A broken tulip

Man and woman were created in the image of God.

Man and woman were made for the glory of God.

Here is the challenge: men can easily see how their masculinity bears the image of God, since God (who is neither male nor female) most often calls himself by masculine pronouns in Scripture. Even clearer, when God came in the flesh, he came as a male.

So exactly how do women bear the image of God? I don’t mean abstractly. What do we look to in God and say, that is what it means to be a woman?

If there is no way to know how I image God as a woman specifically, how can I live into that vision?

So when a man tells me that my womanhood is defined by these things: in the created order, I come after (under the authority of) the man; Eve and ever after has proved women more deceivable; and the woman is the weaker vessel (emotionally, physically, spiritually) than the man – I resist. At the core of each of us is the image of God—and surely no one would suggest that God is weak, inferior, gullible, and therefore dangerous? And if these things cannot be found in the Godhead, then they are not what defines women. So who are we, in the divine story?

The church’s attitudes towards women mean life and death, as Rachel Denhollander wrote recently. That’s not hyperbole. That’s commentary on recent events, recent killings of women by a Christian man.

The church should care deeply about what men and women believe on this, not only for the sake of women, but because the church that sees in women danger and seduction instead of the image of God is, by implication, the church that does not see clearly God Himself.

Where can we look in this world to see God? Genesis 1 and 2 answer, the human, the male and female, them. They are the physical representation, the image to the world, the icon, of the Creator King. We tend to internalize “image of God” as something special we get from God that’s between us and Him. But the image of God is about our place in the world — it’s about the fact that Creation should look to us in order to see God.

Of course, the rest of Genesis tells about how drastically unlike God humans became. Yet Christ came, as the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of Creation. He did what we could not, as the human, and he promises to restore us as his representatives in the world — when people look at us who believe, they should see Christ. It is what we were made for as humans, as male and female. Imaging God.

So I’m not asking “what does it mean to be made in the image of God as a woman” as some kind of interior, esoteric exercise. I’m asking what it means to look at women, real women, who are leading and serving, mothering and single, gentle and fierce, loud and quiet, and to see God.

To put it the other way, if we are made in the image of God then we can look to him to see who we are made to be as women. Surely the God who includes the different ethnes (peoples) in his body, encouraging them to preserve their differences yet come as equals before him, surely this God relates in a unique way to women? A unique and positive way, which is to say, he doesn’t simply tell us to be quiet and to stay in the shadows and out of his temple, but he actually comes to us, speaks to us, speaks through us, in ways that are possible because we are women. He is actually visible–imaged–to the world in women, just like he said he would be. Surely the end of the story isn’t that we were created as God’s second best or as the world’s back-up plan (some people say Deborah was a judge only because no good men were available).

So where do we look?

As I sit here and think forwards and backwards through Scripture, here are a few of the things that come to mind that God and women clearly share:

From Genesis: Strength, salvation from death, creation, and life.

From Proverbs: Wisdom that creates a world, Wisdom that sustains, Wisdom that delights in what is made. Wisdom that enlightens fools. And strength.

From the prophets: Strength. Beauty. Motherhood (life). Steadfast love.

From the genealogies of Israel (and of Christ): Boldness. Initiative. Persistence. Valour. Fight. A firm grip on what matters most. Sacrifice.

From Mary’s life: Surrender. Strength. Boldness. Faithfulness. Suffering.

From the early church: Witness in the face of death. Witness in the face of lies. Hospitality. Gentleness.

From Revelations: Struggle. Victory.

Maybe this list has you scratching your head and that’s okay. We’ll talk more about it. There is one thing I want to stress now, though. It is very, very clear is that strength, and not weakness, is inherent to the image of God in women, and the strength of women is praised by God. If you are a woman who has been told that you are a shadow-version of a man, weaker in your mind, your heart, your spirit, your body, then you have been told a lie.

The truth? Is far more wild, far-reaching, and wonderful than we ever imagined.

---

Featured Image by Jeremy Bishop.