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Healing Before Empowering
Christianity is good for both men and women, even when it does not empower us. Americans often carry the illusion that empowering a person is always a good thing, but a moment of reflection clears up that optimistic fantasy. Bad people should not be empowered and good people already are.
Jesus Christ provides a way for men and women to become what they were created to be. His followers, Christians, are not so much empowered as healed. The healed soul of a Christian man or woman will grow, but out of adoration for God and not as the result of some religious form of pep talk or from a church service selling self-esteem.
Sadly humans as they are today are not what they should be. We are marred--and this applies to every area of human personhood. Humanity needs to hear women's voices and men's voices, but before empowering these voices to speak, both men and women need to be restored.
Doing so includes both encouraging difference and equality.
In traditional Christian belief both men and women were created in the image of God. We are both the same sort of being: human beings. Within that class of being men and women are different from each other. Both sexes reflect different aspects of God's character and the differences are delightful.
Stressing fundamental equality while allowing for diversity is difficult, but Christianity does it.
The traditional Christian belief that men and women are both in God's image helped produce equality before the law in Western cultures. Most of the time, the relevant feature of any person in civil society is not his or her sex, but his or her common humanity.
Christian societies consistently moved in the direction of giving equal civil rights to men and women.
Simultaneously, Christians recognize the pressure to homogenize and become intolerant of different voices. Treating everyone as if they are the same, when they are not can sometimes be used as an excuse to stifle different voices. This is especially true when there is a failure at creating space in which differences can flourish.
When people are different, then treating them as if they are the same can destroy valuable diversity.
The Church administers the same medicine to our broken humanity, but for different treatment where humans are different. Christianity allows both for spiritual mothers and fathers. Persons from either sex speak into the life of the Church, but the Church refuses to confuse the roles, in part because we wish to hear different voices.
Wisely, Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, and many (if not most) Protestants reserve some roles in the family and the Church for women and some for men. This allows space for each sex to cultivate and speak powerfully in a different voice.
Saint Nina is venerated as equal to the apostles, but she is not an apostle. Christians are able to honor Saint Nina as equal to apostles, because her ministry has common features to their ministry. But by allowing her to act out of her own experience of humanity and not shoe horning her ministry into male categories, the Church is also able to hear her woman's voice.
Treating humans the same where they are the same, but different where they are different is very difficult. Simple-minded societies and religions do not even try. Some particularly wicked cultures attempt to silence the voice of one sex or the other, sometimes in the name of religion.
In other cultures normative differences in roles and functions are not tolerated and so healthy diversity is lost. Some fading Protestant groups in the United States demand men and women are treated interchangeably in all functions. Experience shows a massive loss of many voices as a result.
In this area, like any other, Christians have not always understood their own ideas correctly. Bad people have used the slow development of Christian self-understanding as an opportunity for harm. Christians have been inconsistent in their views on these issues. Christianity is always good for men and women, but particular Christians often are not.
Christianity has reconciled Christian women and men to God by Jesus' work. Salvation is, however, both general (for all humankind) and particular (for me). In general each Christian can sing Amazing Grace, but the individual applies this gift from God to his or her particular sins.
Another important piece of what makes each person what he or she would be is his or her nature as a man or a woman. The Church allows each woman and each man a unique voice and the opportunities to cultivate that voice.
When made right with God, humans gain the power to be what they were made to be. We flourish not just as humans, but as individuals. Before we can flourish, or even be empowered, we must first become good so that more power does not harm us or others. God often provides tough medicine for our problems . . . and this can feel exhausting and difficult for a time. When it empowers, Christianity wants to empower souls for Paradise. The great choir of heaven will be made of the beautiful harmony of many different voices . . . and not of the flat homogeneity so loved by the modern critic.
By
John Mark Reynolds
|
October 27, 2008; 4:57 AM ET
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Posted by: sojajohnthaikattil | October 29, 2008 4:36 AM
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John Mark Reynolds:
Defining the parameters, in essence, another person's reality, and how that person can best live their life, is truly evil. I stay away from churches for that reason.
God made me as I am, not as you and people like you would define my role.
Posted by: darling_ailie | October 27, 2008 7:09 PM
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Not one single Christian denomination stood up for women's suffrage. The Unitarians who opposed slavery(to a small degree) wouldn't back a woman's right to vote. The Patriarchal Cults of Abraham have done everything in their power to deny women equal rights in pay, property ownership and political power. Denying women the pulpit is particularly about denying political power.
You can make the bible say anything since it contradicts itself often enough, but you can't hide or retract the actions of those Cults and they have all activly participated in the repression of the political power of women.
Posted by: ender2 | October 27, 2008 3:50 PM
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Yes, where to begin.
You are in your own little world. And in that little world, you are completely isolated from the feelings, experiences, and suffereings of your fellow man. If that is the stand that you wish to take on everything, then that is your choice.
So, who is Saint Nina? (That is a rhetorical question; I don't really care since there are no Saints according to Protestant Churches.)
Posted by: DanielintheLionsDen | October 27, 2008 9:38 AM
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I can't believe one says it actually promotes diversity to assign complete roles exclusively by sex.
That doesn't, frankly, even make sense.
Tellingly, Reynolds begins by claiming, 'Properly righteous religion )his own, of course, doesn't empower *bad people*' ...then goes on to say how it's 'really good for us' to start calling each other bad people if we aren't suited for total adherence to the kinds of roles he sees fit to enforce.
What means one is a 'real man' or a 'real woman,' even.
It's certainly not hard for *me* to see from experience how quickly anyone who doesn't fit those benificently-imposed roles becomes, by definition... 'bad people' to that thought process.
It gets pretty Betty Corcker around my house, but cause I'm in a traditional role with a non-traditional partner, all of a sudden I fall under that 'bad people' category, to some, and they think it's their business to 'disempower' it with the force of law wherever possible.
Don't call it 'Actually more liberating to obey me,' ...not when you're actually making it harder not to fit the 'role' you want to assign outcasts from your perfect little world.
I mean, it gets pretty Betty Crocker here at my house, but
Posted by: Paganplace | October 25, 2008 1:15 AM
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wow...ok...I hardly know where to begin. It seems you are attempting to play 2 ends against the middle and while I see what you're trying to get at, you seem to have created sludge, not sold ground.
you wrote:"Treating everyone as if they are the same, when they are not can sometimes be used as an excuse to stifle different voices. This is especially true when there is a failure at creating space in which differences can flourish." I can agree completely but i think yours and my meaning would be different. i see little evidence that Christians as a whole in this country want to hear different voices or allow them to flourish. Any day of the week a look at the threads here in On faith and you'll see exactly what I mean.People want everything to be as they believe. there are those who post that unbelievers will roast in hell, that millions will die (rather cheerfully, may I say) when Jesus comes to burn them. Others want to push a pro-life agenda no matter the cost. Still others boycott businesses that show support for gays and lesbians, or exchange the word Holiday for Christmas.
One of the things that made this country os great was its diversity- of people, of religions, of cultures, of ideas. american was the space created to allow them to co-exist. But the meaning of freedom of religion has not gone from being I'll do mine, you do yours to if you don't let me dictate to you, you are infringing on my freedom of religion.
It's so George Orwell- love is Hate, war is Peace. And you never say, who has to heal? Who decides who is good and who is bad? Sure we have guidelines, but as they say the devil is in the details. Is a woman who raised 10 foster kids and made sure they had good lives while rescuing cats in her neighborhood, volunteering at a local old folks home a good person or a bad person if she had an abortion? I say she's good. And her good works are as much about healing as helping.
Posted by: sparrow4 | October 24, 2008 7:48 PM
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Inviting anyone who may be concerned to speak out on behalf of suffering Christians in India:
http://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/2365