Sermons
Inside Sojourn
Guarding Our Sisters, by Mike Cosper
The story of Dinah, Jacob’s daughter by his wife Leah, is a strange and disturbing account. Found in Genesis chapter 34, it’s the stuff of a comical violent farce – like Kill Bill. Dinah, a young girl, was raped and kidnapped by Shechem. After the fact, he and his father approached Jacob and pleaded to be allowed to marry her. “I’ll do anything,” he says.
Dinah’s father and brothers were furious – and clever. “Sure,” they say. “You can marry her – but it would be a dishonor to all of us if you were uncircumcised.” So Shechem convinces all the men of his town to get circumcised. I’ll let Eugene Peterson finish telling the story:
25-29 Three days after the circumcision, while all the men were still very sore, two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, each with his sword in hand, walked into the city as if they owned the place and murdered every man there. They also killed Hamor and his son Shechem, rescued Dinah from Shechem’s house, and left. When the rest of Jacob’s sons came on the scene of slaughter, they looted the entire city in retaliation for Dinah’s rape. Flocks, herds, donkeys, belongings-everything, whether in the city or the fields-they took. And then they took all the wives and children captive and ransacked their homes for anything valuable.
30 Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You’ve made my name stink to high heaven among the people here, these Canaanites and Perizzites. If they decided to gang up on us and attack, as few as we are we wouldn’t stand a chance; they’d wipe me and my people right off the map.”
31 They said, “Nobody is going to treat our sister like a whore and get by with it.” (Genesis 34:25-31, The Message)
As Karl Barth would say, “welcome to the strange world of the Bible.”
While I don’t think we have license to pull swords on anyone, we should be as fiercely protective of our sisters in Christ in this church. As Paul tells Timothy, we should treat older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters – with all purity (1 Timothy 5:2). We live in a culture that doesn’t honor any women – young or old. Christian women are targets of sexually predatory men, and books have been written on “how to score at church”. Are we going to allow the world to treat our sisters, our mothers, our daughters in Christ as whores? Or will we be prepared to do what it takes to rescue the women in our church from predatory men, who want only to seduce them and take advantage of them?
We need to speak up. We need to confront men who would treat our sisters like whores and send them searching elsewhere. We need to create a communal culture that honors women and seeks to protect them. How can we do this together? What steps can we take? What are your ideas?
Artwork above: “The Rape of Dinah,” 1531, by Bugiardini
About Bobby Gilles
I love your commentary here, Mike. I feel that this is an area that Sojourn could grow in. I know we use to pretty much threaten a dude when he started dating any of my female friends. I’m sure it was intense for those poor guys but I think it was important. I would be curious what some of those girls thought about that also.
There are tons of things we can do. One easy example is this: when a sister brings a guy to our worship service, don’t just sit back and talk amongst each other (“Look, ___ has a guy with her”). And don’t just let her girl friends be the “greeters.” Walk up to the dude, introduce yourself, and make a reference to the fact that the girl is a valued part of the family.
You don’t have to say anything so overtly threatening as “What are your intentions with this girl?” The purpose isn’t to be menacing — you should be friendly. But you can be friendly while still getting across the underlying message: this girl isn’t alone. this is her family. We’re aware of what she does and what is done to her.”
We DON’T want, on the other hand, this scenario: a girl brings a guy with her and the guy picks up the subtle, unintended message “this really isn’t her family. She’s all alone here. No one even notices if she’s with a guy or not.”
And it’s fine if her female friends take an interest too, but let’s face it — men will be affected more if they understand that a woman has male protectors, rather than only female friends.
Great article Mike! Thanks for approaching the subject. These are great ways to guard our sisters. I am also thinking of two other ways: 1)Not just preventing others who may disrespect her, but personally applying it to ourselves. It can be common for guys to let their eyes roam where they shouldn’t…need I say more?:) 2) While we should do everything in our power to prevent dangerous situations, sometimes you can’t avoid the fight. Not to seek vengeance, but to rescue from immediate danger.
Right. On.
I certainly appreciate this discussion! I also feel very strongly that Christian women have an equal responsibility to guard our Christian brothers. As women we all too often use to our advantage our “feminine wiles” to lure in men, and we should be ashamed of ourselves. We are held accountable for anyone we cause to stumble…in any manner. I think it is imperative for women in the church to behave in such a way as to evoke honor and respect from our Brothers, not desire, and to do everything in our power to protect them from what is probably the most relentless attack on Christian men in our time.
You guys rock!
I completely agree about protecting each other. There is a movie called “Your’s, Mine, and Our’s” that I believe could easily be manipulated to fit Christians. It is about 2 people who have lost their spouses and decide to marry so their children (combined they have 18)can have two parents. Under normal sercumstances these kids never would have even spoken to each other and at first they hate each other. There is a scene where one of the youngest kids is being picked on by bullies in the school yard. Despite their differences all 17 of his siblings come to his rescue and seround him. This sceneis a picture of what it should mean to bare the name “Christian”. We all come from diferent walks of life, but we are Christ’s family and as such we must stand united against spiritual bullies; sexual imorality, spiritual attacks, and others. We won’t always get along or even like each other, but we must protect each other as a family.
Amen. I love this family!
I am a bit of an outsider, but a great admirer of the family of Sojourn. I have 8 kids, oldest is 22 and the youngest is 9 months. I have five daughters, so this is a big deal to me. My oldest daughter made a commitment in high school that she would not date until after high school, as she felt it would not bring glory to God to get caught in the HS dating drama. A year after she graduated, I got a call from a young man who wanted to meet with me to get my permission to date my daughter. After 2 hours of intense Biblical discussion on God’s plan for relationships and for marriage, I allowed him to date her. Now, two years later, they are considering the possibility of getting married. In preparation for that, he and I meet weekly to talk about the expectations of a Godly man, husband, and father.
My point: let the church do the same. When a young man sets his sights on a girl, he NEEDS biblical counsel and intense accountability. As a father, I have to know that the man who takes the hand of my daughter from me can hold that hand with strength, honor, and dignity. If the hand that reaches for my daughter is weak or evil, I’ll take it and either train it or deflect it. If that hand keeps reaching, I’ll break it.
I don’t think we should as a rule pull the sword. Though as the father of a 17 month old girl who will one day be a 17 year old girl all I can say is there are times it is our duty to be willing to fight for their honor.
Any future boy will know very succinctly that if he hurts my little girl in any way then he shall learn that God calls me as the pastor shepherd of my little family flock to be willing to take care of wolves. To borrow from my Southern culture, “some time yaw jus’ have to be willin’ to give a whoopin to a wolf.”
I think if every Christian man treated and gave respect to every younger girl in their congregation like a daughter, every girl who was a peer as a sister, and every elder as a motherly figure then our church culture would be so revolutionary that the revival so many Christians desire to see would happen.