It’s that time of year again… the one you all know and annually dread… the 21st century version of Austen’s London Season… wedding season. I attended my first reception yesterday, elegantly coiffed and in a smashing dress I picked up on sale Saturday, ready to put my three semesters of college ballroom dancing to use. Now, in case this image is ruining your opinion of me as an empowered woman, please note that I was very careful to position myself in “anti-bouquet-catching” stance during the traditional toss—at wedding receptions, you can call me “Teflon.”

Two words of wisdom for any of you who decide to get married and invite me to your wedding—shrimp cocktail. In my mind, no wedding reception seems quite right without it. You can have it at an upscale wedding, a country cookout, and everything in between. It is the perfect reception appetizer.

Weddings, as you may know, are not done everywhere like we do them here in the United States. This weekend a friend e-mailed me a piece from the New York Times about wedding rites in Kyrgyzstan. But first—where is Kyrgyzstan? It is one of the Central Asian republics from the former Soviet Union. And what is so extraordinary about weddings in Kyrgyzstan? Well, they often take place via violent abduction.

Over half of all married women of Kyrgyzstan are kidnapped from the street in a custom known as “grab and run.” About one-third of these abductions take place against the will of the woman. Basically, the practice involves a man’s friends or family luring a woman into a car and taking her to the man’s house. Once she has spent the night there and accepted the jooluk, a shawl that symbolizes her submission, she must either marry her kidnapper or leave as “tainted goods.” Eighty percent of victims eventually agree to the marriage.

I found men’s justifications for this practice interesting. One was the cost of marriage—marrying through less violent channels required a bride price of $800 plus a cow in this impoverished land. One man quoted in the article, a graduate student in one of Kyrgyzstan’s universities, revealed another rationale: “Men steal women to show that they are men.”

In the United States, we couldn’t imagine such a brutal courtship. Yet I think the above quote is telling, and universal. How many things do men do to women around the world to show that they are men? Here you hear stories of gang rapes at parties and battered victims of domestic violence. How is that less barbaric than any other culture? Or what about the business meetings where women’s ideas are ignored by male leaders, the classrooms where women’s thoughts are ridiculed and belittled by male classmates? How many of these things do men do to show that they are men?

People sometimes tell me that Jesus was incarnated as a man because God is man. But I’ve always wondered if there isn’t an entirely different reason that Jesus was a man—perhaps God wanted to give men a new paradigm for masculinity. Jesus felt no pressure to “prove” he was a man when he was on earth. He told us to practice peace when violence was the norm. He prayed when others demanded action. He stopped the stoning of a woman by a male mob intent on vengeance. Jesus taught us that it is wrong to exploit or hurt other people to demonstrate your manhood, no matter who those people are. Exploitation is antithetical to that most “feminine” of all values that Jesus called us to, love.

Women, we need to challenge our Christian brothers to stop “showing they are men” and start showing that they are like Jesus—the Jesus who affirmed and empowered women to proclaim the Good News, the Jesus who spoke love. And in this wedding season, we all need to think about what it means to practice radical, transformational love in our own lives and in the world.

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” --John 13:34-35

Kelsey

You can get a woman for $800 and a cow, sweet. You better tell Steve about that.

What an insightful comment, Kelly! I think you are onto something in looking to Jesus as a role model...after all, He is the prime example of all we as Christians aspire to be! Blessings, Kelly!