Healing the True Feminine
I was dreading this session.
As adults, men and women look for their identity in different places. Men find who they are in their work but women find it in their husbands and other relationships. Of course we can only know who we are when we ask God. We were taken to the beginnings of Genesis to help answer the question, “Who is woman?”
It is important to notice that God went from the less important to the most important as creation week progressed. There were two problems in the creation story. First, there was no plant life because there was no one to care for the plants, nor was there water. “Man” in Hebrew is “adam”; “ground” is “adama”. Adam comes from adama. Human comes from humus. The trees also come from adama.
The second problem was that man was alone. Genesis 2:18 says that God made a helper for Adam We often think of this as a servant, someone beneath, an assistant, but in fact, the word, “ezer” which appears 19 times in the Old Testament (she said 19, I looked it up and Strong’s concordance says 21 times), refers to God as our helper 15 times and the other 3 times (aside from Gen. 2:18) refer to an army who comes to help. The passage in NASB says God created a helper SUITABLE for Adam. I looked this word up in Strong’s as well. 60 times it is translated as “before”, 21 times “opposite”, 15 times “front”, 13 times “presence”. In other words, a helper/ezer is a rescuer who is opposite and goes before, or in front of. Woman came from man; “ishshah” from “iysh”. God intended closeness between man and woman. Just as man is not less than the dirt he was made from, so woman is not less than the man she was made from. Man’s connection is to the ground, to his work; woman’s connection is to man, to relationships.
When man and woman sinned, God curses the earth and the snake and tells man and woman the consequences (not curses) of their sin. Man will fight with the ground—disharmony between Adam and adama and the woman, instead of being a rescuer to her husband will look to him for her identity, giving men power over her—disharmony between ishshah and iysh. This was not God’s intention but a consequence.
As women, we need to find our identity in relation with God and healthy men rather than from the sin of our parents and grandparents. But peers, parents and church give wrong messages to us as to what it means to be a woman. Misogyny is the devaluation and disrespect of women. As women we have a fear of our bodies being violated in a way men don’t experience; we’re treated as sex objects, which is shaming and demeaning as well as empowering; our opinions and abilities threaten men and we have to continually prove we’re just as good; feminine ways of doing things, such as leadership style or the ways we experience learning, are less valued in our culture. In our own homes we find our men failing to live up to their commitments to women, fathers valuing sons more than daughters. Even mothers pass on this devaluation through their comments. We absorb this into our souls and see ourselves as shameful and a liability.
Wherever Christianity has gone, women’s position has always improved but in the last century, there has been a backlash. A hundred years ago, women were church planters, missionaries, etc. Today, men are in the authoritative positions. Women are gifted by God but their use of these gifts are limited. The images of God in the church are masculine and do not show the balance between the masculine and feminine sides of God as in the Bible. These omissions of the feminine of God leaves us to believe we are in second place.
We react to this devaluation and allow it to define us. Because of misogyny, we find our identity in our husbands, bending into men, our purpose found in men. We place men and marriage over everything else and cope by wearing a mask that pretends all is well, serving the men and the family and being who we think we think we should be; as helpless women who can’t live without a man and need to be taken care of or as the seductive feminine who puts all her energies into her body and appearance, constantly in competition with other women. Conversely, some women have bent away from men, denying the good of men. Some even deny the good of the feminine. But all these ways of coping veil the image of God.
We need healing from misogyny to enable us to embrace the feminine. This is a process of seeking and being with Jesus. Jesus treated women differently. He didn’t minimize women, nor was he afraid of them. I can celebrate who I am as a woman. This isn’t about clothes and make up but about the internal. It’s about being. Femininity is about nurture, developing relationships, knowing our emotions, the ability to be weak and responsive and about calling men into relationships. By working together, the sexes provide tension and balance between separation and connectedness. Women can be a complement to men at home and in the church. We can live richly with men.
There is so much in all this that spoke to me. We can live richly with men? The concept is totally foreign to me. I can’t imagine what that would look like. I sit here unable to write. I delete every effort to put my thoughts and feelings into words. What I have written above, sits like a heavy slab of marble on my prone body, flattening me to the floor. My anger at men rises but there seems no escape. The marble slab cannot be moved. Seeking and being with Jesus. That’s what I need, isn’t it? It’s interesting, and probably no coincidence, that during this talk I was flanked by several men on either side. For some strange reason, there was healing in that.
Ministry time followed. The women were invited to come to the front to be prayed for. The men from the ministry team came forward to pray over each of us individually and the men participants were told to go to the back of the room and pray for the women. I can’t remember another thing about that time and made no notes. I’m sure I cried buckets and I remember at least one of the men coming to give me a big hug.
There was one thing however that really stood out for me and had a powerful impact. At the end of her lesson, the speaker read a poem. Each line followed the same pattern and named one of the women in the Bible. The one that caught my attention was this, “May the Christ of Mary Magdala send you out to tell your story.” Say WHAT? I call myself Magdaleine and I have felt called to tell my story. To me, this was confirmation that this is indeed what God wants me to do. Despite the heaviness, this was a joy and a delight to hear. I could hardly wait till it was my turn during small group to share. When I was prayed for, it was like a commissioning to do exactly that—go and tell my story.
As adults, men and women look for their identity in different places. Men find who they are in their work but women find it in their husbands and other relationships. Of course we can only know who we are when we ask God. We were taken to the beginnings of Genesis to help answer the question, “Who is woman?”
It is important to notice that God went from the less important to the most important as creation week progressed. There were two problems in the creation story. First, there was no plant life because there was no one to care for the plants, nor was there water. “Man” in Hebrew is “adam”; “ground” is “adama”. Adam comes from adama. Human comes from humus. The trees also come from adama.
The second problem was that man was alone. Genesis 2:18 says that God made a helper for Adam We often think of this as a servant, someone beneath, an assistant, but in fact, the word, “ezer” which appears 19 times in the Old Testament (she said 19, I looked it up and Strong’s concordance says 21 times), refers to God as our helper 15 times and the other 3 times (aside from Gen. 2:18) refer to an army who comes to help. The passage in NASB says God created a helper SUITABLE for Adam. I looked this word up in Strong’s as well. 60 times it is translated as “before”, 21 times “opposite”, 15 times “front”, 13 times “presence”. In other words, a helper/ezer is a rescuer who is opposite and goes before, or in front of. Woman came from man; “ishshah” from “iysh”. God intended closeness between man and woman. Just as man is not less than the dirt he was made from, so woman is not less than the man she was made from. Man’s connection is to the ground, to his work; woman’s connection is to man, to relationships.
When man and woman sinned, God curses the earth and the snake and tells man and woman the consequences (not curses) of their sin. Man will fight with the ground—disharmony between Adam and adama and the woman, instead of being a rescuer to her husband will look to him for her identity, giving men power over her—disharmony between ishshah and iysh. This was not God’s intention but a consequence.
As women, we need to find our identity in relation with God and healthy men rather than from the sin of our parents and grandparents. But peers, parents and church give wrong messages to us as to what it means to be a woman. Misogyny is the devaluation and disrespect of women. As women we have a fear of our bodies being violated in a way men don’t experience; we’re treated as sex objects, which is shaming and demeaning as well as empowering; our opinions and abilities threaten men and we have to continually prove we’re just as good; feminine ways of doing things, such as leadership style or the ways we experience learning, are less valued in our culture. In our own homes we find our men failing to live up to their commitments to women, fathers valuing sons more than daughters. Even mothers pass on this devaluation through their comments. We absorb this into our souls and see ourselves as shameful and a liability.
Wherever Christianity has gone, women’s position has always improved but in the last century, there has been a backlash. A hundred years ago, women were church planters, missionaries, etc. Today, men are in the authoritative positions. Women are gifted by God but their use of these gifts are limited. The images of God in the church are masculine and do not show the balance between the masculine and feminine sides of God as in the Bible. These omissions of the feminine of God leaves us to believe we are in second place.
We react to this devaluation and allow it to define us. Because of misogyny, we find our identity in our husbands, bending into men, our purpose found in men. We place men and marriage over everything else and cope by wearing a mask that pretends all is well, serving the men and the family and being who we think we think we should be; as helpless women who can’t live without a man and need to be taken care of or as the seductive feminine who puts all her energies into her body and appearance, constantly in competition with other women. Conversely, some women have bent away from men, denying the good of men. Some even deny the good of the feminine. But all these ways of coping veil the image of God.
We need healing from misogyny to enable us to embrace the feminine. This is a process of seeking and being with Jesus. Jesus treated women differently. He didn’t minimize women, nor was he afraid of them. I can celebrate who I am as a woman. This isn’t about clothes and make up but about the internal. It’s about being. Femininity is about nurture, developing relationships, knowing our emotions, the ability to be weak and responsive and about calling men into relationships. By working together, the sexes provide tension and balance between separation and connectedness. Women can be a complement to men at home and in the church. We can live richly with men.
There is so much in all this that spoke to me. We can live richly with men? The concept is totally foreign to me. I can’t imagine what that would look like. I sit here unable to write. I delete every effort to put my thoughts and feelings into words. What I have written above, sits like a heavy slab of marble on my prone body, flattening me to the floor. My anger at men rises but there seems no escape. The marble slab cannot be moved. Seeking and being with Jesus. That’s what I need, isn’t it? It’s interesting, and probably no coincidence, that during this talk I was flanked by several men on either side. For some strange reason, there was healing in that.
Ministry time followed. The women were invited to come to the front to be prayed for. The men from the ministry team came forward to pray over each of us individually and the men participants were told to go to the back of the room and pray for the women. I can’t remember another thing about that time and made no notes. I’m sure I cried buckets and I remember at least one of the men coming to give me a big hug.
There was one thing however that really stood out for me and had a powerful impact. At the end of her lesson, the speaker read a poem. Each line followed the same pattern and named one of the women in the Bible. The one that caught my attention was this, “May the Christ of Mary Magdala send you out to tell your story.” Say WHAT? I call myself Magdaleine and I have felt called to tell my story. To me, this was confirmation that this is indeed what God wants me to do. Despite the heaviness, this was a joy and a delight to hear. I could hardly wait till it was my turn during small group to share. When I was prayed for, it was like a commissioning to do exactly that—go and tell my story.
posted by Magdaleine at 7:53 PM
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