As a male, I find it both a source of frustration and delight that women can think along completely different trajectories at the exact same time. Currently, I am in the delight mode. So I just wanted to take a moment to glory in the feminine mind.
We males think in certain ways about certain things. And in order to change the way we are thinking, we either have to abandon the one way of thinking for the other, or we have to smash another up against it until the winner takes precedence (hey, just because I’m non-violent doesn’t mean my mind works that way!). It is difficult for us to work at a discipline amorphously and it becomes bothersome when hard-fought boundaries are softened or, perhaps, bent into areas they don’t belong according to our classifying, organizing, and compartmentalizing way of thinking. And that is exactly the point at which the female mind shines so radiant.
At the moment, I am reading a short little book called The New Historicism by Gina Hens-Piazza. I knew I was in for a treat the moment I began reading. Here is a biblical criticism which defies normal boundaries between practices and threatens to unite seemingly disparate and differentiated concepts. At least, that is the male reaction. And it is humorous to read that she experienced that reaction as well when she first stumbled into the field. Although, perhaps first
and stumbled
don’t do her justice. She did, after all, spend a great deal of time previous to this book working in Rhetorical Criticism, ANOTHER discipline that moves freely between usually oppositional methods, concepts, and practices.
The past several centuries of modern biblical study were ruled and presided over by men and their male ways of thinking. And, suddenly, in the fourth quarter of the 20st Century (at least for biblical studies), women have stormed into the arena and upset the balance of the whole system. What wonderfully masculine terms and concepts balance
and system
are. And yet what a wonderful turn of events to have the feminine mind finally released from the male structures (another good masculine term) that governed her. In a way, it is alarming. The male can seem to think that the ship on which he has sailed so long on such a proud journey is suddenly under attack. And by unseen assailants! But that is exactly what we men need. If the male can only work within and withstand the forms that male minds present him, what good is he? The rocking and perhaps overturning of our boats is what enables us to build better ships with which to sail and conquer the seas of our discovery. For too long we have considered women unable to lend a hand either to critical scholastic or religious and theological peregrinations, and it has only been to the frustration of our own goals: the acquisition and employment of truer and better knowledge. It is a glory of the woman that she thinks different than the man, just as it is a glory of the man that he thinks differently than the woman. Together, we may serve as checks and balances to our own self-serving interests and perspectives. Together, the sum of two different dimensions of sight can become three-dimensional. I am pleased that such progress is being made in the house of academia, but disheartened that the house of God is lagging so far behind. Not until scripture is taught and interpreted in our churches by as many women as men will a truly holistic picture of what us religious folk call the word of God
be open and available to all. Hey, yo, sista! Bring it!