THE IMAGE OF GOD AS MEN & WOMEN
Feminism: to some the word represents liberation and long-awaited justice; to others, divisiveness. Emotions have run feverishly high in the debate over women's rights, and the past few decades have seen the debate move from various discipline into the theological mainstream. Against this backdrop, the writer intent to negotiate and juxtapose the very meaning of being the image of God as men and women from the biblical perspective which is imperative as I understand. This study takes us through those questions and the various answers that have been offered. It tries to present the arguments as cogently as possible, but using a framework which makes the content easier to understand and debate upon. What is offered here is an edited and expanded form of the original material presented by the writer in one of the believer's congregation in recent time. Therefore, the focuses would be upon the diversity of human experiences and the alternative measures of values and standard for the assessment of progress and the institutionalization of human achievement, aspiration and thus exploring the ultimate will of God. In the light of these findings, the study would directly engage and employ entirely the writer's thoughts drawn out of its wider field experiences. It is a broad conceptual discourse & investigation and thus open to wider and deeper exploration.
Often feminist theologian refers that church itself accommodate two types of Christian…the dominant and the suppressed Christian. It could be rich vs poor, educated vs uneducated or men vs women etc. I may override some famous world theories like the Marxist or some post modernist thinkers like Nietzsche (the co-founder of existentialism to Kierkegard ), as I set a standard as a believer and not merely a secular writer to primarily focus my writings from Biblical interpretation. Knowing that the topic itself is very rich enough and with due respect to its unique issue, views are from the simple Christian perspective countering towards every day life and relationships.
Amidst various discipline, congregation and readers here, one has its own right to ask why at all gender debate during such as so called spiritually sanitized celebration such a golden jubilee? Keeping such gossips and knowledgeable inquiry in my closet, I am deeply convinced that this day we celebrate jubilee not necessarily that the church survived 50 years and the rich historical records of the founding fathers that follows, but we truly celebrate because we're saved simply by his Grace and to which today the church become the custodian of God's kingdom which is on the moved. It is therefore most interesting to unfold the secret of God's supreme commission that it is the divine will of God to be recognized as men and women and to that they are both part of that kingdom. Hence, to the degree that we share the mind of Christ and feel his passion for the kingdom, his ministry and his divine will for us as believers comes alive.
Going by our day to day interpretation & conclusion, our moral obligation and accountability as a believer has time and again been culturally constructed that we are blinded by the norms of the culture and has internalized such practices even by churches around us. Our society has often succumbed to such felony by saying that those who do not fit our definition are out of God’s will. Many church today, we find it really hard to understand what exactly the Pauline perspective means while talking abut women to cover their head etc. Leaving aside to examine the context of that time we narrowed down our own hermeneutic interpretation and perception to gender role and ideology that pertain to our immediate environment and surrounding.
My nature of work is such that am expected to travel across the country and monitor our humanitarian projects form time to time. It is indeed a hectic schedules of sort but i do celebrate my travel meeting and learning different human stories of testimonies & aspiration. From one of the experience that i countered in the case of the people in some of the interior parts of the Kashmir valley, it was during one of the disaster that we decided to provide medical relief and food items for the victims. What actually knocked me was that... women were not allowed to received any medical assistance externally as ordered by some influential groups. Suffering must be part of them. Be it in the harijan and santhal tribal communities in Bihar or the fishermen's community in the Andaman Islands, women's movement do resembles, much more, the constantly growing and shifting cobweb characteristics of new politics in the global age, possibly though could be differentiated by caste, race, ethnicity, religion, geographical locations etc. My intention is rather to underline that somehow we are somewhere succumb within that cobweb. It is heartbreaking yet challenging to see how many of the women's issues have been internalized and that they have become very normal. The customs and cultural obligation of ancient rituals pertaining to women as the unfortunate stock still persist and sadly have internalized within the emerging Christian communities as well.
The very concept of headship is no doubt one of the central issues the Christian institutions faces today …even among various progressive Churches like ours. The bible clearly mention Christ as the head of the church so are men the head of the family. It thus sounds so juicy and very appealing and no wander most of them loved being considered that way. But the crux of the matter is that, for me headship doesn’t at all represent power or domination in a real sense of term as we get to see from the life of Christ. Headship itself reveals the beautiness of how men can lay down his life for his wife as Christ did it for the church. The very notion of self-giving and agape-love is itself what Christ did for the church. If a man is ready to imitate the character of Christ, why is there any problem to refer headship to men. Painfully the heart of the matter is, our human shortcomings and inadequacy have always grown over head and abused that very gentleness of headship. But until and unless an effort is made to merge that dichotomy of bieng human & bearing the image of the divine God at the same time, we can never ever understand the profound meaning of God’s image. Naturally the countless deficiencies in our fallen nature, involuntary though they may be, bring reproach upon our witness. Most importantly it is not a matter of trying hard to copy Christ, but of simply believing him to live out his life in us as God's image.
In order not to circumvent this foreclosure, we can re-study ourselves by comparing Christ who set the perfect example to the believers today. Scripture tells us that Jesus Christ, the Creator of heaven and earth, the King of kings and Lord of lords, submitted willingly to the sinful world and the humanity, HIS essential inferiors (Luke 2:51), and that He submits willingly to God the Father, HIS essential equal (1 Corinthians 15:28). The crucification of sin, evil lust for power and domination and the manifestation of sacrifice, Obedience, forgiveness and most of all love on the cross of Calvary transit beyond cultural norms and patterns, beyond gender or even beyond human knowledge. My intention is not to relinquish the values we embraced as a community but to once again unveil the curtain and simply let the scripture echoes the liberation that we see in the lives and confessions of the saints that is reflected in our living. therefore the main objective of this study is to allow God's divine revelation be released from the scriptures and the church to live again, and the authority of the official humanly canonical framework overturned so that the transforming vision of Christ can be realized. According to one of the evangelical feminist like Eliane Storkey, it is the four paradigms that often influenced our perspective. The paradigms of difference, sameness/similarity, complementarity and union are some of the profound areas we need to address within our congregation.
I therefore believes that the distinction of men and women does not endorse oppression or abuse of authority since in all the texts in the bible convey those in leadership are given mandates to lead the people with godliness and love and that love must be subject to Christ's example. To appreciate God’s divine role in our lives as women and men is the supreme will of God. Friends, as we celebrate jubilee with the church and all the saints until his coming, I pray that we as men and women together with undaunted optimism, equanimity and indomitable commitment to God march ahead with a new perception of life towards a future that holds immeasurable possibilities to affirm wholeness, mutuality and partnership in the eyes of God.