Try on these ruby slippers!
"Christianity…endowed the human female with a soul." (Simone De Beauvoir, quoted in Ruby Slippers)
There’s a buzz growing about a new book called Ruby Slippers: How the soul of a woman brings her
home. A blogger friend of mine recently voted Ruby Slippers the best nonfiction book of 2007. Why? The author, Jonalyn Fincher, fearlessly tackles the core question of what it means to be a woman,
helping us to sort out the truth from the competing voices telling us that femininity is all about glass slippers, romances, modesty, submission, and babies. Yes…there is more! What does it really mean to be feminine? What are God’s ideas about womanhood? What does it mean that Jesus redeemed women as well as men?
Although she’s a busy writer and speaker, I recently caught up with Jonalyn for a few questions…
Q. Hi, Jonalyn. I’m so glad you agreed to answer a few questions for my blog. First, your bio calls you an “apologist.” What does that mean?
A. Well, apologist just means someone who defends something.
It comes from the Greek “apologia”
meaning “to give a reasoned statement or argument, to give a defense.” Paul
uses the word specifically in I Pet 3:15 “always be ready to give a defense (apologia) for the hope that is in you,
but with gentleness and reverence.” You can be an apologist for pretty much
anything (soccer over basketball, vegetarian fare over meat, or in my case
Christ as the best thing going for planet earth).
Q. To be honest, I often skim quickly through books but your
book, Ruby Slippers: How the soul of a woman brings her home didn’t let
me do that. I found myself dog-earing pages, underlining, writing notes in the
margin, savoring every word, and sharing your ideas with my friends at work.
There is so much to think about, work through, and delight in within the covers
of this book. Can you tell me a little about where this book came from? Why did
you write it?
A. Thank you, it’s such a compliment
that you took time to read it so closely. The work of writing Ruby Slippers
started way back when I was in high school, I took a class on the human soul
(yeah, it was a
night class mostly for adults) and I fell in love with one
phrase the professor said, “Your soul does more
than go to heaven.” I wanted to
know more about the soul. I had caught
the philosophy of mind bug. Ruby Slippers combined that academic
interest with another desire. I wanted to undo the confusion and ambivalence
about femininity. I wanted to
understand what it meant to be human in female form. I wanted to engage with
God about why he had let Paul write stuff about women being the glory of man
(what did that mean?) and that woman were not permitted to have authority over
a man. It seemed at best confusing and at worst chauvinistic of God.
At core, this book was about me
seeking God out, trying to figure out what God thought about women and our
souls.
Q. One of the things that really caught my attention about
your book Ruby Slippers is the suggestion that women are female not just
in body, but at the level of the soul. This was a new idea to me! First, what
is the soul? How is it distinct from our biologically based emotions and
personality? And second, why do you think a woman has a female soul, rather
than a DNA-based femininity?
A. This question deserves a lot of attention and more space
than we have here. But here’s a short version. The soul is the essential you, the immaterial you that survives your
body’s change, deterioration and even death. I believe our soul grows our body. Our soul acts as our body’s CEO,
unifier (which is why a corpse deteriorates at death, the soul has left) and
informer. The soul is what makes us
unique from any other human (twins have the same DNA but different souls). The soul uses our body’s
brain to interact
in this world. Our soul is not identical to our brain. The how’s and why’s are part of the ongoing
discussion of Philosophy of Mind. In
popular culture terms, you could say the soul is the spiritual part of being
human. The soul, not just our body,
holds all our thoughts, beliefs, emotions, choices, desires. The soul explains why God can think, choose,
feel and desire, without a body. God thinks, chooses and feels with his
soul.
In Ruby Slippers
I talk about how we are intricate strands of body and soul fabric, woven by
God. Our soul permeates our bodies like
salt dissolved in water. This enmeshed
view of the soul in the body is over a thousand years old and philosophically known
as Thomistic dualism. According to this
view any body difference impacts our souls, too. When I applied this to women, I came up with a wonderful
revelation: Our soul-infused body is never generically “human.” Humans are only
male or female. There is no such thing as a generic human. And it makes sense
to me that the physical differences of sex (chromosomes, sexual organs,
hormones,) make essential differences on our soul’s capacities (mind, will,
emotions, spirit) and therefore on our essential selves. How can a body difference not create a
substantial difference to who we are? All our experiences are mediated by this
body which in turns informs our soul. And since our experience is gendered from conception, our souls are
incapable of non-gendered existence.
More from Jonalyn in the next post…
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SUSY FLORY is a writer, speaker, and journalist who inspires and challenges women to embrace a life of passion, boldness, & adventure. In your own unique way, YOU can change the world, starting in your own backyard. 
