Women, Children, History and Christianity

I was listening to an NPR interview of a woman about her recently published book. She said that women were often not recognized in history, and specifically in the area of battle and war. I'm not surprised that she reached this conclusion, because usually in ancient times women were not valued as they should be. Men were the ones who went out and did the "important" things that end out in history books, namely fighting wars. This is an unfortunate failure among most pagan cultures. Women are to valued, and Christianity definitely does this.

Along with women, children were often undervalued in pagan cultures. The Romans had an appalling tradition that dis-valued children. After a child was born he or she was laid at the fathers feet, and the father had the choice of whether or not to keep the baby. Often the child would be rejected if it had physical defects or simply if it was female (Again-not valuing a female because they weren't as "useful"). If the father chose not to keep the baby, he was brought to a designated place and left to die of exposure.

Christianity was (and presumably still is) different from other religions on both of these points because it openly values both women and children, even though they are physically weaker then men. Many of the Proverbs are about children and how to raise them. This obviously shows that children are worth the effort to train. Another example would be that one can specifically see love of children in the life of Jesus:

Matthew 19:13,"Some people brought children to Jesus so that he would place his hands on them and pray. But the disciples scolded them. “Allow the children to come to me,” Jesus said. “Don’t forbid them, because the kingdom of heaven belongs to people like these children.”  Then he blessed the children and went away from there."


In this passage the disciples didn't understand how precious children are, so they rebuked the people who brought the children. And Jesus rebukes the disciples because he knows that children really are precious. 


Next, Christianity openly values women. Mary Magdelin was commended for worshipping Jesus with the expensive perfume, while most of the disciples were slow to realize the worthiness of what she did. Also, who were the first people to witness Christ resurrected from the dead? Women, even though the testimony of women was not held of much account in the courts of that time. 


The Christian God is a God that values and protects the weak; 1 Corinthians 1:27;" ...God chose what the world considers weak to shame the strong." 


Solo Deo Gloria.