Keepers at Home
What does this scripture mean to you? What do you think Paul was telling the older women to teach the younger women here?Some say that Paul said this because Greek society insisted that any decent woman had to stay, literally, in the house at all times (Their houses had courtyards in the middle that were considered part of the house, so she did go outside, just not outside the walls.)
I do not believe this to be true. Paul was writing to a group of people that had been under Roman rule for more than a hundred years by this time. Yes, the Romans adopted the Greek society as their own, but they changed it in places to meet their own tastes.
Roman women were actually “liberated.” They were free to come and go as they pleased, run businesses, participate in politics (though they couldn't hold office or vote), own property, pick their own mates, etc.
No, Paul wasn't telling them to obey the dictates of Greek society. There would have been no point in that.
Others say he was just saying she should make sure the home was taken care of.
Others, she should be what we call a Home Maker or housewife.
I looked up the words "keeper at home" in Strong's (the original definition in the language it was written in).
oikouros {oy-koo-ros'}
1. Caring for the house, working at home
2. The (watch or) keeper of the house
3. Keeping at home and taking care of household affairs
4. A domestic
Care for the house, work at home, watch (guard) the house, take care of household affairs, be domestic.
Does this mean a woman cannot work outside the home?
Well, most single women would have a little weight problem if they did not; an under-weight problem, that is. They need the money to survive.
But even then, I think it is God's will that their heart is home. Many single women even find work they can do at home to support themselves, though God doesn't lead most in this direction.
What about married women?
My research on the benefits of children being cared for by their own mothers, headship in the home, plus my observations about what has happened to our society since women have gone into the workforce, have led me to believe that God wants most women to be Home Makers.
This verse doesn't say for the aged women to teach the domestically inclined to be keepers at home. It says to teach the younger women to be domestically inclined.
It doesn't say for the aged women to teach those that want to, to be keepers at home.
It doesn't even say for them to teach those with small children to be keepers at home.
It says for the aged women to teach the younger women- period- to be keepers at home.
The story that really set me on the path of studying this issue was one that took place in a church with 200 members. One member had a miscarriage. She, of course, was grieving the loss of her baby and needed a time of physical recovery. The secretary of the church called every woman in the congregation. NO ONE could go care for and comfort this woman. They were all too busy with their jobs.
How many ministries within our own churches and communities are being left undone?
How many sick, lonely, stressed out people are sitting next to you in the pew?
How much of God's work goes undone because women are pursuing a higher standard of living?
Our babies are brought into this world in cold, sterile hospitals delivered by "professionals" (usually men) instead of in warm loving homes caught by grandmother-midwives (which is statistically safer, by the way.)
Instead of a child being cared for by his loving mommy that thinks he is the most beautiful thing on this earth, he is cared for by minimum wage child care providers and nannies. Hirelings. People who care for a child because it is a way to get a paycheck, not because they love that individual child.
“But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them (the sheep), and scattereth the sheep.” John 10:12
- 20% of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) cases occur in daycare. Considering that 51%of all children are cared for by their mothers, 10% by their fathers, and 24% by other family members or neighbors, and children do less sleeping in daycare than at home, this is astoundingly high.
- Daycare children are fifteen times more likely to contract illness and those illnesses are more likely to be serious (i.e. meningitis, hepatitis) and last longer than home-care children. (10% of meningitis cases result in death and many more leave the victim permanently scared neurologically.)
The incidence of respiratory illness is also much higher in day care centers: 100 percent higher for infants and 25 to 50 percent higher for older preschoolers than for their counterparts at home.
For one respiratory illness—pneumococcal disease—the risk of infection is 36 times higher among children under two in day care than it is among children cared for in the home.
The incidence of hemophilus influenza type B is twelve times higher for children in day care; infection rates for giardiasis (a type of diarrhea) fifteen to twenty times higher." Day Care Deception by Brian C. Robertson, © 2003, page 86
- When a baby is away from his mother, his immune system is compromised and his stress hormones go up. This is true even when he receives breast-milk in a bottle. Babies need the suckling at the flesh-and-blood breast and being held in mommy's arms in order to boost immunity. Babies in daycare have significantly higher stress hormones in their blood, and those hormones grow as the day goes on, instead of lowering as they do in the rest of us, signaling that these children are under extreme stress.
- Daycare children are 15 times more likely to be diagnosed with mental illness, learning disabilities (15 times), and ADHD (2 times).
- One researcher found that in third grade classes, those children with behavior problems (hitting, kicking, biting, spitting, disobedience, uncooperativeness, depression, withdrawal, etc.) were universally in daycare as babies.
- 15% of all children in daycare become bullies. This is significantly higher than home care children. Note, too, that if 15% of children in daycare are bullies, then 85% are potential victims. Home-care? Even if 15% were bullies, which they are not, only their own siblings are in danger of being victims.
- Daycare workers almost universally WILL NOT place their children in daycare- EVER.
- Those who were in daycare as children are far less likely than those raised in home-care to put their own children in daycare.
- Children raised in daycare are more likely to use drugs, alcohol, have premarital sex, and engage in violence.
- Daycare children very often never learn to bond with anyone. They never learn to love or trust. As a result, they are more likely to divorce as adults.
What about children in daycare being more independent?
Daycare advocates give some line about children being better socialized and more independent in daycare; children needing time with peers in order to know how to behave correctly. This is baloney.
First of all, babies do not play with each other. It isn't until two and a half or three before a child begins to play with others.
What an infant is learning, socially, in a daycare is that they are not important enough for mom to hang around, nor for anyone to care immediately when they are wet or hungry or tired.
Daycare workers have four or more babies each to care for. They simply, physically can't respond immediately to baby's cries like mommy could.
Yes, this is socialization, but is it GOOD socialization?!
Being attended to by Mommy, having your needs met immediately, is also socialization. Just of a very different type.
From two and a half or three years old children do play together, but half an hour a day is about all they can handle. More than that is too over stimulating emotionally. What they really learn socially is that they are not important, the group is the be all and end all of life, and you have to fight for what you want.
As for "Independence," how do you have an independent infant?
- Do they learn to change their own diapers at six months?
- Warm up their own bottles?
- Isn't that impossible?
What I see when I see an “independent child” is someone who knows they can't depend on anyone else; that they must care for themselves because no one else will. I don't think that is the lesson I want my child to learn.
Though nannies and hired babysitters would have better numbers than daycares, they still would not be able to give a child the love and attention his own mommy would; they are still hirelings.
A child equates time with love. If they love someone they want to be with them. Period. They do not understand economics and "Fulfillment." So, in their way of thinking, if you are spending nine to 12 hours (remember to figure commute time) away from them you must not love them very much. No amount of arguing on your part will ever change that.
Instead of a child being taught at the feet of their mother, who has known him since birth; he is educated at the government schools by someone who doesn't know him from Adam and won't know him a few months from now. He is given a government regulated, factory run, one size fits all schooling. No one really cares in a school what the child thinks, only what he can regurgitate onto the test.
There was a time in this country when each child received a tailor made education designed by their parents, consisting of what their parents knew they would need in the future. This time period- 1776 to the late 1800's- had the highest literacy rate in America’s history. Why?
“But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them (the sheep), and scattereth the sheep.”
Public and private school teachers are nothing more than hirelings, no matter how talented they are. Mommy is the "shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep."
Our houses are cleaned by maids, or not at all, making them no more homey than a hotel, for it is the investing of self into the home through cleaning, caring and decorating (expression of artistic aesthetic)that makes it a home.
Our food is cooked by McDonald's and Swanson and lacks the flavor, color, and nutrition of a meal prepared by loving hands.
People eat too much and too rich of foods trying to satisfy that hunger for home.
It will never be found in a hamburger wrapper but in the arms (and frying pan!) of a loving woman.(Besides, home cooking is cheaper!)
Our sick are cared for by generic nurses.
In times past, the sick were cared for by their own loving mothers, sisters, wives and daughters. Hirelings can't compare to the care given by your own family. (There are, of course, times when illness is so severe that professional nursing is the only answer. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about women intentionally letting strangers do what they are perfectly capable of doing themselves; everyday elder care and low level nursing.)
Speaking of surrogate wives, the feminists (who abhor anything feminine) are generally for legalizing prostitution. It only makes sense to farm out this part of womanhood to a nameless, faceless body just like all the other parts.
We have lost all that is clean, orderly, beautiful, gentle, caring, nourishing, and secure of the image of God. We no longer experience these traits of His in the cradle, at the kitchen table, or in the school room at the hands of our own mother; or in the sick bed at the hands of our sisters, mothers, wives and daughters. We still have the strong, just, and logical image of God through our men, but this makes the view of Him so lopsided. Without both we have an inaccurate picture of God. Without both, we cannot know God completely.
There is also the issue of headship.
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Mathew 6:24
But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. 1 Corinthians 11:3
I have known of too many times when a hubby wanted to take a trip but couldn’t because his wife’s boss wouldn’t let her go.
Or times when a man had to jeopardize his job to take care of a sick child because mommy’s job was too important to risk.
Or fights caused by the woman expecting the man to do the housework because she earned more money, or was too tired (A stay- at- home wife can have all the chores and errands done before hubby gets home so they can BOTH rest in the evenings and on weekends.)
I don’t believe anyone can submit to their hubby and give their job top priority. One or the other will have to take a back seat. It is usually hubby that loses out.
These facts have led my husband and me to decide for me to stay home. We made this decision before we married.
In fact, I was a homemaker four of the six years we were married before having children. We feel this is God's call for our family.
Yes, we have had to choose to do without a lot of frills and toys; to live at a lower standard of living than many others, but it has been more than worth it!
I do have to admit I was not the most domestically inclined when I first married. My time at school taking college prep courses plus extra-curricular activities, and the prevailing notion in schools that domestic skills are not important (Everyone will need to go to college but everyone will not need to make dinner?!) and thus not taught, except from an institutional/career point of view, did not leave a lot of time for me to learn to cook, sew or keep a decent house.
I have tried over the years to learn everything I possibly can in every area of my chosen vocation; Home Making.
I can honestly say I have gotten better. I still have a long way to go, but I have not messed up dinner so bad I had to cook hamburgers for desert in a long time.
God has blessed me with an Older Woman in my life- my mother- who has helped me to learn HOW to be a Keeper at Home.
Yes, Keeping at Home is a learned skill. That is why Paul had to tell Titus to tell the older women to teach it. It doesn't come naturally any more than brain surgery does and I think it is more important than brain surgery. Not everyone needs surgery, but everyone needs good nutritious meals, loving hands when they are sick and a clean comfortable base from which to launch themselves into the world.
What does a stay-at-home-woman do all day?
1. The childcare you pay the sitter to do.
2. The teaching the sitter doesn’t have time to do.
3. The housework and errands that a dual job family does in the evening and on weekends.
4. The housework and errands that just don’t get done because there is no time and everyone is too tired.
5. Cook meals from scratch (cheaper and healthier!)
6. Plant a garden.
7. Minister to the community (weed the elderly neighbor’s garden, paint the invalid’s house, take them shopping, bring them food, visit the rest homes, etc. SAHW have to be careful not to get too much going though. There is so much that is not being done it is too easy to neglect your family trying to fix it all.)
8. Better yourself (Learn art, music, nursing, history, science, etc. The library is free and nearly everyone has Google. Use it!).
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