Notes of Faith September 1, 2022

Find Your Voice

Just like a fingerprint, your voice is unique to you. — Deb Liu

My Chinese, Christian immigrant parents raised me not to stand out too much. They taught me that hard work would stand on its own and that I shouldn’t draw unwanted attention to myself. As immigrants, they focused on carving out a life in a foreign land, hoping to evade too much notice or commentary. As Christians, they stressed the virtues of modesty and humility. I grew up learning these lessons too well, and silencing myself became a way of life. Staying quiet meant staying safe and not risking anything.

I met my husband at Raleigh Chinese Christian Church, where his parents had been founding members and where he had spent many of his formative years. In those times, Chinese churches in southern America embodied a mix of religious, cultural, and social conservatism, modeled after the American churches that helped give rise to them. Having grown up in Southern Baptist and later Presbyterian churches, I was familiar with those norms and expectations. Yet many of the women of the church were leaders, including my future mother-in-law.

Several years later my fiancé and I started the required pre-marital counseling at Atlanta Chinese Christian Church. During one of our sessions, we shared the news that I had been accepted to Stanford Graduate School of Business and that David planned to move with me out to California after we wed. The happy news landed heavily. The pastor of the English-language congregation, who had been counseling us, admonished David harshly. His words stick with me even now, two decades later. “Why are you following Deborah to California so she can go to graduate school?” he demanded. “You should have the lead career. She should prepare herself to stay home and care for the children.”

I didn’t know what to say.

I was twenty-three, engaged, and dreaming of going to graduate school, and this man was telling me that our joint plans were anathema to the will of God.

I sat there stunned, unable to say anything. Embarrassment and shame flooded me. Thoughts ran through my head: “What if he is right? What if I am doing David a disservice? What if this is against God’s plan?” I had worked so hard to earn a place at my dream school, and I felt defeated and deflated.

God doesn't make mistakes

The conservatism of our church and our race stood before me like an immovable object, and I said nothing in the face of that. In our church, a woman’s place was the home and hearth, yet the examples of women like my mother and future mother-in-law stood in contrast. They had left their homes and everything they knew to come to America and start anew, and they had worked themselves to the bone to earn degrees. Many women were like them, including many of the women leaders in our church, yet here stood a pastor saying they were all wrong.

My shame turned to anger when David and I later spoke. He reassured me of his commitment to our move and that nothing the pastor said would change that. But I had grown up expecting to be obedient to the church and its teachings. How could I allow myself to go against them?

That’s when David said something I will never forget. “Your parents named you Deborah for a reason,” he told me. “She was the judge of Israel because God chose her to lead. She preached, prophesied, and led His people.

God doesn’t make mistakes. And He chose to have a woman lead His people to show the world that it was possible.”

He continued, “We read Proverbs 31 together. The Proverbs 31 woman is wife and mother. But she also has her own business, buys her own land, and cares for her family. What does her husband do? He sits at the city gates and hangs out with the guys, no doubt swapping sandals or putting their hands on each other’s thighs.” I laughed as the ever-erudite David reminded me of how the men of the Old Testament sealed contracts with shoes or by touching one another in agreement.1

David encouraged me to reach out to the senior pastor and point out these contradictions. So we sat down with Pastor Jeffrey Lu, the Chinese pastor who led the church, and shared what the English-language pastor had said. He laughed and pointed to his wife, an extremely accomplished woman of faith. Then and there he gave us his blessing and agreed to preside over our ceremony. We married later that year, and one week later, we moved to California to start a new life.

I realized then that my voice mattered,

within my relationship and even within the church, a place I considered monolithic and immovable. I had always been taught deference to authority, but I learned an important lesson through this experience. We are given our voices to question the status quo and to seek truth, rather than proceed in blind obedience.

Alison Mitchell, “Peculiar Passages: The Case of Ruth, Boaz and the Contractual Sandal,” The Good Book, August 15, 2019, https://www.thegoodbook.com/blog/interestingthoughts/2019/08/15/peculiar -passages-the-case-of-ruth-boaz-and-the-co/.

Excerpted from Take Back Your Power by Deb Liu, copyright Deborah Yee-Ky Liu.

God created mankind in His image, male and female He created them. And though I believe Scripture teaches He also gave them roles to function within family and society, they are nonetheless equal. My own mother worked outside the home, a teacher for over 40 years, took care of the finances for the home, and led our family spiritually, since my father did not become a Christian until he was 63 years old. And yet she followed my father to California from West Virginia, choosing a church to attend before a place to live or finding a job. My wife has done much the same, after we were married, I went back to school. God gave me a job, 40 miles from home for 8 years. Three children came along and we both wanted to work closer to home. Robin has handled our financial matters, because I wanted my wife to be able to handle anything concerning every day life. She has done well and will do all these things well, perhaps a better pastor’s wife than I am pastor. Women are valuable, as valuable as man, for each one has been created in the image of God! Amen.

Pastor Dale