“What did you see?” Mariskka asked.
“I saw … words. What words have done.”
The heart rate monitor flat-lined, and paramedics shoved Mariskka away. One straddled Amber-Marie and began chest compressions.
Mariskka sat with her back against the side of the ambulance, the men and the tubes and wires blending into a whirlpool of motion. At her feet, Amber-Marie’s bag flopped open. Inside was Mariskka’s manuscript.
She released the bolt holding the ambulance doors closed. The doors swung open as the ambulance took a corner. She didn’t listen to the screams as she reached for the manuscript, flinging it out into the streets, watching the pages scatter. Some floated in unexpected directions; others sank and landed without any air to move them. No one in the streets moved to gather them. It was just more litter in this city of accidents and betrayals. The heart monitor registered a return to life for Amber-Marie.
Mariskka shut the doors and sat back, waiting for whatever would come next.
Author’s Note
Based on conservative estimates, we can say that for every word on these pages you just read, one woman was chained to a stake and set on fire. In Germany alone it is estimated that twenty-four thousand women were burned alive for witchcraft. These witch hunts were fueled in large part by the textbook for witch hunters, the Malleus Maleficarum, written by two monks. The Malleus could be considered one of the first best-selling books. What can explain the infamous “success” of the Malleus?
? Women were excluded from leadership in church.
? There was no readily available translation of the Bible in a commoner’s language (until William Tyndale risked his life to produce one).
? Commoners couldn’t read anyway.
? Women were often specifically banned from reading the Scripture.
? Denied a voice in the church and persecuted for their distinct gender differences, women frequently turned to folk magic for help.
? The attraction between men and women is a powerful, mysterious chemistry that every generation continually seeks to understand and control.
Gender Roles and the Church
According to medieval religious belief, evil existed outside of men and inside of women. This theory was the backbone of witch hunts. When the Age of Enlightenment swept through Europe, these theories about witchcraft and women’s nature were discredited—and the church lost its credibility too. This is why teaching about gender differences and gender roles must be undertaken with extreme care and extreme attention to the Scriptures. We must be careful never to put words into God’s mouth.
The reality is that no one understands the complete truth about men and women, our chemistry together, and how each gender is a unique reflection of the divine nature of God. But we do know this—when we finally see God’s face in heaven, we will fully understand ourselves, each other, and God: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12).
When half-truths, incomplete truths, or our best guesses are taught from the pulpit as if they are Scripture, we wreck the credibility of the church. We also shame both men and women into believing they are not normal. One expert on gender roles and sexuality told me that young girls raised in church sometimes believe they are abnormal if they have strong desires. After all, the modern church often teaches that women are more emotional than carnal and don’t tend to have strong sexual urges like men. A woman or girl who doesn’t agree is subtly labeled abnormal. If men, on the other hand, are emotional, they are labeled as “feminine.” Church leaders decry the “feminization of the church” as if femininity were a bad thing, as if the church was meant to be a strictly masculine organization, reflecting a strictly masculine God. Such half-truths leave us little room to discover God in ourselves or one another.
I had a chance to chat over email about these issues with one of my favorite nonfiction authors, Jonalyn Grace Fincher. I’ll close this section of our discussion with her thoughts:
Gender differences come in handy when we find ourselves baffled by those closest to us. Isn’t it so much easier to blame something we can’t control for our problems? For instance, when a man and woman get close (this is especially true in marriage), they discover those annoying differences about each other. Wouldn’t we rather locate these irreconcilable differences in gender or sex instead of personal growth?
I’ve often heard married couples give up understanding or intimacy by discounting the baffling differences in the opposite sex—“Oh, men are all like that,” or, “Maybe this is just a woman thing.” Instead we could push into knowing one another and realize most of the gender differences are due to culture, family of origin, personality, or unique life experiences.