Blessing the Curse?

Book excerpt: The message of the kingdom of God, as brought to us by Christ, is a message that overturns hierarchies, sets free the enslaved, and breaks the power of the curse upon humanity. Yet when it comes to women, the church has chosen all too often to live according to the structures of sin and death, offering them not the good news of Christ, but the curse of Genesis, as their inheritance. In this powerful and challenging text, Ksenija Magda traces the impact of the curse – and the ever-present temptation to choose the world and its power over the servant-hearted humility of Christ – on our families, our church structures, our nations, and ultimately, our gospel witness. The question of how we view, treat, oppress or empower women is not, Magda reminds us, peripheral to the gospel but foundational. She warns that if men and women will not partner together in building the kingdom of God, they will find themselves partners in the work of upholding the world’s structures of power and oppression. Will we choose to bless the curse or to redeem it? To live in the death that our foreparents chose in the garden, or accept the life and freedom held out to us by Christ? This is a question upon which human history and the hope of our restoration hangs.