The Help That Doesn't Help

There's a book (and a movie) out there called The Help. In the book "the help" is a black woman working for a Southern white family, raising the children and polishing the silver, earning less than minimum wage without hope of getting social security.

Sometimes I wonder if this is the help hierarchical theologians refer to, for married women do a whole lot of housework, raise their children, and they earn even less than the maid in the book, The Help. But because it doesn't make sense in the case of single women, we have to take a closer look at the hierarchical theologian's definition of help.

If all women were created to help men, and helping men means women don't make decisions or teach in the church, the woman is a help who doesn't help. How does it help the man if the woman is silent when decisions need to be made, when the Gospel needs to be preached? How does it help the man if the woman obeys and agrees to the man's financial decisions and the family goes bankrupt? How does it help the man if the woman is silent in the church and false teachings destroy the church? How does any of that help anyone?

In the Bible, help is something tangible, without which the person in need is in serious trouble.

In my distress I called to the LORD;
I cried to my God for help.
From his temple he heard my voice;
my cry came before him, into his ears (Ps 18:6, NIV) 

They cried for help, but there was no one to save them--
to the LORD, but he did not answer (Ps 18:41, NIV)

Though they have officials in Zoan
and their envoys have arrived in Hanes, 

everyone will be put to shame
because of a people useless to them,
who bring neither help nor advantage,
but only shame and disgrace."
(Isa 30:4-5 NIV)

If the one who helps in the Bible always does something, why doesn't the woman? If the woman was created to help the man, there has to be something she does that actually helps the man.

Childbearing is of course the one thing the man cannot do, wherefore the woman helps the man when she bears children. But since marriage is required for childbearing, single women (and single men) become the problem again.

Let's for a moment consider the idea that women will help men for all eternity. We know that in the world to come we won't marry; everyone is going to be single. If women are going to help men for all eternity, yet, everyone is single, what will women do? How will women help men in the world to come? 

Here the idea of authority enters into the picture. We are told that women help men when they obey them. But really, obeying isn't the same as helping, for obedience is something one has to do, whereas help is optional. You don't have to help someone if you don't want to. God doesn't always help us.

If the woman was created to help the man, her help must be optional. Obedience cannot be part of the deal. But what if the help was the woman? How would it affect our understanding of the woman's creation? If the help the man needed was the woman, the woman was created to be with the man, not as his helper, but as his equal. And if this is the case, we don't have to ask what the woman is supposed to be doing, for the answer is already given in Genesis:
 

God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." (Genesis 1:28, NIV)