The Force Behind Attempts to Silence Women

What are the forces behind attempts to silence women?

To understand my perspective, you must know I am of the school of thought that treating symptoms has some value. However,  that treatment becomes an endless loop unless you dig deeper and learn what is causing those symptoms to emerge.

I won’t be coy with you in this post. The forces I will explore won’t be new or earthshattering to you. I’m honestly not so much a teacher as a reminder of what we know but sometimes push to the back of our mental refrigerators. Like most women, I’m good at finding that missing jar of mayo.

My friend Rhonda says the source of most of our societal symptoms can be found in Genesis and I agree. Since the Garden of Eden when Eve and Adam chose to eat from the one tree whose fruit God had forbidden them to eat, there have been at least three powerful forces at work to silence women:

1. sin with which we each must wrestle
2. a deep distortion in our relationship with God and with one another
3. enmity between Satan and the daughters and sons of Eve. (Enmity= a deep-seated, active hostility, hatred, or state of being an enemy)

I live in the real world and over the decades, I’ve seen miracles and madness in equal part. Born in 1961, coming of age in the 70s, I’ve witnessed significant global changes. I’ve seen both the benefits of those changes and the damage. Humans are uniquely gifted at snatching defeat from the jaws of any victory. Our favorite dance is the four-step: one step forward, three steps back.

In the midst of all the noise– wars, revolutions, movements, assassinations, exposes, scandals, protests, power plays, and societal shifts– I realized God made me a woman of words. He designed me to write, speak, teach, coach, counsel, and inspire through the same vehicle by which He made the world. Words.

As a girl, I came alive inside the pages of books and amidst the library shelves, which were both shelter and open doors for me. I wrote to find out what I think. I wrote everything all the time. When I was very young, maybe ten, short of volunteers for our church’s summer vacation Bible school, I was assigned to teach Bible lessons to the preschool class and discovered I love to teach. I was thirteen when I had my first byline in American Girl magazine. Started public speaking in high school. Attended Christian college where I studied psychology and biblical studies. From there, I continued leading women’s Bible studies, writing, teaching, and speaking and as an official senior citizen, I haven’t stopped.

And I have lived all this out on the battlefield that stretches from that first Garden to every street on which I’ve ever lived.

Silencing Force 1: Sin

I know the battle against my own sinful nature that would pridefully and selfishly tear others down or push them aside in order to be heard, recognized, known for my “oratory and eloquence,” both because there are times I think I have all the answers and because I would enjoy reaping every benefit this world bestows on communicators gifted in language. Paradoxically, it is that same sin nature that tempts me to self-silence or to write only half-stories rather than speak unpopular truth, risk being misunderstood, or expose myself for the faulted human I know that I am. Here is the first force. Here is the initial silencing enemy– the sinful woman in my mirror trying to shout down my better angels.

God warned Cain about his own sin. “Its desire is for you, and you must rule over it,” (Genesis 4:7 ESV). Cain failed to listen and the story doesn’t end well for his brother. When we fail to recognize and own our sin, our weakness, our failure, others suffer with us. My first and best defense against being silenced is to deal honestly with the enemy within.

Silencing Force 2: Distorted, broken relationship with God and with others

I have also confronted on this bloody field, the distortion in my relationship with God and with other people. Thankfully, I wasn’t alone on that front and Jesus gave His own life, dying and rising again, to pay the price for my sins, opening the door for a relationship with God. I have walked through that door and all my life enjoyed knowing and learning more about my Father and King. Righting this relationship was a crucial step in having perspective on the others, to defeating the sin within, and to knowing I now belong with His people, my family.

God does not seek to silence me. He gave me a voice and He delights in hearing from me. He gifted me with words and intends me to use them. He is not, however, indifferent to what I say or how and when I say it. There are well over 300 Bible verses about our speech, speaking, and tongues. Knowing when to speak and when to keep silent is part of the process of applying wisdom, self-control, love, and every other fruit of the Spirit. This is His call to every follower– male and female. There were times when Jesus was silent, not out of fear, oppression, or bondage, but at the will and in the wisdom of the Father. To this end, God’s not content for us to only address what emerges from our mouths but reminds us that “out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks,” (Luke 6:45 ESV). Words emerge from the heart.

Other people. Other people have certainly tried to silence me. Others have tried to distort or exploit my voice for their own ends. From personal relationships to the greater church to the world at large, I have had enough experiences with men and women who would keep me silent I could fill a book. Men uncomfortable with a woman of words– insecure in their own gifts– have sought to stifle mine. Bullies, men with evil intent, or men with good intent but immature, ill-informed, or lacking a sufficient understanding of the whole of God’s Word. Women, too, with their own agendas, have sought to shape my thinking through condescension, bullying, or social shut down. Women uncomfortable with women who don’t share their perspective or sign on to the prevailing narrative of the times. Men and women are equal in every respect and that means we have equal capacity for sin and for causing harm to other women. There were no good guys and bad guys in Eden– just a man and a woman both hiding behind leaves they found on a tree.

We all have stories of being shut down or silenced by others (or when they could not silence us, refusing to listen). But it isn’t people’s DNA nor their reproductive organs that aim to silence– it’s still sin and the distortion– so if I enlist in the gender wars, I’m joining a relentless generational loop treating the symptoms of he said-she said-he’s wrong-she’s wrong and we’re right back in Genesis 3 from which we have been freed– male

and female– through Jesus. Should we speak up against injustice, unsound teaching, immature leaders or those will ill-intent– yes, of course. We are to love justice and to speak truth, especially watchful for false teachers but is the concern confined to men or simply based on gender? I think not.

So we look to God– Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who exist in perfect relationship. Three in one. Full of love, truth, mercy, grace, beauty, justice holiness, and peace. All God. Equal and yet, Jesus “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross,” (Philippians 2:6-8 ESV).

And because there is order in the Trinity, we accept that there is order in human relationships-– marriage, family, the church. I am a “soft” complementarian not because some man has forced his theology on me but because I have studied the Scriptures since I was a girl and have used the mind God gave me, yielded to Christ, to consider what the Bible says for myself and here is where I land. I don’t subscribe to “the patriarchy” but I believe in male eldership. I believe women can preach but I believe the role of pastor/elder is reserved for men. I have not found oppression in this understanding but great freedom and purpose. Most of my speaking is to women and I hold women in such regard that I don’t feel it a lesser role to primarily teach them. We are made in God’s image– male and female– and so I consider teaching women and equal honor to teaching men. There is plenty of work and ministry to go around until the whole world sees Jesus.

I respect and love those in the church who have studied His Word and differ from me here (it is not, after all, a salvation issue) but this is my understanding and I am not a woman who is silenced. I am not a woman whose gifts have been shut down or denied or imprisoned. I am a woman free– not because of the permission of other men or women but because of Christ.  And I live fully in that freedom in every circumstance.

That is not to say there haven’t been consequences for speaking. There is sometimes a price to pay in a fallen world for refusing to be silent when obedience to Christ demands we speak. I have some scars. Nothing, though, compared to sisters and brothers speaking truth in harsher countries but scars, still. And yet, I believe it is right to reject bitterness, blame, generalizations, and the trap of the relentless loop.

I’ve gone on too long and for many readers, I’ve said nothing new. Thank you for indulging me as I attempt to speak into this topic from my understanding of the Bible and from a lifetime of experience wrestling with the Scriptures and with the societal debate as a woman God designed for words. I’ll explore the third force and the impact of evil perpetrated by the defeated one with whom we have enmity in a later post. Too much for this one, I think.

What are your thoughts and your experience in this arena? I respond to every comment and reply to every email. Goodness and mercy, Lori

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https://t.co/ednduieW52 Does God silence women? What are the forces attempting to silence us now? #silencingwomen #Bible

— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) July 14, 2026