A BAD MOVE

Christian News, March 4, 2013

Vol. 51, No. 09

“Pentagon will open combat roles to women,” an Associated Press story in the January 24, 2012 St. Louis Post-Dispatch has this subtitle: “Front-line positions, elite commando jogs possible, officials say.”

The report begins: “The Pentagon is lifting its ban on women’s serving in combat, opening hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando jobs after generations of limits on their service, defense officials said Wednesday.” “The groundbreaking move recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff overtures a 1994 rule prohibiting women from being assigned to smaller ground combat units.”

Christian News has long opposed women as combat warriors and sleeping in the same tents with men. The March 5, 2001 Christian News published an overture from First English Lutheran Church, Spring Valley, Minnesota which asked the LCMS to resolve “That the President of Synod direct the Commission on Theology and Church Relations to examine the theological/doctrinal implications of current national policy impacting women of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod serving as combat warriors and provide to our church a reasoned scriptural response.” (2001 LCMS Convention Workbook, pp. 197-198).

“The Unscriptural Doctrine of Women in Combat” by Chaplain Robert Slimp in the November 4, 1996 Christian News said:

The United States Military establishment has been placing young American women in combat roles for the past several years. This runs counter to everything that happened in American military history until about a decade ago.

In the current presidential campaign, women in combat is a non-issue. It has not been mentioned by any of the candidates except for Pat Buchanan in the Republican primaries. Now some church leaders are beginning to take notice.

In the Bible, women do not have combat roles in the military. This is because both Israelites in the Old Testament and Christians since that time, believe that putting women in combat is contrary to the plain teaching of Scripture.

Because all of us are born of a woman, and because women are everyone's first care-givers, putting women into combat situations in the military as trained killers is a violation of God's Word. It is a contradiction of the grand purpose expressed in natural revelation.

When God created man in His own image, He made man male and female, giving to each a distinctive calling within their common identity as image of God. To Adam God assigned the task of tending and guarding the garden. In a complimentary way, God called Eve, the mother of all living, to the work of bearing and nurturing children.

When Adam, our first father, sinned, God pronounced His judgment cursing Adam in his dominion task so that the earth would resist him with thorns and thistles. And God cursed Eve in her calling so that now in pain she would bear children. Yet God also gave a promise in cursing the serpent, the manifestation of the devil, saying: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed, and he will crush your head and you shall bruise his feet." Genesis 3:15.

As Adam was to have guarded the garden, but failed, so God promised a Savior, who would defeat the Devil, and annul the curse brought on the human race by the sin of Adam and Eve. Here we see that both in creation and Chaplain Robert Slimp women in combat is contrary to the Scriptures. In redemption, God appoints men to the warrior task of subduing the earth. To women, He appoints the motherly task of bearing and nurturing children.

Later, God revealed through Moses that the army of Israel was to be composed of men of a certain age and not of women (or for that matter, not of priests). God warned the Israelites not to mix the categories of male and female, commanding women not to wear the garb of the warrior, and at the same time commanded men not to wear the maternal garb of women.

The Lord Jesus Christ sanctified this order of creation by taking flesh in the womb of Mary and being born a man. In the incarnation of His Son, God has fulfilled His creation, and brought to perfection His calling for men and women. Of Mary it is said, "all generations will call me blessed." What higher calling can there be than the calling of Mary to bear in her womb the Word of God? The virgin-born Christ went on to be the divine warrior who has defeated death, hell and the devil, and gave the free gift of eternal life to all who believe.

Therefore, in light of this consistent and extensive testimony of the scriptures, we confess that it is the will of God our Creator and Redeemer that the task of being a righteous warrior should be assigned to men and not to women. This is not because women are inferior to men, but because God has equipped and called man for one task and woman for another. As Mary is to be called blessed by all generations because she bore and nurtured the Son of God , so all women are blessed in their maternal calling of bearing and nurturing those made in God's image, and invited by the Gospel to become the children of God through faith in Jesus Christ. John 1:12,13.

When we humans sin against God and arrogantly or ignorantly reverse the divine order and annul the divine law, we bring untold evil upon ourselves. And so we must bear witness as Christians that the current U.S. policy of assigning women to combat roles in the military is contrary to the revealed will of God and therefore it must be stopped. Such a policy is already producing a harvest of evil in such forms as sexual immorality, children conceived out of wedlock, venereal disease, and the terrible evil of abortion which is now sanctioned by the United States government and the Supreme Court. American Christians must tell their elected representatives in the Congress that they want the role of women in combat stopped. In addition they must demand that new laws be passed so that men and women will no longer serve together on naval ships or in the same barracks or tents in even support units.

If there should be a draft, Christian denominations and churches will have to request that the current policy be changed or else they will have to help their young people escape the draft.

It is because America's political leaders are disobeying and ignoring the commandments of God in such critical areas as women in combat, abortion, homosexuality (and all of these are linked together), America, as a nation can only expect the judgment of God rather than to experience His blessings. Surely this is a time when we must confess our sins to God and determine that we will make our country truly one nation under God.

Since our elected representatives and magistrates are our law makers, we must appeal to them to govern according to the clear teachings of the Bible in all matters that effect the morals of our people.