Open your Bible to the book of Esther. Before Esther ever enters the story, there is another woman standing in the doorway.
Her name is Vashti.
King Ahasuerus had been throwing a feast for 180 days. Then he threw another one for seven more. By the time he called for Vashti to come stand before his drunken guests, he had been in that banquet hall for over six months. And Vashti said no.
She lost her crown for it.
Now here is the question nobody in Sunday school seems to ask: Why would any woman have wanted that crown after seeing what it cost Vashti to keep her dignity?
Traditional Christian teaching tends to hold Esther up as the model. The humble, obedient, strategic woman who saved her people. And Esther did do something remarkable — her courage is real and worth honoring. But the church has rarely stopped to ask what happened to the women who watched Vashti be removed and then lined up to take her place. What did they believe about themselves? What had they been taught about their worth?
Those are the questions the text is quietly asking us — if we are willing to hear them.
What the Story Was Shaped to Tell Us
Long before the Bible was written, there were other stories. Older ones. Lilitu was an ancient Mesopotamian goddess — the figure from which the myth of Lilith was later shaped. She represented wild winds and untamed spaces. Free and ungoverned.
Female power in the ancient world was rarely allowed to exist without a warning attached to it. Goddesses were painted as jealous, vengeful, and dangerous. Women with desire, with opinions, with boundaries were turned into cautionary tales — siren-like figures, Jezebels, enemies of the home and the family. Women to be controlled, not trusted.
This did not happen by accident.
When a group needs to justify its power, it must first justify why another group should not have it. If men were to be seen as the rightful leaders of families, churches, and nations — answering only to a God imagined in their own image — then women who pushed back had to be made to look like the problem. The demonizing was never really about who women were. It was about who certain men needed women to be.
That story got written into theology. It got preached from pulpits. It got passed from mothers to daughters for so many generations that many women began to carry it as if it were their own belief. It sounds like:
- A woman must love and honor her husband — because someone else is waiting to take him, if they haven't already.
- Any desire a woman has to question male authority is rebellion — against her husband, against the church, against God.
- A woman who puts herself first is selfish. Possibly dangerous. Certainly not godly.
- There is no limit to what a woman should give.
But the God I read about in Scripture tells a different story.
What the Gospel Actually Says About Women
Jesus did not treat women as afterthoughts. He spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well — alone, in public, across every social boundary that said he should not. He let Mary sit at his feet as a student when her sister thought she should be in the kitchen. He appeared first to Mary Magdalene after the resurrection and told her to go tell the others. In a culture where a woman's testimony was not considered legally valid, Jesus chose a woman to be the first witness to the most important event in human history.
That is not a coincidence. That is a statement.
The Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 3:28 that there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female — because we are all one in Christ Jesus. That verse does not erase difference. But it absolutely dismantles hierarchy built on it.
A faith that teaches women to disappear into service until there is nothing left of themselves is not the Gospel. It is something else wearing the Gospel's clothes.
Reclaiming What Was Always True
Progressive Christianity asks us to read the text honestly — including the parts that make us uncomfortable. And one of the most uncomfortable truths sitting inside the story of Esther is this: the community celebrated a woman replacing another woman instead of asking why either of them had to live that way at all.
We can do better. Here is what that looks like:
No woman should feel — or be made to feel — that she has to compromise her integrity to be loved, accepted, or considered a good Christian woman. Every woman gets to define where her own line is. That is not selfishness. That is stewardship of the self God gave her.
No woman should feel that without a man she is somehow incomplete or less than. Scripture does not teach that. Culture taught that, and dressed it in Scripture's language.
Women love and support other women. The church should reflect that truth instead of quietly encouraging competition between them.
A woman's body belongs to her and to God — not to a government, not to a congregation, not to a husband who has not earned her trust. She does not owe anyone access to it.
No woman should be made to doubt her own mind, her own values, or her own sense of what is real. Gaslighting is not a spiritual discipline.
A woman who builds physical strength is not less feminine. A woman who chooses not to is not less worthy. God is not keeping score on either end of that spectrum.
The Invitation
There are many more truths we could name as we do the long, necessary work of rebuilding a theology that honors women as full image-bearers of God — not supporting characters in someone else's spiritual story.
But if all of this feels like a lot, here is the one thing to carry with you:
Every woman should put herself first — not above God, and not at the expense of genuine love — but as an act of faithfulness to the life she was given.
If you do not want a lot of children, that is between you and God. The pressure to fill pews or grow populations is a political agenda. It is not a calling.
Work inside the home, outside the home, or both. Proverbs 31 describes a woman running businesses, buying land, and managing a household — she was not doing one thing. She was doing everything she chose to do.
Putting yourself first does not mean neglecting the people you love. It means remembering that you are also one of the people God loves — and that your flourishing matters too.
You are not a footnote. You are not Vashti's replacement. You are not defined by how much of yourself you can give away before there is nothing left.
You are made in the image of God.
Live like it.