These Ruby Slippers Don’t Pinch
"Feminine guidance is abundant today; it is regularly updated into modern
stuff like what the hot girls wear, what the sexy women do in bed, and what Martha Stewart does for her Halloween parties. The church hasprescriptions for femininity too–only ours are usually more dogmatic and romantic than popular culture’s versions … A dose of small-group Bible studies, a teaspoon of Dr. Laura, and a tablespoon of Oprah, some zest of Beth Moore, and voila, this is our femininity. We use this concoction of femininity to measure ourselves, our friends, and our foes. Femininity becomes a corset that we stuff our souls into and hope the hooks don’t bust open and reveal who we really are." (–Ruby Slippers)
Wow…this is such a great interview, I don’t want it to end! This is part 3; one more post after this, and we’re done. But you don’t have to be! You can pick up a copy of Ruby Slippers and begin your own journey into true female empowerment, God’s way. Today author Jonalyn Fincher touches on the idea of the sacred feminine as portrayed in The Da Vinci Code, as well as whether God has female characteristics. The latter is controversial both in and out of the church. In fact, many women who choose the path of goddess worship cite the church’s history of repressive patriarchy. Read on to see what Jonalyn has to say about God’s gender…
Q. Pagans and goddess worshiping
groups often look back into history with a longing for a time when the goddess
reigned, all was peace and harmony, and matriarchal societies reigned. Is this
an authentic picture of ancient history? Was Dan Brown right when he claimed in
The Da Vinci Code that the early Jews and Christians worshiped the
sacred feminine?
A. I am not an expert in history or
sociology, so I cannot claim to know that matriarchal societies existed or that
they were peaceful and harmonious. It
would surprise me if women had a superior ability to rule men mainly because I
believe both sexes have fallen from their Edenic archetypes. We both fail
at leading. One easy trap for
feminists to fall into is to assume that masculinity is what’s wrong with the
world. I’d nuance this diagnosis by saying “Fallen masculinity is what’s wrong
with many parts of the world.” But if
women were in charge, we wouldn’t be much better. The problems would just
change. I believe God got it right in
Eden when he put a Woman and Man in charge, together. That, I believe, should
be our goal, neither elevating nor denigrating one sex over the other.
Probably the most disturbing
aspect of The Da Vinci Code to me was
how it highlighted the female body to the exclusion of the female soul.
Femininity became reduced to a womb, orgasm a way to experience God. Women became a vessel for sexual pleasure,
not a human being with a unique soul that could reason, choose and feel in a
way that contributed to all humans. The sexual rites in the Gnostic practices
alarmed me, not because I don’t like sex, but because Brown’s story confused a
sexual high with a spiritual high. These are not necessarily linked. You can have sex without spiritually
connecting
with a person. It’s usually
called f*$#ing because it is screwing or messing with their body and in the
process devaluing them body and soul. A
woman’s spirituality is not something you can engage with merely by having
sex. A woman’s spirituality is bound up
with her entire being (body and soul). Sexuality is only one aspect of femininity, a great one, a good one, but
only one slice of the woman’s soul. I
would have appreciated a fuller understanding of what it means to be a woman
than her sexual organs.
Q. If women are created in the
image of God, and we are female at the soul level, does that mean God has
feminine qualities, and is He portrayed as such in the Bible? If so, then does
this mean it’s okay for Christians to worship the sacred feminine? Is the
sacred feminine just another side of God?
A. I believe all good feminine
traits in women are reflections of God, but the same would be true of all good
masculine traits. And yes, in the
Bible, I’ve found several places that God is portrayed with distinctly female
characteristics. One of my favorites is in the New Testament when Jesus says,
“Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born
again” (John 3:3). The Jewish male
teacher, Nicodemus, is listening and he just doesn’t get it. I think that was partly because he felt it
was an insult to ascribe such an earthy, messy experience like labor to God
Almighty. I also think it’s because Jesus is using a wholly new picture to
describe the work of saving a human soul. “Born again” has been so overused we forget that it is an essentially
female picture. I think it was tender of God to
show the world that when a
woman labors to give birth she is experiencing something that God relates to
when he labors to give birth to a new life. God finds the female experience just as valuable in communicating who God
is as the male experience.
This does
not, however, mean that God is divided into a sacred feminine side anymore than it
would be fair to say there is a sacred masculine side. We don’t worship bits and pieces of
God. God is not divided, God is not
body, God is not gendered. God is spirit, he doesn’t own any reproductive
organs, he is not limited to an embodied existence. Therefore, to worship the sacred feminine is as harmful as
worshipping the sacred justice of God. We don’t want to confuse God’s
attributes with who God is. We must not confuse the characteristics of God with
the persons of God, the trinity of divinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit who
cares deeply that we know him. Women
reflect God no more and no less than men reflect God. To worship God as a male
is wrong, as it is to worship God as a female. Both genders act like arrows or mirrors to reflect, “This is a little
more of what God is like.” But neither
gender has fully captured the original essence of God. This is, again, why we
need one another.
In my next post, discover the Bible’s revolutionary equality statement, as well as what’s next for Jonalyn.
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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. 
This makes me think of those famous quote: “If women ruled the world there’d be no war…” I always laugh at this because if it were true we wouldn’t have books and movies entitled “Mean Girls.” Men and women are different but both with sin and fault. Thanks for pointing that out.
“I believe God got it right in Eden when he put a Woman and Man in charge, together. That, I believe, should be our goal, neither elevating nor denigrating one sex over the other.”
And Goddess worshippers believe this as well. Separation is not an idea that is embraced. Instead, there is an idea of Oneness that we believe the Goddess embodies. She is both male and female.
The idea of engendering God is something people do to connect with something that is basically hard to comprehend. The concept of God is huge. The human brain is not even capable of grasping the idea of infinite space, let alone the vast concept of God.
I think everyone has pictured God with human qualities before. Though we may believe God is a being beyond gender – or a being that contains both sexes – we do not imagine God as a hermaphrodite or as an androgynous or asexual being.
The ideas behind masculine and feminine represent metaphors that people can relate to and connect with. And, in my opinion, as long as one is reaching to understand the true nature of divinity what should it matter what tools are used to relate to that deity? You see, I believe your God is the same being as my Goddess. We just envision them differently. I believe there is only one being seen by the people of the world in many different ways.
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I agree that metaphors help us to understand aspects of things far too big for us to comprehend. The Bible uses metaphors for God that help me to grasp in some small way who God is (a shepherd, a lion) and what He is like (a rock, or a river of living water).
But those biblical metaphors describe one God, a perfect and holy Being who created the heavens and earth, and who humbled himself and took on human form to live among us in the first century. (I love that about him!)
—SUSY
I have been reading through much of the material here and have come to the conclusion that the issue in many cases is simply language. There is talk of metaphor and the genderlessness of God hemmed in with masculine pronouns for God. I believe many women would be more apt to explore the feminine aspects of God within the context of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures instead of straying into other traditions if we weren’t so afraid of feminine language in describing the Holy One.
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I’m going to have to disagree, Cheryl. Behind language is meaning, and it’s worth being careful how we talk about God because those of us who choose to represent Him want to be as clear and accurate as we can. Also, there is nothing wrong with a very healthy and biblical fear of misrepresenting God, and I for one agree with Annie Dillard when she says it might be a good idea to wear crash helmets to church so as to survive the thunderbolts.
SUSY
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