At the risk of being labeled a reverse sexist – hey, I can deal with that – I tend to think, in the main , that women are better people than men.
I took some pleasure that the #MeToo movement received TIME magazine’s Person of the Year designation. I’ve had/tried to avoid having debates over whether this particular man (Al Franken, usually, but not always) should have been fired/forced to resign.
Here’s the thing. When you have years (decades, centuries) of oppression, and the oppressed finally get their voice/get some power, the rules to rectify the long-standing wrongs aren’t always clear. Or perceived as “fair”. (If Franken goes, why doesn’t tRump? Because the Senate, and the House of Representatives, have rules about their own members.)
Eventually, some equilibrium, some recognizable standard, is achieved, but it takes a while.
Which brings me to Mary, the Magnificat, and an Unsentimental Advent by Rachel Held Evans. She says Mary has long been painted “in the softer hues… —but this young woman was a fierce one, full of strength and fury…
“And so in this season, I hear Mary’s Magnificat shouted, not sung” in the places of power and oppression. Great stuff, this. And to the War on Christmas folks, she adds:
“God did not wrap himself up in flesh, humbling himself to the point of birth in a stable and death on a cross, eating, laughing, weeping, and suffering as one of us, so that I can complain to management when a barista at Starbucks wishes me ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas.’ The incarnation isn’t about desperately grasping at the threads of power and privilege. It’s not about making some civic holiday ‘bigger and better.’ It’s about surrendering power, setting aside privilege, and finding God in the smallness and vulnerability of a baby in a womb.”