Radical femininity
How can we understand the delicate balance between cultural influence, historical perspective, and biblical authority in our role as women at home, at work, in the church, and in culture?How did the three waves of feminism hinder God’s vision for women?And finally, how do you know where to go from here?Amid the radical confusion of our culture over femininity, Carolyn teaches the radical truth of God’s wise and elegant plan for women.
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Carolyn McCulley: I think the answer requires a lot of nuance to understand the specific culture of the churches you’re talking about and people’s experiences in those churches, but I think we can analyze from their general point of view.
The first is that even churches that are biblically faithful, to what should be the governance structure, to what ecclesiology must be, are sometimes deaf to the voice of women and do not practice the brotherhood of Christ, which means that we are brothers and sisters. and we need each other to be able to represent the fulness of Christ when we bear witness to the gospel, so patience and grace is required from women who sometimes see mistakes and weaknesses to remember that we are important, our gifts of Christ are necessary to build the body, they are necessary to bear witness to the community around us.
That said, the other side of the coin is that there may be times when we forget, as cultures, both in the United States and in Brazil, that upbringing and leadership are gifts that serve to equip the body for the works of Christ, for the works of ministry, to exercise all the gifts he gives.
So what we do sometimes is create a professional platform and it’s a little strange to talk about it like an author and someone who speaks at conferences. Sometimes this culture creates a platform for Christian celebrities who say “you have courage,” as if others didn’t listen. It is very different from the view of the kingdom where Christ wants us to serve. He wants us to serve the little ones. He wants us to serve in secret and he wants us to remember those who have been forgotten.
Thus, there may be a tension in which we professionalize the gifts we have to talk about the platforms and forget about the other gifts that the rest of the body also needs, in each case I would tell the young women to be patient, Christ is patient with us. He sees all this disorder in the church and continues to transform us into the beautiful wife he wants us to be, as a church.
There are times when you think, “Do I want this? And I can look at the scriptures and see the barriers and feel that maybe we say more about restrictions than about freedom. Well, ask benevolent and patient questions: “How can I grow up?in this church?” how can I use my gifts? Remember that our goal is not only the platform, this can be useful to find that balance. It is a very subtle and broad question, it depends on the experience of the person’s church, but I would say that we must remember that Christ is patient with his people here and that we can also be with each other.