Waneta Dawn

Does a spouse who is carnal or not a Christian have any business leaving the country to serve as a missionary–even as a spouse to the head missionary? Isn’t that wanabe-missionary’s first job to nurture the unsaved spouse and children and bring them to Christ? Perhaps as the carnal spouse grows in faith, he/she will be mature enough to hear the call of God.

I am not saying Patton’s wife was carnal. She was pregnant and it was her God-given job to protect her children. Apparently Patton failed to understand how vulnerable a woman can feel when she is pregnant, or when she has young children. She has to have a strong sense of God’s calling to take those children into dangerous places.

Protecting one’s young children is different from “protecting” a grown spouse from serving God in a particular ministry, as complementarian husbands are prone to do.

What many folks do not consider is what kind of life the missionary spouse is supposed to live–when she does not feel called into foreign missions. If she is not called, she will likely be of little mission-type service. Her main job will be to serve her husband in a place where she has many handicaps that make her work take longer than it would in the US. She may have to learn to cook over a wood stove, for example, which can make cooking take all day if the wood isn’t dry enough. She may have to do laundry by hand, etc. While her husband gets the “glory” of and enjoyment of missionary work, her work is made 10 times more difficult than it need be, leaving her no time to be a missionary at all.

The result is a marriage where the husband gets to do the enjoyable work, and the wife is stuck with the never-ending maintanence work. Just like the widening gap between the rich and the poor, this would be a widening gap in the enjoyment of labor experienced by husband and wife. This would likely also end up widening the power gap between them, and the wife becomes her husband’s slave. Unless she really enjoys having everything go wrong day after day, a husband pushing her to go where she has not been called of God will end up taking her into depression or some other disease that will end up forcing them to return home.

If she also feels God is calling her to be a missionary, AND her husband and/or children help with the day-to-day tasks, she also can take the gospel to those who are lost, and have the sense that she is making a difference.

I would think the same applies if the genders are reversed. What business does a reluctant husband have to be in a foreign mission field? No matter what the gender, God may be calling them to do something meaningful at home.

A final note: The class teacher was using guilt and manipulation to get students to go to foreign fields. Often if it is God who is calling, He also gives a specific burden, like to go to Africa or Central America, or even to a specific country.