Dear Saints,
We are in the process of commemorating Women's Month, a tribute to the more than 20 000 women who marched to the Union Buildings on 9 August 1956 in protest against the extension of Pass Laws to women. As much as women are singled out in this month, it actually celebrates the human spirit which refuses to believe that it is made to be subjugated by structures and systems of dominance and the people and powers which create and operate these structures and systems.
This is a month when our nation tries to highlight the truth of one of our slogans “An injury to one is an injury to all.” We are trying to ingrain into our national conscience that no nation can call itself free if its real living reality creates unemployment, poverty, injustice and inequality amongst its people. Freedom is a lived experience, not just something we dream about, not just something for which we have the right ideological rhetoric. Our Scriptures
remind us that the truth will set us free.
This seems simple enough! So why are we not free as a South African community? Why are we not free from poverty and violence? And how do we answer these questions in a way that moves us closer towards a people where freedom in all its forms reigns? If freedom is linked to our truth reality as a nation, then we really have to wake up and smell the roses.
If the truth does set us free, our lack of freedom, specifically freedom from poverty and violence suggests that we are living a lie in South Africa. What are these lies that our reality is built on? How do we become honest about it and how do we move from these lies?
Whose truth will set us free?
Is it the patriarchal truth that has developed and maintained elaborate political,
social, cultural structures and systems which entrench male dominance in whatever form it expresses itself? Or is it a truth that says; “In Christ there is no male or female, no Greek nor Jew, no slave nor free, Christ is all and all in Christ”?
Is it the racial truth that has developed and maintained elaborate political, social, and cultural structures and systems of dominance which entrench racial superiority and therefore dominance in whatever way it expresses itself? Or is it the truth that says “And God created humans, in God’s own image male and female God created them.”?
What is the fruit of our labor when it comes to the truth? How do we live the scripture “That the truth will set you free”? Let us this Women’s Month be inspired by the truth of Scripture. Let us aspire to be fruitful in the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and self-control; against these there is no law.
Yours in Christ as always,
Revd Jacque