Toward stopping abuse of women and girls

A Christian Science perspective.

What is a woman?

A weak human being to be overpowered, violated, and exploited?

If I were to go only by the recent news reports here in India, I’d be inclined to believe that. But is that really what a woman is? I like to think that the majority of people wouldn’t agree.

When we think of our mothers, wives, daughters, or friends, do we associate them only with a physical form? Rather, don’t we think of their warmth, gentleness, tenderness, and even their strength? Perhaps it is their unselfishness or honesty that comes to mind. Isn’t that really what womanhood is all about – qualities that comfort, nurture, and strengthen?

Those qualities of warmth, love, and unselfishness belong to us all, irrespective of our gender. Men express these “feminine” qualities just as women express the “masculine” qualities of strength and courage. Through my study of Christian Science, I’ve come to understand that it is a combination of the feminine and the masculine qualities that makes up our individuality and gives us a sense of wholeness and completeness. Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, explains it this way in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”: “Union of the masculine and feminine qualities constitutes completeness” (p. 57).

Look around you and you will see shining examples of men and women who combine these qualities perfectly. Why then have we set up these divisions, put ourselves into these little compartments of “men must be like this” and “women must be like that”?

Much change has come to those old ways of thinking, and we are starting to break out of those compartments. Some argue that it is this breaking up that is bringing violence against women to the surface. Perhaps it is so. Perhaps it is a stirring up that is going on, bringing false ideas of both women and men to the surface so that they can be removed. False ideas that women are weak and must stay that way, or that men are strong but unable to control their bodies or their actions. It’s a wrong notion that strength can be expressed only harshly or that tenderness is equivalent to weakness. True strength is expressed gently. “Tenderness accompanies all the might imparted by Spirit,” wrote Mrs. Eddy (Science and Health, p. 514). Gentleness is not a sign of weakness.

Much more remains to be done if we are to close the gender gap that is so evident in the recent instances of violence against women in India that have horrified the country and the world. It is really a gap in the general thought that is calling to be filled with right ideas about true manhood and womanhood – the ideal man, God’s reflection, whom the Bible refers to in its first chapter of its first book: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."

This is something each of us can do because each one of us contributes to the general thought. So today, let’s claim our right – and everyone else’s as well – to express our wholeness, our masculinity, and our femininity. It will give a boost to the health and progress of individuals and nations as nothing else can.

Adapted from the author’s blog on SpeakingTree

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Toward stopping abuse of women and girls
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/A-Christian-Science-Perspective/2013/0429/Toward-stopping-abuse-of-women-and-girls
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe