The Glory of the Glory

Ornaments of beauty, grace, and love.

Readership: All
Theme: Glory
Author’s Note: This essay was submitted by Elspeth, author of Reading in between the Life, on 2023/3/10.  Editing, section titles, and images added by Jack.
Length: 1,200 words
Reading Time: 6 minutes

⁷ For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man.  ⁸ For man is not from woman, but woman from man.

1 Corinthians 11:7-8 (NKJV)

A Once Glorious Culture

We — in the West at least — live in the ruins of a formerly glorious culture.  Influenced by the Christian faith, this place, formerly known as Christendom, built a civilization unlike anything the world had known before.  Not that glorious civilizations had never existed before, but they had never been built upon this idea: that we, each and every one of us, are created in the image of the Glorious Creator of the universe.  Propelled by this belief, Western civilization accomplished great feats.

Neuschwanstein Castle, in Bavaria, Germany (Video)

With the solid foundation of Scripture as the ultimate source of Truth, the glory of God shone through in the music, the architecture, and the arts of Western civilization.  There was, as there always is of course, iniquity, injustice, and a deep need for repentance.  What distinguished these people was that many of them knew where to find the grace in a time of need (Hebrews 4:16) as well as the virtue to walk upright and to live a righteous life.

A Once Glorious Femininity

At the heart of this scientific and religious awakening was the family.  Men and women worked together — worked very hard, in fact — to build lives of meaning, rooted in a commitment to glorifying God and to the propagation of the Gospel.  Patriarchal society was commonplace, and although there were, as always, rumblings of feminist revolt, few women were interested in political or marketplace power.  Most women understood the true glory of femininity as God designed it.  They were happy being the glory of the glory as Paul described in the above Scripture verses.

This is an excerpt from an article in The Atlantic dated 1903:

“In 1895 the women of Massachusetts were asked by the state whether they wished the suffrage.  Of the 575,000 voting women in the state, only 22,204 cared for it enough to deposit in a ballot box an affirmative answer to this question.  That is, in round numbers, less than four per cent wished to vote; about ninety-six per cent were opposed to woman suffrage or indifferent to it.”

The Atlantic: Why Women Do Not Wish the Suffrage (1903/9)

In 1903, roughly 96% women understood the true glory of femininity as God designed it.  The vast majority of women understood that women’s glory — if there was to be any at all — was to be found in her role as helper to her husband, as a mother to her children, and in service to her community.

From the same 1903 Atlantic article:

“Woman does not wish to turn aside from her higher work, which is itself the end of life, to devote herself to government, which exists only that this higher work may be done.  Can she not do both?  No!”

The Atlantic: Why Women Do Not Wish the Suffrage (1903/9)

Our foremothers were overruled however, when their daughters, granddaughters, and great granddaughters were subsequently indoctrinated into the mess we see today.

The deceiver induced Christian women to failure and shame.  In her sincere yet misled desire to bring “dignity” to femininity, women cast off the good gift of feminine glory that God bequeathed to us, thereby losing all dignity and the honor of being the weaker vessel.

Because successive generations of women have disdained their place of honor in the home and their purpose in the marital bed, we now live in a world where a slim majority of people, mostly liberal feminists cut from the same cloth as the suffragettes, have turned the world upside down in the name of a social justice and tr@nsgender movement that most people reject.

Returning Home

Women’s preference for the pleasure, security, and ease of being a Stay-at-Home-Wife is an oft overlooked Red Pill truth. Women’s innate savoir-faire of beauty, family, home, and relationships is an oft-neglected practice. The fact that women possess these traits astonishes our current sensibilities given that modern women no longer understand that being the “glory of the glory” is also truly glorious, an ornament of grace adding to the greater glory of God.

How then, does woman fulfill her purpose, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever?  She does this by recognizing that her glory is not in her individual accomplishments, nor the usurpation of a role which she was not designed to fulfill.  She takes on the mind of Christ:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant…

Philippians 2:5-7a (ESV)

God’s assignment of woman as companion and helper was not an afterthought.  It wasn’t an inferior designation.  At least, not in the sense that we define inferior.  To the contrary, it is a role for which she is perfectly made and suited.  It can only be properly embraced, however, when God is the focus rather than the self.

We see this repeatedly in Scripture.  Consider the rare jewel of a wife described in Proverbs 31.  She makes the house into a blessed home.  Her renown increases her husband’s esteem.  Her virtue induces her children to call her blessed.  She is known for her service to the poor and needy.  The glory of God shines through her as a wife, a mother, and in service to her community. Also see 1 Peter 3:1-7 and Titus 2:3-5.

Epilogue

Man is the glory of God.  The woman is the glory of the man.  She is the glory of the glory, yet too misguided to know that she is incapable, in her own power, of creating a glory that outshines the brilliance of the Lord.

The word of God is glorified (the opposite of blasphemed), when women who have lived longer teach the younger generations of women within their spheres of influence:

⁴ so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, ⁵ to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored.

Titus 2:4-5 (NASB)

To do this, and do it well, requires a renewing of the mind.

However, our culture continually induces us away from the level of prayer, study, and introspection that would allow us to come to ourselves and see life for what it is.  Is it any wonder that when the world looks at us, it does not see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven? We’ve been hoodwinked right out of God’s best for us.

Related

• Σ Frame: Lest we forget, Marriage was once intended to Glorify God (2019/8/8)
• Σ Frame: More on Relational Archetypes (2020/11/28)
• Σ Frame: A Ring of Gold in a Swine’s Snout (2020/12/12)
• Σ Frame: The Christ : Church :: Husband : Wife Analogy (2022/8/29)
• Σ Frame: The Glory of Submission and Humility in Helping (2022/10/6)
• Σ Frame: What we’ve learned about Feminine Submission (2022/10/31)
• Σ Frame: A Wife Who Learned how to Motivate her Husband (2022/12/14)