For the Love of Women
Malala sat between her friends on a dusty bus in Swat, Pakistan. The girls were returning home after a long day of school. Suddenly the bus came to a halt and angry men clambered on. They were Taliban. A gun was thrust in Malala’s face and before she could utter questions or scream for help the shot rang out. The Taliban had targeted her because she was an advocate and activist for the education of girls. Starting as an anonymous blogger and becoming an out-spoken member of an increasingly regulated Pakistani society, fifteen year-old Malala was someone to silence. After that October afternoon in 2012 the world followed Malala’s story for the next 3 months as she brushed shoulders with death many times beginning with surgery and ending with intense therapy. Today, as the youngest Nobel Prize laureate, she is strong and fighting once again. She is studying at Oxford University and is an even bigger voice than she was before, advocating for young girls pursuing education (The New York Times).
Though the Taliban is an extremist group of Islam, Muslim women in even peaceable parts of the world are often oppressed with constricting laws and regulations. In many countries they are not only banned from pursuing education but they are also married off at young ages, as young as eleven or twelve sometimes, and expected to begin bearing children immediately. They are confined to the four walls of their houses to cook, clean and raise children. They must receive permission from their husbands for nearly everything. “One Islamic country has a law on the books that punishes nonconforming females with seventy-four lashes or a year in prison simply for violating its dress code” (Spangler, pg. 96). Sharia law even states that a woman who has been raped cannot testify against her rapist(s) in court and that she must produce four men as witnesses to the event or she will be deemed an adulterer (Live as Free People).
Women throughout the world are being treated poorly as a result of the erroneous beliefs of certain religions. In Hindu households in Southeast Asia, for example, women always eat last. Even the family cow is fed before they are. The man of the house gives the first plate of food to the cow as a ritualistic offering before feeding members of his family. The woman cooks in sweltering conditions all day but is the last to sit down to eat; once she does it is usually on the floor. The men and children eat the vegetables and meat and often the women are left with only bread and salt, leading to extreme malnutrition. A campaign called the Rajasthan Nutrition Project is currently trying to change this tradition by means of education. The campaigners say that in just a short period they have started seeing vast improvements in the health of women as they are allowed to eat with the rest of their family members (BBC News).
In the practice of other religions that appear on the surface to be less archaic and patriarchal in nature, women still seem to have drawn the short straw. The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, was a polygamist, claiming that God had commanded the practice. He was known to have as many as twenty-seven wives at the time of his death, including a seventeen year-old girl. When it comes to the afterlife, women have no chance of getting into heaven if they were not married on earth. The earthly husband must invite his wife to join him in the afterlife. Once in heaven a woman’s purpose is to provide her husband with many children to populate his heavenly planet (The Role of Women in Mormonism).
In addition to Islam, Hinduism and Mormonism, religious cults over the centuries have also been known to strip women of their individuality and turn them into childbearing servants. America watched the devastating results of cult beliefs play out multiple times throughout the 1960’s and 70’s. Recently popular TV series The Handmaid’s Tale, adapted from Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, depicts chilling accounts of how women might be treated in religious cults. Though fictional, it hits a nerve in any culture that has witnessed cult tragedies.
Lest we think that we are exempt in the “progressive” era we live in today, let us examine our worldviews of secularism and post-modernism. In our society nearly every facet of culture has been affected by the belief that truth is relative and that absolutes do not exist. Movie-goers don’t blush even a light shade of pink while watching 50 shades of Grey. Entertainment consumers don’t give a second thought to video games that demoralize women or to song lyrics that are descriptively degrading. Women are treated like objects when society depicts them as such. The need for #Metoo campaigns are the direct result of society lacking an absolute standard of what a women’s worth is, let alone what a human being’s value is. Seemingly no organization remains unscathed. Hollywood, NBC, USA Gymnastics, The Boy Scouts of America, the Catholic Church and many others have failed to uphold the value of a life. Without an objective definition and something outside of ourselves assigning us value, human relationships quickly degrade. We become jaded by Harvey Weinstein and Larry Nassar stories. Such brokenness is enough to make us despair. But thankfully for us there are absolute truths. There is a definition of human value. It is found in the Bible.
Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Men and women alike were created in God’s image. This is where our worth comes from. Galatians 3:28 says, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Women would not need to campaign and lobby for equality if these truths were lived out. Their worth was determined from the beginning of creation.
No religion in the world champions women the way that Christianity does. No religious figure esteemed women the way that Jesus did. No religious book defines the worth of a woman the way that the Bible does. Jesus’ interaction with women in the New Testament was revolutionary. We see him heal, protect, challenge, encourage and love them. In John 4:7-29 we see Jesus disregard the cultural standards of his time that said a Jew and a Samaratin (let alone a learned rabi and a woman) were not supposed to speak with each other. He offered the Samaratin woman at the well living water and eternal life by shattering tradition. The woman who had suffered from bleeding for more than a decade received compassion and healing from Jesus. In the same passage Jesus raises a young girl, the daughter of a ruler, back to life (Matt 9:18-26). Jesus extended protection and forgiveness to the adulterous woman about to be stoned. He rescued her but challenged her to change (John 8:3-11). Jesus praised the widow who gave her last two copper coins to the Lord, making her an example to his disciples. The woman who washed Jesus’ feet with expensive oil understood how precious his presence on earth was. Jesus extended her grace, saying, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (Luke 7:36-50). Mary, the mother of Jesus, was called blessed among women. She was given the privilege of bringing the long awaited Messiah into the world (Luke 1:42). After the resurrection the first followers to see Jesus were women. This, in itself is evidence for the Christian faith. In biblical times the witness of a woman was not considered valid. If the disciples had fabricated the story of the resurrection surely they would have given men the role of finding Jesus. As it turns out, the truth of history tells us that Jesus appeared to women first, and Matthew 28:9 says that the women “took hold of his feet and worshiped him.” They understood how much He loved them.
For the oppressed, enslaved, dejected, and unfairly treated women of the world—there is a rescuer, and His love redeems all that is broken. Let us rejoice in the truth that our worth is defined by Him alone.
Spangler, Ann. Praying the Names of Jesus. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006.
The Bible. English Standard Version and New International Version Thinline Bible, Zondervan, 2005.