February-March 2015 Undoing domination

The Baptist Missionary Society produced an excellent, but troubling publication at the end of 2014 about Gender Based Violence. Violence of any sort to another person stems from a desire to hurt another and/or to dominate another. We will be agents for change in this violent world when we refuse to hurt, and when we refuse to dominate. We will do this when we are committed to the care and service of others. Gender based violence will ferment whenever we accept an understanding of gender which includes the necessity to hurt and/or dominate. We will be agents for change when we are brave enough to expose our own complicity in such hurt and domination. As part of our response to this we will be celebrating the story of Esther during the first three weeks of this month. In this marvellous book we find redemption despite the violence and domination of men such as Xerxes, Haman and even Mordecai. We will also celebrate other women of faith in the Old Testament during our shorter service at the end of the month. I hope that we will be able to celebrate what it is to be created in the image of God, male and female (Genesis 1:27), and know that we are all children of God, for “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)