Yay! Rah! Girl-Power!! Am I right, Christian ladies? The people who hate God are telling you that the women in the Bible were strong, feisty, warriors who could birth a baby, herd some sheep, kill a General, and preach a sermon all before Noon.

Take Deborah, for instance. The folks who mock the scripture taught you that God chose her to lead a bunch of dudes into battle! Yay! Rah! Girl-power!!! She’s even carrying a sword in that picture!

In the book of Judges we read about this empowered female fighter:

She sent and summoned Barak…and said to him, “Has not the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded you, ‘Go, gather your men at Mount Tabor, taking 10,000 from the people of Naphtali and the people of Zebulun. And I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin’s army, to meet you by the river Kishon with his chariots and his troops, and I will give him into your hand’?” (Judges 4:6)

Wait a second! Who’s Barak? What’s he doing in this story about a brilliant, capable woman?

It seems the people who hate scripture didn’t tell you that Barak, not Deborah, was tasked with fighting the battle. Gosh, who could have anticipated that people hostile toward the Bible would commit such an oversight?

So, what happened next?

Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” And she said, “I will surely go with you. Nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.” (Judges 4:9)

Barak wanted Deborah to hold his hand. She agreed and straight-up told him that he should be ashamed of himself. This confident, capable, empowered female specifically tells a dude that there is no glory in letting a woman fight his battles.

It seems the story of Deborah is not as much a celebration of empowered women as an indictment of cowardly, disobedient men. Deborah was large and in-charge because things were disordered, not because God wanted to create a role model for female badassery.

But fear not, ladies! God defined a role for you: “…teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.” (Titus 2:3)

Hopefully, you’ll respond better than Barak to God’s directions.