles and start preaching. But Paul’s thoughts do not stop here. They continue on:
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
(Eph. 5:25-33)
In these verses, Paul was talking about a mutual relationship between a husband and wife in which both are treated with respect, appreciation, and love. Paul was not advocating a tyranny in which a husband walks all over his wife. He told a wife to respect her husband and his place in the family. He told a husband to respect his wife and treat her with love.
We concur with Paul in saying that any major decision in a family must be made jointly and with love and with respect. The decision to become a two-paycheck family must be made in an environment in which the husband loves his wife enough that he wants what is best for her.
The husband must love his wife enough to want her to be fulfilled as a person and to view her role as important. If being employed will help her find that fulfillment, then a husband should understand and work with his wife in order to achieve that goal. And the wife should love her husband and respect him enough to understand his wishes on the subject and to seek his counsel about the venture before she makes the decision.
Paul was correct: Marriage includes two people, two opinions, and two sets of standards and feelings to take into account. We say amen to Paul’s statement, Let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. To us, it seems to affirm, not contradict, the basic premise of the two-paycheck marriage.
How Christians Are to Treat Each Other
We see a fourth companion issue to any discussion about two-paycheck families in the church. As we have shown, the Bible never directly addresses the issue of employed couples. But it is clear as a bell about the way Christians are to treat each another—even those who disagree with them.
The biblical standard for relating to others is love, patience, and a nonjudgmental attitude. This applies both to the churches and the two-paycheck families.
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged,” says Jesus (Matt. 7:1, KJV). At another point, Jesus said, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” (Mark 12:31, KJV). These are verses that must always be recalled when Christians are discussing issues on which they disagree.
Churches as well as one-paycheck families have an obligation to refrain from making cruel and unnecessary judgments about two-paycheck families. And two-paycheck families have an equal obligation to understand and love those who disagree with their style of living. We’ll write more about this later in the chapter on how to deal with criticism.
An Issue Each Couple Must Decide
We believe, in view of the Bible’s essential silence on this issue, that becoming a two-paycheck family is a matter for each couple to decide together after prayer and discussion.
When You Both Go to Work
By Louis & Kay Moore
Chapter Three
Some Biblical Dimensions
I could hardly wait to get Pastor Jones on the telephone. In searching for two-paycheck families to interview for our book, we often contacted pastors such as Jones to get the names of active members of their churches whom they believed coped well with the two-paycheck lifestyle. I had zeroed in on this pastor because he was known in his community for his theologically liberal stances on a variety of matters.
He was affiliated with the United Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), a denomination noted for its stand on the equality of women. I assumed he would quickly spiel off the names of several employed couples among his membership. Then Kay and I would be in business to start our interviews.
I couldn't have been more shocked at his answer to our request. He was quiet a long time, muttering, “I’m thinking. I’m thinking . . ..” Finally, he blurted out, “I just can’t think of a single two-paycheck couple in this entire church.” Furthermore, he seemed to have some trouble even understanding why two-paycheck families in the church could possibly be an appropriate subject for a book.
Just the converse was true in the case of Pastor Smith.
I had dallied around for days before I contacted this minister because he was pastor of a Southern Baptist Church and was noted for his heavy fundamentalist leanings. Every time I picked up the phone to call this minister to get the names of two-paycheck couples in his congregation, I would put it down and tell myself that I just wasn’t ready to listen to what I was sure would be a sermon on “why women should stay at home where they belong.”
Finally, I bit the bullet and contacted him. Again, as with Pastor Jones, I couldn’t have been more surprised, but for an entirely different reason. Instead of the lecture I expected, this pastor tuned in immediately with our project.
“Why, that’s an excellent idea,” he said. “I know lots of couples in our church just like the people you are seeking. I am sure people really have a need for a book like yours.” He then rattled off a long list of names of employed couples—far too many for us to use from any one church.
What a reversal! The theological liberal couldn’t tune in with our project, but the fundamentalist almost bowled me over with his enthusiasm. And I had thought just the opposite would occur. After we completed our interviews and research, I continued to mull over these two contradictory conversations.
Finally I realized that another highly significant factor was involved besides the theological leanings of the ministers. The Presbyterian church was situated in an affluent section in its community, near a neighborhood populated by prosperous bankers and oil-company executives. The Baptist church, on the other hand, was situated in an economically and socially changing neighborhood. In the wealthy sector in which the Presbyterian church had its ministry, the right of women to work outside the home was more of a philosophical idea. In the Baptist church’s neighborhood, two paychecks were an economic necessity for many families.
These two phone calls also shed some new light on the way church friends had responded when Kay first returned to her newspaper job after our son was born. We had been members of a conservative Baptist church which was not far removed theologically from the fundamentalist church whose pastor eagerly helped with our book project. But it was situated in the same type of neighborhood as was the Presbyterian church whose pastor could barely tune into our subject matter. Suddenly we could see why Baptist residents of this affluent neighborhood had responded in the same way as did the reluctant Presbyterian pastor.
The two-paycheck issue is often presented as a theological one. The women of the church who prayed that Barbara would not follow Kay’s example of returning to work after her child was born did so, they thought, for theological reasons. They believed God’s will was for a mother to stay home and tend to her husband, children, and house. But, as our experience with the Presbyterian and Baptist ministers taught us, the issue often transcends theological lines. It often has as much to do with the culture in which people live as with their theological bias.
Cultural Attitudes Vary, Too
Before we go further, reflecting on how cultural attitudes toward two-paycheck families have varied during past centuries is important. The concept of working couples is not a new idea developed in the 1980s. Centuries ago the Industrial Revolution brought women out of their homes and into the marketplace to work alongside their husbands in business and industry. In 19th century England, for instance, the two-paycheck marriage was a matter of class: having a wife at home instead of in the factory was a luxury Englishmen of the poorer classes could not afford.
Too, no one today can accurately compare the lifestyle of farm couples during the last century or early in this century with the “husband at work, wife at home” model emphasized today. The farmer and his wife were much more akin to the employed couples of today than to the housewife who “stays home” in the suburbs while her husband goes off to earn the family’s living in the city.
The modern notion that the wife belongs at home all day with the children while the husband goes off to work to provide an income is largely a product of the post-war 1950s. During World War II, wives made the bombs and the airplanes and staffed the plants and watched the homefront while their husbands went to fight in the war. Rosie the Riveter became a national symbol of women at work in wartime. When the GI’s returned home, they wanted to repay their wives by retiring them to the luxury of new homes equipped with the latest in modern conveniences.
In that box of old pictures and memorabilia my mother recently gave me was a letter my father wrote to my mother from the Pacific, where he fought in Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s gallant effort to regain the Philippines and other territories seized by the Japanese during World War II. In the letter, Dad pledges to Mom that when the war is over, he will return home and get a job and that she will never have to be employed again. My father, I believe, was expressing an attitude that prevailed among many servicemen during World War II. Those men looked forward to a postwar prosperity that would enable their wives to give up their war-enforced duties and stay home with the “baby boom” babies of the late 1940s and early 1950s. In the 1950s, the men went off to the offices or factories to get ahead. They often left their wives with small children and with a new life that was much easier than earlier generations had known.
This cultural background is important to observe as we look at today’s struggle between those who believe (based on their concept of biblical premises) that a wife shouldn’t work and those who think a woman has a right to be in the marketplace.
Economic Necessity or Personal Fulfillment?
Another experience just after Kay returned to work served to affirm for us this dichotomy of culture and Bible. About the same time Kay went back to her newspaper job, another young woman in our Sunday-school class put her small child in a day-care center and took a clerical job.
Unlike Kay, however, this woman, named Jan, made it clear to one and all that she was working strictly for economic necessity. Career goals had nothing to do with her decision.
She and her husband needed the money. Her going to work at an outside job was the only answer for them. Curiously, Jan said she never felt the same type of criticism from other church members Kay had felt, although her circle of friends was the same as ours. In fact, we recall that Jan experienced only sympathy and even pity from other members of her Sunday-school class. For several weeks during that time, no one referred to Jan without calling her Poor Jan—poor almost becoming a part of her name. If the groups that criticized Kay had attacked Jan for working, Jan probably would have chimed right in with their criticism. She preferred to be at home but could not financially afford to be. So she took the only route open to her.
For members of this affluent church we attended, economic need seemed to be the only “valid” reason for a two-paycheck family. Although Kay’s course of action was no different than Jan’s was, somehow the women in the Sunday-school class implied that God looked less kindly on us because Kay returned to work for reasons of self-fulfillment rather than financial need. Jan became the “good working mother” because of her motivations, while Kay was pegged as the “bad working mother.” Therefore, Jan did not hear implications about God’s will, but Kay did.
Kay and I realize that this story of Jan reflects the broader issue of hypocrisy in churches, but it also shows how theological issues are used—not always consistently—against the two-paycheck family.
We were not the only couple who encountered opposition to their lifestyle based on theological grounds. And, as in the cases we cited, the opposition did not necessarily occur along denominational lines.
Bracing for Theological Battles
I called long distance to set up a personal interview with Rita and Jack Newton. But the moment I explained our project, Rita began pouring out her troubles over the telephone lines. She had been an elementary-school teacher before their child was born; she wanted to return to outside work as soon as the child was in grade school. In the meantime, she wanted to enroll in graduate study.
But Rita was alarmed by some hair-raising tales she had been told about what had happened when other mothers in the Church of Christ congregation she attended resumed their jobs.
According to Rita, women in their California congregation who returned to work with children at home were visited by elders of the congregation and were instructed not to continue their outside jobs. In one case, the elders even visited the babysitter of a woman who had just taken a job and told the sitter she was doing wrong by keeping the children of women who work outside the home. The elders claimed the church teaches that a woman who sits with the children of other women who work outside the home become something akin to an accomplice to a crime.
Just before I called, Rita had stopped attending the church’s women’s Bible class because of her teacher’s statements about the role of women. The teacher, wife of one of the church’s elders, went to visit Rita after the two had had a disagreement in the class. “She (the teacher) left in a state of shock at what I said,” said Rita. “I disagreed with several things she mentioned about the role of women. I told her so. She said it was a pity that I didn’t realize how great motherhood is and what woman’s role should be in the world.”
Rita said a woman at her church who is a employed wife and mother was offered a management position in her company. A few days after news about the promotion got out, two women from the congregation arrived to tell the friend that she should refuse the job. They claimed the Bible teaches that women should not be in a supervisory position over men.
Rita refused to return to the women’s Bible class at her church. At last report, she and Jack were frantically reading the New Testament, especially the letters of Paul, to better equip themselves to answer criticism and to counter arguments about employed women in the congregation.
Gay McFarland, a writer, says one of the main reasons she stopped attending her Bible church before her marriage to writer John Scarborough was the church’s teachings on employed wives. The large church she attended taught that the Bible says women belong at home with the children and not in the workaday world.
At the time we interviewed them, John and Gay were “sitting out” church for a while. Like many other couples, they were not sure how they would deal with the churchless situation when children arrived. But one thing was certain for them: a tolerant attitude about two-paycheck families likely would be their strongest criterion for choosing a church when they do reach a decision. “I’m just not going to belong to a church where I feel I’m a second-class citizen for working,” said Gay. “There are too many stresses already associated with working. The church shouldn’t add to them by making women feel bad when they earn a paycheck.”
Linda and Eric King, both attorneys and parents of three children, say they have received criticism of their lifestyle at their Church of Christ in Oklahoma. “Many people, including our present preacher, still believe a woman’s place is in the home. They view it as a religious matter. Thus, to some extent, a woman is usurping a man’s place when she leaves her domestic domain. We have had sermons intimating this, along with paeans to housewives,” said Linda.
Since the matter is so often bandied about, let’s look at what the Bible truly does say about the two-paycheck family and whether it really teaches that the woman’s place is always in the home. But before we look at some key Bible verses on this matter, let’s first review our understanding of what role the Bible should play in our lives and how it is to be interpreted.
Understanding the Bible
The Bible is our record of God’s revelation of Himself to humankind. It contains the truth about God. It was written by people whom God guided. We like the way Christianity Today, the evangelical fortnightly publication, described this revelation to the biblical writers: “No evangelical scholar defends the idea that God dictated the Bible by a method analogous to the way a businessman dictates a letter to his stenographer. The few who (unwisely, we think) use the term dictate mean only that the end product is just as much the word of God as though the whole Bible had been dictated by God.”1
The Bible is also our guide for living. It is divine authority. With the help of the Holy Spirit for interpretation, it is the most important book we have to help us understand God. We believe the Bible should be read, studied, and followed.
But we must not make the Bible more than what it claims to be. It is not a scientific textbook. According to that same article in Christianity Today, “Inerrancy does not mean that the Bible always uses exact language. It does not require that the Bible employ up-to-date scientific terminology. Evangelicals are not trying to make the Bible into a science textbook; they mean only that it is true.”2
We also understand that the Bible was written in the context of its culture. No one (at least in our circle of acquaintances) believes that, because King David had many wives, men today should be polygamous. By the same token, no one we know believes that, because Abraham fathered a child by a mistress, men today are free to pursue such activities. The Bible records the actions of sinful people who lived in various cultures—some that are alien to our present way of Christian living.
We must take care that we do not remove the cultural patterns which provided the environment for the writing of the Bible and superimpose them indiscriminately on our culture today.
So how then are we to we read the Bible? We can approach our study with an attitude of prayer and seek the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. We do not need any key, such as Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures or Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormon to unlock the Scriptures. Modern commentaries can help us understand the background of the Bible. But such commentaries do not take precedence over the Bible.
Let the Bible Speak to You
We have two ways to read the Bible: (1) letting it speak to us in ways that were intended, or (2) making it speak to us in ways that we want to hear. Theologians have two fancy words to describe these methods: exegesis and eisegesis. Exegesis means to understand what the Bible is saying to us. Eisegesis means to read in the Bible things we want it to say. Be careful that you do not use the Bible to say what you want it to say.
In Oklahoma, where I was reared, an uneducated Baptist preacher seemed to fall into the second category. This preacher strongly disliked a popular hairstyle of the day—the topknot, formed by wrapping a woman’s long hair into a bun on top of her head. In order to preach against the topknot, this preacher studied the Bible intently and looked for the key verses. He found what he was seeking in Mark 13:15, although he had to adjust his spelling a little. In the verse, Jesus was speaking about turbulent time ahead. Jesus said, Let him that is on the housetop not go down into the house. By adding the letter “k” to the word not and by doing a little surgery on the verse the pastor had the text of his sermon: “Top (k)not go down.”
He projected onto the Bible what he wanted to find. We can read the Bible in context to avoid making the same error.
The Working Couples in the Bible
The central theological question working couples need to answer is this: What does the Bible say about the two-paycheck lifestyle?
Our answer: The Bible is essentially silent on the matter. Working couples were simply not an issue when the Bible was being written. Scripture, however, has two important examples of working couples—Priscilla and Aquila in the New Testament and the “virtuous wife” in Proverbs.
Acts 18:3 says Priscilla and Aquila, a husband and wife, were both tentmakers. Paul stayed with them in Corinth because, the Scriptures say, he was of the same trade. Besides their work with tents, Priscilla and Aquila also worked together as teachers. They were instrumental in the doctrinal education of Apollos. Acts 18:24-26 describes Apollos as a Jew . . . a native of Alexandria . . . an eloquent man, well versed in the scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John. The Scriptures say that Priscilla and Aquila heard Apollos, then they took him and expounded to him the way of God more accurately.
From the story of Priscilla and Aquila, we know that at least one working husband and wife were actively involved in the early church.
The other example of a working couple is found in the Old Testament. The description of the virtuous wife in the 31st chapter of Proverbs seems to describe an ideal woman of early Bible days who does the same kind of balancing act between home, family, and career that many modern working couples do. According to Proverbs 31:10-18:
Who can find a wife with strength of character? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will never lack profit. She does him good and not harm all the days of her life; she seeks wool and flax, and works with willing hands; she is like the merchant ship; she brings her food from afar. She rises while it is yet night, and gives food to her household, even a portion to her maidens; she considers a field and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard. She girds her loins with strength, and makes her arms strong. She sees that her merchandise is profitable; her lamp does not go out at night.
(MLB)
Whether the virtuous wife described here was an early real-estate person, a produce grower, or a garment-maker who sewed for the public, we do not know. But clearly she seemed to be engaged in a business of some sort. She also was capable of performing superior intellectual tasks. The Scripture does not seem to view this capability as an indication of masculinity in a woman.
Except for these two brief examples, we see little direct biblical reference to two-paycheck couples. Jesus does not address the issue of working couples directly; neither does Paul, nor do any other biblical writers. But while the Bible is essentially silent on the issue of working couples, it does offer some pertinent teachings on several related companion issues—the use of God-given talents, the role of women, Christian marriage, and how Christians are to treat each other.
The Use of God-Given Talents
Christian vocalist Cynthia Clawson had just returned from one of her frequent out-of-town engagements when we met. At home in their living room, she and her husband, composer and actor Ragan Courtney, who are Baptists, discussed their hectic and unorthodox lifestyle. Several weeks out of each month, Cynthia travels to various American cities and gives vocal concerts. While she is gone from home, Ragan stays home with their toddler son, Will, and writes and composes.
How does Ragan feel about his wife’s travels and about her being in the spotlight so often? Ragan’s answer was simple and straight from the teachings of Jesus. “The biblical parable of the talents teaches that you do not bury talents,” said Ragan. He believes God has given Cynthia talents he wants her to use.3
The story of the talents is found in Matthew 25:14-30. Although the word talent in the parable actually refers to a coin, the implication is wider and could also refer to God-given abilities. In the story, Jesus encouraged His followers to use wisely what God has given them. In this parable, the follower who failed to use God’s gifts was punished.
Both men and women are given talents by God. Those talents are not limited to what any one culture labels as male or female. Some men have a special knack for cooking. Some women have a talent to manage business matters. God was no respecter of gender when he distributed abilities.
The Bible makes clear what happens when special gifts are allowed to lie dormant; this admonition was not merely directed at men.
I was especially impressed with Ragan’s response about his wife’s talents, because I identified heavily with his feeling. I encourage Kay to pursue her writing career because I believe her ability is from God; that’s the way I feel about mine, too. If we did not use our talents, we would be like the servant in Jesus’ parable who ran and hid his talent for fear of losing it. When questioned by his master, that servant replied,
“Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not winnow; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground” (Matt. 25:24-25).
Then the master said to him: “You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed, and gather where I have not winnowed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest” (vv. 26-27).
Then the master took the servants talent from him and gave it to another, casting “the worthless servant into the outer darkness” (v. 30).
Employed Women in the Bible
Another companion issue to that of working couples is the issue of working women. A couple today usually becomes a two-paycheck family when the wife joins her husband as a breadwinner. The idea of employed men is neither new nor controversial; the idea of employed women is the one that generates controversy in some quarters today. Our purpose here is not to argue the whole feminist issue of equal pay, equal opportunities, or equal rights. We are specifically interested in what the Bible says about women—especially wives—being employed outside the home.
We recognize that many of the women in the Bible were homemakers and not business women. But contrary to popular misconception, several career women are mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments.
Deborah is described in Judges 4:4 as a prophetess. She was the wife of Lapidoth. She also was a judge of Israel, which means she was the ranking Jewish leader of her time. We could call her the Golda Meir of the Israel of her day. Judges 4:5 says Deborah sat on a hill under a palm and the people of Israel came up to her for judgment. Deborah became a great military leader when the leading Hebrew officer, Barak, refused to go into battle without her at his side. According to Judges 4:8-9, Barak said to Deborah, “If you will go with me, I will go: but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” And Deborah said to Barak, “I will surely go with you; nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory. For the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.” Of course Deborah won the battle and gained fame as a leader in battle.
One of Paul’s first converts was an employed woman, Lydia, from the city of Thyatira. Paul met her while he visited with some women who had gathered for prayer outside the gate to riverside of Philippi, the leading city of the district of Macedonia. The story of that encounter is told in Acts 16:11-15.
Lydia is identified in the Scriptures as a seller of purple, which is generally interpreted as meaning purple cloth. Although the Bible does not state whether she was married, Lydia clearly seems to be a prosperous woman, because she maintained a household and had her own home.
Acts 16:15 says, And when she [Lydia] was baptized, with her household, she besought us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.” And she prevailed upon us.
Paul must have been impressed with Lydia, for he returned to her home after his time in the Macedonian jail. Acts 16:40 reports, So they went out of the prison, and visited Lydia; and when they had seen the brethren, they exhorted them and departed.
Phoebe was another leading woman of the New Testament. We do not know what career she pursued, but we know that she played a key role in the early church and had duties beyond that of homemaker. Several scholars believe Paul entrusted his letter to the Romans to Phoebe for deliver. Austin H. Stouffer, in a Christianity Today article on the ordination of women, calls it a “task many of our churches would delegate only to men.”4 Stouffer and others also point out that Phoebe was a deaconess in the early church—possibly the only female deacon in the church.
In Romans 16:1-2, Paul says, I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deaconess of the church at Cenchreae, that you may receive her in the Lord as befits the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a helper of many and of myself as well.
What Did Jesus and Paul Say About Employed Women?
Any biblical discussion about working women must include a discussion about what Jesus and Paul said and taught about women employed outside the home.
Jesus never said that a woman’s place is in the home.
Nor did He say a woman’s place is in the marketplace. He did not speak directly to the question of two-paycheck marriages. But Jesus, in both words and deeds, did say much about the value and worth of persons male and female.
From these teachings we draw our understanding of what He might say today about employed women.
Many writers and theologians have pointed out that Jesus’ attitude toward women stood in sharp contrast to the customs of His day. A clear example of this is John 4:7-42, in which Jesus tells the woman at the well in Samaria that she had five former husbands and a current live-in boyfriend. For two reasons, the woman was shocked that Jesus would speak to her: (1) she was a Samaritan, and Jews had no dealings with these people, who were actually their relatives; and (2) she was a woman, perhaps of ill repute.
Jesus treated this woman of Samaria with respect, understanding, and forgiveness. Her testimony later served to tell the people of her village about Jesus. Jesus knew and respected the worth of this woman and violated traditional customs in winning her admiration forever.
The Mary, Martha, and Lazarus story in the New Testament also gives us a clue as to Jesus’ attitude where women were concerned. As Jesus went to visit this brother and two sisters who lived in Bethany near Jerusalem, Martha became so busy preparing the meal for her houseguest that she could not listen to all that Jesus had to say. Mary listened intently. Finally Martha asked Jesus to tell Mary to leave His side and to help her with meal preparations. Jesus scolds Martha and reminds her that values greater than a well-prepared meal exist. Here, Jesus had the perfect chance to lecture Mary on the role of women and to tell her to stay at home and tend to the culinary and domestic arts. Instead, He told Martha that she, too, should be listening and using her God-given thinking and reasoning abilities.
In Luke 8:1-3, we learn that women as well as men were instrumental in Jesus’ ministry. After this he [Jesus] went journeying from town to town and village to village, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. With him were the Twelve and a number of women who had been set free from evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, known as Mary of Magdala, from whom seven devils had come out, Joanna, the wife of Chuza a steward of Herod’s, Susanna, and many others. These women provided for them out of their own resources (NEB).
The use of the term own resources indicates that the women did more than just offer their talents and physical labor. They offered funds.
Apparently, these were women of some means who shared their financial resources with Jesus and His disciples.
Later, at the time of Jesus’ death, some of these women were standing near the cross. In Luke 23:49, we learn that His [Jesus’] friends had all been standing at a distance [watching the crucifixion]; the women who had accompanied him from Galilee stood with them and watched it all (NEB). Then, after Jesus’ body was removed from the cross, these women were the ones who followed . . . took note of the tomb and observed how his body was laid. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes (vv. 55-56, NEB).
Two days later, on that first Easter morning, these were the women who reported the resurrection. So their role in the conclusion of Jesus’ earthly ministry was crucial.
Could some of the first bearers of the Good News of the resurrection have been businesswomen? We don’t know for sure. The Scriptures only tell us about Joanna’s husband’s job. The idea that Mary Magdala was a reformed prostitute is merely conjecture. We don’t know whether she had a husband or how she supported herself. We also don’t know any of these details about Susanna and the “many other” women who traveled with Jesus. The fact that these women traversed the country freely with Jesus and His disciples and had their own money to underwrite the journeys indicates that these were not typical homemakers of Jesus’ day.
We might speculate that these were businesswomen, or maybe partners in some two-paycheck lifestyle.
We won’t commit the same error the Oklahoma preacher did and try to read too much into Bible verses. But one thing is certain: Jesus did not encourage these women to hide their abilities and intelligence; He associated with them freely.
Paul was the bridge between Jews and Gentiles in spreading the gospel; he took the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and interpreted them to the world outside of Judaism. Paul was “the man most responsible for carrying Christian faith to the Graeco-Roman world beyond Palestine,” says one source book. “Beginning his career as a fierce persecutor of the earliest followers of Jesus, he experienced a miraculous conversion, and from that time on he practiced Christian evangelism so zealously and successfully that he went down in history as the revered ‘apostle to the Gentiles.’”5
An entire book could be written on Paul’s views on women. In fact, Paul’s is the name that usually pops up when the discussion turns to women’s roles. In an editorial on “Women’s Role in Church and Family,” Christianity Today says, “The role of women in the home is more difficult to determine because of the interlacing of scripture and cultural patterns both in ancient and modern times.” Every example the editorial used after that statement is from the writings of Paul.6
We have neither the time nor the space to go into every detail of what Paul said about the role of women. We want, therefore, to concentrate on Paul’s attitude toward women working outside the home.
Paul is like Jesus was on the issue of working women. He never said a woman’s place is always at home, nor did he say that a woman’s place is never in the marketplace. Some people read certain passages from Paul and conclude that he was opposed to employed women. We believe these are only interpretations of people who set out to prove a certain premise.
When Royce Smith was preparing to take her job as truant officer, she and husband Skip, a purchasing supervisor, decided to enroll in a seminar on financial management offered at a neighborhood Baptist church.
To Royce’s shock, the Baptist pastor who taught the course kicked off the opening-night talk by attempting to “prove,” using two verses from Paul, that women should not work outside the home. Part of his text was 1 Timothy 5:8: If any one does not provide for his relatives . . . he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
The other part of the minister’s text was Titus 2:3-5: Bid the older women likewise to be reverent in behavior, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink; they are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be sensible, chaste, domestic, kind, and submissive to their husbands, that the word of God my not be discredited.
Royce said that pastor’s words at first made her apprehensive: “I felt like my decision (to go back to work) had been God’s will. My first reaction was, ‘Maybe I didn’t pray hard enough.’ So I prayed again and got the same answer—that this was the right step for me.”
The two verses from Paul quoted by the pastor at the financial seminar in no way exclude women from working outside the home. We believe modern women can use their talents outside the home and still meet all the requirements of the two verses: loving their husbands, caring for children, and being sensible, chaste, domestic, kind, and yes, even submissive —terms that get tossed around a lot in discussions about working women.
We’ll pick up on the subject of submission in a few pages when we explore the meaning of Christian marriage.
Back to Paul’s specific comments about employed women: We have already cited two passages that indicate Paul had golden opportunities to lecture employed women about their lifestyles—the cases of Lydia and Priscilla. But these passages concerning Paul’s relationship with Lydia contain no indication that would indicate he frowned on her career. In fact, one could argue that he willingly accepted the hospitality that her income and status allowed her to offer him. Lydia is, moreover, immortalized in the Scriptures as the seller of purple, just as professional women today want to be remembered as journalists, doctors, lawyers, real-estate brokers, and so on.
In his relationship with Priscilla and Aquila, Paul had the perfect opportunity to lecture or scold Priscilla about working alongside her husband in the tent-making business.
Paul never seemed to hesitate expressing his disapproval of other customs or behavior he considered wrong. Yet we see no indication whatsoever that Paul disapproved of this two-paycheck marriage.
In both cases, we believe Paul’s silence on the issue of employed women is significant.
Several other women played key roles in the life and ministry of Paul. We do not know whether all these women pursued careers outside the home. But we do know that women were not excluded from a vital role in the early church. Said Austin H. Stouffer in his article on the ordination of women, “Of the twenty-nine people Paul greets in Romans 16, many are women he addressed by name, contrary to Jewish custom: Phoebe, Tryphaena, Tryphosa, Julia, Mary.”7
Though Paul is often placed in the role of an opponent to modern employed women, we believe that image is unfounded. Our study of Scripture does not show Paul to be opposed to women being in the marketplace, as some would have us believe.
What the Bible Says About Marriage
Another biblical issue that relates to the two-paycheck family is that of Christian marriage.
Reflecting on two passages from Genesis in the Old Testament which set forth the principles on which Christian marriage is based is important. In the Genesis creation story, we find: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them . . .. (Gen. 1:27-28). Then, a few verses further, we find the second creation story of man and woman, in Genesis 2:7, 21-24:
Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man became a living being . . . So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh: and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.
In these beautiful verses which tell us of the first marriage and the first couple, we see that God created each of us—male and female—in His image. That means we each have value and worth, regardless of whether we are male or female. Many people have pointed out that God did not choose to remove a portion of Adam’s foot to make Eve, to show that woman is beneath man. Nor did he remove a portion of Adam’s head, to show that woman is above man. God instead chose to remove a portion of Adam’s rib to show that woman stands beside man. Man and woman are to be together, side by side.
We believe this side-by-side partnership is essential for a two-paycheck marriage—and any marriage—to work.
In a successful two-paycheck lifestyle, husbands and wives must see themselves as involved in a partnership in which both persons benefit from the relationship and the marriage, just as Adam and Eve benefited from each other. A husband and wife must work together—side by side—to make the lifestyle work.
Understanding Submission
Now, back to the verses from Paul on submission. These verses continually pop up like a jack-in-the-box as the theological basis for opposition to women working outside the home. The key verses on this subject are found in Ephesians 5. To understand Paul’s teachings on the roles of husbands and wives, reading these verses in context and in their entirety is absolutely essential.
Paul wrote, Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and himself its Savior. As church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. At this point, many opponents of the two-paycheck lifestyle stop reading their Bibles and start preaching. But Paul’s thoughts do not stop here. They continue on:
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
(Eph. 5:25-33)
In these verses, Paul was talking about a mutual relationship between a husband and wife in which both are treated with respect, appreciation, and love. Paul was not advocating a tyranny in which a husband walks all over his wife. He told a wife to respect her husband and his place in the family. He told a husband to respect his wife and treat her with love.
We concur with Paul in saying that any major decision in a family must be made jointly and with love and with respect. The decision to become a two-paycheck family must be made in an environment in which the husband loves his wife enough that he wants what is best for her.
The husband must love his wife enough to want her to be fulfilled as a person and to view her role as important. If being employed will help her find that fulfillment, then a husband should understand and work with his wife in order to achieve that goal. And the wife should love her husband and respect him enough to understand his wishes on the subject and to seek his counsel about the venture before she makes the decision.
Paul was correct: Marriage includes two people, two opinions, and two sets of standards and feelings to take into account. We say amen to Paul’s statement, Let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. To us, it seems to affirm, not contradict, the basic premise of the two-paycheck marriage.
How Christians Are to Treat Each Other
We see a fourth companion issue to any discussion about two-paycheck families in the church. As we have shown, the Bible never directly addresses the issue of employed couples. But it is clear as a bell about the way Christians are to treat each another—even those who disagree with them.
The biblical standard for relating to others is love, patience, and a nonjudgmental attitude. This applies both to the churches and the two-paycheck families.
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged,” says Jesus (Matt. 7:1, KJV). At another point, Jesus said, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” (Mark 12:31, KJV). These are verses that must always be recalled when Christians are discussing issues on which they disagree.
Churches as well as one-paycheck families have an obligation to refrain from making cruel and unnecessary judgments about two-paycheck families. And two-paycheck families have an equal obligation to understand and love those who disagree with their style of living. We’ll write more about this later in the chapter on how to deal with criticism.
An Issue Each Couple Must Decide
We believe, in view of the Bible’s essential silence on this issue, that becoming a two-paycheck family is a matter for each couple to decide together after prayer and discussion.
(To read further on this subject, locate a copy of When You Both Go to Work by Louis & Kay Moore. The book is available at www.hannibalbooks.com, www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com and other online and physical bookstores.)
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