Joyfully At Home: Chapter 16 - Part Four

Good morning!

I'm nearing the end of my vacation and have got nearly none of what I hoped to get done - but I had a lot of fun and feel far more rested than I have in months so I'm satisfied.

Spawn and I went to the zoo with his paternal grandmother and had a blast.  Spawn is so much more mobile than the last time we went to the zoo that I was blown away.   As always, I brought our stroller - and he clambered in and out of it without any help.  The zoo has a small petting zoo area.  Spawn has always been a bit agnostic about petting animals; he likes looking at them - but generally doesn't want to touch them.   

This time, he decided he was going to chase chickens.   He'd look up at me and say, "Mama, let's run and chase chickens!"  I'd say, "Sounds good!" and we'd take off at a fast walk (for me) and a wobbly run (for him).   

Whenever he'd get close, he'd pipe up, "Chicken!  Wait!"  Unfortunately, the chickens didn't respond to that by waiting.

If he got close to a stopped chicken and the chicken started walking again, he'd say "Chicken!  Come back, chicken!"   

At no point did the chickens come back.  I have no idea who was training these chickens, but they don't respond very well to verbal commands from strange 4-year olds.   :-P 

He was so adorable I kept giggling.

Occasionally, he'd stop chicken chasing to go talk to the goats and sheep.   "Goat, how are you today?  Are you sleeping?  Time to wake up!  Oh, you are asleep."

Eventually, he decided to pet the goats - who felt like a dog according to Spawn - and he touched the sheep who were very soft.   

I petted a chicken.   The petting zoo chickens were so tame that one teenage girl was able to catch a hen and pick her up - but I didn't want to tempt fate.  I don't think Spawn petted any chickens; he enjoyed being able to chase an animal that was much smaller than him - but every time I broached the idea of petting the chicken, he looked at me as if I was insane.

I had a great time with my little boy - who I often cannot believe was the tiny, fragile baby I cradled on my chest in the NICU - even though he is.

Over time we all grow and change.  Jasmine Baucham mentions on her adult blog that having people read chunks of "Joyfully At Home" to her is awkwardly painful because she doesn't believe a lot of the same things as a woman in her late-twenties as she did at 19.    

I think nearly everyone can agree with that.  I often tell my husband that I am incredibly grateful that no one thought I should write a self-help book at age 19 or 20; I'd hate my book as much as she does.  

This next quote is one that didn't age well after being rather priggish and self-important when it was first written.  

But what about missionaries like Amy Carmichael, Gladys Aylward, and Mary Slessor?

I know a lot about these women. They were all heroes of mine growing up! (...) My opinion of women missionaries in no way invalidates the sacrifices they made, or that the sacrifices did, indeed bear great fruit.

However, I am not a pragmatist -- just because a Christian has done something that bears fruit, does not mean that there is a Biblical provision for that action. When I approach the question about the biblical validity of a female missionary, I try to approach it from a Biblical perspective, not necessarily a historical perspective, because even God's people are prone to misunderstanding his precepts.

These women were brave. They were incredibly virtuous, and they loved God with all their hearts. But that does not mean that they were above ignorance of the Lord's precepts, or above correction. We will never know if the same work could have been done by different people in different ways at different times, because the Lord ordained to use them, even if they were misguided. (pg. 193)

Allow me to paraphrase the quote:

Question: What about well-respected female missionaries who practiced the kind of service that Jesus preached while remaining single throughout their lives?

Response: While I cannot fault their works or the fruit thereof, they failed miserably because none of them conformed to the ideals my family preaches!   If they had stayed at home, gotten married and raised a brood of kids, God would have totally brought a man in to do the exact same thing they did.  Instead, they destroyed God's Real Plan - which I as a 19 year old stay-at-home daughter am privy to more than those women."

Now, I knew nothing about these three women - but the fact that a CP/QF writer disapproved of them is always a good sign in my opinion.

I've done some cursory research into their lives and here are the major themes in their lives:

1) Extensive work experience outside of their homes:  None of these women lived anything like a sheltered middle class life prior to entering missionary work.  Amy Carmichael's family planted a church in Ireland and she was intimately involved in working with girls who worked in the local mills.  By age 20, Miss Carmichael had expanded the building of the planted church by finding a single donor to buy a $500 prefabricated building that would hold 500 people at a time and by finding a mill owner who donated land to build on.  Gladys Aylward worked as a domestic worker from her teens until she was 30 years old to save up enough money to travel to China.  Mary Slessor's father was an alcoholic so she and her mother worked in the mills to support the family.  Slessor was working 12 hours shifts by the time she was 14.   

Ms. Baucham may have objected to working beyond the confines of a family - but self-reliance is an important skill that working gives women and helped these missionary women in the field.

2)Willingness to adapt to the culture of their new country:  All three of these women were raised in British or Irish homes but recognized that the local culture had equally valid traditions.  Amy Carmichael dressed in Indian clothing and gave rescued children Indian names.   Gladys Aylward spoke fluent Chinese and became a naturalized Chinese citizen.  Mary Slessor learned fluent Efik, ate local food, dressed far more simply than required by missionary codes, and lived among the people rather than at a mission station.  

American culture is fine for America - but Christianity is about more than forcing everyone to adapt American middle-class cultural norms regardless of what CP/QF leaders believe.

3) Attempted to facilitate change in cultural traditions that were harming local people:  Amy Carmichael provided homes and training for women and young girls in India who were members of the Dalit caste involved in prostitution.  Gladys Aylward worked with the Chinese government to monitor the progress of ending foot-binding for girls while caring for orphans.  Mary Slessor brought change in abandonment of twin babies into an area where that was still practiced while bringing vocational training opportunities to the local communities.

There's a saying attributed to St. Francis that I love: "Preach the Gospel always- and if necessary, use words."   This saying causes preachy theologians and priests to start explaining that we are really allowed to verbally teach people about the Gospel - but I think it provides a needed push-back against sermons without action.

4)Single motherhood:  Amy Carmichael spent 55 years raising girls who had been engaged in prostitution and the children born to women engaged in prostitution.  Gladys Aylward adopted several orphans, gave them meaningful Chinese names, and lead nearly 100 orphans through mountainous territory to avoid Japanese occupiers in the Second Sino-Japanese War.  She was particularly annoyed by a movie made on a biography written about her life because her movie character leaves the orphans at the end of a movie to follow the male love interest to another country.  This was particularly galling for a woman who prided herself on never having kissed a man at age 60.  Mary Slessor adopted and raised at least four abandoned babies.  

I often think single women adopting children is the largest threat to the CP/QF way of life.  After all, the 'prize' of motherhood in CP/QF land is the main carrot dangled out to sweeten the gall of being a subservient wife for the rest of a woman's life.    If a woman can become a mother without being a wife, why sacrifice her freedom?  Normally, the answer is an aghast "Sex outside of marriage is immoral!".   Well, ok, but then why not motherhood without sex?  These women pulled it off - and they seemed to have a lot more freedom to choose how to live their lives than, say, Terri Maxwell.

One last thought:  Young Jasmine objected that each of these women blocked the "correct person" - who is obviously a married man with pastoral training - from doing God's Work.   

That assertion ignores the fact that none of these women were working in areas that could be described as the mythical 'uncontacted people'. 

India was a colony of Great Britain nine years before Amy Carmichael was born.  China had been aware of Christianity for a millennia prior to Gladys Aylward. Similarly, traders had brought the ideas of Christianity to Nigeria overland and by sea for hundreds of years before Mary Slessor.  Each of these women joined existing missions in the country they served - although Gladys Aylward wins an award for crazy amounts of pluck in getting to her mentor.  

In other words, there were already enough white dudes in the area trying to convert people.   

What Carmichael, Aylward, and Slessor brought to the table was a recognition that women can often work in different ways than men can.  Raising children is often viewed as the major contribution that women bring to societies - and each of these women was able to tackle an area of humanitarian reform that fit under the scope of women's purview.   

Relatedly, I suspect the women's willingness to raise local children opened far more doors than standard missionary work.   Mary Slessor said as much when explaining why she was welcomed and incorporated into the local government of the people she approached.  (That and her willingness to drop all of the colonial cultural ideas when she realized that they were not serving the community she wanted to serve.)  Now, I suppose the local mission could have sent in more male missionaries - but since all the previous ones had been killed - Mary Slessor's methods are both effective and life-saving for more than one group of people.....

How many people did they convert?  I have no idea - but I suspect that their willingness to care for the "least of God's people" did more for interesting some people in Christianity than all of "The Good Person" Tests ever have.