Is your view of gender and sexuality too narrow? The church often struggles with these discussions, but the truth is found in God’s design, which we learn through His word. Join us today with Dr. Sandra Glahn, professor of media arts and worship at Dallas Theological Seminary, as she shares her insights on biblical sexuality and gender roles, revealing God’s extraordinary plan for women as daughters of the King. You’ll hear her personal story of struggling through infertility for years and how that impacted her own sense of femininity. Despite that hardship, she didn’t give up. That’s our challenge for you: discover how to live in God’s purpose and persevere through trials, knowing God has extraordinary plans for your life.
Continue reading for highlights from this episode of the Even You podcast, or watch the full interview with Dr. Sandra Glahn below.
You once thought women shouldn’t go to seminary. Why is that?
Amazingly, it wasn’t rooted in insecurity. The church that I plugged into did a great job of discipling me. But on gender and family life, there was some cultish thinking. And I was not with my parents in that church. They have since come to faith, but were not there to say, “Some of that’s wacky.” In my mind, they were in a liberal church, and I was in the truth, but I didn’t have the guidance I needed then.
Fortunately, I married a guy who had a higher view of women than I had for myself. When I supported him as he was in seminary, it meant I was working, and he was working a lot less. So I had to work through the question, Is that biblical? And people would say that’s a real threat to manhood.
And then I found Luke 8:1-3 where these women are bankrolling Jesus and the guys, and it didn’t seem to bother their manhood. So the Bible kept pushing back against some of these questions I had. So with my husband in one ear and my pastor’s wife in the other ear, they convinced me that I needed to get some seminary training. I still wasn’t sure this was what women should do. And I did what I don’t usually do. I got on my knees in front of my couch on my way out to class and prayed, “If I am a woman entering a man’s world, and I’m not supposed to do this, stop me.” I didn’t hear an audible voice, but you know when you’ve heard from the Holy Spirit. I thought about how Mary had chosen what is better. And I thought of the story of her sister doing the traditionally domestic thing. Mary was like the first seminary student.
I had no idea where it was going to lead, but I walked out knowing that this is what I’m supposed to do today. And as it turns out, if you enroll and pass and enroll and pass, and you do that enough times, you have a master’s degree. If you keep doing it, you end up with a doctorate.
During seminary, did you have direction from the Lord for where your ministry would go?
In the 1990s when I got laid off from my job, I bought a laser printer to open a writing business. I was mostly writing secular stuff for my clients who had businesses.
It was only when I began to go to seminary more that I started writing more Christian content, and a lot of it was rooted in my heartbreak. My husband and I had 10 years of infertility and pregnancy loss.I’m the fourth of five kids. I thought I was going to have more kids than I could handle. I heard Susanna Wesley had 19 children. I thought, “That’s going to be me.”
It was not me. That was a crisis of faith. And so my studies of women were really for me, not anybody else initially. I had to know, if I’m not a mom, what’s the alternative? What was I made for? If I can’t have kids, there was no vision for my purpose. It was a crisis of faith I had to work through.
How did you walk through that crisis of faith?
Part of it involved international missions. I met strong Russian women, and I realized that the women’s movement in the U.S. didn’t start the whole movement toward strong women. That’s how little I knew about women’s history. International missions helped me see a different way of doing Christianity—many different ways of doing Christianity—through strong women.
Another part of that was learning to pray the lament psalms. I had learned that you don’t ask God’s questions. But I had a good spiritual mentor who said, “Have you ever noticed how many questions the psalmists ask God? And they don’t get answers. Job didn’t get answers. Not only are you allowed to ask questions, I don’t think you’re raging hard enough. This relationship with God is strong enough to handle more of your honest emotions.” That was very freeing, because I was heartbroken.
And my husband was always cheering me on, which didn’t fit the narrative I had in my head that if a woman leads, it’s because she’s pushy and trying to take power. That really wasn’t my heart at all. But he would tell me, “The church needs you. God wants to use your gifts.”
Some of it was also just digging into Scripture for myself. I was taking Greek classes and learning that the underlying word in some passages isn’t male. Jesus said, “‘Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of people (Matthew 4:19, NASB).’” The word “people” is “men” in some translations, so I read it as, “I will make you the trainer of male leaders.” That’s how I read that, even pretty far into my seminary studies, But He’s not saying that. I just started seeing how many places women were present in Scripture when I had read the passage as male. That really surprised me.
How did you figure out your role as a woman?
Lots of different ways. I realized it wasn’t either or; it wasn’t sitting on the floor playing Candyland with a child or having a career. It was taking my child with me as I feed the poor, taking my child with me as I teach Sunday school.
I think some of the pushback about women in the 70s was that some of the really good work had left the house. I had to work through what it looks like if and when we do have a child—which we did end up with a successful adoption—for her to see me engaging in meaningful work. It doesn’t mean that I have to neglect her to do work. I can invite her into it and not dichotomize as much as my mother’s generation thought they had to.
The Even You Podcast
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