More on Women

A few years ago, a Bible publisher asked what kind of Bible readers wanted to see. I said that I would like to see more Bibles commentated by female theologians - not female ministers, not female pastors, not female leaders; female theologians. Women who have studied God's Word. 

And I was immediately told that there are "plenty" of Bibles by women...for women. 

To be honest with you, I have always struggled with women's ministries - those subsets of services and groups set up in churches in which women minister to and with one another. 

My problem with women's ministries is that they tend to emphasize the women more than the ministry. They create this caricature of what a Christian woman is - what she does, what she likes, what she buys, what she wears, whatever - and then cater to that image by digging up scriptural things that speak to only that. 

As a female who is allergic to most perfumes and candles, doesn't wear make-up, can't eat chocolate, doesn't drink wine, doesn't have kids, isn't into yoga (no Christian should be doing yoga anyway...), and who otherwise does not fit the caricature that has been created by women's ministries, I have always felt out of place. They simply don't speak to me. 

I am not, as it were, a woman of God. 

I am a female Christian. 

And as I labored and struggled and longed to try to fit into women's ministries, my heart was aching for the Word spoken for me. Not the me that I wasn't, that I'm not, that I'm never going to be, but the me that I am, that God created in His image, that doesn't fit the caricature. 

So yes, there are Bibles by women...for women...and they are full of beauty and flowers and ideas for candlelight meditations and aroma therapies and recipes to share and all those sorts of things, but what they are not full of is nourishment for my soul. Because these kinds of things make me feel like less of a woman, they make me feel like less of a woman of God. 

Like I'm not who God wants me to be because women's ministry, honestly, makes me feel like a lesser human being. 

I have therefore been drawn to men's spaces. Like Mary, who sat at the feet of Jesus while He taught instead of being in the kitchen with Martha. That's who I am - I'm Mary, in a world of Martha-based ministries. 

I want to be where theology is being discussed, where the Word is being read and understood, where the Hebrew and Greek are being parsed, where the unique perspectives of being a female Christian have merit as a being created in God's image just the same. I think it would be totally cool to commentate a Bible. 

Not for women, but for Christians. For all Christians. 

And I think, truly, that if you get the theology right, the men reading it wouldn't even know it was written by a women. There don't have to be hints of potpourri in it just because a female wrote it. She can speak authoritatively on the Word of God and if the truth is accurate, the voice should carry. Shouldn't it? 

I want more Bibles written by women. Not for women, although I hope that women will read them, too. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.