Last spring I went to a conference called “The Red Tent” at Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia. It was a really great experience in which Mennonites gathered to celebrate women, worship, theology, and the arts. It was open to both male and female participants, but all of the speakers and artists were women. What I would like to share about is why I am sad when I think about the conference.
I think it’s really good that women get together to talk about “women’s” issues, but that’s not what this conference was about. It was simply women being given a safe place do gender-neutral things. I am sad, because women needed to have a special conference like this to teach, discuss theology, preach, and so forth. I am sad that only a handful of men-mostly college students or husbands of speakers-attended. And I am sad that I was so shocked to discover so late in my life that women can be wise theologians and preachers.
Our problem is not that we need more safe places for women to be active and to be who they are created to be. The problem is our culture’s view toward women and their talents. We have submitted to cultural structures in which human beings are placed on their appropriate level on a hierarchy. The problem is that we judge each other according to gender, income, mental competency, deeming certain people more valuable than others.
My dream is similar to Jesus’ prayer in John 17, for all believers to be one as God is one. There are three persons in the Trinity, each different and equal, but one God. Another example of this oneness is in a marriage, where two people become one but remain two separate persons. We don't need to segregate because we’re different. God created each human being in His image-including men, women, children, the young, the old, the sick, and the healthy. God's plan is for all of us to live as one. I don’t want to have to go to a special place to be given a voice and treated as an equal, and neither should anybody else.
So what is the Church's responsibility? First of all, we don’t need to do the liberating. Jesus died so everybody could be set free and the walls between us could be torn down. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). But this is obviously not the way it is everywhere in the world.
So, second, we need to repent for putting up walls, for judging the worth of God’s creation, for submitting to our culture’s faulty hierarchy, and for committing structural sins. Everybody should be free now and can be, but we’ve messed up. We must admit our wrongdoings and ask God for reconstruction. We are all guilty of these things, including those who have been marginalized. And it won’t change enough if an individual or an individual church changes their thoughts and ways. This is not an individual issue or sin but a structural one.
Third, once we have asked God for forgiveness, we must be careful not to expect the previously oppressed people groups to “snap out of it” immediately and begin to live totally free. We must encourage them, teach them, and give them time to gain back their God-given confidence. Healing doesn't happen overnight.
Finally, we must not be surprised any more to see everyone being treated equally and walking in freedom. We should be excited to see women teaching intelligently or people with disabilities ministering at church or little children giving prophetic words. This is what God wants for his people. This is what unity is all about.
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