This week, as I continue to share with you some thoughts from the 2016 annual meeting of the SBC, I want to discuss one of the resolutions that was adopted by the messengers that addressed the issue of women being drafted into military service. In one of those moments of historical irony, on the same day the SBC adopted a resolution opposing women being pressed into military service (including the now-open combat positions) the United States Senate passed a bill requiring women who come of age on or after January 1, 2018 to register with the Selective Service. The bill was adopted by a surprisingly wide margin, 85-13. Before this bill can become law, it does have to go through the reconciliation process with the House of Representatives, which is the last chance this provision can be removed before it is sent to the president for his signature.
The effects of such a change in the law will be both numerous and severe. Though some have argued that the physical requirements for infantry divisions will not be changed, a simple understanding of the human anatomy helps us understand why such change is inevitable. Women’s bodies are created differently by God and thus have different tolerances and abilities. To think that the average 130-pound female will be able to carry a 200-pound wounded man (read, dead-weight) from the battlefield requires us to suspend reality. Likewise, the mental processes of men and women are different. Please, don’t hear me saying that this implies one is superior to the other or that this is a bad thing. Rather, what I am saying is that, again, our divine design has imbued us with specific skills and abilities that are well-suited for the God-ordained roles we are to fill within our world. Simply repeating ad nauseaum all the claims by government and society that there are no real differences between men and women simply does not make them true. The societal effects of requiring our daughters and sisters to submit to being called into involuntary service through a draft cannot be fully predicted nor completely understood, but suffice it to say that it will rend our societal fabric in long-term ways.
Should this bill make it to the desk of the president and be signed into law, how should we as Christians respond? Romans 13:1-7 shows us that under normal situations, we are to be “subject to the governing authorities” (v. 1). Yet we also recognize that there will be unjust laws that are passed because we live in a fallen world where people will abuse the power of government, which is divinely instituted by God, for their own sinful purposes. I believe this would be just such a law. Our response, then, should be one of speaking prophetically to the culture, demonstrating the Biblical example that women do not, nor should they, bear the responsibility for fighting military battles. It means we should pursue all avenues available to us to change the law (peacefully writing to our elected representation, supporting organizations that are speaking and lobbying for such change, and so forth). What’s more, each of us who has a daughter or sister who would be affected by this law will have to make a decision of how to encourage and support them when they refuse to register. Failing to register is a felony with stiff penalties (which are not limited to fines and jail time), as is knowingly counseling, aiding, or abetting someone in failing to register. Yet as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.” Just something to think about…
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