Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 15:4 (Fall 2001)
Article: Christlike Responses To A Hierarchical World
Author: Jeanne Williams

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PP 15:4 (Fall 2001) p. 18

Christlike Responses To A Hierarchical World

Lessons From Bold Women.

Jeanne Williams

Jeanne Williams is a child therapist who works with low-income urban families. She lives in Denver, Colorado, with her husband and two sons and is completing a master of arts degree at Denver Seminary. Jeanne serves in her church as a deacon and a worship leader.

“. . . be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”

—Matthew 10:16

The Christian egalitarian woman is in a difficult position. If she truly believes God calls women to engage in the same types of ministries and offices of the church in which men engage, and if she is also committed to living a life that reflects God’s character, she is faced with a quandary.

Some women hesitate to fight actively for their rights, believing such attitudes and behaviors do not characterize the Christlike attitude to which Christians are called in Philippians 2. On the other hand, many women are not satisfied with the alternative of passively accepting marginalization by a male-dominated church.1

Just how is a Christian egalitarian woman to live in today’s world? How can she respond to the hierarchical structures around her, and to the victimization that sometimes results, in a way that demonstrates the image of God in her life? In this article we want to look at Jesus’ responses to women who engaged him in ways that sometimes went against cultural norms and compare those responses to current psychological research in the area of overcoming victimization.

Beyond Victimization

Some social scientists suggest that neither embracing the victim role nor denying experiences of victimization are psychologically healthy options for those systematically marginalized from society. When people embrace the role of victim, they may unwittingly perpetuate an undesirable condition. “Weakness, passivity, and unhappiness are all endemic to the victim role, and so people who identify with the victim role could conceivably sustain perceptions of self as having those disadvantages.”2

Baumeister and Bratslavsky3 cite an interesting study in which subjects were initially presented with sets of five words and told to make a four-word sentence from each set. By random assignment, half of the participants received sets in which the superfluous word had to do with victimization (i.e., pain, abused, mistreated, and victim). The ot...

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