Demographic.
I first understood this term in college. Before taking a particular class, I was completely unaware of how advertisers and the media targeted people, targeted me! Whether it be a television show or the new latest fad, nothing is sent across the airwaves without a purpose.
One college class, though, revealed how much women were being oppressed in the media. As a young and naive woman, I believed this hook, line, and sinker. Suddenly, as if they were multiplying by the minute, I began seeing tyrannical males everywhere. They had set up an unfair and unbalanced system that benefited themselves and cheated women, cheated me!, from my fair share.
Oh, how this thinking appealed to my soul. I fed off of this and gravitated toward others who believed the same.
Several years later God grabbed my heart and showed me mercy. The concept of unfairness dissolved when I understood “that while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me”.
I wonder how many of us are among the demographic known as “Discontent”.
Discontent women without fulfilling careers…
Discontent mothers never able to have a quiet moment to themselves…
Discontent wives in frustrating marriages…
Discontent friends coming up short and feeling empty…
The more we feed on this discontentment the more it multiplies. We see it everywhere. Whether we are discontent in our marriages (“Isn’t her marriage perfect?!?”) or in the station of life (“I wish I were older”…”I wish I were young again…”), we get so desperate in our discontentedness that even something that goes against God’s Word appears sweet to our appetites.
This sort of discontentment doesn’t appear just at work or at home…it’s in the church too. Women see what the men get to do and they cry, “Me too!” And “That’s not fair!” when the Bible commands that men do certain things while women do others. If we want to rule our homes, why should there be any surprise that we also want to rule in our churches? The curse is ever present; we want to rule, we want to be the boss.
When a woman can be content in the countless jobs that God has given her, then she will not go looking outside of those jobs for others. On any given day I can give you a list of duties I need to fulfill knowing that I’ll probably only get to a few of them. If someone were to tell me that I now get to bear my husband’s responsibilities too, I’d feel completely overwhelmed. Same thing is true at church. When I see the deacons working diligently and I know the elders are shepherding difficult spiritual issues, I am grateful for these men and their spiritual broad shoulders.
However, many women are discontent and they hunger after even bitter things. If we cannot be thankful for what God has given us then we are sinning in discontentment and that is the beginning of a downward spiral of futile thoughts and darkened hearts.
We must become grateful and satisfied in being made as women. This is who God has made us to be and He has given us many responsibilities, both globally as women and individually as His own children (Ephesians 2: 10). If I’m too busy looking all around and wanting to be like the men or resisting the specific works that God has prepared for me, then I will be forever hungry and every bitter thing, in other words sin, will appear as sweet.
Women, we must cultivate contentment in our lives. The Puritans called this “a rare jewel” and “divine”. To persist in that discontent demographic only results in joining our first sister, Eve, by getting sucked in by our soul’s enemy who said,
“Did God really say…?”
Love, Wendy
Our family watched Zootopia over the weekend, and Ma and Pa Bunny’s line about being happy because they’ve given up on their dreams and "settled" really raised my hackles. Godly women ought to arm themselves with a knowledge of the difference between true contentment and what is commonly defined as settling, between Christian joy and shallow happiness. The one is rooted in the " Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change" while the other is rooted in our constantly changing circumstances and perceptions.
Well said, Tai!
And Wendy!
There is great joy in for women in the roles God has ordained. That we would all say, "The boundary lines have fallen unto me in pleasant places, Yea, I have a goodly inheritance." Thank you for sharing these truths.