When I was about 8 years old, I decided I wanted to try playing softball. I had never played a sport before, but I had seen my older sister play and wanted to give it a try. By accident, I gave my mother the form for baseball, not softball. I ended up on a team with all boys.
To his credit, my coach sincerely tried to teach me to hit. If desire to succeed was all it took, I would have been hitting home runs. As it was, I was really quite terrible. The boys on my team were nice enough to me, but inevitably when I would get up to bat one of the basemen would holler to the pitcher, “strike her out, she’s just a girl!”
“Just a girl” indeed! I had a heavy metal bat in my hand and all he had was a cloth glove to protect him! I tried to focus all my energy into hitting the ball, however, instead of laying out the insulting boys on the other team.
As I went through school, and especially whenever I played sports, the fact that I was female never failed to make me feel I was second-rate. Even from some of my friends, who were also girls, came taunts of, “you punch like a girl.” Yes, occasionally I punched my friends, upon their request (don’t ask- middle school was a strange time).
As a Christian, I would love to say that I found things to be different in church. This was not so. In my high school youth group, girls seemed to be more listened to and valued if they invested heavily in their appearance and acted like idiots. Sorry about the bluntness- I actually knew them to be much more intelligent than they let on, which is why I must say “acted.”
Thus, by the time I reached college age I felt I had to become an object to be noticed. Of course, I rebelled. If I was supposed to be a made-up dummy who laughed at nothing like a fool and didn’t have any strong opinions, I countered this by seeking to be exactly the opposite. My views on issues involving gender, because of the unfair treatment of women by society from my personal experience, became quite skewed. I thought women should be allowed to do anything a man could do, and that more women should be trying to break gender stereotypes by being strong, opinionated leaders and world changers. I masqueraded as exactly that for at least a few years. I was also trying to be that independent woman who didn’t need any man to help her. Ever.
Allow me to pause to explain: I am merely stating how my original opinion was formed, not trying to justify it by these anecdotes. I actually say much of this to my shame now.
In the midst of all this, however, I lost a few things. I lost my ability to respect men. Not completely, but at many points I trampled their opinions to prove that though I was a woman I could think things through well, too. The issue in my heart, and at the heart of feminism, is pride.
At the same time, God was doing a great work in my heart. I had this nagging question to God--what does it mean to be a woman in His kingdom? I somehow knew I had got it wrong, I just wasn’t quite sure how.
I knew to find the answer to my questions, I had to fight with my interpretation of the creation account. Why did God create a woman? How is she different from Adam? How is she the same as him? Is she, too, made in God’s image?
The last question was the most crucial to answer. If I was not made in the image of God as well, then it didn’t seem to me that all the same rules which applied to “men” applied to me. Some wacky theologians even believe a woman can be saved only by being made into a man after she dies. But I digress.
This brings me to my current thoughts on the matter. If Man was made to reflect God’s beauty, character, and glory, being made in His image, why did God not simply stop with Adam? He could have made him asexual.
I have a curious interpretation of this matter. Please test what I say against scripture as a whole, and decide for yourself. Even so, this is what I offer: that God wanted Adam to reflect Him in his relational nature, and namely, in His ability to love. Thus, God created Eve from Adam, making her rightly to be loved as himself, as she formerly was a part of him!
Eve’s purpose, as she is also made in the image of God, is to reflect a different kind of love. This is the love of submission--as Christ submitted to the Father, not in a natural inferiority of being but in a willing, loving, trusting, and mysteriously powerful way. The power of submission is the best way I know to fight the ill effects of pride on other human beings.
When women allow men to exemplify the power and wisdom of Christ and attempt to exemplify Christ’s humility and submission, God is glorified in both genders. To be clear, this does not let men nor women off the hook for trying to imitate Christ’s full character, but I am proposing that perhaps each gender has been created to more naturally reflect certain aspects of Christ.
The Fall has undoubtedly contributed to misuse of the above principles, where some men will abuse their position to “rule” her in a controlling or demeaning way. Likewise, some women’s desire will be “against” men. She will contradict him for the sake of contradicting him, or to remind him that she matters, too. This does not just play out in marriage, but in society as well.
So how has this changed my feminist stance? If women were created to reflect a different aspect of Christ’s character, we need to stop trying to a) do all the things men do--we were made from Man but not to reflect him and b) one up men all the time--this was not meant to be a “battle of the sexes,” but rather a partnership. I believe men and women can learn from each other, can help one another, and can reflect Christ together. The battle needs to end somewhere, and this woman is laying down her sword (which can be put to much better use elsewhere).
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