oDiscussing periods in public seems like a risky endeavour. Yet periods so greatly impact women’s lives that we would benefit from having frank conversations on the subject. Plus, our brothers will benefit from understanding their mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, and female friends.
Periods in Outer Space
Consider this story about the first American woman in outer space: In 1983, as Sally Ride was preparing for her one-week mission, NASA engineers asked her if 100 tampons would be enough for the week of her period. That would have been over 70 tampons more than she needed! Although these NASA engineers were some of the greatest minds in America, they had little clue about the way a woman’s body functioned!
The first person to suggest a discussion on such a topic was a listener of the podcast I co-host, Chrétienne. In considering her request, I came across a book titled A Brief Theology of Periods. I came across favourable book reviews on TGC Australia and The Good Book Company. So, I told myself that if these trusted resources were bold enough to publish on this topic, it’s because a true need exists, and our readers might benefit from such a discussion.
Broad Statistics about Periods
A few statistics might help place the idea in context:
- Every month, 1.8 billion people across the world menstruate.
- The average woman today has around 400-500 periods in her lifetime.
- Periods are very much part of the way women experience the world as embodied creatures. God has made us with minds and souls and bodies… and for 50% of the population, for around 2280 days, that body is bleeding. That’s 6.5 years of her life!
- The average age for the commencement of menstruation is 12.5 years. This is much earlier than 150 years ago, when the average age was 17 years.
- On average, a woman will menstruate until she is fifty years old, for an average total of 37.5 years. During this time, she will menstruate around 500 times.
- Menstrual cycles vary but, on average, women have 13 per year.
- The first tampon was invented in 1937 by an American doctor for his wife, a nurse. She encouraged him to develop and market a more suitable product than sanitary napkins. Tampax, as they became known, met with great resistance from politicians and the clergy. Religious leaders complained that these “sinful products” would impair virginity. For this reason, until as late as the 1950s, every packet of tampons had to carry the warning “Not suitable for unmarried women.” To this day, in many traditional countries in the developing world, sales of pads are notably higher than tampons.
Periods Around the World
In many parts of the world, periods can be an even bigger challenge than for us in the West:
- In low-income countries, half of the schools lack adequate water, sanitation, and hygiene services. All of these are crucial to enable girls and female teachers to manage menstruation.
- Women who lack female-friendly sanitation facilities in the workplace lose wages for days of work missed during menstruation. What’s more, their employers view them as unreliable workers. This diminishes their options for advancement.
- A study in Kenya found that 95 percent of menstruating girls missed one to three school days per month. Seventy percent reported a negative impact on their grades. And more than 50 percent stated falling behind in school because of menstruation.
- A survey in Bangladesh found that only 6 percent of schools provide education on health and hygiene. And only 36 percent of girls had prior knowledge about menstruation before their first period.
Incredible Pastoral Care
An African sister once shared her testimony of coming to Christ as a teenager from a poor family. Her parents turned her away, and she had to fend for herself. Her pastor was a true shepherd. He cared for her spiritually. But he also demonstrated concern for her materially in very practical ways. For example, he asked if she had anyone to help her buy supplies for when she had her menstrual cycle! He then gave her money to buy what she needed. He seemed keenly aware of how hard this could be for a teenage girl on her own. I find this level of pastoral care incredible!
Our Bodies Proclaim God’s Goodness in Creation[1]
If we turn to the Scriptures, we read that in the beginning, God created male and female. Their bodies were different by design. Together, they were to procreate and fill the earth. Sexuality, procreation, and all that accompanies these were God’s good plan for his image-bearers. Our bodies, therefore, proclaim God’s goodness in creation. Because we believe in God’s good design, we can view our bodies, including their childbearing capacity, as beautiful and as glorifying to our Creator. We’ve been fashioned with the ability to conceive and nurture new life in us. This is a gift from God!
Our Bodies Proclaim God’s Goodness in the Fall
Our bodies also proclaim God’s goodness in the fall. The rebellion of our first parents deserved instant death. Instead, God showed them mercy. But their rebellion brought consequences. In the judgment oracle of Genesis 3, the LORD told Eve that he would greatly increase her pains in childbirth. So, if Eve did menstruate before the fall, her periods were not accompanied by excruciating cramps, PMS, endometriosis, shame, and the uncleanness that later became associated with menstruation.
So, our bodies proclaim not only the truth and goodness of God our Creator, but also of God our Judge. Ever since the fall, the whole process of childbearing, with its various systems and stages, has been accompanied by pain on many levels, not only physical but also emotional. Think of the emotional upheaval many women experience due to the hormonal shifts brought about by PMS. Think of the pain of longing for children and being unable to have them. In such a case, a period is a monthly reminder of a barren womb.
Our Bodies Proclaim Hope in God
Praise God that the story doesn’t end in Genesis 3. Even after the fall, our bodies proclaim hope in God. And the rest of the story, and in particular the barren wombs that are made fecund, teach us hope in the Redeemer. I explored this idea a bit in the article on childbirth as a theme of biblical theology. God glorified his name by dramatically interrupting the menstruation of the matriarchs of Israel, allowing them to bring life into the world. And through their seed came the Deliverer, who also experienced a supernatural birth. Mary’s personal experience confirmed that the angel Gabriel’s announcement was true when her periods ended, and her belly began to grow.
Leviticus 15 and Women’s Uncleanness
And yet, the question arises as to what we are to make of the laws in Leviticus 15 concerning menstruating women. If we read them through our Western frameworks, they seem degrading to women. But, as I’ve written in another article on how to interpret difficult passages of the Bible, we need to remember a few things when we face questions we can’t answer on our own. First, God is good. Period. (No pun intended!) We must settle that in our hearts before we go any further. And second, we need to do the hard work of peeling back the layers of time to understand something perplexing in its cultural and historical context. That takes hard work. But it’s rewarding indeed.
Kathleen Nielson on Leviticus 15
One author who helps us as we seek to interpret Leviticus 15 and other passages like it is Kathleen Nielson. In her book Women & God: Hard Questions. Beautiful Truth, she says the following:
Why would God call a woman “unclean” when she has her monthly period? Two things help us here: first, if we read all of Leviticus 15, we find equal attention given to men’s reproductive discharges, with equal contamination and equal requirements for purification. God’s not out to get women; he’s seeking to communicate something about cleanness and uncleanness among all people. And that something doesn’t just have to do with protection of his people from diseases easily communicated through blood and semen, though that was one good effect of these laws.
The second, larger, point is this: through these ceremonial laws God was communicating his holiness and his mercy. We have to read through Leviticus to grasp the detailed requirements for purification and blood sacrifice, all of which point to the way our sin disqualifies us from approaching a holy God. For us to come before such a God in worship, sin must be dealt with—and God mercifully provided a way.
Discharges of blood and semen in themselves are not evil. These discharges were symbols of uncleanness. Blood in itself represents life: “The life of every creature is its blood” (Leviticus 17 v 14). So the loss of blood, as in a woman’s bleeding, was directly associated with death—death that came on the human race as God’s judgment for sin. These Old Testament purification rituals point backward to the fall and point forward to the Lord Jesus, who shed his blood to cleanse us from our sin and give us eternal life. In Luke 8 v 43-48, we see Jesus welcoming a desperate woman with a chronic discharge of blood who had, in faith, touched him and been healed by him. These Old Testament laws help us grasp the beauty of that scene.
Understanding the Difference Between Sin and Impurity
I find her explanation super helpful. I would add a couple of comments:
- When we look at all the possible cases of impurity in the Torah, impurity seemed the norm and purity the exception.
- As Nielson mentions, unclean did not mean sinful. After all, burying the dead was not sinful. Yet it made you unclean. Having marital intercourse wasn’t sinful (the Bible encourages it!). Yet it made a couple unclean. Having leprosy wasn’t sinful. Much like menstruation, it was something a person had no choice over. A woman does not choose to turn away from God one week of the month. She is simply living in the body God gave her. Notice that no sacrifice is required for a woman following menstruation. Therefore, a woman is not by nature bad because she is menstruating. And if she’s not bad, then she’s not being punished. If she’s not being punished, there should be no shame during her monthly periods and the actions that surround them, including her times of impurity. This is important to remember because, depending on how we were raised, many women have grown up with a great deal of shame about their bodies in general, and menstruation in particular.
- In the Ancient Near East, regularly menstruating women were fewer than they are in the West today. Women married younger and bore more children. It was not unusual for a woman to bear ten children. And we must remember that pregnant women were not ceremonially unclean. Also, women weaned their little ones later, at age two or three. So, they did not resume normal menstrual cycles as early as we in the West do post-partum. We tend to marry later, bear children later, have fewer children, and wean them sooner. So we are likely to menstruate for a lot longer than our ancient Israelite counterparts. This is significant because it means that all women were not barred from entering God’s presence for a full week every month. The number of women this applied to was likely much less than we imagine.
Periods and the Church Fathers
Unfortunately, throughout church history, Church Fathers misunderstood the Levitical laws and transposed them onto the Church:
- As early as 241, Dionysius, Archbishop of Alexandria, wrote to declare that, “a menstruating woman should not approach the Holy Table, nor touch the Holy of Holies, nor go to a church, but should pray elsewhere.”
- Local councils in France: Orange (441) and Epaone (517) decreed that no women deacons could be ordained in their region. The reason was the fear that menstruating women would defile the sanctuary.
- Bishop Timothy of Alexandria (680) stipulated that couples should abstain from sexual relations on Saturdays and Sundays before receiving communion as well as during the day. Women who were menstruating could not receive communion, could not be baptized, and could not visit a church at Easter.
- Bishop Theodore of Canterbury (690), ignoring Pope Gregory the Great’s letter to his predecessor, forbade menstruating women from visiting a church or receiving communion. Women remained unclean for 40 days after giving birth.
To Be Continued
In the second part of this series, we will conclude this discussion by exploring what the New Covenant teaches us on this subject. We will also explore lessons about periods for the building up of the body of Christ.
[1] I’m indebted to Rachel Jones and her book A Biblical Theology of Periods for some of the reflections in this chapter, particularly in viewing our periods through the lenses of the epochs of redemptive history.
