Men in Women’s Shoes

I wanted to entitle this ‘Men, Feminism & Faith’. I rarely struggle with what to baptize these articles as name, but I do hope God was close to nailing the point He wanted to lead home with this selected title as you’ll see.

I loathed being ‘a man’! Why I loathed being a man was because of the ego I had seen many men portray and live issuing. Even the boys in their teen ages were metamorphosing in unruly ways. I so prayed very much that I’d never turn out like that.

Yes, I was the inferior one. I always wanted to be vulnerable, and that’s not a bad thing. C S Lewis said “to love at all is to be vulnerable.” So if you hate vulnerability, and don’t want any part of it, question your love. For the reckless things love makes us do, have all their root sprouting from vulnerability. God so loving this world that He gave up His only son was a vulnerable thing. I mean, how disturbing it is, to sacrifice your only child…

Women, are the sex or gender that vulnerability is very much associated to; but your thinking is about to change.

The Bible says there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female. If we were all created from the same image of God, I believe we were created from or with His emotions. Yes anger — the emotion that tends to fall on the masculine side — is also from God. BUT, we have led it astray. It is not to fuel our retaliation when someone does something bad for us. It is to be the fuel with which we loath sin and all the works of the enemy such as disease. When we direct it to the meant recipient, then that’s the only time it’s valid. The rest of the times when it’s used is invalid, for the one meant to have a share of it ends up using it against each other of us, keeping it away from Him.

Ephesians says ‘don’t let the sun go down when you are still angry’. It didn’t say ‘do not be angry.’

That’s that.

From the point I diverged, I was still expressing how man and woman came from the same. In fact Adam’s rib — the woman — came from him, thus a replica of his very emotions. Once I understood this, I let my emotions loose. I used to think that feeling lovey-dovey was intolerable or wacko, but I came to realize that that was to my advantage.

The thing that was referred to as ‘feminine’ has helped me a lot in my faith journey. Most men will find hard time relating to some parts of the Bible because it either requires you to come as a child, or two; to be a woman.

Most times God refers to Israel as a ‘she’. When Israel went astray, the nation was denoted as a harlot or prostitute. Never was it denoted as a male prostitute (though I hear we have those too today), for if it was so, then the pronoun referring to Israel wouldn’t have been ‘she’.

On the other hand, we see God allegorically go all out, crazy in love, in the shadows of the book of Song of Solomon. The woman in the book represents the bride of Christ; and the church is the bride; and the male christian fraternity are also part of the church. So it all indeed gets confusing.

The idea however is not to be confusing. The end is for you to understand the setting and in the end benefit from it. You can (for example) never ever be able to come to the full comprehension of the joy of the one glorious wedding day of Jesus as mentioned in the book of Revelation, if you’ve never imagined how it’d feel like for a man to propose to you, and betroth you, securing you out of the billion other women in the world.

If you’re always thinking about how you’ll be able to fetch from all corners of the earth the bride price, then you’ll never understand how special it feels to be the one receiving all manner of gifts that entail the bride price. You’ll never understand how valuable you are — though in this instance I want the woman to image herself as the groom working tooth and nail, fingers to the bone just to make the ends meet to purchase all manner and forms of bride price, to better appreciate a groom’s sweat and effort.

Just like God assumes many forms, we too have to place ourselves in the different shoes of other creatures to be able to make sense of how much God loves us or how He works. God has been portrayed as a pillar of cloud by day, and fire by night. He was a burning bush. He is the lion and the lamb. He’s the wind at some point, and at another, He is the water. He is the rock, and at some other point — an earthquake. Our knowing of each of these things enables us to relate deeply with Him.

Since we are like Him, we ought to assume different forms too; for He has already associated other forms with us: that of a child, that of being a vine, that of being sheep and He a shepherd. Now if all you know is computers and AI — there’s no AI referral in the Bible. You then have to be able to know what every example you’re compared to in His word is.

The man therefore has to place himself in a woman’s shoes, and the woman in a man’s (though the article was meat for the gents firstly and mainly). Proverbs 31 always provides women with ‘manly’ roles like going out to buy a field.

Is that a ‘no’ I hear bellowing? Are you trying to say buying a field can be a both male and female task? If so, then why do you say ‘big boys don’t cry’. We all come with emotions with us. Tears weren’t only infused in a woman alone. Or the emotion of fear… So we can’t say a man won’t fear. If He would not, then Isaiah 41:10 should have specifically said “Dear women, do not fear, I will be with you.” The caution would have only been directed to the females.

The gist of the point — if it hasn’t sank in yet — is, that you have to assume the thing you’re being called. If you’re 40, but the Bible has said we have to have faith like a child’s, you have to remember how as a child you always believed. You always believed in fairy tales if you’re like me. You always believed your parents would return from work with that toy you wanted. You always BELIEVED even if they were lying! Those are the memories you have to recall to benefit from the portion Jesus is beseeching you to come as a child.

Likewise, when the bride tells her fiance to “lie all night between her breasts…” in Song of Solomon, you have to activate your imagination. When in chapter two, verse six she says, “His left hand [is] under my head, And his right hand embraces me,” you have to picture yourself as a girl. A girl stupidly in love — blushing and fluttering her eyes as they stare deeply into his.

If you’ve never been married or not in a relationship, you too have to outsource experience. Use movies to understand scenes as such. The Bible won’t seclude your situation and just like we were told that Song of Solomon was the unholiest book in the Bible as kids, we always looked down at it with scorn, yet the mere fact that it was in the Bible already qualified it to be HOLY!

If we were told to imagine ourselves as young adults in love, perhaps it’d have made some sense to us. Even if the article was meant for the men to assume a woman’s body and apply themselves where need be, it also goes to everyone else; to assume shapes of a sheep, of a widow like Ruth, of a prostitute like Gomer who’s bought back from the stalls of selling her body again and again by her husband, of a prisoner like Joseph, of a denier like Peter, of a woman who has hit menopause like Sarah, of a potential impotent like Abraham, or of a harlot saved from destruction like Rahab even if she thought she didn’t deserve to live.

When the woman caught in adultery was about to be stoned, Jesus tricked everyone to get into her shoes: “If you’ve never sinned, be the first to cast a stone at her.” That’s the whole point! For men to put themselves in shoes of women, and children. For women to put themselves in shoes of men and children. For children to put themselves in shoes of adults, and for humans to put themselves in the shoes of creations like wind and water, not forgetting timelines and settings far different from their own (for example to understand that there were no cars in Bible days and to travel on horsebacks was an expensive luxury).

When we do so, we understand better like that crowd that was about to stone the woman in front of Jesus.

This act will take us far in our understanding of the Word, and that’s when we’ll become wiser than our enemies and bear more understanding than the ancients.

Dear sir, imagine showing up at Jesus’ feet, washing them with your tears and drying them with your long hair, then pouring oil on Him that cost you your entire annual salary combined …

Here ends my thesis.