7th April 2021
Women are made in the image of God.
Women are made in God’s image.
Women bear the likeness of God.
God made women in Her own image.
Women are God’s image bearers.
How many other ways can I say this?
How many times do we have to say it?
Because this is the crux of it really.
I’ve written post after post about how the church can support survivors of abuse, how the church can address violence against women, how the church needs to accept responsibility for perpetrators of abuse, how some of our theology enables abuse, and there’s so much to say there. It’s so complex and huge, but ultimately recognising the simple notion that God is not male and that women are equally made in God’s image is the first and most important step.
Whoever you are, male, female, straight, gay, black, white you reflect something of God uniquely, something that nobody else does. God is HUGE, his glory is unparalleled, if humanity is to reflect God’s glory it needs all of us. All of us in our wonderful, diverse, complicated beauty. ALL OF US.
We are all uniquely and equally wonderfully made, by a creator who breathed a spark of her image into every single one of us.
For too long we’ve been presented with an image of a male God, a God who made man in his image and woman as an afterthought, to act as a comfort and helper to man. This is wrong. The bible tells us “in his image he made them, male AND female” ALL OF US. Men alone cannot reflect the glory of God.
I remember Mark Driscoll complaining about the “feminising” of Jesus, saying he couldn’t worship a Jesus he could beat up. Yet men, like Driscoll DID beat Jesus up. They beat him to a pulp and nailed him to a cross. There is no room for “toxic masculinity” in the Gospel. God is not “one of the lads” She is Father AND Mother, Male and Female. We all bear God’s image. We must worship the feminine in God as much as the masculine and we should recognise the full equality of Gods daughters as her likeness. It is not an insult to refer to God as female.
Women are made in the image of God
