Mothering like the Church

Chapter 2 of Praise Her in the Gates compares the Church’s role as the bride of Christ to that of a wife and mother in an earthly marriage. As the Church submits to her head Christ, the wife also must submit to her husband. The Church is also maternal in that it teaches truth, disciplines and corrects its members, and bears fruit (or at least that is what it’s supposed to do). Submission to your husband is a necessary foundation for these activities, as the Church also takes its direction from her husband, Christ.

The first role Wilson discusses is the mother’s responsibility to teach and build up. None of our children can “slip through the cracks” because we are busy or have many other children. Wilson writes, “if God blesses a household with many children, just as He blesses some churches with many members, it is no excuse to say that there were just too many to teach” (17). Mothers must make sure that their children are learning truth and growing through the teaching they are receiving, either from her or from another that she delegates.

As the Church nourishes and feeds the flock, so too does the mother nourish and feed her children. She nourishes them with spiritual food that lets her children know she loves them. With breastfeeding, a child receives physical nourishment but also emotional nourishment through the close bond that is established. A mother must set aside all distractions for a time of communion with her child. As a child is attentive to the milk he is receiving, so also should Christians be attentive to the teaching they receive from the Church.

Mothers also should discipline their children as the Church disciplines the people of God. Because she is with the children most of the time, the children will receive most correction from her. She must submit to her head in this also, and seek his advice and wisdom in this task (though fathers may also administer the correction when they are home). “Correction must be judicial, kind, and loving, even when it is painful, and it must be done promptly and consistently,” Wilson says. When the Church discipline is this manner, members are happy; children are also happy and balanced when they receive correction from their mother.

The last paragraph of this chapter deals with fruitfulness. It is so good that I don’t believe I can do it justice with a summary, so I will include it in its entirety here:

Finally, the Church is fruitful. While evangelism brings more worshipers into the Church, childbearing brings more disciples into the home. A mother should be fruitful like the vine in Psalm 128. Children are not to be viewed as a hindrance, an intrusion, an interruption, or a burden. Fruit is not viewed in such a way. Of course fruit requires tending, and tending can be hard work. But it is good work. Women should see that their view of children is shaped by Scripture an not by the world. Hard work, when it is good work, is soul-satisfying and soul-prospering. No matter how many children the Lord may give you, be it two or twelve, you must rejoice in the number and be fruitful in the rearing of them. The Church becomes barren when it is disobedient. Women today embrace barrenness as freedom, and yet barrenness is always a curse in Scripture. But fruitfulness includes more than just childbearing; it is descriptive of a lifestyle. “For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (19).