McNeeley Ann

Alternatively titled: a fallen world meets redemptive grace. 

It was in a hotel room in Pittsburg during my 16th year where it all came crashing down in my head; I felt completely hopeless with the words leaving my mouth. It was the beginning of my journey of finding the balance of feminism and biblical teaching on gender, which was seemingly unredeemable.

The six months before that defeating moment had been some of the most confusing of my life, thus far. I had sat on my floor and read feminist literature, and thoughts multiplied. I had always associated the feminist agenda as anti-Church, but in the feminist texts I read, I saw redemption from oppression. Wasn’t that God’s will? Why did the ideas contradict? These thoughts were brewed in isolation, and curious thoughts became angry ones.

Those thoughts were manifest when I thought about the arch I wanted my life to follow. Since I was old enough to read, I knew I wanted to write. In High School, when I told people I was pursuing a career in English, I was often reassured that, as a woman, my career choice didn’t really matter, after all. People I barely knew often made comments, such as “It’s good you’re majoring in something fun, because you’re a girl so you’re going to be a mother in the end” or “Are you pursuing teaching so you can homeschool your children?” When all along, I wanted to learn to be a writer and a teacher, and ultimately  I wanted to work hard and my dreams weren’t ones I followed for “fun.”

For ever since I was saved at the age of thirteen, God immediately opened my heart to the idea of going out in the world, in whatever way he would call, and education has and will always be a way I personally have felt – if it is the Lord’s will – I would be equipped to go somewhere to love on students well, and to obey Christ’s call.

It seemed that many people’s assumptions were that I would either marry young and be a wife or be a single woman waiting for marriage, using my “fun” college degree to pass the “waiting” season. I watched women around me, and saw this to be often true – I felt devastated. Women were being taught marriage refined a Godly woman, yet single women waited and waited until they began to doubt, left broken with a cruel idea of grace.

I, likewise, saw Christian women continuing to submit to men in abusive relationships, where a man was using his gender as power and not for the sake of the gospel. My heart broke more and more, desiring the freedom I found in feminist readings to align with Christianity, somehow.

My peace didn’t come in the year I was sixteen. Yet God did not leave me to my anger.

It all came together the summer I turned 18.

One summer morning, I read Genesis 2 and a physically felt a burden physically being taken from me. I can’t explain it in full, except the Lord just opened my eyes to the reality of His story for women.

The sixth day: an almost-perfect creation. A created world, filled with life bursting forth. The green lands and lush ocean told of the God, reigning in the skies. Animals walked and swam, and from the dust man was created. Yet it was not yet complete. Adam named every animal, and not one was found to be a fit companion. God felt Adam’s isolation. As the trinity, He knows that a creation in his image was not meant to be alone. The Lord let Adam sleep, in order that He could bring him a woman. Adam rejoiced to see the woman, who he named Eve (mother of all creation) and when he saw her, he proclaimed, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!” A great work was finished, for creation was complete.

This unity would last a moment. A darkness was coming. After the fall of man, a separation would begin: “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you” (Genesis 4). God’s perfect creation was ruptured in a way that men and women would not enjoy their differences but use them unfairly: men would rule over women, look down upon them.

The story wasn’t finished. In the garden, the gospel was promised. Eve would bear a child, and begin the family heritage that would, in thousands of years, lead to another woman who would find God’s chosen favor: Mary, the mother of Christ. Though the world fell prey to darkness, God’s gospel would still advance and he still clothed both Adam and Eve, not in their handmade clothes of leaves, but in animal skin. The first blood was shed, and the coming of Christ foretold. One day, Christ and His bride would be united, and the great longing for that day began, for things to be made right.

Since that day, I have understood God’s purpose for us. He made women with the same loving hands that made men. He loves them both, and the gospel is for both. Through women, God would bring Christ into this world, and the redemption through Christ was for all.

Yet, since the fall, men’s eyes would be blind to perfectly knowing how indeed women are a perfect creation, and are a perfect and equal companion. There would be much evil brought from men who mistreated God’s plan for his children, and the roles he desired they carry out.

Thankfully, as well, I’ve realized a lot I used to struggle with was rooted and defined by own sin and I regret starting up arguments on the topic where I had no grace. I realize my family and I have always agreed on the heart of Biblical issues, but I would often word them wrongly. I thank God for clarity and certainty in what I believe. Now, while I have personally found peace, it is my desire for more women to know that they are not alone. Christian women are not to keep silent about the issues in society we face in regards to oppression from men believing they are superior.

2017 has been a tremendous year for women, one I dare to say will be one of the most important in history up with women gaining voting rights in the 1920’s and the 1960’s women’s movements. After Trump was elected president, women revolted for their rights and for an end to sexism, especially in our government. This year, the #metoo campaign spread like wildfire, as women found the voices to stand up for themselves after being sexually abused by men.

I have wrongly thought often that Christian women perhaps don’t belong in this movement, and I have been wrong to think so.

Feminism is the idea that women are equal, and the fight that men no longer should oppress and abuse women. This core idea does not promote an idea against God, but simply cries for redemption that his perfect creation be right once more.

Therefore, the women’s movement is not contrary to the gospel, but instead is complementary.

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The Church needs the movement. It needs bold women to speak out. Because, so often, women are subject to ideas that are not God’s ideas, but the world’s ideas that have been disguised as God’s. There is still a need for women to be recognized as equals in the context of the Church.

I’ve observed two major issues pertaining to this. The first is women submitting to men before God.

How often I see women throwing away their lives for men, throwing away going into the world with the gospel for a relationship.

I should clarify: God is faithful to provide spouses. I eagerly anticipate the day he might provide a husband as a companion fit for me. But I cannot put my hope in that. If I did have a husband, still my hope is called elsewhere. Another human, in theory or in my life, will never define who I am in Christ. If the Lord chooses to call me into a life of singleness, I will still be a wholly a woman and a Christian. If the Lord calls me to marriage, I will blessed with a wonderful gift but still be just as whole as the hour I first knew Christ.

Yet, I have witnessed women often prize the idea of a marriage over God’s will for their lives. They seek love where it is not yet the Lord’s, leading to much brokenness. They idolize relationships, that are good things from the Lord, and put security in those above God. They feel unloved by God when earthly love is not given.

Yet the Lord never sees unmarried as those stuck in a season of waiting. As Paul wrote, “It is good for them to remain single, as I am” (1 Corn. 7). So why do we often reduce an unmarried women serving the Lord to “using her singleness well”? As Christians, let’s honor each other and realize that Paul’s words ring true for women: a single woman simply can serve better. The kingdom advances through single missionaries and single local Church members. These people are not in a season of waiting. They are complete in the Lord, and capable of His work.

Later on, Paul writes “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches” (1 Corn. 7). Single or unmarried, the call is the same: live for the kingdom first. Instead Christians often find identity in their marriage state and it breaks my heart. God has called each of us to a purpose, and let’s find joy in that. Let’s train men and women to be equipped to go out in the world, first and foremost, before we teach them to be good husbands and wives, for that core is the very thing they will carry into eternity.

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The second core issue I’ve noticed is the false identity in the authority of men above God’s authority has led to a misunderstand of God’s plan for women and led to abuse, which should not be tolerated in Churches.

Many Christian women remain silent because they are told to always obey men. Men have used their place as a father or husband to emotionally abuse women, and these women remain silent and continue to be “obedient” because they are falsely taught a theology where women are to be kept quiet, and submit to men before God.

Often people use 1 Timothy to contradict the idea of bold Christian women: “Likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.” Personally, I cannot see this passage asking women to be conservative, I can only see a gospel message shining through these verses: women are not to adorn themselves, their hope being in appearance or beauty or the affections of a man. Godly women are not to find their hope in constant shopping, or whatever else hope can be found in. Instead, women are to adorn themselves with good works: serving Christ, sharing the gospel, going forth. A woman is to do this quietly – humble, obedient, not for the sake of the world but only Christ. A woman to quietly submit to the Lord’s will, and the Lord often calls us to be bold and not tolerate the injustice of sin.

Being bold is not at all contrary to the gospel, it is merely proclaiming it. As disciples, we are commanded to not be silent. We go and we proclaim, perhaps quietly yet never in silence.

God is not afraid to use women to further his kingdom the same as men; his redeemed children are equally equipped to write the story of humanity with beautiful gender roles working together to provide the unity of Eden.

Often, the women God has used in his kingdom have been women wrongly outcast or in the hands of the darkness of evil men. He comforted Leah when she was not preferred by her husband. He heard Hannah in silence cries for mercy. He met Hagar in the wilderness: “So [Hagar] called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.”

God used Ruth, a widow, in all her grief, and gave her boldness to go where women couldn’t go to the threshing floor that she might be redeemed: “May the Lord make the woman, who is coming into your house, like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel” (Ruth 4: 11).

God used Esther, he commanded her to not keep silent, “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14).

God used Mary, who sat at Jesus’s feet, soaking up his words while Martha was “distracted” with serving her home. Often a home, marriage, and things of this world turn our perspective away from being on our knees, listening to God, and to submitting to this world and what is required to be “good wife or mother” in the eyes of the world. Jesus shakes his head at Martha, and pleads to her: “Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10).

God used the “sinful” woman who broke societal rules, and washed Jesus’s feet with her hair. She wept, and Pharisees judged. But Christ saw only redemptive love defining this woman: “Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, ‘Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair’ (Luke 7). This woman is judged wrongly, but Jesus looked into her eyes and told her she is forgiven. As he did many women: the woman at the well and the adulterous woman for examples.

God used these women torn down by men or the world’s view of how they should behave or where they should go to share the story of his gospel; these women who did not stay silent.

When women stand up, claiming “no more,” or when we fight for compassion for those who are voiceless, it is a picture of redemption; of created creatures no longer being subject to the darkness of the fall.

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Ultimately, all things will come to completion at the day of Christ. He who started a good work in Christ Jesus is making all things new: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corn. 13:12). He has finished the great work, he knows us completely and will continue to be our faithful guide and counsel. One day, we will see full and no longer as cracks of light in the darkness. The promise of heaven is equally promised for women, and for men, and we will both be raised in Christ in the very same way, we will both see full.

Christians, let’s eagerly wait for the completion of the work of Christ by evangelism, the pursuit of holiness, and going to the nations together. Let’s fight for the oppression of women to be no more that the gospel may be proclaimed in this world.

For when we see his face, at long last the oppression of gender that begun when Eve’s lips tasted the fruit will be gone and His glory will be all that is left.

Because His promises are true: I am a Christian, and a feminist. A concept that doesn’t contradict itself, but complements.