Is motherhood a woman’s highest calling? It is, according to someone Jen Oshman - author of Cultural Counterfeits - encountered at a baby shower a few years ago. As she wrote in a blog post for Crossway.org on August 1st of this year, the statement hit her like a slap in the face since one friend she had with her at the event was single and longed to be married, and another friend she had with her had struggled with fertility problems for years.
But what do the Scriptures say? And who do we reserve awe for, and who do we revere and regard as our ultimate authority? And how much weight should it carry in our hearts and minds that Jen’s one friend is infertile, or that her other friend is single? At the risk of seeming uncaring, these are irrelevant to the question of motherhood as a high calling.
So also, whether the statement from the other lady at the baby shower was meant to be a slap on the cheek, or whether it was just an uncareful effort at celebrating that the woman for whom the baby shower was being thrown was to be honored and congratulated - this is an important detail. Without answering that question, getting overly offended about the hyperbole itself seems just a tad dramatic.
The point of the baby shower wasn’t for Jen to grandstand, so it's a good thing she didn't crash the party to confront the untruth. Nor either was the point of the baby shower for Jen’s single and infertile friends to feel so inclusively and comprehensively equal to a married and pregnant woman for whom the baby shower was being thrown. The point of baby showers is to celebrate the mother and baby in question, and to come around them and support what is happening and about to happen.
But notice something key. Jen Oshman isn't just saying the comment was careless or insensitive. She's introducing an important question in the premise of her blog post which I believe we need to grapple with here. Namely, has the American Church actually made marriage and motherhood into idols?
Speaking personally, I don’t just dislike the tendency to call “an idol” everything we can’t make a sound argument from the Scriptures against, I hate it. If someone can justify this and prove me wrong from the Scriptures, I am open to that. But in the meantime, I hear more and more references to Christians valuing this, that, or the other thing more than some Christian pastor or author wants them to, or in a way they don’t want them to. And rather than making their case from passages that deal specifically with the point in question, they just throw the behavior, attitude, habit, or assertion they don’t like into a kind of theological junk drawer labeled ‘idolatry,’ then carry on as though that's sufficient.
Nothing personally against Mrs. Oshman, but this broader trend is uncareful. Moreover, it's unconvincing, and perhaps even manipulative, and perhaps borders on bearing false witness against our brothers and sisters. Whether coming from men or women in ministry, it needs to stop.
If the American Church is being uncareful in its celebration and promotion of marriage and having children, we need to bring God’s Word to bear on that with clarity and precision – book, chapter, and verse. Talk of this or that being idolatry whenever there is an imprecise statement or uncareful pendulum swing is overwrought, however, and may even be a symptom of the latest iteration of the errors of the Gnostics and Manicheans.
We are called in the Scriptures to be thankful stewards of the good gifts the Master has entrusted to us, and there is nothing inherently unspiritual or idolatrous about striving for faithfulness and honor from that conviction, particularly given the totality of our current cultural problems.
