The discussion of Sarah Palin on the Republican ticket heats up the debate on woman’s roles. This didn’t happen with Hillary, but since Palin is a conservative and a mother of young children, liberals and conservatives alike are having fun with this new fodder for the debate. We’re talking about it around our dinner table. My email box is full of, “So, what say you on this Palin thing?” All of the sudden, my friends are wondering about the sanity of writing in Ron Paul or Mickey Mouse.

There are plenty of comment blogs having fun analyzing the strategy of what good men and women should do with their vote. I haven’t written in to those (yet), but I did want to finally write about something I’ve been meaning to for a long time. The Palin ticket just highlighted some of my friends boasting, “A woman’s highest calling is to be a wife and mother.”

This is not what the Bible teaches.

It is right to opine that the role of a wife and mother is one’s personal calling. It is also good to note that the occupation is normative when reading the Bible as a whole. I am a wife and mother. It is what God has called me to do. However, this is not true for all women. All women should NOT aspire to be a wife and mother. Instead, all women should aspire to present their bodies a living sacrifice to the Lord. God is glorified in us when we are satisfied with His will for our lives. This is why some marry, some stay single, some have children, and some are barren. Glorify God in your present circumstance, the one you are in right now, not in a future marriage that may or may not happen.

Paul counsels the unmarried to stay that way if they can do so without sinning in I Corinthians 7. If there were a “highest calling” award, it would be for the unmarried woman who is devoted completely to the Lord’s affairs:

An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.

The Body of Christ is made of many believers. The Church universal is diverse, not entirely made of Western upper class families. As women (and men, but I am not referring to them), we can do God’s will in the middle of China’s one-child communist government and in poverty that requires all members of the family to work for their food. Any other gospel that makes the widow, the abandoned, the orphan, the poor, the single, or the barren unable to attain high favor (or a high calling with God, if you will) because of their circumstance is really no good news at all. The Lord is honored by our love and obedience to His Word, not in our ambition to serve in the “highest calling” as a wife and mother one day.

In the Kingdom economy, the first is last and the last is first. The greatest is a servant, and that is why I do not truly understand the propping up of the nobility of motherhood beyond what is reasonable. Superlatives are misguided here. A single woman who works as a janitor during the night shift—and does her work as unto the Lord—- she has the highest calling. Her reward is the greatest. The one who loves the Lord with her whole heart, soul, and mind—she is the one who pleases God. This is the good news– that no matter who you are, what you’re doing, or where you’re at—that faith in God and the work of His son Jesus Christ pleases Him.

Again, since we have to make life choices and not all choices are created equal, the Apostle Paul tells the young unmarried girls to aspire to serving the Lord, not a husband. The unmarried woman is concerned about the Lord’s affairs; the married woman is concerned about worldly affairs and pleasing her husband. Trust me on this, he’s right. Being a wife and mother is a good and noble thing, but it is not the highest thing.