The historical view of women as a commodity...

At the church where I serve we are in the middle of a sermon series entitled Relationships or Relationsinks. During this series, we are discovering what the letters that make up the Bible have to say about relationships. Regardless of your age and stage of life, regardless of your marital status, this series is designed to bring people to the place where they are better equipped to experience love and lasting relationships.

This week, I would like for us to spend our time together by focusing on the men. And the reason that I want to focus on the men is because there is a fundamental question that every man who desires to experience a lasting relationship has to ask and answer. And that question is this: how do you as a man view women?

Do you view women as a possession that provides a service? Do you view women as a potential servant that meets a need? Do you view women as a commodity that decreases in value and worth over time? How do you as a man view women? Now if I was to ask every man to answer that question our loud, I am almost 100% sure that not a single man would answer yes to any of those questions.

But what answer would I receive if I looked at the playlist on your mobile device, or on Spotify or Pandora? What answer would I receive if I looked at the cookies on your computer? What answer would I receive if I looked at the last ten movies that you rented?

You see, the reality is that in our culture, women are more often than not viewed as a commodity. More often than not, women are viewed as a possession that provides a service. Now if you do not think that is the case, then just spend a few minutes thinking back at the commercials that were portrayed to men during any sporting event on TV. If you do not think that is the case, just take a minute and look at the magazines as you check out at the local grocery store.

Are not those magazines dominated by articles about how a woman can provide the best service to her man? How you can look your best? T.V. and magazines portray women as possessions that provide a service to men. Popular culture views women as a commodity and places enormous pressure on women to raise their value in the eyes of men by how they look and how they perform.

Unfortunately, this is not a new phenomenon; this view of women as a commodity; this view of women as a possession has been around for thousands of years. As a matter of fact, in the Jewish culture of the first century, women were viewed by men in an incredibly negative manner.

Josephus, who was a first century Jewish historian, stated that women were to be held to be inferior in all matters. Philo, who was a Jewish philosopher, refers throughout his writings to women and female traits as examples of weakness. A Jewish literary work of the times states that “better is the wickedness of a man than a women who does good”. And one of the Jewish prayers of the day included one in which a Jewish man thanked God that he was not a woman.

And then there was how women were viewed in the Roman culture of the first century. The Roman culture of the first century was male dominated culture where women were treated as possessions. Roman law did not regard women as equal to men. Women in Roman culture could not vote or hold political office. Women were treated as servants who were expected to obey their husbands in almost every aspect of their lives.

Women received only a basic education, if any at all, and were subject to the authority of a man. Traditionally, this was their father before marriage. After marriage, authority switched to their husband, who also had the legal rights over their children. Women were viewed as a possession that was responsible to provide a child for heir, but not too many children.

As a matter of fact, the birth rate among the ruling class declined to such an extent that the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus, who is mentioned in the accounts of Jesus birth, passed a series of laws intended to increase it, including special honors for women who bore at least three children. Those who were unmarried, divorced, widowed, or barren were prohibited from inheriting property unless named in a will.

In the culture of the 1^st century, it was not unusual for men to have multiple mistresses or for men to engage in sex with prostitutes so as to avoid the responsibility of having children or raising children. In addition, unlike today, most adoptions in Roman society did not occur when children were babies. In Roman culture, you would never adopt a baby. So, in the Roman Empire, female babies were often left on the street or taken to the garbage dump after being born to die of exposure.

And it was into the male dominated culture that treated women as possessions, and in some cases, less than human, that Jesus entered into humanity. It was into this culture that Jesus began to engage and treat women in ways that left his disciples scratching their heads.

Tomorrow, we will begin to look at how Jesus engaged and treated women in a way that left men scratching their heads…