A Woman with a Conscience 5/8/49
Scripture: (Read Proverbs 31: 10-31)
Text: Judges 5: 7; “... they ceased in Israel, until that I Deborah arose, that I arose a Mother in Israel.”
This day in May that has for so long been know as “Mother’s Day” has more recently been given expanded meaning by being called among many churches the “Festival of the Christian Home.” The week preceding it is widely known in our land as “Christian Family Week.” Some of us have heard one or more of the 7:30 broadcasts over our local radio station this past week under the general title: “All Good Things Begin at Home.” Incidentally, I thought they were well done. The importance of the family in our way of life can hardly be overestimated. Good family life is the best stabilizing influence in our national and cultural life. And cold statistics prove that the Christian family is far more stable than is the home with no church connection or Christian influence.
In the Christian home, every member of the family has his or her place of individual importance. And the developing sense of mutual responsibility is what makes a well adjusted home. Since it is the responsibility of the husband and father, in most cases, to provide the means of daily bread and care for the household, and since this responsibility takes most fathers away from the house a good deal of the time, the mother has a greater proportion of time spent with the children, especially while they are young. Because this is the normal arrangement in most homes, people sometimes raise the question, “Why give a girl advanced education? She will probably marry some fellow and settle down to keeping house and caring for children.” I should say that that is exactly the reason why she should have at least as good an education as her husband! She will probably put more of the stamp of her personality, ideas and attitudes on the children of her home during their most formative years than will anybody else. And she should be at least as competent in attitudes and general knowledge as is the man who is to be the father of her children.
And then sometimes circumstances arise wherein the family functions must be realigned. Now and then an illness confines a father to his house and the mother takes over the bread winning job. Older children sometimes have to pitch in and help with the family earning. The family ought to be as well prepared as they may be to take some of the responsibilities of each other when necessary.
We delight on Mother’s Day to extol the virtues of a good woman. The latter part of the last chapter of the book of Proverbs has quite a list of such virtues. She does her husband good and he trusts in her. She is industrious, thrifty, provident. She is wise and kind, loved by her children and praiseworthy in the eyes of her husband, who has honor among the elders of the community because of her. Mostly these are the virtues of the home, and they are worthy. It should be possible to compile a similar list of virtues for the worthy husband and father, and a corresponding list for worthy children. Any woman who lives up to the standard of the book of Proverbs should have the praise and appreciation of her family. [Proverbs 31: 10-31].
Many women go beyond the boundaries of their homes - much beyond - in their influence on the life of theirr time. I want to call attention today to this “extra,” for it is important.
We read about such a woman in particular in the book of Judges. Her “song,” in the fifth chapter, over a victory by her people, and the recovery of their moral fiber, is noteworthy. I refer to the song of Deborah. She speaks out of the dim, pre-Christian era in these words: “They ceased (or failed) in Israel until that I Deborah arose, that I arose a Mother in Israel.”
The life of Israel had been at low ebb. There was no leadership worthy of the name. The people had forgotten God with the inevitable moral decay that goes with such neglect. And so enemies had overrun them repeatedly. Politically, morally and spiritually the life of the nation ebbed low. The people groped about for lack of leadership. This statement is oft-repeated in the book of Judges: “In those days there was no king in Israel, and every man did as he pleased!” Anarchy stalked in the polluted channels of living.
Then there stepped into this appalling need a wife and mother, Deborah by name. The channels of living were cleansed. The enemy from within and without was beaten back. People regained their self-respect. Hope returned, as it always does when a deed is done for freedom anywhere in the world. When leaders had failed and no man took the responsibility, a mother stepped into the breach and repaired it.
1) It is well to remember that Deborah was primarily a leader in her own home. She came up not as a general, a statesman or a religious dignitary. “I arose,” said she, “a mother in Israel.” She gloried in a noble vocation, for that is what motherhood is. There have been cultures that regard women as mere producers of human offspring, unreliable or undesired when it comes to the rearing of those children. Actually the best of all cultures is that in which mothers not only conceive and bear children and care for their physical welfare but resolutely train them in the way they should go.
America’s first line of security is not in its military preparedness and stockpile of bombs. America’s first line of defense is in the character of her homes. When the day came that large numbers of mothers turned the rearing of their children over to nurse maids while they pursued careers outside their homes the first line of our defense was jeopardized. It is further in jeopardy in conditions which require the work of migrant mothers and others in field and factory while their children run unattended about the camps and shacks, unschooled and unguided and un-cared-for.
And when the home shunted over to the church the responsibility of imparting the knowledge of God, vital stones were pulled out of the foundation of our national life. The church can never be a sort of agency for taking over the religious training of children. The church, educationally speaking, is rather a pooling of the resources of all our homes for the more efficient and effective teaching of religion. But it cannot replace the home in this, or any other respect. It can only supplement what must be done at home.
The Deborahs of all time, engaged in the highest vocation known to humankind, that of being faithful mothers and companions of their loved ones, are worthy of highest praise. “I arose,” said Deborah, “a mother in Israel.”
2) Observe this also about Deborah: she had a vivid, militant conscience. When that conscience was really aroused, it wrought revolutionary changes in the corrupt body-politic. Here is a spirit that was adequate to the need that was greater than home. For of course the home is helped, or endangered, by the external conditions that surround it. Of course this mother in Israel got exercised about the state of affairs which affected all the homes of Israel. Her spirit inquired into every area of life and took hold wherever possible.
History would be pretty barren without the conscience of Florence Nightingale to lift nursing to its proper place of dignified service; without Frances Willard to crusade against the debauchery of drunkenness; without Harriet Beecher Stowe to needle the conscience of a whole nation in the matter of human slavery; without Susannah Wesley to train sons in understanding of the need of all human souls for the gospel of Christ and the practice of his understanding mercy. Like men of similar stature in other fields, these women have led in the “fellowship of the concerned.”
The mothers, wives and daughters of men who keep bright and effective a militant conscience supply what the Maginot Line lacked. The lack that hastened the collapse of that line was basically a soft and decaying moral fiber.
Lest we dwell in smugness on pre-war France, look instead on ourselves in this land. Those who study the matter ensure us that there are at least three million alcoholics in our land - people who no longer have the self control to say, “I will not drink,” but who have become enslaved, in varying degrees, to the habit. One out of four marriages, of late years, ends in failure and a home dissolves with each failure. People, many of whom sacrificed least in the last war, talk glibly about the “next” war while others wring their hands in futility.
Deborah did something about it, and her crusading spirit helped to raise the moral tone of the whole nation. Wherever, and whenever, we Americans have lost the capacity to be righteously indignant, we stand in need of a Deborah to stir again our conscience in the face of neglect and moral evil - to fire us with a determination to correct it. “When they failed in Israel” --- largely because of their moral blindness -- “then it was that I arose, a mother in Israel.”
3) And it wasn’t just a woman who arose. Barack is seen also in the book of Judges. A man and a woman banded their forces together for heroic conflict. The Deborahs and the Baracks are the mainstay of the Christian Church. Their efforts become incorporate in a community of effort. Community of effort makes a good, functioning, influential Christian church; a good, effective family life, a home built on a rock.
A well-known judge was addressing a group of young people. He disclosed that, during a rather long career of dealing with domestic infelicity, he had yet to run across an instance where a solution was not possible, providing the home was actively related to a church. The spiritual emptiness of too many homes today is alarming. George Buttrick has told of a lecturer who addressed a college group. Several times he used the word “sin.” Afterwards two of the college women were heard discussing the lecture. “What did he mean by sin?” asked one, The other replied, “Ah, that has something to do with Adam and Eve.”
A veteran preacher of the gospel died leaving a legacy to his children in these gritty words of common sense: “I desire (also) to bequeath to my children and their families my testimony to the truth and preciousness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This heritage of the Christian faith, received in unbroken line from exiled and persecuted Huguenots and Scotch Covenanters as ancestors, is of infinitely more value than any house, land, or barns. I hereby bequeath and devise it to them.”
Let us tackle the problems and bear the burdens of our day in the spirit of such men as he and such women as that mother in Israel, Deborah by name.
And may her anthem of victory, and her battle cry of freedom be often on our lips:
Then perish all thine enemies, O Lord,
But let those that love thee
Be as the sun going forth in his strength!” [Judges 5: 31].
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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, May 8, 1949.