THE DISTORTION OF PROVERBS 31

I will be writing an essay, some time soon, on the Distortion of Proverbs 31.

but for a quick summary, I heard yet, another preacher today on the Radio [I won't say who because I am confronting the teaching and distortion, not the preacher], about Proverbs 31, that has been the idolized 'ideal' of what God desires of women.

This distortion has been more abused and has caused more of a perpetuation of racism, privilege, consumerism, androcentric patriarchy and indifference to the oppression of women worldwide than any other scripture, in my opinion, even worse than the scriptures on women and submission. Therefore, I believe that the manner in which Proverbs 31 is taught to direct, influence and heap guilt onto thousands of women, begs to be challenged.

I believe Proverbs 31 is not some 'perfect Godly ideal' for women to try to achieve, which is, to anyone with any inkling of common sense or mathematical ability to discern time, number of hours in a day, but rather, that Proverbs 31 is God speaking to the millions of women in our world who are mere SLAVES, that they are VALUED, more precious than rubies.

And the best example I can give is the women in Africa, who yes, do live the Proverbs 31 in very much the same manner as women did in Biblical Times. The men sitting at the gates, yes, men in Africa, for example, Do sit at the gates, men who don't life a finger to work,

because their slave WIVES do all the work, and they are some of the world's most exploited, abused, violated, and suffering violence. In their reality, though it is NOT a andro-centric nuclear patriarchy, it is a tribal patriarchy that thrives on hierarchy, particularly among the WIVES, or, WIVES WITH SLAVES, slaves that are usually children, paid and bought for, by men, who claim them as wives but they are really servants, with a very harsh hierarchy. The one at the bottom, does most of the grunge work and takes the most beatings. Countries such as Sierra Leone, for example,

and not just in Africa, but in parts of Asia this also ends to be the social norm. The world looks at these women with disdain, with pity, they are not the glamorous woman that the West holds up, but in God's eyes, because He sees, their oppression, their being devalued and yet, its These women, who hold and preserve entire societies THROUGH THE GENERATIONS, while the men, yes, sit at the gates, men who are privilege, fat with excess and luxury of idle time, and men, who no one dare challenge them to be, better men. Men who are like 'gods' in temples, who can do no wrong,

yet the tears of the thousands upon thousands who break their backs under a heavy yoke and whose spirits are crushed under a heavy cloud of contempt, fill the crevices and rivers that pour out onto the clay cracked soil that yearns for rain, rain of comfort from God.

Proverbs 31 has been the catalyst of the American and Western Puritanical andro-centric patriarchy that forced many a woman to also, rely on slaves, slaves who were African, Mexican, Asian, slaves who were women, yes, the real Women, of Proverbs 31,

but these women did not wear scarlet robes nor were they crowned with jewels, no, these women wore burlap and cotton and polyester. These women wore sun wrinkled skin and hump backs and swollen ankles,

but to God, these women, were the crowned jewels, these women in His eyes wore scarlet robes of nobility, more precious than rubies, their works not going unnoticed, nor will they be invisible.

In our world today, we have thousands of women who work in not just the worst impoverished conditions but who work in labor camps, who work as domestic 'slaves' even here in America, though titled Nannies, these women, many of them from Jamaica and Haiti, work with no days off, no freedom, no room of their own,

it is not the privilege woman with the nannies and the thousand dollar remodeled home with her prada shoes that is the Proverbs 31 woman, though she may be a trophy and a trophy to quite a number of Preachers, Men, who yes, sit at the gates,

no, the Real Proverbs 31 woman, the one that God sees who is worth more than the crown of rubies, is that woman,

you may walk by every day in the market, at the park with the children who are not her own, that woman that sews your clothes for .20cents a day to feed her starving children,

the women in burlap, cotton, naked even...the women who are yes, Proverbs 31.

In solidarity in Christ Jesus,

Jane

[I will be writing far more on this in weeks to come]