• Referenced scripture:
  • Titus 2:3-5
  • 1 Timothy 6:6.
  • 2 Timothy 3:1-8

• Recommended resource:
  • thenewsisgood.com

Ryan: Selena, we’re going to tackle tradwife trend here today, But I have a question for you to start this conversation off. Are you a tradwife?

Selena: I am a… I mean, I think there are parts of the tradwife Trend that I appreciate, but at the core I am not, I will say.

Ryan: I would say you’re a radwife. [both laughs] Come on. That was some low-hanging fruit right there.

Selena: Nice.

Ryan: And I didn’t leave it behind. So, all right, we’ll see you on the other side.

[00:00:31]

Ryan: I feel like the radwife thing should have gone over a little bit better than it did. I don’t know. Maybe-

Selena: I was trying to make sure that I was answering correctly [Ryan laughs] and then you just not made fun, but just laughed at everything. So I was like-

Ryan: You gotta have some fun.

Selena: You do. But I’m just trying to be correct. [chuckles]

Ryan: We wouldn’t be doing this. We wouldn’t be going on the sixth year of the Fierce Marriage Podcast, if we didn’t have a little fun along the way-

Selena: It’s true. I’m taking myself way too seriously. This is why I married you.

Ryan: Well, I think you strike a good balance. We like to have fun.

Selena: We hope so.

Ryan: So yeah, if you don’t know who we are, I’m Ryan, this is Selena. We are the Fierce Fredericks. We minister to families, marriage, and parenting. If you haven’t heard the parenting podcast yet, if you’re just an avid Fierce Marriage listener, we want to encourage you.

If you have kids, go check that out. Over the next, I don’t know, few months, we’re covering a series of topics that I believe are going to be crucial topics moving forward in the next 50 to 100 years in the lives of our children, our grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Check that out. I’m happy to say that the Fierce Parenting Podcast is approaching a quarter of a million downloads.

Selena: Wow.

Ryan: So God has been gracious. We’re like 70 episodes into that, so it’s taken some hard work.

Selena: That’s great. I think we should share the three tenets real quick so that it’s a little bit, you know, leave you a little titillated. There’s a lot of Ts. We’re doing that alliteration today.

Ryan: It’s what we do. But the first one is children are a blessing. This is on the Fierce Parenting. The second one is… what is it?

Selena: Family is God’s idea.

Ryan: Yes, good. And the third one is all of parenting is discipleship. And so, yeah, we unpack that on the parenting side. Didn’t intend to plug that today.

Selena: Well, it’s good fun. Well, it’s good fun. All right, we’re tackling this topic of tradwife trend. Tradwife. T-R-A-Dwife. Stand for traditional wife.

Ryan: Okay, Selena, describe to me, what is a tradwife? And where is this trend? Where can this trend to be found?

Selena: Social media. [chuckles]

Ryan: Oh, imagine that.

Selena: Well, we found it through your Greek professor who had messaged you.

Ryan: Hey, shout out Tyler. Boom. Tyler is listening to this. He texted, he’s like, “Have you heard of this trend?” He’s like, “This might be good podcast fodder.”

Selena: Sure.

Ryan: And I said, “You know what? I’ve heard of the trend, though I’m not very familiar with it.”

Selena: So funny. I, as a wife, have never heard of this trend, but I can see the pieces of it-

Ryan: I think it’s because of…Yeah.

Selena: …playing out in some of the accounts that I follow.

Ryan: I see it a lot on Twitter. I’m not on Instagram hardly at all.

Selena: I’m never on Twitter, always on Instagram. Not always, but that’s where I am primarily.

Ryan: Certainly, I think Christian circles, it tends to surface more commonly.

Selena: Yes.

Ryan: In particular, some of the guys I follow on Twitter-

Selena: They got tradwives? [both chuckles]

Ryan: I think they probably say that, yeah.

Selena: What is it?

Ryan: Although they wouldn’t say-

Selena: Are you tradhub? [both chuckles]

Ryan: Traddad.

Selena: Traddad. But do you have to be a dad though to be trad?

Ryan: Well, if is going to rhyme, you got to be.

Selena: But tradwife doesn’t rhyme. Anyways.

Ryan: Anyway. Tradhub. Trad hubs. I don’t know. There’s no such thing.

Selena: That’ll tweet. [laughs]

Ryan: It will not tweet.

Selena: Says the person that’s never on Twitter.

Ryan: It will expressingly not tweet. No. See, the thing is I follow like guys like James White, Jeff Durban, all the kind of like apologetics guys and they would say their wives are probably emphatically traditional, but they would never say that they have tradwives because they don’t conform to this trend. Trend is a bit of a caricature, right?

Selena: Right, right. So it’s basically kind of a woman who believes in the traditional roles of marriage, the traditional idea of marriage being one man, one woman. It’s kind of looking back on a simpler time in life for some people that’s like the 50s, where, you know, the typical housewife, they get the groceries, they have an allowance to purchase all the things they need to, the husband’s a full-time breadwinner. One of the, I think, more known, I don’t about famous is, Eleanor Petit. I don’t know. Well, I shouldn’t say that.

Ryan: You said petite.

Selena: Petite. [both laughs] Sorry.

Ryan: Anyway.

Selena: She’s British, she’s 34 years old and not a Christian or anything and doesn’t claim and is not loud about anything Christian-based. But she was born in the 90s and she said that she was always told, you know, “Be something more than just a housewife.” And she always want to be a housewife and a mom.

So she tried the career thing, but she was miserable and her and her partner, so she… It’s her husband, they just weren’t married yet. But she’s like, There’s so much tension at home, like tension at work, tension at home. It just didn’t seem to work.” So she had quit her job, and while she was looking for a new job, they were living off of his income and found out that cleaning house, buying groceries, all that made them all happier. Life was somewhat easier, more enjoyable.

She talks about how some of her roles basically are, and she says this in an article that we looked up, are cleaning the house, buying the groceries, washing and ironing her husband’s clothes, cooking and baking daily. So that definitely like puts in your head the 1950s wife. I don’t iron. I don’t even know if we have an iron anymore. Maybe for like attending a wedding. I don’t know. Even then I’m like, “Can we throw them in the dryer?”

Ryan: I’ll take them to the dry cleaner.

Selena: Exactly. And in return for her hard work, again, her husband provides her with an allowance, which I think is a very triggering word. I think they should have said, you know, like a budget. We have a budget for food.

Ryan: But that, to me, speaks to part of this trend.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: I just read more than once, but there’s almost a fetishization of whatever this is, both on the women’s side and on the men’s side. So you’ve got these guys that are like all about tradwives because they’re all about that, you know, kind of dominion of a man, so to speak. And then you’ve got these women… I’m just I’m pointing out something for better or worse, but it’s like they’d rather use the word “allowance” than budget because there’s something in them that’s like wants-

Selena: Well, there’s something that wants to be under that-

Ryan: It’s what it seems like. Of course, we can’t speak to her motives.

Selena: Yes.

Ryan: But it’s like you use all the triggering words because the triggering words are like the words you want to use.

Selena: Right. And maybe she used that for whatever reason or maybe the editor for the article wrote that.

Ryan: Little quick. I’m not speaking to whether or not the triggering is legitimate either.

Selena: Right. We’re just saying there’s-

Ryan: They’re obviously using a word that’s going to make some people upset. Are you doing that on purpose because you like the idea of making them upset or are you doing that on purpose because you like the way the word makes you feel?

Selena: Right.

Ryan: Of course, we can’t know until we ask her.

Selena: Right. I mean, she said, quote, “It’s like with any business, you set aside a certain amount of money for each department. So my husband gives me a set amount of money for my department of housekeeping.” And I was like, Okay, cool. Like, you got a budget.

Ryan: Now, if you’re a radical feminist, there’s not a single word that she said that wouldn’t trigger.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: It’s interesting. But that’s-

Selena: From a Christian perspective, it all sounds… it’s like, Oh, yay. It kind of sounds, it warms my heart. It validates a little bit, you know, finally, a woman embracing like the God-given role of home and wife and mother. What she does kind of fits nicely into the biblical principles that we’ve been given as women and wives-

Ryan: Let’s unpack that a little bit because-

Selena: …that we see in Titus 2 and Ephesians 5. But all I’m saying is that we see these principles of like loving your husband, taking care of your children and training them, you know, the Proverbs 31 woman, but-

Ryan: I want to push back. I’m going to push back because I don’t think that’s what the tradwife trend is.

Selena: No, it’s not. That’s what I’m saying.

Ryan: Okay. Remember like-

Selena: I’m not saying that it is. I’m saying that there are a few principles in it of submission.

Ryan: Okay.

Selena: But the tradwife, the questions that you have to start looking at from a Christian perspective I think is like authority. Like, is that being ill-defined? We talked about allurement, like this nostalgia you want to live in a time that you didn’t live in and you want to you want it simpler and you want it… It’s kind of this childhood innocence. Like when you were a kid, you saw this as perfection and you want that because are you trying to escape something or do you actually want that? Like those types of questions.

Ryan: You did most of the research for this, but I’m going to shoot from the hip a little bit here because-

Selena: You always do. [both chuckles]

Ryan: I always do.

Selena: Bad shooting though. [chuckles]

Ryan: So there’s two things that are kind of circling around in my head right now. This is the pendulum swinging. At least in some subcultures-

Selena: Sure.

Ryan: …the pendulum is swinging away from what we see is the radical feminist movement. And it’s full bloom right now.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: Which we talked about just how inane it has become. It is. The movement is inane in that now you have, you know, feminism that went so hard that basically now… I was put in internet jail recently because remember that Dylan Mulvaney?

Selena: Yeah.

Ryan: They’re probably one of the most famous like trans activists in the world, the man, but he spent last year dressing up as a woman and quote unquote, becoming a girl. And you said the way he acts like this really kind of infuriates you because he is a caricature of a woman. He’s not an actual woman in that sense. But I posted a picture of him sitting and Drew Barrymore was kneeling before him. And Drew Barrymore is in a suit and Dylan Mulvaney is in a dress.

Selena: You have a woman dressed as a man and a man dressed as a woman.

Ryan: And the woman is kneeling to the man dressed as a woman.

Selena: Ironic.

Ryan: So that’s feminism. That’s where feminism has brought us.

Selena: Right. And I think feminism begins-

Ryan: I’m trying to say it push… So this feels like it’s that pendulum swinging back and one as a culture.

Selena: Yes. A response in some ways.

Ryan: And then another thing that comes to mind, I want to hear… I won’t interrupt any more than this, but it’s like they’re pushing back to some version of nostalgia. So tradition. So in this case, back to the 50s, I’ve noticed another tradwife kind of subsection, I’ll say, where they’re pushing back even further, like to Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie, even Mennonite Puritan kind of pioneer phase tradwife status. You know, you’ve got like the-

Selena: So there’s the hardcore tradwife and then there’s like a dabbling tradwife.

Ryan: But you got the Homesteader tradwife, right? Because one version of tradwife is like 1950s by the latest-

Selena: I feel like the [inaudible 00:11:08] is going to come out with things like these.

Ryan: Degrees of tradwife. And then you’ve got like the Homesteader tradwife and then like the 1950s, you know, world trade fair kind of-

Selena: We’ve read a few articles or you and I read one and then I read some about feminism. And from its beginnings and its roots, it was wanting to just give women the option to be at home or be in the workforce, right? But it obviously has progressed to being at home as well as being in the workforce and having a career is greater.

As Christians, or at least as Ryan and Selena Christians, we don’t believe that that is a Christian worldview. I don’t think that that stands up to what God says and what the roles of a husband and a wife should be. So again, like any cultural trend, we have to put it through a biblical lens. We have to ask questions. We have to filter it through scripture.

So we’re just going to ask a few questions. We’ve kind of dabbled in some of them already, right? So we talked about where this tradition came from. Where did the roots of this tradwife… It’s weird. All the words that are coming up with lately, I’m just like, I don’t-

Ryan: It’s not that weird to me, whatever.

Selena: Tradwife.

Ryan: It will grow on you. [chuckles]

Selena: Sounds like chadlife or something like… I don’t know. I just-

Ryan: That’s the dad version. Chad is another internet meme of overly masculine man.

Selena: Oh, yes. There you go. Chadwife and chadlife. Anyways.

Ryan: Hey, if you’re coined it, [inaudible 00:12:38] people.

Selena: Where did this tradition come from? Again, from the people that are kind of in the front head… spearheading this, we’re seeing that it’s kind of like the 1950s, even further back. Just historical traditions.

Ryan: What I’m gonna say is that tradition is that tradition came from somewhere and those roles-

Selena: Those duties.

Ryan: …that they’re trying to kind of bring back to the forefront came from somewhere. Now, for better or worse-

Selena: There’s a lot of contributing factors.

Ryan: You know, we are complementarians, biblically speaking.

Selena: Which means?

Ryan: Which means that that male and female have separate roles that complement one another. They’re equal in value, worth and importance. You’re equal to me in value, worth, and importance. But in terms of the household, there is a natural order. And the word that no one likes to hear. There’s a hierarchy in the sense that Christ said or Paul said, and therefore Christ said, I’m the head of household as Christ is the head of the church.

Women are to not be the head. They were to submit. Whew, that’s a… I’m gonna get you in trouble these days but we don’t frankly care that much because it’s what the scriptures say. So you’ve come to show me this beautiful picture of submission and then the husband, the head doesn’t mean that I’m just lording it over you.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: It means that I’m actually serving as Christ served and dying to self as Christ died. But what you see in the 50s is we have the nostalgic view of it, all the while kind of forgetting that the common pitfalls that have plagued humanity since the capital F Fall, right? The distortions of these roles in that I will, in my sin, wield my headship sinfully and I will lead you imperfectly and selfishly and I’ll lord it over you. And in your sin you will submit sinfully and usurping and undermining and doing the thing.

So there’s different kind of brands how we distort our roles. So I think if we look at these trends, where this trend is coming from wanting to kind of revive a nostalgic period in history but those traditions that we saw in those periods of history came from somewhere else. And we can’t forget that even in the nostalgia there was the sin.

Selena: Right?

Ryan: But then look even further, past of the nostalgia, past the period of time to the truth that whatever good we’re seeing is actually going further back to biblical principles.

Selena: Right. Right. I think of the movie Mona Lisa Smiles. Her smile. Mona Lisa’s smile.

Ryan: Mona Lisa’s smile. [both laughs]

Selena: But it’s that whole time period of like the 50s and there’s these brilliant girls at this Wellesley University. And basically this teacher from out west comes is Julia Roberts and she is so excited to teach these young minds, only to find out she’s not equipped enough. They are overly brilliant and she has this realization that it’s just a finishing school, basically. Like they’re churning out tomorrow’s women, not tomorrow’s leaders. Like women in the sense of traditional women-

Ryan: Mother and moms and wives. Yeah.

Selena: Yeah. And you see the relationship struggle she has with one of the most brilliant students who got into Yale that they hold one slot for, like, a Wellesley girl and she wants to get married and have children. The teacher asks, “What do you want to do after your marriage?” She’s like, “What do you mean? I’ll be married? That’s what I do.”

It’s just interesting how, of course, Hollywood portrays it. But again, you know, you see the value of the roles and the duties. The traditional view… it feels predictable, I think, too to people. Like it’s known. Whereas the modern, all this new, you know, blurring the lines of roles and gender and all of that, it feels unknown to me. It feels unstable obviously. And I don’t know that people… obviously… you don’t have to be… I’m saying a lot of things.

Ryan: What do you mean it feels unknown?

Selena: Like people are… they’re saying like you can be whatever you want and you choose to be.

Ryan: As a woman?

Selena: Yeah, but people of the past have probably said that, but not to this loud of an extent. So I would look out and be like, “So where is this going to lead me essentially?” Like, where…

Ryan: Take that train of thought to its full fruition. That’s one of the… Just kind of were talking about it earlier, the fact that you can be whatever you want to be even to the extent of calling yourself a man when you are born a woman. That’s tragic. But that’s where the humanist game goes.

Selena: Right. Right. Which is one of the potential pitfalls that we’re going to talk about here is-

Ryan: Taking quite a circuitous route on this. But I wanted to mention on the Fierce Parenting side, if you haven’t yet, we just… I think it would have been… by the time this episode releases, it’ll be two parenting episodes back. It’s the Population Bomb Fallacy Part Two.

Selena: Oh, man.

Ryan: We talked about this.

Selena: Feminism has quite a role in that.

Ryan: The deleterious effects of feminism in addition to things like the pill, in addition to-

Selena: Abortion.

Ryan: Yeah, abortion, secularism, all that, cultural shifts and how it’s affected the birth rate and how our young ladies are seeing childbearing becoming a wife and how that’s going to bring some pretty… I’ll say unexpected fruit in the coming 50 to 60 years. So go check that out if you want to hear more on that.

Selena: So question to consider. Where did this tradition come from? We need to always ask ourselves, like, what’s the authority on trends like these? Although they may look like they’re Christian, they can fall nicely into what Scripture might call women to do, what is the heart motivation behind it? You said follow that trail kind of to the end all.

Basically, I think we can say that it’s rooted in humanism. So what are the potential pitfalls of identifying, I guess… I hate that word. Not hate. I just don’t like how it’s used. But identifying as a tradwife, right? Like it can lead you to believe that your life is… you’re going to base it on nostalgia and you’re going to essentially… like humanism, it just elevates self over God, right?

So then you have people… again, it’s just worshiping yourself. And as Christians, what is our role like? The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. So my goal to be a tradwife is not the motivation, right? That can’t be as a Christian.

Ryan: This will always gonna be a thing. It’s always going to be an internet thing. It’s like if you want to do these things, if you want to, you know, serve your household in this way, if you want to pursue traditional things, which again, we’re trying to lay this kind of tradwife traditional view alongside the biblical view, which happens to have-

Selena: A lot of big pieces that are the same.

Ryan: …pieces that end up being traditional because they’ve been around since Christ and before-

Selena: The pitfalls are just there’s a wrong view that can so easily and quickly take root when you talk about things like we talked about allowance and that word being one under more of submission, right, instead of budget, which I think we would use… I am balking at allowance because I feel like we’re more partners in this although he has the final say and we’ve agreed to that. And I trust you, though. I trust you.

Ryan: When do we use the word allowance? We use the word allowance talking to children. You’re not a child. You’re my wife.

Selena: Right?

Ryan: If I’m treating you like a child-

Selena: I’m allowing. The very word “allowing.” Allowance. You’re allowing me to have something that-

Ryan: There’s some of the like…

Selena: The context.

Ryan: In the same way I can say you allow me because by agreement we allow one another.

Selena: Sure.

Ryan: So, like, I’m not here like, holding back money, Selena. Like, I’ll allow you to do this when you start acting like a wife. That’s not what we’re doing. I think there’s a reason why the word is grating, but I don’t think it’s grating for-

Selena: Sure.

Ryan: You’re not balking against the idea of biblical headship and authority.

Selena: No, I just don’t know that they’re defining things well is where it can be a pitfall because you’re not defining things like submission. You know, there’s no moral compass. It’s a trend. And so how far do you take that trend? Right. When you’re having marital issues or a crying baby, just kidding, how far does a tradwife go? What’s the moral compass? What’s the guiding light? Just kind of divvying up roles and authority. But that’s going to come into… It’s going to intersect right at some point and there’s going to be conflict. Get this baby. [baby crying]

Ryan: All right. So we’re back. So we’ve been talking through potential pitfalls. Now it’s been a minute or two floss but not for our listener. Can we succinctly define these pitfalls? So as a Christian, people looking at this trend thinking, okay, it’s tempting to jump on board and want to kind of fall in line with the trend. But instead we’re saying fall in line with scripture, fall in line with biblical womanhood, not hashtag tradwife womanhood. That’s like the big overarching thing we’re trying to communicate.

Selena: I also think that, you know, the rise of the internet, and no one would deny this, and this may go without saying, but that’s what’s created trends. And so what are we-

Ryan: There were trends prior, but the trends nowadays are so loud and they’re so segmented and they’re so fast.

Selena: Yes.

Ryan: They come up and they leave.

Selena: And so it’s like, yeah, I agree with a lot of the traditional messages that they’re putting out there, but it also can feel like it attacks your identity as a woman of Christ. Like you should know how to bake these things and you should know how… It’s another should, right, what wives don’t really need to be honest.

Ryan: Right. The imperative for a biblical woman and a biblical man is faithfulness. Faithfulness under God and faithfulness unto each other as a result of God’s goodness to us. And when you pile on these shoulds, that’s when it starts to feel easy to… It’s easy to feel condemned.

I’m picturing… I forget. It’s probably not on Twitter, but the picture of a tradwife that I saw. And it was not the 1950s version. It was like the Puritan version. Or it’s like this woman in a long dress. You can’t really see her face, but you assume that she’s beautiful and she’s looking out over a field. She’s like one kid kind of by her waist on one side, and she’s holding another baby on her hip. And then she’s like getting a sheep to come in.

And I’m like, okay, if you bought into this trend as a woman and you feel like that’s what it means to be a biblical woman, if somehow you’ve conflated the two, all of a sudden you now feel like your, you know, two bedroom, one bath apartment or your house in the suburbs with, you know, 0.1 acres of land and, you know, you’ve got a dog and you might have a fence, but it’s a white picket fence and not a farm fence. All of a sudden, you start feeling like, wow, my life is not good enough. I am not good enough.

Selena: What are those voices of discontentment?

Ryan: Discontentment. Exactly. So we need to be aware of this and-

Selena: With any trend.

Ryan: With any trend.

Selena: But I think especially this one, because it is so closely the duties or the roles, the pieces that make it up are so closely related to the Christian wife’s role.

Ryan: True.

Selena: So let’s look for the Christian wife. All right. We’re going to go to scripture and we’re going to talk about a few scriptures that I think will help clarify-

Ryan: All right.

Selena: …our reasons for why we are not a tradwife, but we are a godly wife. Proverbs 31 woman.

Ryan: This #godlywife. Is that a thing probably-

Selena: Probably.

Ryan: …associated with that. Titus 2:3-5. “Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands…” This is the real tradwife part. “…teach the young women, encourage them to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands so that the Word of God will not be dishonored.” Don’t want to unpack that at all. Let’s move on.

Selena: Let the scripture just say what the scripture says.

Ryan: Let the scripture bear its weight. It is what it is. All right. 1 Timothy 6:6. Do you want to read this one?

Selena: “But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment.” So we were talking about that earlier.

Ryan: What translation is this? You got some-

Selena: NASB.

Ryan: Oh, NASB. Very wooden. ESV is like “Godliness with contentment is a great gain.”

Selena: Yes. Why don’t you unpack that a little bit? Because we were talking about the discontentment that trends can bring. And so-

Ryan: Well, I mean, never before in human history are you subjected to so much perfection and beauty that is obviously not real. Especially with the advent of filters. So you have these… Especially if you’re a woman. Because I could care less like if a guy gets on Instagram and he’s ripped and he’s got… I could really care less what he looks. Now if he’s accomplishing awesome things, I have to deal with that in my own heart. But the physical appearances of men doesn’t really affect me in terms of my own identity.

But you’ve got these filters that are designed to make women look perfect: perfect skin, perfect like facial contours, perfect makeup. Whatever the trend is, just update the filter and now everyone looks like that trend if they’re using that filter. So, yeah, we have this window into beauty and perfection that is…

Selena: It’s unattainable for-

Ryan: It’s so distorted into our perspective. So then when now put the phone down and you’re looking in the mirror and you don’t have your makeup on, you haven’t done your hair, you’ve gained some weight, you’ve whatever the thing is-

Selena: I feel seen. [both laughs]

Ryan: So do I.

Selena: You don’t wear makeup. You’re a man.

Ryan: It’s true. But the point is, is that now all of a sudden, you have devalued yourself because you’ve propped this up on a pedestal so high. And God is looking at you saying, like, I’ve called you to live your real life.

Selena: Which is as a woman, you’re to be reverent in your behavior, not malicious or gossip or enslaved, too much wine, teaching what is good, so you can encourage young women to love their husbands, love their children, be sensible, pure, workers at home. The Bible is not quiet about the roles and the-

Ryan: Ohh, wait till you hear about what 2 Timothy says.

Selena: Oh, baby.

Ryan: 2 Timothy 3:1-8. This is Paul talking to Timothy in terms of his pastoral ministry, kind of warning him against people coming in and kind of upsetting the balance or of what Timothy is teaching. He want Timothy to stray from the course. He wants him to hold fast to truth and continue leading and teaching and being a minister in light of what Paul has taught him.

So in chapter three, Paul comes around to this. He says, “But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come for people will be…” Okay, I’m not saying Paul is writing about us, but what he has written obviously applies to us in some sense. It’s not about us, but it describes us.

It says, “For people will be lovers of self in the last days, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderous, disobedient to parents,” now just think about everything is happening in our culture right now, “ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, though they have denied its power,” now, he says, “avoid such people as these.”

Now, this is the part where Paul really doesn’t pull any punches. He says, “For among them are those who slip into households…” We now are in the domestic sphere. “They slip into households and captivate weak women.” Now, in the CS-

Selena: Was does Greek say?

Ryan: CSB. I don’t know. I didn’t look it up. The CSB calls them gullible women. So captivates weak women, weighed down with sins, let on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Wow.

So the part that sticks out to me is holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power. So to me, that’s where this tradwife thing can really go off the rails. Now, there’s aspects to it that maybe are beautiful and worth kind of valuing.

But if we are not Christians about this trend, if we don’t look at it through the lens of Scripture and run the filter of our identity through who Christ is, what He did, what He’s calling us to, in obedience, in terms of being now people on mission, starting with our disciples, our first disciples, which would be your, you know, your spouse and your kids, and the first domain within which we are to subdue it, the household, if we don’t view this through that lens, we run the risk of… Excuse me, we run the risk of holding to a form of godliness, but denying its power.

So how do we hold a form of godliness is we do the things… Like, I’m going to make this dinner because this dinners would a tradwife would do, as opposed to I’m going to make this dinner, prepare this dinner because I love my God. And because I love my God, I love my family.

Selena: Right. Well, and I want to glorify Him in what I do. I’m not glorifying myself on Instagram.

Ryan: That’s good.

Selena: There’s a post that I saw and I haven’t been through all of her stuff, so I’m not going to name this account. But she said, “My worth isn’t found in my physical appearance, but I’m going to steward my body well and make an effort. My worth isn’t found in my homemaking skills, but I’m going to use them for God’s glory and my family’s benefit. My worth isn’t found in my husband or marriage, but I’m going to love him well and give it my all. My worth isn’t found in my children, but I’m going to do my best to disciple them in the ways of the Lord. Spending time on something doesn’t mean you’re finding your worth in that thing. You can know for certain that your worth is found only in Jesus Christ, while also pouring much of your time and energy into the various things He’s given you. Focusing much of your time and energy on your marriage, home, and children isn’t idolatry, it’s being a good steward of the various things with which God has blessed you.” And she ends with a quote. “I have one desire now: to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy and strength into it. That’s by Elizabeth Elliott.

I want to give this woman credit because I feel like this is… what she said I fully agree with. It’s the @_reformedwife. She’s somebody I follow. She posts a lot of just solid, solid stuff that I’ve seen. Again, there’s always the exception. So I think she says it well. Just remembering that who we are in Christ, that our worth and our values in Christ, who we are created for, not to glorify self and not to even take pleasure in things for ourselves. Right?

We enjoy these things unto the glory of God. We enjoy cooking food for our family because that is a role that God’s given us. And we do it for His glory, for our good. We submit to our husbands in the most pure and biblical definition of submission because that’s what God has called us as wives to do. And there’s beauty and purpose in that.

Ryan: All right. So the termination point is not the behavior. The termination point is Christ.

Selena: Yes.

Ryan: And that’s, I think, the difference between anyone who’s trying to live up to an ideal that we see online or an ideal that has whiffs of Christianity. The difference between holding to that form of godliness, but denying its power, between holding the form of godliness and actually giving it its power is to terminate whatever that is in the person of Christ. So it’s because of Christ, it’s through Christ, it’s by His power, it’s for His glory, not my own, but His.

So if you are listening to this, you’ve watched this entire episode, you’ve heard the entire episode, and you were thinking this tradwife stuff is weirdly appealing, well, we’re here to tell you, because there’s probably something in there that is… there’s some truth and goodness to be had in there. But if you don’t know Jesus, it may or may not make sense.

So we want to invite you into relationship with Christ. If you don’t know him, find somebody that you know as a Christian, talk to them, ask them to read the Bible with you. Ask them to show you to a pastor who preaches through the Bible. And then we want to call you brother or sister in Christ and a pastor will walk you down that process of what it means to place your faith in Christ.

If you don’t have friends like that, you don’t have a pastor that you know of, the website thenewsisgood.com, check that out.

Let’s pray. God, we thank you for the beautiful design you’ve given us in biblical marriage, in the roles that we can play as men and women in the household. Father, I ask that you give us wisdom as we navigate those, Lord. And I pray that you give us the power to be faithful. Holy Spirit, well up us, a desire to be faithful according to your standard, not some worldly trend or worldly standard or some standard we would place upon ourselves. We want to be faithful according to you, according to your standard, Lord.

I pray for the husband and wife who might be struggling right now. I pray that you would strengthen them, give them a clear path forward, and give them the wisdom and strength to step there, to place their foot upon that path in faith. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Thanks for hanging out. You guys has a fun episode. If you haven’t yet, like I mentioned earlier, check out Fierce Parenting. We’re having a good time over there. If you want a partner with us, go to fiercemarriage.com/partner. We would love that. Other than that, this episode of Fierce Marriage is—

Selena: In the can.

Ryan: We’ll see you again in seven days. Until next time—

Selena: Stay fierce.