First let me say that I am totally for homeworking and homemaking women/wives and homeschooling, as long as they are seen as options for women to pursue if they choose and not commands from scripture, or with the mindset that any woman who is not solely working at home is “unbiblical”. My offense with Carolyn Mahaney’s view, who is the wife of C.J. Manahey who leads Sovereign Grace Ministries, is that she does the very thing in scripture that the Apostle Paul was fighting against with his instruction to Titus. She does this by making a woman’s sole job and employment as working at home a command, and anything else is unbiblical womanhood. With our current situation as my wife working outside of the home as her main employment and job, Mahaney’s commands make my wife an unbiblical woman and me a poor provider and an unbiblical man. If my wife were to come home after hearing Carolyn Mahaney speak at one of her conferences and tell me that I am a poor provider and an unbiblical man because she has to work outside of the home, it would not go over well. I know that she would never do this because she knows how hard I work at my job, getting my Master’s degree, running a nonprofit organization mentoring at-risk children, of whom one I mentor myself, help do the house cleaning, grocery shopping, and cooking. I don’t see how Mahaney’s exclusive view on biblical womanhood is building up and strengthening marriages. Let’s look at Titus 1:13-14 which states,
“13 This testimony is true. For this reason reprove them severely so that they may be sound in the faith, 14 not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth.”
Paul is addressing the Judiazers here who were trying to put laws on people. These Jews taught that salvation required the physical cutting of circumcision and adherence of Mosaic ceremonies. In a sense, Mahaney is doing that same thing by making women solely working at home a command. Also, I have looked at the Proverbs 31 woman and I do not see anywhere where she is solely required to work at home to be a biblical wife, mother, and woman. I do find that she has about 4 or 5 jobs outside of the home though. In verse 13 she looks for wool and flax, verse 14 she brings her food from afar not close to home. With her earnings she plants or oversees an entire vineyard in verse 16. She is out in the community giving to the poor and helping the needy. In verse 24 she has a business of making and selling linen garments and belts to tradesmen in the marketplace.
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John Gill on Titus 2:5
Keepers at home: minding their own family affairs, not gadding abroad; and inspecting into, and busying themselves about other people's matters. This is said in opposition to what women are prone unto. It is reckoned among the properties of women, by the Jews, that they are twynauwy, "gadders abroad" {x}: they have some rules about women's keeping at home; they say {y}, "a woman may go to her father's house to visit him, and to the house of mourning, and to the house of feasting, to return a kindness to her friends, or to her near relations—but it is a reproach to a woman to go out daily; now she is without, now she is in the streets; and a husband ought to restrain his wife from it
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