Heading offline for Xmas soon, but what do you say to one more thread for the road? Let's talk about "empowering women."
Recently, more & more folks are coming to understand how women in their orgs have been marginalized & unheard. This is great. A necessary conversation is developing.
I've been particularly encouraged by the intentionality & focus that churches are giving to this convo. Pastors & leaders are asking Qs about their structures & hidden assumptions.
They're re-evaluating their practices, forms, & even underlying categories. They're doing the hard work.
But I often hear this process being described as "empowering women." I think folks mean that they're reshuffling & redistributing org power & giving it to women
Some may mean that their taking their own social power & supporting women in their pursuit of their own vocations.
These aren't wrong ways of speaking, per se, but I think the language of "empowering women" might have the potential reinforce certain false assumptions about women & the power God has granted them as image bearers.
What we're really doing when we restructure orgs or support women in their vocations is honoring & recognizing the power that God has already extended to them both as image bearers & by the Holy Spirit.
IOW, when orgs restructure or intentionally support women, they are not bestowing power on women. They are simply aligning themselves w/ something that God is already doing. They are aligning themselves w/ truth.
Part of the problem, of course, is that we tend to have flawed understanding of power in the first place. We forget that all power comes from God, that all of us--male or female--derive our power from Him. HE is the one who empowers.
W/in community, we can try to amass power to ourselves. We can fight & scrape & scramble to be top dog. We can steal what rightly belongs to another. We can deny the God-given agency & authority of fellow image bearers.
But when we do this, we are fighting against God himself. Yes, the harm comes on other image bearers, but our struggle is with the Almighty. And it is a struggle we can't but lose.
This is why societies that do not honor women will never truly flourish. Why families that do not women will never flourish. Why churches that do not honor women will never truly flourish.
Oh, such communities may amass power & wealth for a time. Leaders may individually gain the control & authority they lust after. But, soon enough, it will collapse from the inside--for the simple fact that such communities do not honor what God honors.
God has extended his glory & power to his daughters as much as his sons. We can choose to align ourselves w/ this reality & be blessed. We can choose to call good what God has called good.
When we do this, we are not so much "empowering women" as humbling ourselves. We are acknowledging God's choice to bestow dignity & power on his daughters.
And *that* is how we will end up on equal footing, able to serve each other well & be blessed by the work God is doing through both his sons & daughters.
If you truly want to "empower women," the first step is not to give them a hand up to where you are. The first step is to ask what kept you from recognizing their God-given power in the first place? The first step is down.
