Eve in Exile

Book Reviews

Nov 11

Eve in Exile and the Restoration of Femininity
By: Rebekah Merkle

[Fulfilling “A book with a person’s name in the title” as part of the 2021 Fall Reading Challenge.]

“If God designed women for a specific purpose, if there are fixed limits on the feminine nature, then surely it would follow that when we are living in accordance with those limits and purpose we will be in our sweet spot. That’s where we’ll shine. Where we’ll excel. And where we will find the most fulfillment. If your hackles are already going up at that, then it’s probably because you’re afraid that in the end, what God designed for you is unexciting, unfulfilling, demeaning, and generally dull.”

This is a great book that elevates the importance of the home, affirms women who have not chosen careers, and reminds us how integral all women are to the Creation Mandate (subdue, fill, help, glorify) and its expansion— the Great Commission (spread the gospel to all the world).

With a fiery boldness, Merkle doesn’t back down from the truth but defends the beautiful and meaningful boundaries God has placed for all people in accordance with his design and purpose for humanity. She critiques historical figures in the feminist movement and reiterates throughout the book how we can trust God with our role in his design.

I think this book is best if read with another person— ideally a group of women— to discuss and hear others’ perspectives as women who are married/non-married, kids/no-kids, careers/no careers, etc.

However, it is not a perfect book and there are places I would rewrite when I think of some of the women who may be reading these pages. But there is wonderful news for women in this book if we have ears to hear it.

My review will take you through the best and worst and offer a recommendation at the end.

Who is Rebekah Merkle?

In a book like this, who the author is matters. There were parts of this book that struck me in a way that made me defensive for working moms. At first it felt more geared toward women who stay at home full-time, so is she condemning working moms or claiming they are all selfish for choosing careers over their families?

By no means!

Merkle has a career herself. She runs her own clothing line and is a high school humanities teacher. So if we find ourselves questioning what she is implying, we must be careful because we can know she is not saying women should not work outside the home.

Other notable items in her biography are her familial connections. Her sister is Rachel Jankovic, author of Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches and one of my favorite books, You Who?: Why You Matter and How to Deal with It.

Her father is Douglas Wilson, author of many books—none I have read or reviewed yet.

I don’t know much about their other family members, but all three of these are highly intelligent people with a solid grip on biblical truth. They are bold truth tellers and oftentimes their personalities or writing styles can rub people the wrong way.

But we can’t let our sensitivities to certain words or phrases cause us to dismiss their entire rhetoric.

Merkle has a lot of great things to say in this book and we would do well to hear her out.

[I want to note here in the spirit of transparency— I recently read Jesus and John Wayne and criticized KDM’s tone for being “accusatory reviling.” Many positive reviewers of KDM’s book appreciated her tone and found it witty and sarcastic. So is the situation with Eve in Exile like that but in reverse? Am I appreciative of Merkle’s boldness just because I agree with her whereas I wasn’t with KDM because I did not find her convincing?

As I reflect on this, I do believe it is different. I do find Merkle’s tone different than KDM’s. I find Eve in Exile to have more grace and truth. Reading more about Merkle I am convinced her words are all chosen deliberately, not emotionally driven, and are directed toward a given truth. Yet, this was a good consideration for me to keep in mind as I continue to read and process controversial books.]

Her Driving Point

“The question is not where a woman is standing but which direction she is pointed.”

Because Merkle talks about God’s directive for women to tend the home which typically involves husbands and children, there seems to be a void for groups like single women, single moms, working moms, women who can’t have children, and probably others I haven’t mentioned, and I felt the void too.

But her point is not that a stay-at-home mom is the pinnacle of womanhood biblical or otherwise.

She says,

“A household is bigger than the house itself, and as Paul describes the duties of a wife and mother, it is clear that her duties are defined by the people she is surrounded by and not simply her street address. What it looks like to keep a household running varies from century to century, from country to country, from family to family, and from season to season. A woman keeping a house full of small children looks different than a woman keeping a house full of teenagers…

…I would never say that a wife’s place is in the home, but I would absolutely say that a wife’s priority should be her home.”

The void we feel may not exist after all!

With each chapter Merkle points out the ways that the ‘feminist attitude’ (as she has defined) has the woman pointing inwards to herself, away from her people, and/or away from God’s design.

Merkle’s heart for this book is to jolt us out of our lethargic slumber, hypnotized by the draw of the culture’s “promises” of “freedoms,” and to reorient ourselves to the incredibly meaningful and important design God created us for— where we will find our true freedom and fulfillment.

The Outline

Merkle opens the book by observing the culture’s obsession with removing boundaries, particularly regarding gender. The battle against gender stereotypes has devolved into just the idea of gender being offensive. But instead of being disheartened, Merkle notes that we have a unique position now.

By giving historical context of the feminist movement, Merkle points out the very real unjust boundaries forced on women in the past (i.e. no voting rights, barred from education, etc) and explains the very divergent trajectories of a solution based in feminist thought and one aligned with the Bible.

Boundaries are a good thing. She says they are “essential to freedom” just as adhering to rules and boundaries are essential to excelling in a game of basketball.

I have to insert this applicable quote from Carolyn McCulley’s book, Radical Womanhood, here:

“The real problem is that a man once stood by his wife as she listened to God’s enemy question His authority, His goodness, and His boundaries. The man did not intervene in any way. Instead, he was a monument to passivity. His only action was to eat the forbidden fruit his wife gave to him. For her part, the woman knew the life-preserving boundaries the Lord God had established, but in her quest to be like God, she violated those boundaries, sinfully judged God’s motives and orders, and gave in to her own assessment of the situation.

… Every one of us is prone to agree with Satan’s character assassination of God. We often chafe at the good boundaries God has given us. We are easily tempted to think the worst of God. And we doubt that what God has provided is anywhere near as good as what He has restricted.”

So here we stand in the rubble of boundaries leftover from deconstruction in decades past, able to rebuild the boundaries that help us live as women in the world as God has purposed it, keeping out the unjust and replacing what is right.

She then warns us of the two ditches, or distractions, that send us veering off course. We could swerve into escapism, believing if we lived according to an earlier and “better era” like Pride and Prejudice or Little House on the Prairie, we can avoid the ‘ungodliness of society’. But that’s a pretend world.

Or we could jerk the other way and start believing that our worth and fulfillment lies solely in career advancement and recognition. The self is the most important. Do whatever it takes to achieve your dreams and don’t settle for anything less. Personal achievement is the noble path. But that’s an empty lie.

We can’t isolate ourselves in our homes or ignore them altogether.

Merkle then runs through the three waves of feminism highlighting figures like Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Margaret Sanger and their contributions.

This is followed by a look at the Creation Mandate found in Genesis— subdue, fill, help, glorify— and what that means as women and how those could be applied to our lives today.

The Best Parts

“A woman raising her children is not only shaping the next generation, she is also shaping little humans who are going to live forever. The souls she gave birth to are immortal. Immortal. And somehow, our culture looks at a woman who treats that as if it might be an important task and says, ‘It’s a shame she’s wasting herself. She could be doing something important— like filing paperwork for insurance claims.’”

I am a stay-at-home mom and I have felt the inferiority surrounding that title. Any version of small talk usually begins with ‘So what do you do?’ My reply is often met with an awkward pause as if there is nothing further worth talking about. Oh, you’re just another one of those… I feel my abilities and intelligence is sized up on that fact alone.

I feel the culture at large looks at ‘stay-at-home mom’ and sees a woman who has settled into a demeaning traditional role of wife and mother, given up on her dreams, lacking in ambition. Pitied for not wanting more for herself, for not recognizing that women can and should have careers now! We need more women CEOs and doctors and engineers and astronauts and I’m ruining the cause of women everywhere because all I do is housework and change diapers.

Well I have news for you, world! I don’t do housework!

Ha. Just kidding. Well I’m mostly serious about the housework, but I reject that perception of what my life looks like. There is nothing demeaning or ‘sorry’ about raising children full time. It is an honor and should be seen that way.

Merkle does a fantastic job of elevating and validating what women who choose to stay home are doing. God created women alone to bring life into the world! He created our bodies to make and sustain life. He created us to be nurturers, managers of a home that brings people together and points them toward the Lord.

To be clear, in all the ways she defends the housewife in intelligence, worth, and work, she is not simultaneously tearing down the working woman. She is focusing on destroying the stigma of what “staying at home” has been reduced to in a culture fixated on “equalizing” literally everything.

“Our jobs are not important because they keep us just as busy as if we had “real” careers. They’re not important because we can come up with important sounding words to describe them. Our jobs are important because they are poetry. Because they share loves and they shape loyalties, they teach and they convict. They’re important because they take glorious truths and make them incarnate, make them visible, and weave them into the souls of the people around us.”

What I love about this quote is that I believe God created women as multitaskers. And because we can hold multiple lines of thought in our head, we can do this weaving of souls and truth as we go about our day in ways that men can’t (or are not as likely to). We can incorporate biblical truths and make connections with all kinds of things as we teach and live with our kids. I think that’s really cool to think about!

I think it’s also important to insert this caveat, lest we paint Merkle as someone who thinks only ‘true women’ have children.

“There is nothing inherently blessed about the physical act of childbearing. A woman can have children to the glory of God or in defiance of God, and a woman can be childless to the glory of God or in defiance of God.”

We are no more or less biblical women if we can or can’t have children. Again, it’s not where women stand, but what they are pointed at. What is the attitude and the mindset? Where is the heart?

I had my own journey of feeling like a failure because my body wasn’t doing what it was supposed to to make a baby. Why would God command us to be fruitful and multiply and then close our wombs?

Everyone’s journey is different, and we can’t begin to explain the hard paths God allows us to walk, but having our own biological children is not the only way God has created us to fulfill his command. We need to open our minds to the possibilities.

If you are home with your kids and constantly second-guessing the choices of your life, feeling like you’ve failed your true self in some way or have ‘settled,’ this book is for you.

Merkle will lift your head and infuse those heavy-laden arms with God’s truth that those arms are holding and caring for eternal souls and there is nothing flippant or wasteful about that. God will bless your very hard work.

Other quotes that resonated with me:

“Running away from the scriptural requirement to submit to one man, as an equal, within the protection of marriage (because that’s just too demeaning), has resulted in women living with the reality of abject submission to numerous men, with no protection at all, and with her bearing the entire weight of responsibility for the outcome. The fruit of this lifestyle must either be killed or she must raise the child alone.”

“I happen to think that the role of women is massively important and incredibly fundamental to the mission God has given us, and if I were the devil I would definitely make the goal of distracting the women one of my primary objects.”

“God wants women to tend the home— tending the home must therefore be a hugely meaningful task.’ The way we respond to the command shows whether we trust God or whether we doubt Him… We should not read that command as God telling the women to get out of the way and make room for the important stuff—He’s telling them to get out there on the front lines.”

“No Christian should ever really be asking, ‘How can I fulfill myself?’— the question should always be pointed outward. Who can I bless? How can I use my gifts to build up those around me? How can I embrace my femininity in such a way that I shine the light of the gospel into a lost and sinful world? How can I be truly excellent in the opportunities that God has placed in front of me? The answers will vary wildly, but the questions are always the same for every woman— married, single, old, young.”

The Hard Parts

I think the hardest part readers will have with this book is the author’s voice. In a lot of ways I found it refreshing just as I found Rachel’s bluntness inspiring in her book You Who?.

But there’s also part of me that feels it worked better for the content of Rachel’s book whereas Eve in Exile has some more controversial and sensitive material. She has called out a group of women, named feminists, and criticized their motives.

While I believe that truth does not always need to be gentle and doesn’t always make us feel good, I can see how some phrases may have gone a bit far or would turn people off to considering the author’s intent:

At one point she says feminists need to “calm down” (never a good thing to tell someone) and that they got their “research techniques from fainting goats”—this was in jest, pointing out the inconsistencies and linguistic gymnastics needed to reach the conclusions they do.
She compares something to lesbianism using the terms “ugly and barren”— which I think she means ugly in terms of the opposite of God’s beautiful design and barren because biologically they essentially are. But, yes, this writing voice is not going to make lesbian imagebearers feel loved or respected.
She also says that women who are fixated on the one thing the Bible prohibits them from doing (teaching/preaching in authority over men) “need to get out more and see that there are people in the world with actual problems.” Again, the general sentiment that women keep fighting for the one thing they can’t have being ridiculous resonates with me but saying it this way could make women feel like their feelings are belittled and the call they feel to teach is foolish. Again, feelings aren’t our standard of truth and God would never call us to something outside his design, but her words would not fall under ‘tactful.’

Having read some of Merkle’s blog posts I got a better sense of her person and realize her voice is not in anger but just boldness and some humor, part of her passionate and fiery personality. But the written word is often misinterpreted and people who are already anticipating to disagree with her will not be persuaded otherwise by her tone.

In her Glorify chapter she talks about 1 Corinthians 11:3-12 which includes the verse: “For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.” This led her to eventually say that “Women are the glory of the glory” comparing it to the Holy of the Holies. This passage of Scripture is confusing (I found it to be confusing in Kevin DeYoung’s book Men and Women in the Church too) and I’m not sure if I fully grasp or agree with her line of interpretation here. Needs more study.

Other reviewers seemed to interpret this chapter to be dangerously close to husband worship. I wouldn’t go that far. She encourages us to serve our husbands, she just maybe didn’t emphasize “as unto the Lord” enough. For both husbands and wives are called to serve one another, but Merkle’s book is written for women and doesn’t flesh out what God’s commands to men are. We can’t criticize the book for a lack in that way.

Another theme requiring discussion was her charge to women to “enflesh” theology and make it beautiful.

She says, “We are the ones who take the metaphysical principles, the heady and complicated truths of our faith, and instead of saying it to the men in a sermon, we show it to them. Our job is to make holiness beautiful, to make it taste. We draw people to the truth by showing them the beauty of life in Christ, and in real, actual, tangible ways.”

For one, I think there was a missed opportunity to talk about how women can teach theology with words. We aren’t merely relegated to visuals. Our words are important and there are biblical ways to use them— like her writing books, or teaching women’s classes. I don’t think she disagrees with this, but it would have been helpful to include.

Secondly, there are men who make things beautiful too, who “enflesh” in visual and tangible ways. It’s not a solely feminine quality. I also don’t think she would disagree with this. She’s writing to women, not men. But still, there’s just maybe more to be said about this topic.

In Summation

I can give grace for her word choices and I ultimately believe her writing voice is in love. I see and commend the passion to jolt Christians from assimilating into a culture set against God’s design.

When it comes down to it, I, personally, found this book to be both uplifting and challenging.

She reminded me that everything I’m doing at home for my husband and my kids has eternal value and importance and I am playing an essential, God-ordained role in the plan for his glorious kingdom. There is nothing wasteful about it, and when I start to resist the boundaries God has designed, then I am starting to believe that God has nothing exciting or meaningful for me within that framework and that’s a pretty small view of God.

Whether we stay at home full-time or we have work outside the home, we need to be asking ourselves which way we are pointed— at ourselves and our own dreams and desires we feel we deserve, or are we pointed outward at our people, serving as Christ served? Are the decisions we’re making about how we spend our time keeping our family’s best interests in mind or are we convincing ourselves that anything less than self-fulfillment is demeaning? Are our choices benefiting and adding to the home or taking away from it? What is our attitude?

We can’t deny that feminism has influenced the culture’s war on boundaries, and I will stand with Merkle in seeking to rebuild the ones that God has lovingly designed for us to find ultimate freedom and fulfillment within.

Would I hand this book out to every woman on the street? Probably not. At least not without addressing the primary caveats of writing voice and author intent.

Radical Womanhood (fantastic book) is very similar to this book in terms of content but a little gentler. I would probably lean more towards this one as a recommendation if I am in doubt of a reader’s disposition.

Two final quotes:

“If I set the sun beside the moon,
And if I set the land beside the sea,
And if I set the flower beside the fruit,
And if I set the town beside the country
And if I set the man beside the woman
I suppose some fool would talk
About one being better.”

G.K. Chesterton

“The good news is that when we trust God, He’s never waiting at the other end to say “Haha, tricked you!” God is faithful, and He gives what He promises. Obedience and faith never turn out to have been a trap.”

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Eve in Exile

Eve in Exile and the Restoration of FemininityBy: Rebekah Merkle