Should Women Be Police Officers?
00:00:00.000 | A listener named Beth writes in, "Hi Pastor John, I'm a woman who enjoys being a woman.
00:00:11.200 | I have no desire to be a man or to compete to be better than men at being masculine.
00:00:16.680 | For a couple of years now I have felt drawn to police work as a vocation.
00:00:20.880 | I am unmarried and should I become married and my husband object, I would discontinue
00:00:25.520 | work as a police officer.
00:00:27.300 | At this point my question is a question of principle.
00:00:30.880 | Can a single Christian woman who is a complementarian become a police officer?"
00:00:36.800 | I love Beth's spirit and I hope I can be of help without telling her what she should do.
00:00:44.360 | Exactly.
00:00:46.760 | Here's how I've approached these kinds of issues because police officer is just one
00:00:51.320 | of so many questions that arise.
00:00:53.800 | If you want to be a godly man or woman and walk in paths of relationships with the opposite
00:01:00.360 | sex that are pleasing to the Lord.
00:01:03.480 | And I've tried to wrestle with the scriptures, which is, I hope and pray, my final authority
00:01:10.020 | in these matters, and I've come up with a general definition of what I think the heart
00:01:18.420 | of mature manhood and the heart of mature womanhood are.
00:01:24.460 | And then I've argued these and spelled them out in a little book called "What's the Difference?"
00:01:30.140 | And these are really foundational for me and they help me answer a lot of questions.
00:01:34.340 | Let me give you the definitions and then try to show how they apply to this.
00:01:38.620 | At the heart of mature manhood is a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, a sense
00:01:45.580 | of responsibility to lead, provide for, and protect women in ways appropriate to a man's
00:01:53.980 | differing relationships.
00:01:56.940 | The postman won't relate to the lady at the door the way the husband will, but he will
00:02:01.140 | be a man.
00:02:04.560 | At the heart of mature womanhood is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive, and nurture
00:02:13.340 | strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman's differing relationships.
00:02:21.020 | So I take a whole book, a little book, to unpack those two definitions.
00:02:26.860 | Now in the home, the Bible makes plain that these definitions imply a leadership role
00:02:33.660 | for men that bear the burden of loving, leading the wife like Christ, and implies in the church
00:02:41.700 | that men bear the responsibility to lead the church as elders.
00:02:45.620 | But what about outside the church, in thousands of possible roles that men and women may fill
00:02:53.740 | in society?
00:02:55.620 | And my sense is that it is unwise to make a list of women's jobs and men's jobs.
00:03:03.460 | There's simply too much diversity and too much flexibility in how many jobs there are
00:03:10.620 | and how the jobs are done and what the varying relationships with men and women are in all
00:03:14.660 | the various jobs.
00:03:15.660 | It just won't work to try to make a list like that.
00:03:19.060 | So instead of a list of whether a policeman is on the man job or the woman job list, instead
00:03:26.380 | of a list, I've tried to provide guidelines for men and women who sincerely want to be
00:03:32.740 | submissive to the Bible, and that really is the key.
00:03:36.180 | If a person approaches this and just says, "I'm going to do what I want to do," then
00:03:40.020 | I don't have much to say to them on this score.
00:03:42.580 | But if the aim really is, "Does the Bible have something to say here at the root level
00:03:49.780 | of my manhood and my womanhood that would affect the kind of work I do in relationship
00:03:55.780 | to the opposite sex," then I want to submit to that and go for it, because that would
00:03:59.860 | be God's best for me.
00:04:01.620 | So here's one possible set of criteria that I've tried to develop over the years in assessing
00:04:07.740 | which roles are appropriate for men and women, which aren't.
00:04:12.460 | It seems to me that all the acts of influence or guidance or leadership between men and
00:04:18.460 | women can be described along two continuums, and I'll mention these and then show how
00:04:24.300 | they apply.
00:04:25.300 | There's a continuum from very personal influence, very eye-to-eye, close, up front, personal
00:04:35.620 | influence to non-personal influence.
00:04:38.900 | And the other continuum is very directive, you know, commands and forcefulness, directive
00:04:45.900 | influence to very non-directive influence.
00:04:51.020 | And here's my conviction.
00:04:53.420 | To the degree that a woman's influence over man, guidance of man, leadership of man, is
00:04:59.500 | a personal and directive, it will generally offend a man's good, God-given sense of responsibility
00:05:10.640 | and leadership and thus controvert God's created order.
00:05:17.220 | To an extent, a woman's leadership or influence may be personal and non-directive or directive
00:05:26.740 | and non-personal, but I don't think we should push the limits.
00:05:32.060 | I mean, I don't think those would necessarily push the limits of what is appropriate.
00:05:37.260 | That's my general paradigm of guidance, and you can see how flexible it is, how imprecise
00:05:44.940 | it is.
00:05:45.940 | So let me give some examples.
00:05:47.860 | A woman who is a civil engineer may design a traffic pattern in a city so that she's
00:05:53.080 | deciding which streets are one way, and therefore she is influencing, indeed controlling in
00:05:59.140 | one sense, all the male drivers all day long.
00:06:03.140 | But this influence is so non-personal that it seems to me that the feminine-masculine
00:06:10.780 | dynamic is utterly negligible in this kind of relationship.
00:06:15.700 | On the other hand, husband and wife, very personal, and hence the clear teaching of
00:06:20.740 | the New Testament that the man should give leadership in the home, and she give glad
00:06:26.540 | partnership in supporting and helping that leadership come into its own.
00:06:32.060 | On the other hand, some influence is very directive, and some is non-directive.
00:06:38.260 | For example, a drill sergeant might epitomize directive influence over the privates in the
00:06:46.020 | platoon, and it would be hard for me to see how a woman could be a drill sergeant - right
00:06:55.420 | face, left face, keep your mouth shut, private - over men without violating their sense of
00:07:02.420 | manhood and her sense of womanhood.
00:07:04.980 | And I know that the world we live in has gone completely the other way on these things.
00:07:11.340 | So I know I'm an absolute dinosaur when I'm speaking these things, and I doubt that moving
00:07:18.660 | away from dinosaur truth has been good for the world or will be good in the long run,
00:07:25.700 | no matter how sweeping the day is in regard to making negligible sexuality and gender
00:07:34.560 | issues in role relationships.
00:07:37.580 | So if you combine those two continuums that I just mentioned, I would say it like this.
00:07:43.620 | If a woman's job involves a good deal of directives toward men, they'll need, in general, I think,
00:07:51.340 | to be non-personal, or men and women won't flourish, I don't think, in the long run in
00:07:58.380 | that relationship without compromising profound biblical and psychological issues.
00:08:05.640 | And conversely, if a woman's relationship to a man is very personal, then the way she
00:08:10.680 | offers guidance and influence will, I think, need to be more non-directive.
00:08:18.100 | And my own view is that there are some roles in society that will strain godly manhood
00:08:25.480 | and womanhood to the breaking point.
00:08:29.380 | But I leave women and men in those roles to sort that out.
00:08:33.100 | I've never tried to make that list.
00:08:37.720 | So the key is, do they deeply want to shape their whole lives by Scripture?
00:08:44.720 | And we may come to different views on some roles, but that submission to Scripture is
00:08:49.600 | a great common ground.
00:08:52.480 | So good.
00:08:53.480 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:08:54.480 | And there was mention of the book, "What is the Difference?"
00:08:57.120 | Which is a little 90-page book you can download and read free of charge at DesiringGod.org/books.
00:09:03.060 | It's titled, "What's the Difference?"
00:09:07.620 | Tomorrow a listener asks, "How culturally up-to-date must my pastor be, especially when
00:09:13.580 | it comes to getting a handle on all the ethical questions in the news?"
00:09:17.380 | And I know a lot of pastors feel perpetually behind and out of touch with the news cycle,
00:09:21.780 | and especially this summer.
00:09:23.820 | And John Pfeiffer will have some refreshing counsel for pastors.
00:09:26.460 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:09:27.460 | We'll see you tomorrow.
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