Читать книгу Blessing the Curse? - Ksenija Magda - Страница 4

First, this book is about the male-female relationship regardless of our other identity markers. In my years as BWA Women’s president, I have glimpsed our racial blindspots and the excruciating pain and hardship experienced by those who are not Caucasian. Taking the racial component into consideration would further benefit the discussion and make this book even more valuable. But for my whole life, I have lived in an almost exclusively white environment, and so I feel I have no right to write that segment of the book. While writing this book, I have tried to see all people of various colours and shapes, but entitlement blinds people, and so I ask for forgiveness for any places where these issues should have been mentioned and have not been. I would appreciate feedback from anyone who would be willing to share with me, and I do hope that someone will pick up where I have left off and write this missing segment.

Second, this book is intentionally systemic, as I believe that an overarching approach to the problem of male-female relationships in both theology and the church is long overdue. I am aware that systemic solutions cannot be presented in all the pragmatic detail that gives readers small pieces of information that they can swallow and put straight to practice. While such an approach may be appealing, some of the deeper teachings of the Bible have been watered down into simple stanzas of a cheap and shallow feel-good faith that leave many asleep in churches. Moreover, this book may not satisfy activists who are looking for simple, practical solutions. Though I have fought for women’s rights and am dedicated to stopping violence against women, I have come to see life as a complicated network of intertwined and reciprocal interdependencies, and so it is sometimes impossible to see the causality of origins and outcomes. Sometimes, these intricacies make direct activism simplistic and, on occasion, counter-productive.

Third, according to the Myers-Briggs personality assessment, I have a judging personality that always sees faults first. I have fought hard with this tendency in my soul, but I have not yet arrived. This will become apparent when I point to examples that do not reflect our greatest behaviour as the church in the first two sections of the book, “Blessing the Curse” and “Church Structures as Structures of Sin.” Although I begin with a lot of criticisms as I trace my biblically informed evaluation of our failures as Baptists (in particular) and Christians (in general), I love the church and am a Baptist – with conviction. Moreover, I have found that the Baptist approach offers the best contextualization of the Bible’s servant leadership and the effort to partake in the church as equals. Please bear this in mind as you read some of the self-critical notes about this tradition.

Though Baptists have a long history of fighting for the rights of the oppressed and are active and dependable leaders and doers in any interdenominational effort or ecumenical project, we fail women miserably from a global perspective, and so we are also losing them to mainline denominations and the world. On many occasions, I have cried because I felt disrespected and ignored, sometimes even ridiculed and rejected, simply for being a woman. I know now that my own path has been easy compared to the experience of women in the global context. I still cry, but now I cry for my sisters who are being denied life, education, or the freedom to make even small decisions about their own lives or ways to use their gifts. I cry for all the abused and trafficked women, because in more places than not, this is the way for women – including church women (and Baptist women).

Although I have encountered godly leaders in all cultures around the world – regardless of the level of “development” – who promote a theology that regards women as equal partners in the church, there are also vast numbers of people who simply accept the way things are and continue to perpetuate them. To change this, we must begin by examining the gloomy circumstance of the curse (Gen 3) and its global implications. We cannot change anything if we do not first acknowledge the pain and look the evil in the eye.

I hope to make up for the initial pain in the second half of the book, where I chart the way forward through Bible readings and examples of best practice. In my global work, I have encountered strong and godly women everywhere who cannot be stopped from using their gifts for the glory of God – as well as men who have a servant’s heart. We are still alive and kicking because of them!

Fourth, when I challenge men, I am not doing so as a hurt and angry female. In male/female relationships in the church, there continues to be much self-worship and a glorification of men that keeps us from revealing God’s glory, and this reality is not just the men’s fault. My learning has brought me to a point where I can clearly see that if men and women are not partners in God’s glory, they are partners in the devil’s crimes. I hate to call women partners in this evil when I see the physical, economic, social, and political pain that is inflicted on women daily by men. Though women have been bashed and estranged from themselves and others, taught to bend quietly to fit into the structures of sin, and to survive instead of living life to the fullest, they also need to be confronted with the truth in order to be able to change the structures that keep them enslaved.

More than anything, I have written this book to help all of us reflect the glory of God that the world is eagerly awaiting to see in the children of God. I am not talking about eschatology, for God wants us to reflect this change sooner than later. We have been entrusted with the job of tending and caring for the world by the one who saved us, because it is God’s world! Supported by the Spirit and everything else that has been bestowed on us for life and holiness, we are to offer our bodies as living sacrifices that will glorify God.

May we all have the courage to challenge the death-dealing structures of the world wherever we are with the good news of God. God has not created us as men and women to live under the curse of Genesis 3; rather, he has sent Jesus to take the curse of our bodies upon his own body so that we can partner together for the renewal of the world and bear witness to the already here and now of the glory that is to come.