Celebrating International Women's Day: A Christian View of Gender Equality
I was part of the Voices for Change Nigeria, V4C, and advocacy for positive gender perspectives, not for any reason other than my passion to see certain mindsets and worldviews about women change.
Losing my father close to my tenth birthday and watching my mum struggle to continue where my father stopped in raising us, a woman not empowered and with limited education, made me determined early to see to changes in the way women are treated and regarded.
Not because my maternal grandparents or even my dad didn't believe in education, after all, my uncles were the first set of graduates in the village and my dad and mum were in the UK to study, the problem was that it seemed they didn't see reasons why a girl should be too educated. My mum had to stop her studies in the UK just because her husband was returning to Nigeria after his own studies with the promise that there wasn't anything she would ever need that my dad won't be able to provide. He died unexpectedly about ten years after and that inability to complete her course back in Belfast would not just limit her but also her children.
God created man and woman equal even if different. Equality isn't sameness. Some people think when we speak of gender equality that we speak of sameness, of course they aren't the same. Equality means that though we are not same, the differences we have should be complementary for completion and not for competition which makes the winner to take all.
Equality means everyone has a right to be exposed to every opportunity available to anyone. Equality means no one should be treated as a second class based on his or her sex. Equality means whatever each of us can do should be what he or she should do and should be judged by.
God created Adam and Eve equal. It is arguable that Adam and Eve equal Adam before Eve was taken out of him. If God was to make another person, He could have made that independent of Adam, but instead He put Adam to sleep, removed "a rib" from his side and from there made the woman. I believe Adam was carrying Eve around in him before that operation. Man was originally made male and female, the female wasn't an afterthought. According to the record of Genesis 1.
And it shows in the sameness of the number of chromosomes both in our somatic cells and in our reproductive cells. The somatic cells carry the diploid number while the reproductive cells have the haploid number, it takes an equal contribution from both a man and a woman to have another human being through the regular sexual reproduction pathway. So, outside the differences we have sexually, the man and the woman are equal. It's possible to have hormonal influences that affect things but essentially, intelligence and productivity aren't subdued in anyone because of his or her sex.
It's possible to say that the stress of pregnancy, breastfeeding and early childhood parenting take its toll on women, yet these do not reduce her productivity, intelligence or her ability to impact her world and proffer life developing solutions to the issues of life. Yet, God created the reproductive cycle of women to be temporary, stopping at menopause to show us that women were not created to bear and raise children all their lives, to show that its just a temporary and not a primary lifelong purpose.
So, if we see less of women with opportunities or in position to make a difference, it isn't because of God or of nature, it is the warped mentality of the world, not just of men but of the world as a whole that has deprived the world of their impacts.
When Jesus Christ said 'For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that WHOSOEVER believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life', He destroyed with that one sentence every limitation religion placed on the woman to enjoying the fullness of God. The highest anyone can have is eternal life, the very life of the God species of existence. The kind of life that makes mankind children of God, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. The word 'whosoever' destroyed the gender mentality that made women second class in things pertaining to God. It was the same word that brought the non Jews into reckoning in the things of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and made Him the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, otherwise we would have been seen as unclean still according to the laws of Moses.
Some had asked why Jesus Christ didn't have women as part of the 12, but He didn't also have anyone outside Galilee...does that then mean no one outside the Galileans are qualified to be His disciple?
We saw that the promise of the Holy Spirit, which is the mark of the New Testament and the empowerment for service in Christ is for both male and female of any social order or age.
On the day of Pentecost, Peter, under the influence of the Holy Spirit referred to the prophecy of prophet Joel concerning the day...
Acts 2
17 ‘In the last days,’ God says,
‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy.
Your young men will see visions,
and your old men will dream dreams.
18 In those days I will pour out my Spirit
even on my servants—men and women alike—
and they will prophesy.
And we remember that it was the power they were to be endued with for them to be His witnesses to the ends of the earth.
So, we see that in the New creation, gender issues don't come in and also in serving as witnesses, prophesying and seeing visions, gender considerations don't come in.
Galatians 3 27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus
What about in marriage? Leadership issues in Christ are clear. The hierarchy puts God and Christ at the top, followed in the local church by the pastoral leadership and then the people. In a Christian corporate system, businesses and enterprises, God and Christ at the top, followed by the leaders and then the employees. In the Christian home, God and Christ are tops, followed by the husband and then the wife and then the children. 1Corinthians 11:3
Why is it so? To care for those who are most vulnerable. The one called the head is subordinate to the overall head and must lead after the order of his or her own head. You are only followed just as you follow Christ. If you aren't following Christ, you have no right to demand anyone in the church either as a pastor, a CEO in business or as a husband to follow you. Ephesians 6:9, 1Corinthians 11:1.
Submission which a lot have issues with starts from the husband towards God and Christ and then to everyone, and it is then, that submission can come from the wife. Ephesians 5:21. Submission primarily is to God and Christ and then to one another for one to be qualified to be submitted to Ephesians 5:21-22. The head of the home is Christ and to Him everyone submits. That's the kingdom system. Any husband not in submission to Christ as the head of the system isn't running a Christian home and notice that submission is to Christ, it is conditional.
Now, that doesn't remove the fact that in the home, the leader sees to the fulfillment of everyone's destiny including that of the wife. He is a servant, just like Christ sent to serve others and to give His life as a ransom for many, Matthew 20:24-28
Even at that, the husband as head of his wife should see her as equal heirs of God's life.
1Peter 3
7 Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, GIVING HONOUR UNTO THE WIFE, as unto the weaker vessel, and AS BEING HEIRS TOGETHER OF THE GRACE OF LIFE ; that your prayers be not hindered.
Notice that husbands are commanded to give honour to their wives otherwise there will be spiritual consequences.
To think that Christianity supports the oppression and the subjugation of the female sex is not to have a good grasp of the doctrine of Christ. These things have been embedded in Scriptures long before the advent of social advocacy for women's rights. Of course, a lot of insincere and selfish people have twisted Scriptures to support all sorts of evil, others too who hate Christianity and would always want to spite it, not acknowledging anything good in it, have taken the wrong perspectives of what the Bible says in this regard.
God created and equipped us to deliver certain purposes in the earth, equality will mean giving everyone the opportunity and the chance to maximize their potentials, to produce purpose and to enjoy the produce of their efforts.
If she can, she should be allowed. If she can't, don't burden her with it. Roles should be shared in society, in church and in the home by potentials and by abilities to deliver and not by cultural perspectives and biases. Why deprive the person who can from doing while burdening the one who can't just because they are males or females?
Finally, women should support other women. This is crucial in the advocacy for equality. Either in leadership and decision making, in fight against violence against women, girls and vulnerable people, education and workplace inequalities, and in other such issues, women should support qualified women and stand against the oppression of people based on their sex. We know the reorientation needed would need all hands to be on deck including that of the men, but women must not turn their backs on other women when they need to have what's due them for whatever reason, and they should do that sincerely and not to selfishly launder their own selfish image for selfish purposes.
I celebrate all the women in my life, my grandmothers, mum, aunts, my sisters, my wife, my daughters and my friends... Happy world women's day!
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