Who Is To Remain Silent?
A blog about learning and listening and godliness
Teachers and Students
If I am teaching a class about how to write a poem, who should be the quietest? Those who know the least about poetry, correct? They are to remain silent, not so the real poet can do her job, but so they can learn the most from the teacher. Now, if I’m a poor teacher and not explaining things well, the students might need to speak up and ask questions, but the burden of teaching is on the teacher. The burden of learning is on the learner. If a student monopolizes the class with his or her questions, the teacher may not get through her curriculum for that day. By the way, don’t ask me to teach a poetry class. I don’t know enough to teach one.
Here’s another example. If I am taking an accounting class—and I know something about accounting—should I be silent in the class? Because of my bookkeeping background, I’ll probably have more intelligent questions than those who know nothing, but I’d be rude to tell everyone what I know about bookkeeping unless the teacher asked me to. I have submitted to taking this teacher’s class with the other students, so I ought to be respectful and silent like the rest of the class in order that others can learn properly.
It’s the teacher’s responsibility to teach others. It’s the student’s responsibility to listen and learn.
Women Are to Remain Silent
I believe this is what the Apostle Paul was talking about in the passages where he asks women or wives to be silent. That’s primarily in 1 Timothy 2:11-12 and 1 Corinthians 14:34. Here are those passages:
“A woman/wife should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman/wife to teach or to assume authority over a man/husband; she must be quiet.” (1 Timothy 2:11-12)
"Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says.” (1 Corinthians 14:34)
As best as I understand it, women weren’t educated in those days. They didn’t go to Torah school. They didn’t have access to information like men did. This meant that men had greater access to an education and knowledge about the outside world. Women learned things through the grapevine or through whatever men told them. Thus, men in Paul’s day were primarily responsible for passing on what they knew to women. It was vital to women’s growth to be silent in order to learn about the Christ-life in a time when women could not access information as easily as men could.
While times have changed, these verses are still applicable where people wish to learn. If a newbie is going hunting with a group of experienced hunters, he needs to “remain in quiet submission” to the experienced hunters. If a child is learning how to cook from her mom, the child needs to “remain in quiet submission” to the Mom. This isn’t a permanent state of affairs, but it allows a newbie to learn the ropes until he or she can rise to the level of co-teacher, or co-hunter or co-cook. To remain quiet, therefore, seems to be talking about being teachable.
Misinterpretation of Godliness
Unfortunately, I don’t think this is how the organized church has applied these verses over the years. Rather, these verses have been used to support all sorts of wacky beliefs about how godly women are supposed to act. Perhaps one of those wacky beliefs is this: that godly women are generally quieter than women of the world.
I have heard “quietness” taught by men of faith as a praiseworthy quality for women to have. Is this a misunderstanding of those Pauline passages or just men’s personal preferences taught as morals?
In either case, this supposed-praiseworthy characteristic played to my strengths growing up because I spoke less than my siblings. But, while it may have made me feel better than my sisters in one area, it was a false feeling of superiority. I wasn’t any more godly than my sisters because I spoke less. That’s just the way God made me. And if my sisters spoke more than me, then that is how God made them. After all, it’s not silence that makes a woman godly. It’s speaking or being silent in the Spirit.
Likewise, we wouldn’t say a godly man is less active or adventurous than a man of the world. Being active or adventurous is just a way that some men are. Men don’t become more godly by being less of what God made them to be. They are godly by being active or inactive in the Spirit.
Forgive me if you don’t fit these generalizations about men and women. I myself don’t fit these stereotypes. I’m just using them as examples. I think everyone would be more godly if they sat quietly in separate rooms and thought, coming out occasional to hike or horseback ride or read poetry or tell stories while cooking simple food over an open fire. Ha! But that’s just wishing people were made in my own image.
Making Others in Our Image
Maybe the praise of quieter women was simply men stating their personal preferences about women.
Maybe the teaching of women to be speak less was simply men trying to teach women how to deal with men like themselves.
Maybe the praise of quieter women was simply men wishing women were more agreeable to themselves, that is, by encouraging women to be more like men. “A little less conversation and a little more action, baby.” (That’s not in the Bible, by the way. That’s Elvis.)
Maybe teaching that godly women are quieter is the result of men doing the best they can to instruct women how to act like godly women when they themselves have no idea what it’s like to be a chatty women trying to follow Jesus.
Maybe women do the same when they tell men to “settle down,” “cut it out,” or “get down” or “Why would you do that? That’s stupid!” Maybe some women too wish they could make men in their own image.
But I think God made people different on purpose. I see some of those differences so much more clearly as I raise my son and daughter. My eldest boy brings danger into his play with his sister who just wants to set up house and put people to bed. They get into such spats when they play. He crashes through her bedtime scenes pretending to be a tornado. Again, my eldest kids are stereotypical male and female in their play. This doesn’t apply to all boys and girls. My third born doesn’t follow these stereotypes. Third borns are different, I guess.
The solution isn’t for my daughter to be less domestic or for my son to stop pretending danger is coming. The solution isn’t for them to stop playing together either: boys with boys, girls with girls. Rather, the solution is for them to learn to use their unique tendencies to play together. The solution is for them to learn how to work together through the Lord’s guidance.
We don’t become more like Christ by being less of who God made us to be. We become more like Christ by following Christ in becoming more like who He has made us to be. That means to be active and/or speak up (or in my case, think deeply) in the way God leads us.
Interestingly, this coincides with Paul’s instructions to first-century Greco-Roman women to have a teachable spirit. All Christ-followers, men and women, are to have a teachable spirit unto the Lord. The Holy Spirit is our ultimate teacher, and He is leading us into all truth about when to speak up and when to remain silent, when to take man’s words as universal truths, when to take man’s instructions as wisdom for a specific occasion, and when to see man’s teachings as just people being people.
Follow Up Questions
How has God made you unique?
Do you label certain personality types as being less godly?
How is God leading you to glorify Him in the unique way you were made?
In what areas do you need to “remain in quiet submission” in order to learn? In what areas is the Lord leading you to speak up or act?
To read more, click the link below:
Fun to hear you comparing yourself with your sisters