To fill the position vacated by the queen, King Xerxes ordered that all the virgin women of Susa be brought into his harem. Under the care of the royal eunuchs, the women underwent twelve months of beautification, adorning themselves with oil, myrrh, spices, and lotions, before each took a turn in the king’s bed to see who would please him best. (We didn’t get that version in Sunday school.) The women received just one night with the king, after which they were transferred to the eunuchs in charge of the concubines, with the instruction not to return to the king’s chamber unless summoned by name, under the penalty of death. The lovely Esther, whose Jewish name was Hadassah, won the heart of King Xerxes, and he made her his queen.
We never learn of Vashti’s fate. Many midrashic interpretations suggest that she was formally executed. Others propose that she was killed by Xerxes in a drunken rage. Still others, less sympathetic of the plight of pagan queens, contend that Vashti grew a tail. Few suggest she met a happy end.
Esther would go on to boldly defy Xerxes’s edict and appear before him without a summon to plead on behalf of her people, who were about to be slaughtered by the king’s evil vizier. To this day, Jews commemorate Esther’s bravery and the salvation of their ancestors with the annual festival of Purim.
Only recently have feminist interpretations reminded readers that it took the defiance of two queens to save the Jews—Esther by appearing before the king, Vashti by refusing to.
February: Beauty
* * *
My Breasts Are Like Towers
I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers. Thus I
have become in his eyes like one bringing contentment.
—SONG OF SONGS 8:10
TO DO THIS MONTH:
□ Find out what the Bible really says about beauty and sex
□ Interview a couple who practiced “biblical courtship”
□ Give Dan a “Sex Anytime” coupon (1 Corinthians 7:4–5)
Shortly before Dan and I married, we attended the summer wedding of two college classmates in which the officiating minister offered an ominous charge to the young bride.
“The Bible requires that a wife be available to her husband,” he said. “This means keeping yourself beautiful for him. Unfortunately, many women let themselves go after having children, giving little thought to their weight or appearance. It is your responsibility to delight your husband throughout all stages of life, so that he has no reason to stray.”
I jabbed Dan in the ribs with my elbow and hissed, “HE JUST TOLD HER NOT TO GET FAT!”
I waited for a similar charge to be issued to the groom, but no such instructions were given.
Later, in 2006, popular evangelical pastor Mark Driscoll made headlines when in response to Ted Haggard’s confession that he’d had an affair with another man, Driscoll declared:
At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.1
Driscoll’s comments drew fire, and I believe he eventually apologized, but the sentiment behind the remarks—that the Bible holds women to a certain standard of beauty that must be maintained throughout all seasons of life and that wives must devote themselves to pleasing their husbands in bed—remains a popular one, even among women.
In Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, Dorothy Patterson wrote that “God’s woman gives time and effort to her appearance” and hails the wife of seventeenth-century theologian Jonathan Edwards as the perfect example of a godly woman because “she stayed attractive, and fifteen years later she was still able to entrance men much younger than she was.”2
Similarly, Martha Peace instructs women in The Excellent Wife to remain beautiful and sexually available for their husbands, declaring that “the husband should be so satisfied that even if another woman entices him, he won’t be tempted.”3
At the last Christian women’s conference I attended, several speakers mentioned the importance of keeping a beauty routine so that husbands will not be tempted to “look elsewhere.” The message is as clear as it is ominous: Stay beautiful, or your husband might leave you . . . and if he does, it’s partially your fault.
The notion that buried somewhere in the sacred texts of Scripture is a verse directed at women that says “Thou shalt not let thyself go” has gained considerable traction within the Christian community in recent years. I wrote about the phenomenon in my blog, and the post broke traffic records, generating nearly three hundred comments from women and men alike. Many reported similar experiences:
• “My husband recently started seminary, and they had a special orientation for the married couples. In that orientation, they exhorted wives to be sexually available to their husbands and to keep up their appearance—again, this ‘don’t let yourself go’ mentality. I wouldn’t have had a problem with this if they had exhorted the husbands to do the same thing, but they didn’t. Why is it okay for the guys to let themselves go, but not the wives? It makes guys seem like base creatures, unable to deal with any temptation from a pretty young woman.”—AliasTheVault
• “The pastor that officiated my wedding presented this exact idea in one of our premarital counseling sessions. He mentioned his wife as an example, explaining that throughout their marriage she had always made an effort to dress nicely with her hair and makeup done when he arrived home in the evening. That idea stuck in my head, and for the longest time I felt guilty if my husband arrived home to find me in loungewear and a ponytail.”—Jessica
• “Anytime we get into ‘biblical’ looks, it’s going to be a losing proposition for women. If you don’t look good enough, your husband will lust after women who look better. If you look too good, you make other men cheat on their wives in the hearts. So you’re out of luck no matter what.”—Alise
In addition to fighting unrealistic standards of beauty, many women said they struggled with the Christian culture’s expectations regarding their sexuality:
• “I was told by my church that having sex before marriage was like buying a car and crashing it and trying to resell it. No one would want me anymore because having sex even once meant I was totaled.”—Sara
• “In church I learned that, before marriage, it was my job to say, ‘no,’ to never think or talk about sex at all, and then, on my wedding night, flip a magic switch and turn into a sex goddess who magically knows what she wants, is comfortable with her body, and knows just how to please her husband.”—Laura
• “I went into marriage thinking that my husband wanted a ‘girl next door in the living room but a tiger in the bedroom’—as I was told in the psychology classes at the small Christian college I attended . . . Then I had a child and found myself physically damaged from the birth and deep in postpartum depression. I turned to the local mother’s group at a church for support, and what did they tell me? You need to make yourself beautiful for your husband, take time away from your kids, and make a special night in the bedroom every week. All I heard was ‘you’re broken, you’re damaged, you’re an awful wife.’ They never actually said those things to me, but that’s the message I heard. I never felt comfortable enough to share my struggles with any of them because they kept harping on the ‘be a good wife by being amazingly beautiful and sexual’ routine.”—Regina
I, too, felt enormous pressure from the Church to meet certain expectations regarding sex and beauty.
I signed my first abstinence pledge when I was just fifteen. I’d been invited by some friends to a fall youth rally at the First Baptist Church, and in the fellowship hall one night, the youth leader passed around neon blue and pink postcards that included
a form letter to God promising to remain sexually abstinent until marriage. We had only a few minutes to add our signatures, and all my friends were signing theirs, so I used the back of my metal chair to scribble my name across the dotted line before marching to the front of the room to pin my promise to God and my vagina onto a giant corkboard for all to see. The youth leader said he planned to hang the corkboard in the hallway outside the sanctuary so that parents could marvel at the seventy-five abstinence pledges he’d collected that night. It was a pretty cheap way to treat both our bodies and God, come to think of it. Studies suggest that only about 12 percent of us kept our promise.4
Upon reaching her wedding night, a Christian woman is expected to transform from the model of chastity into a veritable sex goddess, ready to honor God by satisfying her husband’s sexual needs without fail. I was told that, according to 1 Corinthians 7:4, I had no authority over my own body, but was responsible for yielding it entirely to my husband, who needed regular sex in order to remain faithful to me.
Wrote Debi Pearl, “Wife, it is your God-ordained ministry to your husband to be his totally enthusiastic sex partner, ready to enjoy him at all times . . . If you don’t score high points here, you are providing an opening for your husband to be tempted by other women.”5
Pointing to the Song of Solomon, also called the Song of Songs, Pastor Driscoll issued a blunt declaration to the women in his megachurch audience: “Ladies, your husbands appreciate oral sex. They do. So, serve them. It’s biblical. Jesus Christ commands you to do so . . . Let me assure you of this: if you think you’re being dirty, he’s pretty happy.”6
Jesus Christ commands oral sex?
It seems there are enough rumors floating around the Christian community about what the Bible says about sex and beauty to put the average junior high boys’ locker room to shame.
So my first task for the month of February was to do some research, to sort fact from fiction and see what, if anything, the Bible required of women in the bedroom and in front of the mirror. Then I needed to find out how many of these instructions I could authentically reproduce for a book that I was pretty sure my mother would read.
Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.
—PROVERBS 31:30 NKJV
Sometimes there’s as much to learn from what the Bible doesn’t say as there is to learn from what it does say. I discovered this one Saturday afternoon when I broke out my concordances to see what sort of advice the Bible actually gives women about beauty:
• Of the occurrences in which the words beauty, beautiful, lovely, or attractive appear in conjunction with references to women, most are applied to specific Old Testament figures (Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Abigail, Bathsheba, Tamar, Vashti, Esther, the Shulammite princess in Song of Songs) or to groups of women ( Job’s daughters, the daughters of Jerusalem). While many Old Testament matriarchs are described as being beautiful, others, like Leah, are said to be plain. The gospel writers never rated the hotness of Jesus’ female disciples.
• The majority of verses that include woman and beauty in the same sentence are found in the book of Proverbs and appear in warnings to young men about the dangers of adultery. “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion,” says Proverbs 11:22. “Do not lust in your heart after her beauty or let her captivate you with her eyes,” says Proverbs 6:25.
• While young love is certainly celebrated in the Bible, particularly in Song of Songs, there is nothing in Scripture to suggest that a woman is expected to maintain a youthful appearance throughout all phases of life. Nowhere does the Bible teach that a woman shares responsibility for her husband’s infidelity because she “let herself go.” And nowhere does it teach that outer beauty reflects inner beauty.
• The Bible consistently describes beauty as fleeting. “Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing,” goes the famous line in Proverbs 31, “but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised” (V. 30 NKJV). The apostle Peter told the women of the early church, “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight” (1 Peter 3:3–4 UPDATED NIV).
So for all of its complexity and incongruity, its mysteries and its dark stories, the Bible consistently presents us with a realistic and affirming view of female beauty. The writers of ancient Scripture seemed to acknowledge what all women instinctively know—that our bodies change as we get older, as we bear children, when we get sick, and as we experience joy, pain, life, death, victory, heartache, and time. And frankly, the suggestion that men are too weak to handle these realities is as emasculating as it is unbiblical.
Warning young men against adultery, the author of Proverbs 5 wrote:
Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well . . .
May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.
A loving doe, a graceful deer—may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be intoxicated with her love.
(VV. 15–19 UPDATED NIV)
Both husbands and wives bear the sweet responsibility of seeking beauty in one another at all stages of life. No one gets off the hook because the other is wearing sweatpants or going bald or carrying a child or battling cancer. Any pastor who claims the Bible says otherwise is lying. End of story.
While Scripture has very little to say about beauty, it has quite a lot to say about sex. And when it comes to sex, the Bible is full of surprises. It includes erotic poetry and explicit sex scenes along with meticulously detailed laws about copulation and cleanliness. The Bible repeatedly warns against sexual immorality, yet some of its most celebrated heroes boasted sordid sex lives. The apostle Paul urged some Christians not to marry and instructed others to settle down. While Deuteronomy calls for the public stoning of women who fail to remain virgins before marriage, it is unclear whether the young lovers of Song of Songs were married at the time of their first sexual encounter. Hosea married a prostitute to make a point.
Far from idealizing the nuclear family, Jesus identified his disciples as his brothers, sisters, and mothers (Matthew 12:48) and insisted that his followers prioritize faith over family bonds (Luke 14:25–26). When the disciples asked Jesus if it is better not to marry, Jesus conceded that celibacy may be preferable for disciples and that some may choose to castrate themselves “for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:12 UPDATED NIV). And when the Sadducees tried to trip him up with a trick question about marriage after resurrection, Jesus responded, “When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven” (Mark 12:25).
Many early Christians took these teachings so seriously that they remained celibate, sometimes even castrating themselves, in anticipation of Christ’s coming kingdom. Paul himself never married, praising the celibate lifestyle as free from distraction and heartache in a world where many followers of Jesus were being persecuted by Rome (1 Corinthians 7:32).
Apparently, Paul’s teachings caused some confusion in the Corinthian church, where misinterpretations of one of his previous letters, now lost to history, required a follow-up letter from Paul for clarification. It seems that some Christians were teaching “it is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman” (1 Corinthians 7:1 UPDATED NIV) and applying this across the board, even to married couples. This was causing an increase in divorce, adultery, and marital unhappiness among these early Christians (particularly, we can surmise, when one partner in a marriage wanted to devote himself or herself to asceticism, while the other did not). So Paul spent a good deal of time in 1 Corinthians clearing things up. In chapter 7 he offered these instructions:
Each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty
to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. (VV. 2–5 UPDATED NIV)
In other words, no one should withhold sex from his or her spouse out of misguided religious devotion. Paul added, “I say this as a concession, not as a command. I wish that all of you were as I am, [single,] but each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that” (VV. 6–7 UPDATED NIV).
The apostle’s elevation of singleness as the ideal stands in stark contrast to the modern Church’s fixation on marriage and family. Singles were celebrated in the Church then, and they should be now.
Given this context, it seems odd that 1 Corinthians 7 is cited by so many Christians as a command from God to women everywhere to “ just say yes” to whatever a husband initiates in the bedroom.
For example when I first announced that I would be following the Bible’s commandments for women as literally as possible for a year, Dan received playful ribbings from friends who declared, “Dan, you lucky man! You get sex whenever you want!”
A Year of Biblical Womanhood Page 12