Hi Kristen

Thank you for your comment at Provoketive Magazine (http://provoketive.com). We’re creating a space of rich conversation about life, faith, justice and culture without judgment. Our desire is to provoke the reader’s imagination through conversation and open up spaces of dialogue, learning, and hope.  We want to invite you to come back soon and continue to participate in the conversation. 

Thank you,
Jonathan Brink
Provoketive Magazine

You posted the following comment:
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Coming to this conversation late-- but I can hear your respectful, honoring voice, Jonathan, and I think part of the pushbacks are a result of miscommunication.  When you said, "I don't want women to be equal in the traditional sense," the context in which you wrote that leads me to believe you meant, "I don't want women and men to be exactly alike or for women to have to act like men to get ahead in this world or in the church."  But "alike" and "equal" are two different things, and I, too, found myself bristling at the idea that you don't want women to be "equal"--  that is, to have the same rights and opportunities that men have.  However, I don't think that's what you meant. 

I agree that there are no good qualities of character that are "pink" or "blue" -- for Jesus embodied all the virtues, including strength and nurturing, assertiveness and gentleness, and we are all called to imitate Him.  The differences between men and women seem to me to be related to our biology.  Men can be fathers but not mothers; women can be mothers but not fathers; women have more estrogen and men have more testosterone-- all of which leads to different experiences of, and ways of approaching, the world.  But Christianity is not about the spiritual only.  It is a faith that considers the physical to be good, and our physical bodies are gendered.   So we do have differences and should celebrate them.  We are not all alike and should not try to be-- but it is the stereotypes of "gender roles" that really try to make us all alike (all the women one way, all the men another), not the notion of true equality in which we can all be who we are, with our individual differences, and yet have the same powers, rights and opportunities.