Perceptions of women
Our lesson this week was on the martyrdom of Joseph Smith and Hyrum, his brother. The Doctrine & Covenants includes the statement and testimony of John Taylor, one of the apostles, who was present and badly wounded, but survived. (The other man in the cell, Willard Richards, was not hit.)
The lesson materials had a long list of things that Joseph had accomplished in his calling to restore the full gospel of Jesus Christ, and how many truths, long lost, were understood through him. I had marked the overarching things that stood out to me, like the Book of Mormon, the principal of revelation, priesthood authority, and temple work. I asked for what things struck the sisters personally in their lists. The first comment was that in that First Vision as an answer to his prayer, Joseph knew that God was a Person with a tangible form, who knows us by name and loves us. That was the idea which had brought her into the Church, that God was her Father who cared about her in a very personal, individual way.
Sisters mentioned temples, baptism, the missionary work reaching out to all the world. (We're not quite there yet, but coming.) The vision ( D&C 76) of the three degrees of glory, changing our understanding of what is meant by heaven or hell. One of the things that a sister in class mentioned yesterday about the Prophet Joseph was the new understanding of Adam and Eve, and Eve's status as the wise rather than the weaker person, or the temptress who helped wreck it all. To know the true role that Adam and Eve played for all of us, that the Fall was a necessary part of the plan and not its ruination, is key.
Jesus in his ministry included women as directly as men, above what the tradition of his time would presume. Women are referenced in the New Testament as following him, receiving him, being treasured and loved by him, having great faith in him. There are the stories of his mother Mary, of Mary Magdalene, of Mary, Martha and Lazurus. It was Mary and Martha who were quoted, not Lazarus, not a reference to simply "the sisters of Lazarus" which would have been more characteristic of typical Jewish records. Paul names and offers honor to certain women of the Church in his epistles, and he had grown up in the separatist tradition fully, as a Pharisee. Jesus's response to unnamed women in trouble--in sorrow, in pain, even in sin, was compassionate. Women were counted as full disciples.
As those truths were lost to time and apostasy, so many doctrines were decided on the basis of expediency and political purposes. Women came to be seen as weak. Women were declared inferior. Through a period of centuries when the only spiritual instruction was through your priest, when the Bible was not in the common tongue and most people were illiterate anyway, you were taught that Eve was weak, she was devious, she was the one who tried to get around God and was punished. (A fact that all women were still paying for.)
With more freedoms and choices for women today than in times past, our society rejects the idea of looking down on women as an inferior sex. It struck me, and I voiced the thought to the class, that today's efforts to 'empower' women seek to leave any spiritual identity behind because of its association with that lingering mindset. In a reaction against one false idea, many have run across the seesaw to the other end, crashing to the ground on the other side, stuck again--still not balanced in that perfect center. Any suggestion that women need men or fit different roles than men is pushed away, sometimes belligerently. It instantly recalls, to some, the errors of perception that we are supposed to have freed ourselves from.
But the perceptions of human beings, alone, without God, are always filled with errors. We tend to just trade one set of errors for another.
We do not have to be 'the same' to be equal in value and worth. We do not need to be identical in our roles and experience. Someday all the things the world tells us to chase so hard, money, possessions, status, recognition, will pass away. The scripture says, "neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man, in the Lord." We come to a fullness of joy and of our eternal reward, only by being sealed through the keys of the holy priesthood together, as husband and wife. We can't do it by ourselves. The only credentials that will endure are the faithful fulfillment of temple ordinances, love, learning, and service.
By bringing back God's story rather than just trying to amend men's stories of who Eve was and what the Fall meant, the restored gospel teaches us that women are not only equal to men, but that both men and women have promises and possibilities far beyond any 'traditional' imaginings. Eve was the first to recognize that experience was the greatest good, and that difficulties were necessary that we might learn and become like our Father through our choices. Our discipleship is the one benchmark of success that endures forever.
The lesson materials had a long list of things that Joseph had accomplished in his calling to restore the full gospel of Jesus Christ, and how many truths, long lost, were understood through him. I had marked the overarching things that stood out to me, like the Book of Mormon, the principal of revelation, priesthood authority, and temple work. I asked for what things struck the sisters personally in their lists. The first comment was that in that First Vision as an answer to his prayer, Joseph knew that God was a Person with a tangible form, who knows us by name and loves us. That was the idea which had brought her into the Church, that God was her Father who cared about her in a very personal, individual way.
Sisters mentioned temples, baptism, the missionary work reaching out to all the world. (We're not quite there yet, but coming.) The vision ( D&C 76) of the three degrees of glory, changing our understanding of what is meant by heaven or hell. One of the things that a sister in class mentioned yesterday about the Prophet Joseph was the new understanding of Adam and Eve, and Eve's status as the wise rather than the weaker person, or the temptress who helped wreck it all. To know the true role that Adam and Eve played for all of us, that the Fall was a necessary part of the plan and not its ruination, is key.
Jesus in his ministry included women as directly as men, above what the tradition of his time would presume. Women are referenced in the New Testament as following him, receiving him, being treasured and loved by him, having great faith in him. There are the stories of his mother Mary, of Mary Magdalene, of Mary, Martha and Lazurus. It was Mary and Martha who were quoted, not Lazarus, not a reference to simply "the sisters of Lazarus" which would have been more characteristic of typical Jewish records. Paul names and offers honor to certain women of the Church in his epistles, and he had grown up in the separatist tradition fully, as a Pharisee. Jesus's response to unnamed women in trouble--in sorrow, in pain, even in sin, was compassionate. Women were counted as full disciples.
As those truths were lost to time and apostasy, so many doctrines were decided on the basis of expediency and political purposes. Women came to be seen as weak. Women were declared inferior. Through a period of centuries when the only spiritual instruction was through your priest, when the Bible was not in the common tongue and most people were illiterate anyway, you were taught that Eve was weak, she was devious, she was the one who tried to get around God and was punished. (A fact that all women were still paying for.)
With more freedoms and choices for women today than in times past, our society rejects the idea of looking down on women as an inferior sex. It struck me, and I voiced the thought to the class, that today's efforts to 'empower' women seek to leave any spiritual identity behind because of its association with that lingering mindset. In a reaction against one false idea, many have run across the seesaw to the other end, crashing to the ground on the other side, stuck again--still not balanced in that perfect center. Any suggestion that women need men or fit different roles than men is pushed away, sometimes belligerently. It instantly recalls, to some, the errors of perception that we are supposed to have freed ourselves from.
But the perceptions of human beings, alone, without God, are always filled with errors. We tend to just trade one set of errors for another.
We do not have to be 'the same' to be equal in value and worth. We do not need to be identical in our roles and experience. Someday all the things the world tells us to chase so hard, money, possessions, status, recognition, will pass away. The scripture says, "neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man, in the Lord." We come to a fullness of joy and of our eternal reward, only by being sealed through the keys of the holy priesthood together, as husband and wife. We can't do it by ourselves. The only credentials that will endure are the faithful fulfillment of temple ordinances, love, learning, and service.
By bringing back God's story rather than just trying to amend men's stories of who Eve was and what the Fall meant, the restored gospel teaches us that women are not only equal to men, but that both men and women have promises and possibilities far beyond any 'traditional' imaginings. Eve was the first to recognize that experience was the greatest good, and that difficulties were necessary that we might learn and become like our Father through our choices. Our discipleship is the one benchmark of success that endures forever.
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