Imageo Dei?

We are made in the image of God, too, right? Women, I mean.

Sometimes I honestly think that I know how Hosea and Jeremiah felt. And Jonah. I sometimes wonder if it's not also a 'calling' to be commissioned to struggle with certain sufferings in order to comprehend a fraction of the father's heart. Following the will of God is not easy, calming and peaceful -- at least not from what I can see of the biblical picture. Christ sweating drops like blood and crying out to the father to change his will doesn't seem quite the idyllic picture of peaceful submission to the greater plan. Jonah, too, follows the will of God under duress -- as do scores of others we are given as examples. Moses, David, Jesus, Paul, the list continues ad infinitum. To be with God is to struggle with man, yes, but also sometimes with God and with ourselves.

I'm beginning to wonder if that's not some part of why I can't quit, even when I most want to and even when I've prayed to be relieved of the drive, the care and the--- whatever else it is that makes it all so hard. I know that when I feel like giving up, wussing out and throwing in the towel, there is something far beyond me that pushes me back into the fight -- something a whole lot bigger than I am.

Last week, I was covered in a blanket feeling of peerlessness that brought a sort of despair. At the grad school, there are men who are pursuing these degrees, there are males who are teaching us, mentoring us and serving as our practical examples. But at times like last week when my strength is empty and my temptation to quit, I have no one to look to for advice. There isn't anyone encouraging the heretics. Many would be happy if I did, in fact, manage to give up. It underscored the aloneness I sometimes feel as a female theologian in a male tradition. And it hurt. It had nothing to do with any 'new information' yielded by my studies or any revelation from on high that I'm in the wrong field. It had everything to do with feeling tiny, ill-equipped, and alone save for God.

And it's that feeling that reminded me a few days later of the struggle I'd related before concerning women's ministries, anemic as they are in my fellowship. Apart from heresy or doctrinal constraints, there is a need for a more organized network of women to act as peers and mentors and people to whom we are accountable. There is a need and a desire and there has to be a way. And so I think I realized from the acuteness of my own experience even in only that day that the need is urgent. It is a salvation issue; many have thrown off God because they can no longer stand what professes to be his church.

The church as it stands today -- and yes, I have to contend that it has changed greatly over the years and no current manifestation reaches the apostolic ideal; it is doubtful even the apostolic church approached the apostolic ideal, the God-ordained intent -- cannot be the realized manifestation of the church that God desires. It is inconceivable that any ideal conceived of by God and realized in a perfected or even acceptable form would be responsible for so much damage, hurt, anger and apathy. This cannot be the will of God. And if we are expected to believe in a God whose will it is, I can see why so many reject him.

None of this has anything to do with what women are "allowed" to do in churches, in worship, in general -- and I am so indescribably sick of people attempting to distill any opposition to tradition down to that trite point. It's asinine and shallow to presume such a thing, much less to promote it. It has everything, however, to do with the debasement of the image of God.