Used For His Glory

Used For His Glory

If we lined up all the men who 'achieved' something
Who 'created' something
Who 'started' something
And we looked at their records - not of achievement
Nor of what they're credited with creating
But of the women in their lives
Wife Mistress Daughter Assistant Housekeeper Servant
(or perhaps, more correctly: property property property property property property)

Women who were
unacknowledged for the work they did
dismissed in the ideas they had
beaten for infractions
enslaved for the colour of their skin
raped for having an orifice
impregnated for having a womb
divorced for convenience
Along with all the other sufferings as they were used for his glory

Could we count the men of achievement who treated women like they were humans...
Would it take all our fingers and toes? Or just one hand? Just one hand...and not use all the fingers?

More telling perhaps:
Would we excuse their sins?

As though the use of another human being like they're a thing can be passed over when 'achievement' is made?
As though the broken flesh of women who were never named, never claimed is an acceptable cruelty in exchange for 'greatness'
As though being 'man enough to do the job' is the sewn skins that will hide a shame
That dates back to Adam giving his wife a name
(like she was one of the the animals)

If we lined up all the women who were forgotten would their cries matter to us?
Does their suffering count? Or would we say 'yes'
even as we wagged our heads in disapproval of her choices?

Yet the slave-woman named Him the God who sees
who sees her pain
and grieves
and comforts
and honours

The daughters of Zelophelad claimed their portion from the Lord
before all the people
before history
before the rights of husbands not-yet-chosen

A woman of valour was lionised in scripture
For business acumen
For compassion on the hopeless
For responsibility to her own

God took women and made them evangelists
sent from the well
sent from the tomb
sent across the empire

Even if not at first believed, even if not acknowledged, even if denied the title the name the dignity
Women have always been entrusted with the Empire of the LORD
They pondered these things in their hearts
knelt as a student at a teacher's feet
wept as a mourner before He Who Sees

Their presence in the scriptures
Even a little bit
Even for a moment
Just a mention
Not forgotten, tossed aside, left behind, ignored.

But remembered for
magnification
perfume
faith
healing
forgiveness
discipleship
witness
and participants in the joy that comes of being used for His glory.

Overseers or freedmen?

An awful lot of people would rather be overseers in a slave system than freedmen alongside populations they despise.

The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant? Is a story of one who saw himself as an overseer in a slave system.

The king had given him freedom from the crushing debt he was owed. But the king had given him freedom…alongside one whom he saw as his inferior, someone who owed him.

And the Unforgiving Servant saw it as his job to demand what was owed to him, when what he owed had been forgiven.

The truth is, we all have the chance to stand alongside our fellow freedmen. It's just that many won't because they see themselves as essentially superior to 'those people'. Sometimes we call them immigrants. Sometimes we call them criminals. Sometimes we call them spics. Sometimes we call them chinks. Sometimes we don't even label them, we just call them 'those people'.

The story of white supremacy? Overseers in a slave system. So many could have chosen to stand alongside freed peoples, even if their skins were a different colour, but they wanted what scraps of power they could gain to lord it over others who were just like them.

Those people blathering on about how the only good Australia is white Australia? Overseers in a slave system.

But so, too, are Christians who think our mission is to stamp out the 'sexually immoral, adulterous, drinkers, thieves, liars, etc.' - the Christians who would rather be God's Police than servants of their fellow humans.

From a worldly wise perspective, everyone would rather be the slave overseer, with authority and dominance over the slave.

From a godly perspective, too many really don't see that we are slaves in the same system, trapped all together, and our job is to be the underground railroad. Less questioning, more getting them out.

a theology of resurrected bodies

Decades ago, I learned a theology of "resurrection of the body" that told me that someday I'd be in a resurrected body that was identifiably me but also not.

New creation means a new body - which is a whole new interesting thing. My body works as most bodies should work. Maybe it's not as pretty or as sexy or as shapely as our society thinks a woman's body should be, but it does pretty much all the things I've needed to, and when it 'malfunctioned', it was something that could be dealt with.

What about the friend I have who died twenty years ago, wheelchair bound? The theology of resurrected bodies that I learned wasn't one with a space for non-standard bodies. Does Abby get a 'new body', too? Will it still be her body? Was her body - her physicality - innately sinful, then, for being "non-standard"?

Or does her body just do all the things she needs it to do in the new creation, her physicality no longer a binding upon her in the next life as it was in this life?

Abby died around two decades ago. My fully-abled and very physically-capable cousin Tina died around one decade ago. Both Christian women, from very different traditions, with very different bodies, but very steadfast faiths. And one night I dreamed of them both dancing before the Throne - Tina as she loved to do, Abby as she never had the opportunity to do. Did I see what kind of body Abby had? Nope. Apparently it was beyond my comprehension as limited by this world, and so my brain lacks the ability to think beyond the bound of the society it was raised in - where Abby's body was "wrong" for not being capable of all the things that my body and Tina's body were capable of doing and being.

Or maybe I just made it all up in my head. Always possible.

A theology of disability - of "differently abled bodies" - is an interesting one, because it forces us to confront that if the flesh is not inherently sinful, then having a body that doesn't fit our social expectations isn't a sin either.

OT laws vs NT laws vs Laws Of Love

Not eating shellfish? Isn't a matter of "love thy neighbour". Providing opportunities for those who aren't born into them? That's a matter of "love thy neighbour".

The NT Laws we recognise as being more about 'loving people around us' than the OT Laws, but also, the NT laws are rooted in a culture and a time and a place and issues that the church was facing at the time when those answers were given. They give us the shape of "loving our neighbour" but not necessarily the specifics.

The way the OT law worked was a lot of ancient society wisdom - not eating things that were risky-disky in terms of cleanliness or biosecurity, or which could be mistaken for the religious practices of the peoples around them - AND a lot of stuff that went against the codes of the ancient societies around them. Slaves and servants being granted a rest day off? The sexual abuse of a woman being punishable by either her legal right to your entitlements (as happened for women through the contract of marriage) or your death? Welcoming those who flee their lands of origin?

Those are pretty weird by the standards of the day. And sure, we can argue that 'people should have known better' but we have the experience of some nine-thousand years of human thought and experience and knowledge, transmitted by myth, legend, story, and parable, and then by fairy-tale and epic narrative and collective chant, and most recently by print and recorded media. So, yeah, we know now, but we didn't know then. Just like children start off with very simplistic understandings of the world and grow into complexity with adults. (Sometimes. Sometimes they don't. That's part of the issues we're facing right now: people who want childlike solutions to problems that have been woven by generations of humanity.)

Basically, the OT laws that carry on to the NT, and the NT mandates that we still cling to today, are entirely and without exception those that dignify our relationship with God and with other human beings. We have corrupted them in the modern world with our legalism and our tricksy wordses of online defensive discourse, but in the end, what we are asked to do is to love and care for and succour and support others in ways that lift them up in everything they are, not merely 'spiritual'.

Which is why we don't take the entire literal books of the Torah as our laws. We take the spirit of what they say in them and not the specifics - to respect our fellow human beings as co-created by God, to do right by the created world He gave us to look after, and to do right by the other created beings He put in the world with us, and to give due place and presence to the creator God.

I don't think that we should be focused on "the spiritual" so much as "the spirit".