Please Revere My Imago Dei

In which I work through chapters 5 and 6 of She Deserves Better

Photo by Josh Eckstein on Unsplash

In the pursuit of Christ, claims Shiela Wray Gregoire in She Deserves Better: Raising Girls to Resist Toxic Teachings on Sex, Self & Speaking Up, Christians are supposed to “tear down hierarchy” in their work of “revering” the imago Dei in themselves as well as “others.” [page 128]*

That is quite a claim. Is it true?

So far, Gregoire and her two co-authors, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach and Joanna Sawatsky, have offered helpful correctives for Christian mothers trying to navigate the turgid waters of evangelicalism in this post-post-sexual-revolution plastic age. Your daughter shouldn’t be ghettoed into weirdo youth ministries. She should be discipled in a robust faith. She should not offer herself up as the sacrificial lamb for the salvation of creeps. She should be given good and proper boundaries. So far so good.

Next, in our journey through the book, we come to the subjects of dating and of avoiding toxic people. In chapter 5 the authors make the astute point that if you just pray a lot and ask God for a husband, but never go out and talk to any boys, it is unlikely that you will get anyone to fall in love with you. God, they rightly point out, is not a “husband vending machine.” This is the romantic equivalent of driving to church and then sitting in the parking lot with your eyes closed, asking God if he wants you to even go into the building.