Gurl power

One of the things that I have been pondering the last little while has been how to approach the issue of women in the church. Not that that should really be an issue in the first place, actually. However, I'm beginning to appreciate that there is a difference between true freedom and freedom-as-we-define-it, which tends to be freedom-to-do-whatever-I-want-damn-the-consequences. I also, for the most part, am under the persuasion that sola Scriptura does actually mean something significant, and that, I cannot ignore.
That being said, I cannot shake the notion that women, despite our inherent stronger abilities to communicate and to identify spiritually in comparison to our male counterparts, have been given the short shrift in the history of the Church. Without question, much of the suffering of women, be it belittlement, abuse, rape, identity as non-persons, castigation to the home, deprivation of education, raising children alone, or living in poverty (all of which, we are well aware, greatly affect far more women than they do men worldwide), can be linked to religious attitudes through the ages. This particularly, in a religion that promotes the idea that Jesus loved and elevated women to positions of respect, and that proclaims that there is no longer male nor female in Christ, bothers me. How can a faith that says such things, and claims to believe such things, continue to act in ways that clearly demonstrate it does not?
Certainly, I know we are fallen creatures, and the good we wish to do and be we fail to fulfill on many occasions. I know also that other divides, such as racial and socio-economic reconciliation, are even wider gaps that still need to be bridged.
But I also wrestle with the fact that church discipline also means something as well, and in our hyper-individualistic culture, just because my feelings or opinions don't jive with where things are at, doesn't necessarily mean that I'm right, and 'they' are wrong. There is a reason for tradition and practice, and I also fully understand the notion of how women are not actually subjugate and are not lowly creatures in the hierarchy of the church. I understand how we rationalize it in words, and I can agree with it, provided we actually lived that way. But we don't, and the practice of mutual submission is sorely lacking. I think also we tend to ignore how the Holy Spirit may be empowering and gifting women to do tasks that we then prevent them from doing, in the name of staying true.
Sigh. It is a difficult business.