In a world in which most religions begin with God the Father or some sort of male image of the divine, and are founded by male figures such as Moses, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad, do we undervalue Motherhood or the role of women in faith?

We honor our mothers this weekend, just as Jesus loved and honored His.

Jesus Christ and His apostles also radically included and empowered all women in their lives and ministries, so the Christian faith, wherever it has gone in the world, has served to reverse the sinful human tendency to undervalue and oppress women. One can see this reversal vividly in the early centuries of the New Testament Church (see, for example, Chapter 5, The Rise of Christianity, by Rodney Stark), and one can observe it on the Christian mission field today. The New Testament teaches both equality of genders and also distinctiveness of roles in both marriage and church leadership, so that when God reveals Himself to us as Father, we grasp both His tender, caring love and also His authority. This divinely given order has obviously been perverted on many occasions, by both men and women, to the detriment of many; but when the biblical pattern has been followed, it has yielded great blessing for mothers, fathers, and their children.