I had a true education and learned a few unexpected things in the process. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone has something that they believe in so deeply that they will work it into every conversation and every nook and cranny of their lives. It might be football or it might be feminism, but whatever it is you can be assured that it dominates their thinking and informs everything they do. I think that unbeknownst to us feminism (and yes, the definitions are many) has woven its way into our subconscious and that fact hasn't been without consequence. It is the air we breathe in the 21st century.
I don't know about you, but the only air I want to breathe is the Spirit of God working its way through my dead flesh and making me alive in Christ. Anything less just might be a false God.
The gender debates that have raged in our country for the last 100 + years (they have, don't make me give you a history lesson. Lawd, you don't want that because I LOVE Women's history like I love chocolate). The debates have left us confused and I think have found women feeling like we've got something to prove. If you're a working woman then you feel the pressure to balance and spin a million plates. If you work in your home as a wife and mother you feel the need to justify and fortify the work you do. Nothing women do is ever enough. It is never enough to get equitable pay and it is never enough to make us feel really worthy in the world's eyes either. Don't lie sister, you feel it too. The endless pressure to prove we're enough just as we are. We've created enormous pressure for ourselves and the weight of the glass ceiling can feel like a million pounds of failure on our backs. It can if we let it. It can if we believe the lies.
What I'm trying to say is that in a fallen world where womanhood and manhood are marred by sin our focus can get blurry. Heck, the visibility can get down to just about zero. Gender matters. I believe it matters to the heart of God. I believe that His design for us is unique and beautiful. I believe that being a woman is something valued by God, designed by God, celebrated by God uniquely. Ladies, we've got nothing to prove to God. His design for us is perfect, but we live in an imperfect world.
We live in a world where girls are married off at thirteen to men twice and three times their age. We live in a world where women in Afghanistan, Liberia and Somalia will die {today} pushing babes out to life. We trudge forward in a world where women will eat meager burnt rations after their husbands and children have eaten their fill. Womanhood can feel inglorious in a fallen world. Womanhood, apart from God's redemptive work, is inglorious in a fallen world.
Feminism, this movement to promote women to equality and fight for the cause of women the world over, can feel right and good. It can seem like it is the way to tie frayed edges together and make whole what has been torn apart. I don't disagree with the presupposition. Women are treated like expendable commodities in many parts of the world. Consumer culture gone mad. Even in our own culture we see it splattered across the screen telling us what to buy and how to think at the expense of our daughters and sons. I don't disagree with the presupposition that women are not treated equally. I disagree with the conclusion.
All the woman-power in the world won't right this upside down world. We need a God sized solution. We don't need girl power. We need God power. God lifts up the humble and if there is anything that I saw in four years of Women's Studies' courses is that feminism is not a movement born out of humility. It is a movement born out of pulling ourselves up by our (combat) boot straps and demanding our rights be made right.
What if we humbled ourselves? What if we dared to believe God's Word? What if we silenced the gender debate by embracing our differences? I don't mean to say that we settle for inequitable pay scales and oppressive cultural practices. That isn't God's heart. No, I mean to say that we believe that God created men and women and He said that it was good even before we fell into sin and the whole experiment went topsy turvy. He said it is good and He meant it and He still means it and gives grace for it to be good in the here and now.
Maybe we need to take off the power suits, stop the man-bashing and give the sharp tongued, quick come back lines a rest. Our brothers need us to protect them and pray for them and stop viciously competing with them and tearing them down so that we can build our own agenda up. Sisters, we've got nothing to prove if Jesus is alive in us. We live our lives and we read, we breathe in the Word and we believe that He is making all things new, even this age old fight. Embrace our femininity which is not summed up by frilly dresses and makeup. Oh no, sweet friend, it is far vaster than that narrow view. Womanhood is a glorious calling to prove to a cynical world that God is gracious and gentle and worthy of our whole life. Every womanly piece.
Feminism tells us that we have everything to prove as women. We need to prove that we are just as good (or better), just as smart (or smarter), just as strong (or stronger) than every man on the planet. I have one wild and wonderful daughter and I worry that she will not see the forest for the trees of feminism. I want her to rest in the fact that, in Christ, she is free from the debates. She is free to be a woman fully resting in God's grand design. That might take her over the sea to minister to the least of these as a single woman or it might find her leading a business with integrity or preaching with her life the Gospel every single day in her home. When you've got nothing to prove you can live free, untethered and full. I want that for us all more than I want anything else. For it is the freedom in Christ that so few ever experience that is the true light in the darkness of the gender debates.
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