Another Ruby Slipper
"…The
word God used to describe woman is a word more often used to describe the
delivering, warring, protecting, supporting, shielding, capable, brilliant help
of God Almighty. It is a sunbeam that
traces our image to the Triune God." (Jonalyn Grace Fincher)
Here’s more from my interview with Ruby Slippers author Jonalyn Fincher,
as she grapples with the question of what it means to have the soul of a woman. Does the Bible teach that women are second class citizens, forever doomed to the role of lowly helper? Read on…
Q. Traditionally, the church has
looked to the story of the creation of Eve as Adam’s helper to establish gender
based roles where men are to lead, and women are to follow and support. Is this
an accurate interpretation of Scripture? Are women to always follow Eve’s lead
as a secondary creation, an after thought, a “helper”?
A. It’s disappointing to me how
often a text from the New Testament, “But I do not suffer a woman to teach nor
to usurp authority over the man but to be in silence. For Adam was first
formed, then Eve” (KJV, II Tim 2:12-13) is read back into the Creation
Narrative in Genesis. I’m particularly
bothered at how easily Gen 1-3 is preached or taught as a God-ordained system
of patriarchy. From my reading, I do not see any teaching that men are to lead,
to be in authority over women, or to be the spiritual head from these
passages. I see that Man was made first
and I see that God thought Man’s aloneness was not good. I see Woman’s creation
as part of making the world good. She was the first provider and protector, providing
companionship to Adam and protecting him from loneliness.
I find it helpful to always
balance Gen 2-3 (the zoomed in creation account) with Gen 1 (the zoomed out
creation account). If you focus
primarily on one account you can become imbalanced by the overall message. What
is that message? It is that Man and
Woman were both necessary to make God’s image fully known, both charged with
taking dominion and subduing the earth both equally shameless as they stood
before each other and God fully naked and fully human (Gen 1: 27-30 and Gen 2:7-9,
18, 23, 25). The fact that Woman was
created second is only a problem if we import our man-made (modernistic,
fallen, competitive) ideas onto the text, ideas that say first is always the
best, the superior, the primate, the leader, the boss. The God of the Bible isn’t preferential to
“firsts”, not first-borns (God regularly chooses the second born in a
primogeniture society to be his favored see Gen 4:1-5 Abel over Cain, Gen 25:23
Jacob over Esau), not first created (Woman was chosen to bear children and
bring the
Son of God into the world), not first begotten (the Son is not more
God than the Holy Spirit), not first is strength or wealth or privilege (God is
near the weak, the poor the underprivileged). God did not find Woman an after-thought. He found her a necessary part
of what earth needed (Gen 1:27).
As far as woman created to be a
“helper”, there is a wealth of meaning to what helper means in Hebrew (ezer). Our English word “helper” doesn’t
really nail it. Suffice it to say the
word God used to describe woman is a word more often used to describe the
delivering, warring, protecting, supporting, shielding, capable, brilliant help
of God Almighty. It is a sunbeam that
traces our image to the Triune God.
Q. Many of the women who are embracing goddess spirituality point to
the church’s ill treatment and repression of women. Was this part of God’s
plan? Where did we get off track?
A. God never intended his people to
abuse one another. I imagine his pain
when he watched the Jewish people suffering during the Holocaust or the
unnecessary pain women were forced to endure labor as anaesthesia was withheld
from them during birth to “enforce” the curse. God hates abuse. But we
cannot
judge a thing by its abuse, especially the church.
Part of the reason I’m so
impressed with Christianity is due to the way its founder, Jesus, treats women.
Put Christ up against any other major religion’s founder, Mohammed, Joseph
Smith, T.C. Russell or Siddhartha Buddha and you find his dignity for a woman
body and soul to surpass all of the others in life and teachings. Most
religions either magnify the male over the female or the female over the male,
or they emphasize body over the soul or the soul over the body. I find refreshment in the Creation Story of
the Bible because God created men and women to both need one another in body
and soul. It affirms my
intuitions, my
reason and my experience.
The reason the church and any of these groups
“got off track” is due to either exaggerating differences between the sexes to
the point of devaluing the gender (usually women) who were different, or
flattening the differences so that we don’t need each other. We will not value
someone unless we recognize we need them. Valuing a different ethnicity or
gender is just political genuflecting unless we realize we are deficient in
something this group offers. If we
really believed women, for instance, would bring necessary insights to
preaching or decision making we would not have to make laws forcing companies
or churches to hire them. We would
promote them out of sheer concern to “get the bigger picture” and to understand
reality more fully.
In the next post: Jonalyn on The Da Vinci Code, and God vs. the sacred feminine…
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SUSY FLORY is a New York Times best selling author, speaker, and journalist who searches out big stories with happy endings. She's I'm always looking for true stories that inspire and challenge her readers to embrace a life of passion, boldness, & adventure. 
