i used to be a really good chris­t­ian woman.  like one of the best.  i said the right things, did the right things, played nice.   the only prob­lem was that what was on the out­side & what was on the inside were two dif­fer­ent things.i believe evan­gel­i­cal chris­tian­ity has cre­ated a lot of divided women.

women who are cut off from their desires.  who are pulling it together on the out­side but crum­bling on the inside.  who are con­stantly feel­ing like losers, always miss­ing the good-​​christian-​​woman-​​wife-​​or-​​mother-​​mark.  who are afraid to dream. or take care of our­selves. or want some­thing more because it can be per­ceived as self­ish. who love God but aren’t sure God really loves us just-​​as-​​we-​​are because we’ve been bom­barded with teach­ing about our deprav­ity & eve-​​nature & how we need to be more like proverbs 31.

from Kathy Escobar’s, Ex-​​Good Chris­t­ian Women

I am an ex-​​good Chris­t­ian woman. Actu­ally. Scratch that. I don’t think I was EVER a good Chris­t­ian woman.  But I sure tried, and I tried hard for a long, long time.  The Good Chris­t­ian Woman was that elu­sive stan­dard that I never could quite mea­sure up to. I know a lot of other women who are the same. We aban­don our authen­tic selves as we strive to be Proverbs 31 head to toe, inside and out. We give our­selves away to a fault. I appre­ci­ate the Chris­t­ian dis­ci­pline of self-​​denial, yet when it comes to being a fol­lower of Jesus, women tweak it to a dif­fer­ent ideal of los­ing our self for the sake of who we imag­ine God wants us to be — the Good Chris­t­ian Woman. She’s a ghost of an ideal who haunts us to be just like her. Instead of press­ing for­ward in the quest for Christ like­ness, women like me get off course in  hot pur­suit of becom­ing the good Chris­t­ian woman. She is our saint, our matron of all that is holy and approved of by God. She is the vision of true Chris­t­ian wom­an­hood: sub­mis­sive, self-​​sacrificing, hum­ble and quiet. She is who I aspired to become.

But the good Chris­t­ian woman is a sem­blance of a human being who does not entirely exhibit her human­ity or oth­er­wise we would imag­ine her with a host of other human char­ac­ter­is­tics such as lead­er­ship, strength, intel­lec­tual prowess, and so on. But instead, the good Chris­t­ian woman is ide­al­ized with a few “fem­i­nine” qual­i­ties that are sup­pos­edly more sacred than other human qual­i­ties such as a sub­mis­sive­ness and a meek, quiet spirit. Throw in cre­ativ­ity and a flair for home décor and bak­ing and she is down­right the most mag­i­cal woman in the king­dom of God. She can pray, bake and teach Sun­day school. All at the same time. With a good, com­pli­ant attitude.

Fem­i­nine attrib­utes have become Chris­tian­ized and per­son­al­ized into a myth, a kind of Proverbs 31 man­nequin whom women are chal­lenged to emu­late. This does not honor a woman’s per­son­hood. Christ fol­low­ing women are meant to trans­form into the image of Jesus, but this image of bib­li­cal wom­an­hood has taken over.

Cul­tural con­di­tion­ing, includ­ing church cul­ture, shapes and informs who we think we are meant to be. Women mix up fem­i­nine char­ac­ter­is­tics with Christ’s char­ac­ter­is­tics. My fem­i­nin­ity has always felt a chal­lenge from cul­tural mes­sag­ing about whether or not I am girly enough. A tomboy at heart and play, I have just never quite taken a shine to pink fin­ger­nail pol­ish or flowy, lacy skirts. When I became a Christ fol­lower at age eigh­teen, that ten­der thresh­old of tran­si­tion from girl to woman, I sud­denly found myself plunged into a new cul­ture with a new vision of what it is to be a woman.

Through­out my jour­ney as a Christ fol­lower, I have inter­nal­ized this image to be a good Chris­t­ian woman instead of inter­nal­iz­ing the Per­son of Christ. This ideal of a good Chris­t­ian woman is not a human being — but an invented being. Who invented her? I’m not sure, though I sus­pect she was born from  a com­bi­na­tion of the per­fec­tion­is­tic flog­gings that drive many women to become who we are not as well as the con­di­tion­ing from the spirit of patri­archy that always seeks to keep it’s women under control.

Being less than girly my entire life has not just been a cul­tural affront, but a chal­lenge to reflect­ing the image of the good Chris­t­ian woman into my life. She is not who I can ever be. I am no good at being demure. I am nei­ther soft-​​spoken nor gentle-​​mannered. I do not restrain my words very well and I lack the pro­pri­ety to just be silent. I am head­strong and will­ful and enjoy rig­or­ous debate. I lean into the rough and tum­ble of grit rather than glam to this day in my middle-​​aged years.

I have tried hard to fol­low Jesus. I’ve prayed the prayers for him to trans­form me into a bet­ter per­son, into a good Chris­t­ian woman. I’ve chased after her and entreated heaven to help me catch her. But I never have and I never will. So I have had to let her go, to dis­man­tle the boards of the altar that I built for her within. In let­ting go of her, I dis­cov­ered not only more of who I really am, the authen­tic me, but I read­justed my path to find­ing more of Christ. He is who I follow.

I am not a good Chris­t­ian woman. I am a human being, a unique indi­vid­ual with cus­tomized fea­tures that are all my own. I have been made in the image of God, my sin­gu­lar life a sliver of the grand­ness of who God is and what God is like. My female­ness is a part of me, but it is not all of me. I do not have to con­form to the image of a good Chris­t­ian woman; I want to instead, con­form to the image of Jesus. He was not a good Chris­t­ian woman either.

***Are you famil­iar with the good Chris­t­ian woman? If you’ve met her, hook me up. I want to inter­view her!!