Female status in the west and its debt to Christ

Jesus Christ has had a huge and growing effect on history, as described in Who is this man? By John Ortberg. He grew from  humble beginnings in Galilee  to  inspire the lives of billions and transform societies  2000 years later in a variety of ways and His influence continues to  grow. 

As noted by H.G.Wells  in ‘The Greatest  Men in History’:

The historian’s view of an individual’s greatness is ‘what did he leave to grow?’ Did  he start men to thinking along fresh lines with a vigor that persisted after him? By this test Jesus stands first.

The incarnation of our Creator into humanity not surprisingly had numerous profound effects, including the infusion of the divine into situations of suffering and sin, something requiring deep prayer and meditation to comprehend but  God chooses to make spontaneously available in many cases.  Even though only partially understood and sometimes wrongly portrayed by the powerful institutions, both secular and clerical, Christ has transformed the world to a degree which makes Christian society more humane, free, democratic  and technologically advanced than any other (look around the world today and tell me you don't agree, bearing in mind that most non-Christian nations, such as India and China, have been  influenced by the west in modern times).

One of the many unique contributions of Jesus Christ to human progress was the effect on the place of women in society and how he overturned tens of thousands of years of entrenched exploitation of females worldwide. Here I will list just a few points:

The Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus. Hundreds of virgin births occur in nature every year. The divine  birth of Jesus from the virgin Mary has theological significance, signalling that God had not favoured any biological blood line for His entry into humanity. It also illustrates the essential complementarity  between the gender roles which God chose for his incarnation.  He could have just appeared out of nowhere, like an angel, but to be fully human He had to go through all the stages of life from visceral birth to  physical death and interact fully with both genders.

The Samaritan woman at the well.   Jesus’s  longest recorded conversation with one person was with a woman, a Samaritan (a sect despised by the Jews) who had been married 5 times.  It was a conversation about her relationship to God and  ‘many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.’  It was to her that Christ gave this eternally powerful statement:  But whosoever drinketh of the water I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. (John 4:14)

Women followers.  Jesus travelled from place to place spreading the gospel.  Following him were the 12 disciples, Mary Magdalene, Joanna wife of Chuza from Herod’s court, who was the manager of Herod’s household,  Suzanna and a host of others (see Matthew 27:55, Luke 8:1-3).  Joanna used her comparative wealth to help in spreading the word. This was unprecedented and must have raised many an eyebrow. Respectable women and unmarried girls were expected to remain at home, out of sight.

Healing and resurrection of women. Jesus healed a woman who for 12 years had been sick with a flow of blood and, uniquely, without a word having been spoken beforehand.  She just touched his cloak from behind while being surrounded by  a crowd and the healing power flowed into her.   Later that day  he resurrected the daughter of Jairus, the ruler of a synagogue, having been called to his house.  (see Matthew 9:18-26, Mark 5:22-42, Luke 8:41-55.)

Martha and Mary. Jesus  was invited into the house of Martha , Mary and Lazarus of Bethany. While Martha prepared food Mary sat listening to Jesus. Martha resented this but was rebuked by Jesus who made clear to her the importance of spiritual values. This, I believe, would have been unusual, given the general status of females at that time.  He could have chosen to say this to a man but he was here to relate to and influence humanity, not just men; and humanity involved male and female in complimentary roles and equal before God.  It also emphasized that the woman’s role was not confined to domestic duties, important though these are. (See Luke 10:38-42.)

Gathering to anoint Christ's body.  The Bible relates that on the morning after the Sabbath, as early as they could possibly come without breaking the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the lesser and Joses (also called "the other Mary"), Salome the wife of Zebedee, and Mary the mother of the apostles James and John,  came with spices to anoint His body and prepare it for burial.(See Mark 16:1-2.)

The discovery of the empty tomb . The gospels record that the empty tomb was discovered by  Mary Magdalene of Magdala and other women, and it was to her  that an angel first announced the Resurrection, something which no one was expecting and was probably the most cosmically significant event since beings with the imago deo had  appeared on earth.   Not surprisingly Mary  initially met with disbelief  from the male disciples, who had dispersed and become demoralized as their belief in him as the Messiah ebbed away on witnessing his ignominious death. (See  Matthew 28:1-10;  Mark 16:1-8; Luke 24:1-8.)

Women in the book of Acts.  There are numerous cases of single or married women preaching or teaching the gospel, or being healed or resurrected by one of the disciples. Paul’s first European convert was Lydia (Acts 16:40), who was used by God to house him and Timotheus.  Also in Acts 9:36-42 Dorcas full of good works, died and was raised by the Lord through Peter.  For a detailed listing of women's contributions to the spreading of Christianity in the first century see http://momof9splace.com/womensacts.html

Florence Nightingale, pioneer of modern heallthcare

Women through history. As the influence of Christ spread, however imperfectly,  throughout the world  women played an increasingly important role in history, whether as nuns in convents or  mystics [e.g. St Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897); St Julian of Norwich (1342-1416)] or major forces for good in society. Dozens could be listed. FlorenceNightingale’s (1820-1910) God- inspired initiatives in the Crimean War were an essential precursor to the nursing vocation and the founding of the NHS in the UK following WW2. She also pioneered the application of statistical techniques and is said to have invented the pie chart.   And innumerable social reformers and founders of charities throughout the 19^th and 20^th centuries have been women. The Quaker Elizabeth Fry, for instance, was responsible for the Prison Act of 1823, while William Wilberforce was campaigning to outlaw slavery for the first time in

Mother Teresa followed a vision from Christ

Cicily Saunders

history. The blessed Mother Teresa (1910-1997) worked in Calcutta  as a nun and a missionary. She left a privileged upbringing after a vision from Christ. Dame Cicily Saunders (1918-2005) founded the world's first hospice in 1967 after being inspired to do so by God.Thousands of hospices to care for the dying now exist worldwide.She pioneered new kinds of palliative care and set a pattern of spiritual support for people in their last days.

 The move to win votes for women in England in the early 20th century was driven and sustained by Christian inspiration, as indicated by this text from Questia

The appropriation of religion for the militant political campaign took a variety of forms. The suffragettes adopted symbolic Christian figures as well as the structure and tactics of other contemporary Christian organizations, particularly the Salvation Army. They infused their rhetoric, in both their autobiographical accounts and their novels, with the language of Christian theology and the Bible.

This had a profound and lasting effect on the whole culture and social structure of the western world.



 Harriet Beecher Stowe and Harper Lee were  Christ-inspired novelists that helped major shifts in the spiritual state of the USA, leading to the civil rights reforms. They have also taken on roles of national leadership, as did Joan of Arc.

Compare the treatment and status of women in Roman times with nowadays:  the Law of Romulus allowed routine killing of female fetuses and infants, resulting in  a gender ratio of 140 males to 100 females. Temple prostitution was widespread. Sex slavery and  child molestation were standard, default practices in most places most of the time, and even today are only regarded as wrong in societies with a Christian heritage or after recent Christian  influence.  

Wives and daughters of emperors in the Roman and other civilizations managed to maneuver themselves into positions of power, as did the males, or to exert influence behind the scenes, or even to become monarchs themselves. But this was exceptional. The push for recognition of females in society outside the home only really began in the last two centuries or so as the gospel became accessible through the printing of the Holy Bible and a growing level of literacy. Ironically, this influence even continued in Soviet Russia after it became an atheist dictatorship.

 In India gender exploitation is being slowly removed by conversion from Hinduism or Islam to Christianity. Within countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and China  there is a growing western feminist influence which traces back to Christianity in the west from the nineteenth century.


(My personal view is that the Holy Spirit is working through all races, religions and cultures and will eventually bring them together in Christ, even when cultural and ritual practices are retained. The world will then be in peace except for those who knowingly and deliberately reject Him. What happens next nobody can know.)

I am not an academic and became confirmed in Christ only a few years ago in my sixth decade. However,  the more I look at history the more apparent it becomes that the unique role of women in western society and their growing role in other parts of the world, even today, owe a great debt to the life, teaching and resurrection of  Jesus the Christ.  

John

Author, 2077:Knights of Peace

reach me at cosmik.jo@gmail.com

Humans and the universe

We are often reminded by scientists of how BIG the universe is and it is therapeutic to occasionally reflect on this, especially when our ego is bloated. Yet to compare a human being to a grain of sand or a slime mould, as some do, is misleading.

Consider:

• You could traverse the entire universe in a fraction of a second of your life if you travelled sufficiently close to the speed of light (relativistic effects include the slowing down of time as experienced by the traveller). This is likely to remain a thought experiment since your mass would become comparable to that of the universe while your thickness would tend towards zero,  but in principle it complies with the presently understood laws of physics.
• Regardless of the relativistic cosmic speed limit (the speed of light)  quantum entangled particles interact instantaneously, independent of distance or time. Particles are entangled when they emerge from the same quantum system, e.g. from the same atom or molecule. Once the whole universe was one infinitesimal  quantum system, i.e. as it emerged from a point just before the Big Bang. So everything is potentially connected.
• You can see the universe but it can’t see you.
• Every experience you have - love, kindness, tranquillity, beauty, revelation, creativity, satisfaction, fulfillment, physical pleasure or even its opposite  - is a miracle given that ultimately it originated in a point in space-time, billions of times smaller than the nucleus of an atom, from which our universe is thought to have emerged 13.8 billion years ago.
• You can think about the universe but it can’t think about you
• The entire cosmos would be totally pointless, in a sense non-existent, without life to experience it.
• Even in ordinary life size has nothing to do with importance. One person in a deserted city would be more important than all the buildings and streets put together.
• As a human being you can love and be loved.
• You can have a multitude of experiences: pleasure, pain, heat, cold, light, darkness, sweetness, sourness, noise, silence, harmony, discord, etc. etc.
• As a human you can create understanding of the natural world, technology, art, music and new ways of conducting human affairs.
• You can conceive of there being entities or concepts that are beyond scientific investigation (e.g. God or infinity).

If , like me, you believe that humanity, all life and all inanimate matter, were created by a God who cares about God’s creation, then gauging ourselves by size or any aspect of the material world is a pointless exercise, since mind and soul are what connect us to the Creator, and these are independent of space and time.  Good, evil, justice, redemption and free will would also be meaningless in a humanless, godless universe.

The above assumes humans are the only sentient beings in the universe. If we are not alone then one can simply substitute ‘sentient beings’ for ‘humans’ in much of the above.

Feedback welcome.

John Sears

See also

Deep mystery of existence

cosmik.jo@gmail.com

Ειρηνη του Θεου

Book page for novel about a world where violence is tackled by technology and spiritual Enlightenment
2077:Knights of Peace

Transhumanism: staring into the abyss (updated March 2016)

Never in the history of humanity have we needed so much to be in touch with the divine, with the Holy source of creation from outside of space-time. Never has this been so crucial to human destiny.

By copying and adapting the mind boggling designs, schemes and systems of God’s natural order we are, it would appear, within sight of being able to alter, for good or evil, the body and brain of a person, before or after birth. As a layman who follows popular science stories it appears to me that dramatic reductions in the cost of sequencing a genome, growing knowledge of epigenetics, rapid progress in genetic technology (mainly mimicking nature) and quantum computing, could conceivably allow us to

• Achieve life spans of hundreds of years

• Impart immunity to many diseases

• Enhance mental abilities

• Increase physical strength

• Alter the body’s appearance

Some of these are already beginning to happen and no doubt there will be mistakes and unforeseen consequences. We are tampering with a miraculous work of heavenly engineering having the God-given property of life. Hubris and its consequences are inevitable, especially if we ignore  factors such as the transmission of learned information and environmental influences from generation to generation via the epigenetic mechanisms and meta-mechanisms which govern the switching on and off of genes as well as the function, shape, size and folding characteristics of the proteins which are encoded by some genes. These factors have only recently been discovered and are barely understood. It is also a sobering, if not terrifying, thought that resistance to antibiotics is growing yearly and we may soon be faced with horrific diseases that medicine can do nothing about.

The human body-brain system is orders of magnitude more labyrinthine and multi-layered , complementary and competitive in function and mysteriously diverse in the way it relates to the environment than was thought only a decade or so ago. In fact, with the discovery of quantum entanglement and recent findings on the molecular scale of undreamed of hierarchies of complexity in a person it is becoming apparent that not only does the body-brain system interact with the present world around it but, quite likely, with both past and future and potentially all parts of the universe (this follows from quantum entanglement). We have not adjusted to this idea let alone thought about its implications.

And what is life? We have absolutely no idea and much of the time are not even aware that we don’t know. It is more of a mystery than in the early days of homo sapiens sapiens. All we can say is that some all pervading agency holds the continuously changing flux of living systems in being, so that atoms, molecules and cells are continuously arranged, rearranged, repaired and replaced to result in functioning organisms which jointly give rise to a biosphere which has remained benevolent even as the sun’s luminosity has increased by 25- 30% over 4 billion years, mass extinctions by asteroid impacts have occurred repeatedly and cosmic rays have bombarded the whole planet (albeit mitigated by the Earth’s apparently unique magnetic shield and the solar wind shield stretching to the limits of the solar system).

Not only is the nature of life unknown. Its extent in the universe is also totally unknown. Even on our own planet we are finding viruses and bacteria miles below the surface not only of the ocean but of the surface soil. 

‘Functioning organisms’ includes homo sapiens sapiens (the extra ‘sapiens’ is needed because the latest paleoanthropic findings based on scattered bone fragments  suggest more than one 'species' of homo sapiens) made in the image of God, the Imago Dei. These organisms question their own existence, explore the nature of the world and the universe, construct theories of science and philosophy, deduce the limits of their own knowledge, invent, make and distribute ever-better technology, create art, poetry and music, set up civilisations, have concepts of divinity, experience love, truth, justice and beauty and seek out the Creator and sustainer of the universe. A supernatural universe because it emerged from outside space-time itself i.e. outside the natural order, therefore beyond the epistemological limits of future science.  Everything from quarks to abstract ideas and works of art are, ultimately, from outside of our universe, from a realm not susceptible to scientific investigation.

So in practice what do we do with the burgeoning knowledge of the human brain-body system? Copy it or improve it? Given that certain human beings suffer because of a bodily dysfunction there does not seem to me to be any reason why we should not use any means possible to restore function. But when it comes to improving a brain-body system we hit a problem.

What constitutes an improvement? Every time a system is altered it immediately impinges on other systems in the body-brain complex, potentially on the whole organism and even by some amount, not necessarily minute, on the biosphere or even beyond. How do we know the overall result is an improvement? The whole biosphere includes immeasurably large numbers of interactions from the macroscopic right down to the quantum level, where particle spins are entangled independently of the distance separating them.

An analogy might be to consider a chimpanzee which does not understand the working of an automobile (along with many human drivers) except that bad fumes come out of the exhaust pipe. So he improves this state of affairs by sticking a banana up the exhaust pipe, not realising that this will not only reduce emissions but completely stop the whole engine functioning, possibly killing driver and passengers in the process.

Suppose, for example, we have the ability to prolong life to 300 years (an incidental theme in my novel, 2077:Knights of Peace). This would have a Noah’s’ ark full of ramifications:

1. Individuals full of evil (e.g. Hitler types) would be able to do much more evil in their lifetime; conversely, those filled with goodness would have more time to do good. E.g. people harbouring grudges for 300 years could do a lot of damage, while those doing charity work could do a lot of good. Would good win over evil in this scenario? Or vice versa?

2. Family structure and rules of marriage would have to change. Ways of bringing children to maturity would have to change. The education system would need completely restructuring and morality would need to be given more emphasis.

3. Travel to and from distant planets within our own solar system would become possible in a human lifetime even without a quantum jump in propulsion technology.

4. Some individuals may become wiser than any hitherto, causing knowledge and technology to grow even faster than it has done since the Renaissance. New biotechnology could cause life spans to be further increased. Conversely, the long lived individuals may become stagnant and resistant to new concepts. Progress could be brought to a halt by intellectual stagnation. Some long lived people may become bored and question the point of life.

5. New strains of virus and bacteria could appear to attack the long lived members of the race and these variants might be so powerful that they would find those not having had life extension treatment (probably the majority of people) easy targets.  
 

6. Individuals with the ability to earn high incomes might be able to amass more wealth in their extended lifetimes, making their relative wealth even higher. A steep wealth hierarchy could emerge. Those not able to have life extension (e.g. because they can’t afford it) may be regarded as inferior and expendable. New socio-economic and political systems could evolve, possibly more totalitarian and hierarchical than ever before.

Immortality can never be achieved within the confines of a natural universe bound by the laws of thermodynamics. The universe itself is destined to heat death and this applies to everything in it, including machines and robots, even quantum computers.

Moreover, the concept of absolute goodness disappears in the godless world of robots, as it already has among atheists, relativists and post-modernists. Somebody has to define what is good, and this will never be agreed upon by more than a very  small group, probably even as small as just two people.  Robots rely on humans for their inbuilt arbitrary moral laws (NB: all robots must be atheists). 

I am sure there are many more possible implications of longer life spans. The point of drawing up this list is to show that ramifications and consequences will abound and rebound from any attempt to ‘improve’ humans. Given that increased life span is likely to occur in conjunction with intended or unintended changes in other factors such as personal appearance, intelligence and physical attractiveness together with new technologies for creation, destruction, communication, education, subjugation and exploitation, the scope for unintended consequences is multiplied.

The above assumes that all the longevity techniques actually work without unforeseen and undesirable side effects at the biological level. Given that the human body incorporates not only trillions of body and brain cells working together in unknown ways and in unison with bacteria and viruses more numerous by orders of magnitude, and this meta-system varies continually by the microsecond with the environment in which the organism finds itself and that no mortal being can know the nature of consciousness, this seems more than likely.

In addition to the potential for Transhumanism there is now the real prospect of technology driving us into the colonisation of the solar system and the possible terraforming into benign environments of some of the extra-terrestrial environments we encounter. This could lead to new nations on different planets. If each nation decided to use transhuman  technology in different ways there could be totally different descendents of the race. Is this meant to happen? In a sense it would be a repeat of Genesis chapter 11’s early verses which portray the scattering of humanity over the Earth after building the Tower of Babel  after the Flood (probably at least 4000 years ago) , when the survivors were concentrated  in one place and spoke only one language. God made them all speak different languages to prevent them advancing too much too quickly. Perhaps this time the break up of humankind, English speaking and homogenized in western ways, into different cultures on different terraformed planets will slow down progress to a rate we can deal with spiritually. Just a thought.

So we need to maintain humility and move slowly and carefully in a spiritual way, with humanity and divinity united in our being. God manifest Himself as Jesus Christ, to sanctify humanity, conquer spiritual death and take us forward to a New Heaven and a New Earth. Most Christians believe this and if they are right nobody can ignore the consequences – every single particle or quantum of energy or living being is affected.

Science on its own can’t answer the questions we face.

So look into the abyss, empty yourself of pride and pray for guidance.

John

Author 2077:Knights of Peace