Equality: already present
Is the equality of the sexes only a vision for the future? Or perhaps even a goal set too high in the clouds for our time? When it comes to the situation of girls and women in many cultures around the globe, these questions are not abstract. In many places girls and women are subject to rape, domestic violence, human trafficking, vicious abuse. Girls who are little more than children become child brides to much older men, and other atrocities occur.
Earlier this year the young education activist Malala Yousafzai gave her first high-level public appearance on the importance of education. A teenager, she was in the news worldwide after being shot by the Taliban because she campaigned for the right of all girls to an education. And it’s worth noting that a global estimate says 77.6 million girls are not enrolled in either primary or secondary education.
As a husband and father, I have witnessed on a much lesser scale the gender-related challenges that my wife and our daughter have faced in different cultures and contexts. Be it on streets in Colombia or in the academic world of Germany, the world has a long way to go until both sexes are perceived to be equal. Nowhere, it can seem, are boys and girls functioning on a level playing field.
One God ensures dignity, safety, and the unfoldment of good for everyone.
As disheartening as this all seems to be, a light is already shining brightly and clearly. It is the light of prayer and intelligent thinking. Mary Baker Eddy assures us: “Of this we may be sure: that thoughts winged with peace and love breathe a silent benediction over all the earth, cooperate with the divine power, and brood unconsciously o’er the work of His hand” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 152 ).
Although Mrs. Eddy refers here to His hand, her discovery, Christian Science, reveals God as Father-Mother, reflected in spiritual qualities such as intelligence, strength, love, joy, and so on, which are expressed by both men and women.
When we understand this spiritual reality, our prayers in support of the right of girls and women to be safe, to have dignity, education, fair expectations, and freedom take on new clarity. As we start with the one God—Father and Mother of all—we are giving up the old brutal traditions toward women for a more spiritual view. We are seeing girls and boys, women and men, as reflecting the one infinite God, who is Life and Love.
Is it really so difficult to see in everyone the light of divine Love, which reveals the uniqueness of God’s creation? Christ Jesus told his followers that they “are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14 ). As his followers today, we also are able to express the Christ light, which reveals God’s love for all of His people—the male and female of His creating, as the Bible puts it (see Genesis 1:27 ). Through Christ Jesus’ teachings on the kingdom of heaven, we better understand the nature of spiritual laws and how they can perfectly equip us to raise the level of thinking and acting around us.
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures declares: “One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself;’ annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry,—whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed” (Mary Baker Eddy, p. 340 ).
I take this to mean that God is a force to be reckoned with. One God ensures dignity, safety, and the unfoldment of good for everyone. Under the government of the one Father-Mother God, justice will reign, and true equality will become apparent everywhere.
