Sweet Water and Bitter

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It has happened again: a young girl, alone and wandering around drunk after a late-night party, has disappeared. We don’t know yet exactly what has happened to her, but we can assume it was something horrible. What a tragic thing for her and her family. I have every sympathy for them.  And yet, more and more when this sort of thing happens, I find myself thinking regretfully, “If only she had stayed at home.”

Let me stop and make a few concessions and/or admissions before I continue:

1) No one deserves to be victimized by anyone simply by being alone or being in a public place, or even being intoxicated. No one deserves it for any reason. No one is “asking for it.”

2) In my young and single days, I partied and drank in bars on a weekly basis. Generally I was with a friend, but there were occasions when I went out alone.

3) It is entirely possible to be victimized anytime, anywhere (including your own home or workplace), and even while engaged in the most innocent of activities.

All that being said, let me admit in addition that I watch an inordinate amount of true crime TV:  “Snapped,” and “Suburban Secrets” and “Deadly Women” and all such as that. I don’t make a particular point to catch these shows; I think I just wind up watching a lot of them because unlike network TV sitcoms or dramas, there is no particular premise I need to understand and no characters I have to be familiar with. I can tune in at any point and pretty much catch on to the action, so I tend to watch bits and pieces of them. As I listen to the descriptions of circumstances that lead to murders and other crimes, I again find myself noticing a pattern. Much of the time, if she hadn’t been out carousing, she’d be alive. If she hadn’t been out cheating on her husband, she’d be alive. If she hadn’t been trying to enrich herself by hurting somebody else, she wouldn’t have gotten into trouble.

We’re all just trying to feel happy, aren’t we? The latest missing girl probably just wanted to have some fun that night. I know that’s what I was doing when I was in my twenties…trying to have fun and looking for a relationship. Thankfully, nobody ever harmed me, but I can easily think of DOZENS, if not hundreds, of times when they could have. How many dark parking lots could I have been snatched from? How many times did I enter a home or a car of someone I didn’t know well enough to trust with my life? One of the main verses of scripture that constantly pops into my mind is I Timothy 5:6: “But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.”

This can be applied various ways. Obviously, it does not mean “don’t have any fun or you’ll get yourself killed.” I’m not saying that. I am suggesting that if the main thing on a woman’s mind is partying, getting drunk, getting high, finding some sex, getting male attention and acquiring money or possessions, she’s on the wrong path. If you’re single and this is what you live for—you might want to rethink your priorities. If you’re married and you can hardly WAIT for the next girls’ night out, bachelorette party, or whatever social occasion takes you away from your family and out into the street to relive your more hedonistic days, you definitely need to reconsider. She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth. Your life should be about more than making yourself feel good.

I’d like to call your attention to the biblical phrase, “keepers at home.” (Titus 2:5.) This phrase is often used in connection with our more modern word, “housekeeping,” and is thought to refer to being a housewife, a stay-at-home mother, or a person who manages her home well and maintains a clean and organized house. Maintaining an orderly home is obviously a good and admirable thing to do (as opposed to, y’know, sitting around watching “Snapped.” :-) ) But I happen to think that the verse is actually stating that a good and chaste woman ought primarily to stay at home, rather than be out at the bar, the restaurant, the friend’s house, the country club, or the shopping mall.

Consider the description of the woman in Proverbs 7. She is not, you”ll note, a professional prostitute. She is a married woman, merely wearing the attire of a harlot in the episode described. (Hmm, what do you wear when you go out with your girlfriends?)  She is further described as “loud and stubborn; her feet abide not in her house.” (Emphasis mine.) There are several translations of that phrase available in the various versions of the Bible, but they all amount to the same thing: the woman described will not stay home and behave herself; she’s always out running the streets. Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible expands further on this passage with the following statement: “Her feet abide not in her house; to attend to the business of it; but she is gadding abroad to seek her lovers, and bring them in; it is the character of good women that they are keepers at home, but it is the sign of a harlot to gad abroad…”

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Getting pretty radical in here now, isn’t it? I hope no feminists are reading this, or their heads may have just exploded. SURELY I’m not saying you ought to be like a prisoner in your own home, am I? Surely I’m not saying that we shouldn’t venture outside the house unescorted by a male relative. Next thing you know, I’ll be saying it’s a sin to go to the grocery store, or drop your children off at school, or go to work, for that matter, since it involves leaving the house.

Well no, I wouldn’t take it that far. But there is a bit of a difference, wouldn’t you say, in going about your normal life doing good and necessary things, and in “letting your hair down,” escaping the responsibilities of being a wife and mother, and seeking your own pleasure by going places and doing things that a Christian woman simply ought not to do.

Compared with “gadding abroad,” chances are better that you’ll be safe at home. Chances are better that, in your own home, you won’t encounter someone who either wants to harm you or lead you astray. You have liberty; of course you do. But if you search the whole Bible, I am pretty sure you won’t come up with any description of a wise woman that says, “She hangeth out with her girlfriends and drinketh margaritas.” The world thinks it’s perfectly acceptable. But Christian women have a different standard…..don’t we?