Does motherhood mean anything?
April 10th, 2007Albert Mohler examines the capture of British seaman Faye Turney, the mother of a 3-year-old daughter, by the Iranians. Mohler quotes from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:
“You will know that among the detainees there is one lady who is a mother of a child. Why is it that the most difficult work like patrolling at sea should be given to a woman?
“Why is there no respect for motherhood? Why does the West not value its women?”
Mohler says radical feminism has paved the way for such developments in the Western world.
Driven by a fanatical ideology of feminism, the West has turned its back on a reality as basic as motherhood. We have adopted a new morality that insists — nature’s obstinacy notwithstanding — that there is no difference between men and women. This produces mothers of babies and toddlers in uniform and in the killing zones.
How sad that a madman like Ahmadinejad gets what so many people in Western civilization don’t.
does the lady seaman have a husband?
“Why is there no respect for motherhood? Why does the West not value its women?”
The leader of a prominent Islamic state is lecturing about valuing women? The last I heard or read women are still considered property in many Islamic cultures.
I agree that his statement is hypocritcal, Leland. But that doesn’t necessarily mean what he said is wrong.
I think Leland has a point here. I’m not so sure that Ahmadinejad “gets” it as much as he is trying to find something to shame the West with, ignoring the irony of his comment.
He probably finds it offensive to have women in the military, but his religion is not pure in its treatment of women.
On the other hand, the point that he makes is still valid: the roles of women and men are not the same, and women, especially mothers, should be afforded extra protection and consideration in many circumstances.
Men and women are (and ought to be) equal under the law; God made us all in His image, loves us all with His infinite love, and crafted His plan of salvation for all of us. And yet, while we are equal, we are not interchangeable: biologically, the differences among the races is nothing compared to the differences between man and woman.
For those who want to approach humanity as merely physical beings, it’s still the case that there’s a whole chromosome of difference between us. And it’s not as if, like some fish, the female lays a thousand eggs and the male passes by to release many more seed, so that their behavior is largely identical: a mother carries her child for nine months and then nurses the child for about as long, and the father cannot do either of these things. These biological facts have an impact on our different psychologies, even for women who either cannot bear children or actively choose not to.
For us, we who acknowledge the authority of Scripture, God made us different, to have different roles within the biological family and within the spiritual family of the church: roles that always involve submission and a denial of self, but not in symmetrical ways.
(And, biblically, the races were the result of sin — pride at the Tower of Babel — and we saw the first sign of that punishment being undone during Pentacost. But the sexes and even the institution of marriage were created before the Fall: there was never a version of man that predated the sexes, and there’s no indication that my being male and my wife’s being female will ever be undone.)
We’re equal, but not identical. The post-modern nihilists want to ignore the differences between man and woman, and the pre-modern jihadists want to ignore the equality of man and woman.
They both miss crucial parts of the puzzle, so I don’t think it’s prudent to praise one when he criticizes the other. As much as I respect Dr. Mohler, I would have preferred that he made clear that the Christian message is in opposition to both the relativism of the West and the misogyny of the Mideast.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the same thugs who chided us for letting a mother serve in combat also impose their head scarf on her?
Tim, I made the exact same statement to my wife after I we saw Ahmedieadaosjfjs’s statement on the news. The Islamic states have plenty of dirt on the west to propogate with, including a former president who is an adulterer, and his possibly soon-to-be president wife.