ruby slippers: a review

After being married for almost ten years, I realise that I know very little about women. (I also know that I will always know very little about women). This is somewhat disheartening. I figured after I had grown up with two older sisters (and thus had three mums growing up) I would be able to understand them, at least a little.

Yet I am still amazed at how different women are from men.

I also want to make clear that I like it this way. It would be rather boring if I could understand my partner completely. We have a deep bond, but to be surprised still is something I cherish.

So as I picked up the book, Ruby Slippers by Jonalyn Grace Fincher, I was expecting to gain a bit more insight into how women interact differently with God, and I was not disappointed.

At times it felt as though I was eavesdropping on a confidential conversation between a two women deeply committed to figuring out how God is remolding them into his image. Fincher leaves no holes barred as she examines what it means to be a woman who bears a distinct part of the image of God. While I find it difficult to determine whether the things she talks about are things that women in general struggle with, I did find it refreshing to see that Fincher confronts things like materialism, and competitiveness, while at the same time tackling some of the less helpful expectations Christian culture places on women.

The image of the ruby slippers comes from the wizard of Oz where Dorothy finds out at the end of the movie that she has had the ability to get where she wanted to go all along, in her ruby slippers. Fincher suggests that women need to understand themselves as already containing the things that they need to get where God is calling them; a soul which bears a distinct image of God, and is given a distinct role in God’s creation.

While Fincher is mostly dealing with how women can grow in their faith and relationship to God as women, she does express some of how she sees gender differences. She does not appear to be an egalitarian, but more of a complementarian. Each gender has a different role to play in God’s world, but both genders exhibit God an equal amount; just differently.

Adam and Eve knew themselves, and they knew what they had to do. Those two, patriarch and matriarch, fit together and fit in Eden. And even better, Eve knew how well fit she was, not just for Adam, but fitted for her purposes, and for God’s purposes.

Fincher also expresses how Christ can change our understanding of submission from the abused, embarrasing, dishonest version we often receive.

[Jesus] redeemed the idea for me, not by telling me submission no longer applied to me, not by removing the task, but by showing me how God is made great when I bend my knee. He taught me how submission is actually more, not less than, I had been trained to believe. He showed me that submission begins with knowing myself so that I might more fully and maturely give myself to others.

This emphasis, for Fincher, means that we should be listening more to women’s voices regarding certain aspects of the scriptures.

If we really believed women manifest God as much as men, we might be more willig to let women teach on passaged of Scripture. We might ask a mother to preach on what “born again” has meant in her life. We might ask a female athlete to comment on Jael, who murdered Sisera in Judges. We might ask an unmarried woman with the gift of teaching to speak about Anna, the prophetess who met the baby Jesus in the temple.

While there is much disagreement over whether women should preach or teach within an ecclesastical setting, I do appreciate the reminder that a different perspective may help us understand things better.

I found this book extremely helpful for me, a male pastor and husband, to expand how I see God working to break down the cultural barriers that we impose on eachother and show us what it really means to live as image bearers of God. Fincher thoughtfully and Biblically outlines an understanding of what it means to be a woman and have a woman’s soul.