The first week of April marked the second annual Women in the World summit. Hosted by Tina Brown, editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast, the summit was a veritable ‘who’s who’ of activist women. Representatives from Africa, Asia, South and Central America, Europe and the United States converged on New York to spotlight the work of male and female activists working on behalf of women across the globe.
I caught some of the panel discussions while waiting in the airport. They were interesting, inspiring, enlightening and challenging. But I couldn’t help but wonder, “Where are the women of God? Where are the American Christian women to be exact?”
Now I’m sure that out of the 2,500 women in attendance some were Christians. A few, like
Oral Lee Brown were celebrated for their work in their communities, but I didn’t really see any on the panels or standing at the podium.
Perhaps, as one of my friends said to me, there were no Christian women invited to the forum. Perhaps that may be true. But if that is our defense, then certainly we should be able to point to our own work addressing these issues both here and abroad.
Can we?
Do we assume that it’s just our job to raise good kids and to be good wives? And that someone, somewhere else is responsible for addressing the ‘big’ issues like rape, trafficking, slavery, prostitution or violence? Or do we, in light of Genesis 3, just shrug our shoulders and say, “Oh well”?
Proverbs 31 states that a virtuous woman “extends her hand to the poor, yes, she reaches out her hands to the needy”. Jesus was even clearer in the parable of the Good Samaritan that we have a responsibility to reach out to the hurting, the lost, the poor, the suffering, and to those who are not “us”.
You’re going to hear me say this over and over again: we are all ministers of the gospel. Each of us has a responsibility to more than just our own family and to more than our own comfort. It isn’t enough to bake nice soufflés and to caravan our children from church to school to home if it means that it consumes our entire existence making us oblivious, whether intentionally or unintentionally, to the suffering of those around us.
Jesus said in Luke:
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.
Although we understand that Jesus was not talking about actual hatred, but about how we prioritize our families, it still sounds harsh. And actually, I think that in a lot of circles we would prefer that somehow this wouldn’t apply to women. But it does.
Certainly if we’ve made the commitment to be married and to have children, then we have responsibilities. But if our hand only “extends” to our own families or to those who are already in our circle of faith, then quite simply we are disobeying the command of Jesus Christ.
