Three Cheers for Michelle Obama
Posted by deangonzales on December 4, 2008
Michelle Obama has declared her chief project as the nation’s first lady. It’s being a mom! In an article entitled, My First Job as First Lady is to be First Mom, Michelle Obama stated: “Now that Barack has been elected president, it will be an honor to be First Lady. I will work daily on the issues closest to my heart: helping working women and families, particularly military families. But, even as First Lady, my No 1 job is still to be Mom. At 7 and 10, our daughters are young. My first priority will be to ensure they stay grounded and healthy, with normal childhoods – including homework, chores, dance, and soccer. Our girls are the center of Barack’s and my world” (Timesonline, Nov. 7, 2008).
Albert Mohler recently wrote: “As for Mrs. Obama, she has made her position clear — she will devote herself first and foremost to being the wife of the President and the mother of their children. She is willingly and eagerly choosing the role of First Mom. She will not practice law and she will not be actively involved in policy development — at least for now” (AlbertMohler.com, Dec. 2, 2008).
Well done, Mrs. Obama! I know you’re taking heat from feminists. But you go girl! And I assure you that your Princeton University and Harvard Law School degrees won’t go to waste in your challenging new vocation.
Here’s an extended excerpt from Womanly Dominion: More than a Gentle and Quiet Spirit (Calvary Press 2008), pp. 108-109:
Homemaking motherhood is no refuge for the inept woman who can’t cut it in the real world. Rather, for the biblically thinking Christian, stay-at-home mothering is the ultimate profession for the elite of her gender.
Her skill set must be highly diversified. She’s no mere babysitting caretaker. She realizes she’s raising thoroughbreds for the kingdom, and so she studies and reads and prepares meals with the inspiration of a dietitian and a nutritionist. Her health care duties summon her often to rise to the level of nurse and physician. Domestic engineer is a suitable title for her who exercises dominion over her household headquarters by subduing swarming details into workable order. She is an economist in keeping the budget, holding the purse strings as the accountant, and acting as the purchasing agent for the family corporation, averting bankruptcy and maintaining solvency. She’s a psychologist in analyzing the peculiarities of each temperament, tracing the development of each child, and bringing the apt word as a counselor in every situation. She’s a personal trainer and disciplinarian as she cultivates obedience and self-control in her natively wild herd. She’s a teacher and professor in instructing her students in reading, spelling, grammar, mathematics, history, science, and art. This is exceptionally and overwhelmingly true of a home schooling mother. She’s a pastor and theologian as she educates her children in the lofty themes of morality, spirituality, and eternity.
With a job description like that, I advise young women to get all the education they can. Any liberal arts or professional university degree will provide money in the bank knowledge from which a mother will daily make heavy withdrawals.
I know that some jobs don’t really count, don’t make much of a difference, don’t actually matter that much, don’t have much lasting significance. Not so with mothering. I know that in some jobs the worker is only handling cleaning equipment, or car parts, or computer keyboards, or insurance policies, or court cases, or political legislation, or stockholders’ funds. Not so with mothering. A mother is handling things of a far greater magnitude. She’s handling never-dying souls. She’s daily conducting heart surgery on eternal spirits whose forever destinies are influenced most profoundly by the hands that rock their cradles, wipe their noses, spank their fannies, open their Bibles, prepare their after-school snacks, and turn off their bedroom lights. Those motherly hands are molding characters which will become men and women who will turn the world upside down either for good or for evil. Now that’s a job that counts.
Mark Chanski
Author of Womanly Dominion: More than a Gentle and Quiet Spirit
12 Responses to “Three Cheers for Michelle Obama”
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December 4th, 2008 at 4:57 am
If you believe these people I know about a good deal on a bridge in NY.
GJF
December 4th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Dr. Joe,
Thanks for your somewhat satirical caution. It’s certainly possible that Michelle Obama’s professed devotion to the role of mother may prove to be empty in the end. Hence, we should not be gullible and read too much into her words.
Nevertheless, I’m not so sure it’s inappropriate to acknowledge and to be grateful that the soon-to-be First Lady has publicly honored the role of motherhood. True, her professed devotion to her God-given calling may in the end fall short of the biblical norm. So did King Ahab’s public display of humility and contrition (1 Kings 21:27). But that fact didn’t prevent God from commending Ahab’s public gesture (1 Kings 21:29).
Thanks to God’s common grace even the non-believer is kept from becoming as wicked as he or she could be. And because even the unregenerate continue to be images of God (Genesis 9:6), they may still reflect, to varying degrees, traces of virtue. Of course, that virtue will lack the kind of God-centered motivation (1 Corinthians 10:31) to qualify for God’s truest commendation. But if God could call the pagan monarch Cyrus His “Shepherd” (Isaiah 41:28), His “Messiah” (Isaiah 42:1) and if God could use him to free his people from exile (Isaiah 41:25; 45:1-6; 46:11; 48:14-15)–though Cyrus himself was likely ignorant of the truer significance of his deeds–then can’t we allow for the possibility that God may use the words of Michelle Obama to restore some measure of respect to the sacred office of motherhood?
Sincerely yours,
Bob Gonzales
December 4th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Since the children will be in school all day, I wonder if the whitehouse cooks and housekeepers will be out of a job?
Frank Pontillo
December 5th, 2008 at 12:09 am
Bob,
I appreciate your balanced input on this backed by bibilical examples. I find it helpful when looking at these types of things. It can be too easy to be black and white on these issues. Thanks for the input.
Sincerely
Rob Morrison
December 5th, 2008 at 4:01 am
When dealing with people who are associated with people that she is associated with I would rather be telling the people in my area of influence to “Beware.” rather than cheering them on.
December 5th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Well, at least she cares about her own 2 children. She would have the rest of America’s murdered. Please read the part particularly about her fundraiser:
http://www.jillstanek.com/archives/2008/05/michelle_obamas.html
December 5th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Wow. I thought I’d get past “surprise” from how this election has exposed the hearts of people who are “Believers”, and whom I call brother/sister. I know that we are all entitled to our opinons and comments, but it’s very disheartening to hear that we can’t just simply take Mrs. Obama’s word and that her intentions are pure. Wow! What a concept.
December 5th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Dear Stefanie and Kelly,
Be sure to read my comments to Joe. I don’t think it was Pastor Chanski’s intention to provide a positive appraisal of Mrs. Obama’s motives or to predict whether she’ll carry through with her mothering commitment. I believe he was simply drawing attention to a public statement she made in favor of motherhood. I doubt he voted for her husband and would certainly not endorse many of his or her beliefs.
Of course, one might question whether Michelle Obama was pressured against her will to make a positive statement in favor of the role of mother in order to appease a majority of the American public. If so, we can still be grateful that God’s common grace is operative–if not in her, at least in a significant amount of American’s to whom her statement would appeal.
I’m aware that she and her husband support abortion. While I believe abortion is a form of murder (see my post entitled, “An Immoral Proposal”), I don’t believe everyone who supports abortion is fully aware of the gravity of their crime in the same way that they’d be aware of wrongdoing if they murdered a five-year old child in cold blood. Of course, such ignorance is not ultimately excusable. But I’m not certain I would place Mrs. Obama in the same class as someone like, say, Hitler, who, with full knowledge of what he was doing, brutally and heartlessly murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent victims.
In any case, thanks for the link and your counterpoints. Let us pray that God might open the eyes of the President-elect and his wife that they might see not only their sin but the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Sincerely,
Bob Gonzales
December 11th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
I’m afriad I’m going to have to agree with the more critical elements here. Praising Mrs. Obama’s remarks about how she’s going to have an active role in her children’s upbringing sounds a lot like praising the steward on the Titanic for preventing the chairs on the deck from tipping over while the ship is rapidly going down.
Equipped with the knowledge we, the American public has, of the Obama’s very liberal and at best psuedo-Christian beliefs, we can only surmize Mrs. Obama’s efforts in the lives of her children will only serve to perpetuate a morality and value system which is ultimately antithetical to a Biblical world and life view. May the Lord see fit to open Mr. & Mrs. Obama’s eyes to this truth.
December 13th, 2008 at 1:19 am
Thanks for the slices of wisdom found coming from this little multitude of counselors.
December 18th, 2008 at 5:32 am
I wonder if Sarah Palan is uneasy reading romans 2:25-27 in light of Michele obamas declaration?
February 19th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
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