Customer Reviews

The Extraordinary Mother: Blessings for You from Bible Moms

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This is a nice quick read. Each chapter is only a few pages and focuses on a particular woman of the Bible. It makes for an excellent gift item for a "soon-to-be" mother or a mother looking to grow in her faith. There isn't a lot of theology, just examples of Biblical mothers living out their faithfulness. There is much to be learned from these women, both through their faithfulness and their times of trouble.

One interesting thing about this book, is the fact that some of these Mother's are not well know to the average Christian. For example, most people don't pay much attention to John Mark's mother.

The book uses the following mothers as examples:

Eve

Sarah

Hagar

Rebekah

Rachel & Leah

Jochebed

Deborah

Samson's Mother

Abigail

King Lemuel's Mother

Mary - Jesus' Mother

Mary - John Mark's Mother

I purchased more than twenty of these as Mother's Day Gifts for mothers in our church. In the past we had bought flowers and the ladies told us they preferred books. We have bought books the last couple years but none before brought the response that this one did. They absolutely LOVED this book!

I came across this book by chance in a store and, while I at first scoffed at the typical complimentarian slants John MacArthur put on certain Biblical women, I also found some gems of wisdom.

I'll admit, my first reaction was to merely snort at the book and put it back. As a Christian woman who recognizes the truth of equality among God's children, I had no patience or taste for MacArthur's claim that Eve followed Adam "with perfect meekness and humility". After that degrading sentence, MacArthur chose to add a little dig at feminists by claiming "this may not be convenient to modern feminists, but it's clearly what the Bible says." Wrong, brother. The Bible never says Eve follows Adam; that idea is subjective and utterly unnecessary to the Christian faith. With that in mind, I returned the book to the shelf and forgot about it until recently.

When I looked through the book again, I gave myself time to really study the chapters and found that there was really less sexism and condescension than I had originally thought. In fact, other than that one distasteful section in the chapter about Eve, there's really very little in the book that gave me cause for objection. Even Deborah is upheld by MacArthur as the strong leader that she was and, except for the erroneous idea that God shamed Barak for asking Deborah to accompany him, I agreed with MacArthur's presentation of her story. Indeed, he even described Deborah as the "mother of Israel", which was really a way I had never thought of her before!

The only other time I had a problem with the book was at the end of Sarah's chapter, in which MacArthur seemed to praise her for throwing out Hagar. MacArthur said, "Once Hagar was cast out, Sarah was able to return to a healthy monogamous relationship with her husband. In fact, her actions were a sign of her faith in God." I was rather disgusted by this shabby treatment of Hagar and felt that MacArthur was treating her the same thoughtless way that Sarah did, as a problem to be got rid of instead of the human being that she was. Heck, it was Sarah's own fault that Hagar was a problem to begin with; she practically threw her into bed with Abraham and then she blamed Hagar for the predicament that she herself caused! I finished the chapter of Sarah in this book feeling that MacArthur had completely ignored Hagar and written her off as unimportant. Then, however, I turned to the next chapter, and who do you think it was about? Hagar! MacArthur hadn't ignored her after all; he'd just focused on Sarah in the chapter dedicated to her and spent an entire other chapter on Hagar's story. Needless to say, I was relieved and very impressed. I very much enjoyed going on to read Hagar's story, especially since I think she's one of the most under-examined women in the Bible.

All kinds of ladies are presented here, from Rebecca to Abigail, Bathsheba and Mother Mary. MacArthur features Scripture throughout the book and a blessing to the reader for her own motherhood at the end of each chapter (assuming the reader's female).

The package of this book is gorgeous as well. Both covers are light blue and the end papers are a gorgeous, cobalt blue. There are photographs of different kinds of flowers throughout the book, all of which feature a soft and natural beauty.

All in all, this book is really a little gem and I do recommend it to the ladies out there. No doubt men could learn something too about the various strong women in the Bible and their stories. And hey, I may not agree with all of MacArthur's views of womanhood, but at least he didn't make this book pink, light purple or some other "feminine" color. That's a nice change :)