The Woman "From Obscurity to the Wings of Change": A Book for the Upcoming Woman, the Girl-Child, and Their Supporters

By Dr. Onu Felix Madu Wogu (B.Sc MBA Ph.D K.Sc)

The Woman

From Obscurity to the Wings of Change

This book is all about the woman. God created the woman when he saw and said, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). God was not satisfied, at a stage, with the performances of Adam alone in the garden of Eden. God therefore created the woman for fruitfulness and to unveil hidden knowledge, wisdom, and procreation in fulfillment of God’s blessings and wishes for his creation on earth.

The men on earth became jealous and suspicious of the woman because of her nature and qualities. The early religious leaders, family heads, the community leaders, authors and Bible writers, the governments in the Middle East, and society in general made laws and culture aimed at demeaning and downplaying the woman’s qualities and contributions. They veiled the woman to obscurity in the land.

Centuries later, women passed through changes toward emancipation as a result of pressure by feminist groups, government and civil society agencies in developed and civilized countries who made legislations and edicts prohibiting discrimination and gender inequality laws against women. Several women and men organizations in cooperation with government-initiated activities and made laws aimed at abolishing all kinds of gender discrimination in their nations.

As a result of these laws, women became not just educated, but they became educators in various fields of science and technology. Highflier women became professors, doctors, engineers, pilots, political leaders, heads of states, and industrial leaders in their nations.

Today’s women are on the wings of change. They now compete with men all over the world. Women are becoming more equal to men than expected. Many men are confused and are looking up to the women highfliers for direction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638441878

Book preview

1

The Woman on the Wings of Change

In the history of creation, religious stories, legends, folk law, and handed down stories told in families, the woman has been seen and referred to in various ways and in different circumstances. They are said to be something good when found by men as wives and with the husband in the home as helpmeet, loving and caring in the family. She is called the life giver and mother of nations in procreation. Words like courageous, aggressive, deceitful, wicked, fiery revengeful, wise, and pushful have been used to qualify the woman. Phrases such as fertility, apple of the eye, slave girl, and others have been used to depict her makeup. Other expressions like pushful, strong, wise, and determined are attributes that women are known for. They have exhibited, in different situations, these attributes rightly or wrongfully to prove the women they are. Men have tried but failed to intimidate and to stop them. The more these women get liberated, the more they earn their liberation from the clutches of men’s domination. From one generation to another, they have been seen to be positively dynamic. Although gradual, but steadily, women have moved beyond and past one level of domination by society to another, where their rights are not tampered with. They have come to be recognized for whom they are and for the wonderful talents they possess.

The time has come, and it is now, for women to wake up from their slumbers and truly be what they are. Unfortunately, however, many women wait passively for some miracle to happen that will bring success to expose their hidden sterling qualities. There is no magic wand, miracles are very rare, but today many women have woken up, being motivated by great women of history and by many recent events in the world. The news of strong and influential women from America, Brazil, Germany, Britain, India, Asia, and even from Africa abound which act as wake-up calls for women of the world to be who they want to be. It is time for the so long exhibited faith to be translated into affirmative action. Women are no longer contented to be every other woman, but themselves. They are no longer satisfied to be measured by the expectations of others in town.

No longer are women fulfilled by remnants or cumbers that full out from their dream platforms. The times of women is now because they are tired of hiding under the umbrella provided by men. It is time to move out from the shadows and into limelight where it is happening. Women are now out there, and they are making things happen. They are creating niches for themselves and are moving from sit-down look positions to the center stage of events and playing significant and commendable roles in the society and nations where they live.

Today, women can boast of being great leaders and president of great nations such as the Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth II; chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel; and Mrs. Michelle Bachelet Jeria, the executive president of Chile. In the year 2007, Christian Fernandez de kirchner was the executive president of Argentina. The Moldovan prime minister in 2009 was a woman by name Zinaida Grecianii. In the same year, 2009, Michele Pierra-Louis was the prime minister of Haiti. Mrs. Johanna Sigurdardsottir was the prime minister of Iceland in the year 2009. In the same year, Rose Francine Rogombe was the interim president of Gabon Republic at the death of president Bongo, and Jadrank Kosor was the prime minister of Croatia.

In 2010, Doris Leuthard was the president of the confederation of Switzerland. In the same year, 2010, the head of the interim government of Kyrgyzstan was President Roza Otumbayeva and the president of Costa Rica was President Laura Chinchilla Miranda. In 2011, the executive president of Brazil was Dilma Vana Linhares Rousseff. Rosario Fernandez Figueroa was the president of Peru. The Republic of Kosovo was headed by President Atifete Jahjaga. The nation of Thailand had at its Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, and the prime minister of Denmark was Mrs. Helle Thorning-Schmidt. All these are women leaders.

Finally, in Africa, Allen Johnson Sirleaf has been the executive president of Liberia since year 2006 and up to 2011, when she was reelected as president of that country. This list has not ended, but mention this few have been mentioned for the purposes of reference. The time has come, and it is now when women are making waves in different areas of human endeavors. Women are playing key roles in education, health, welfare, science, and technology. They are up front in economics and business; women are politicians of repute and heads of government. In corporate finance, they are leaders in world banking and international monetary leadership. At the same time, they have not lost their revered places in the homes and family affairs. In religious circles, they have been there even from the times of Jesus Christ and Prophet Mohammad of the Islamic faith. In these two great and most revered religions, women played very active roles in the establishment, growth, and spread of both Christianity and Islam. It was women that financed, hosted, and nurtured both religious sets from the onset.

The Woman at Creation

The woman was created by God in his love and kindness at creation. God was not satisfied with all he created until he created the woman. God made woman because he saw that by the nature of man he formed out of the dust, he was not so equipped to fulfill his plan and will for creation.

God gave Adam authority to have dominion over animals, cattle, and creeping things that crept upon the earth (Gen. 1–26). He put Adam in the Garden of Eden to dress it and look after all that was created by God. He gave him authority to control and give names to the animals and cattle in the garden. God made laws for him to obey and gave instruction as to what he should and should not do. God may not have trusted him because of his natural being, having been created from the dust. It was not God’s intention for Adam to have knowledge and wisdom of his own. He did not want him to have the knowledge of good and evil, which was needed to manage the affairs of the garden of Eden (Gen. 2:17). From this verse, it was not God’s intention for Adam to be the administrative officer of the garden. He wanted man just to exist empty and bear, eat, and dress the garden. Everything he needed was provided and made available. No provision was left for him to use his brain and initiative. Adam could make no choice of himself in the garden. Man, therefore, in his natural existence, was just as a robot to obey commands. Man had remained unable to know the good from the bad. He was programmed only to obey nature.

The man was introduced to knowledge, wisdom, and power by training and by learning what he was taught to do, say what he was asked to say, and eat what he was given to eat. She gave me of the tree and I did eat (Gen. 3:9–12). The rest of the story is now history of creation from where all the earth took her origin.

The truth is that the world of man has developed and evolved but has not changed from who the Creator wanted him to be; he could be living in pretense. Man has fought nature from every sphere. He has researched into the unknown; his circumstances have made him search the heavenly bodies. He has sought for knowledge and power through science and technology and conquered the universe. He has been to the moon and stars and roamed the orbit in search of knowledge and power. Man has been through thick and thin in this search, yet the man is still the child of the woman, and so let it be.

God created the woman for various reasons. God is all-knowing. He knew that the man in the garden could not unveil the knowledge in the forbidden tree. God knew that it could only be through the courage and initiative of Eve that the knowledge of whom God is could be unveiled. The story of the encounter between the serpent and Eve could not have been a surprise to our all-knowing God. Later in the scriptures, our Lord Jesus knew even as he chose his disciples that one of them was the evil one, who was to betray him (John 6:64–70). Judas was created and born for the purpose of fulfilling God’s purpose to bring salvation to the world (Mark 3:14, 19, 14:18). The woman Eve was God’s tool to give knowledge and wisdom to God’s creation. God knew that it was only through the knowledge of who he is that man can worship and serve him. It will be sinful for any God-fearing child of God to believe that it was not the permissive will of God that Eve will be tempted and that she was going to eat the fruit of knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:5). It is a truism that knowledge came to the world through Eve, and that it was Eve who gave Adam knowledge. Whatever the man has done in his existence to subdue, maltreat, and dehumanize the woman was to fight his way out of the fact that the knowledge he exhibits is the one he got from the woman, Eve. She gave me of the tree and I did eat (Gen. 3:12). The Bible says that My people perish for lack of knowledge. Again, it said that the soul be without knowledge, it is not good (Prov. 19:12).

Eve, the name given to the woman, means mother of all living humans. When God blessed them, he said, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. When God created the earth, his plan was to make creation fruitful and to replenish her kind. When he said multiply, he had Eve positioned to be the vessel. To multiply and replenish the earth followed the knowledge of good and evil, which came through the woman (Gen. 4:1), And Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived and bear Cain. God had an excellent purpose for creating Eve. Adam on his own had no knowledge; he was a moving human, controlled by his environment. He could do nothing of his own. He was an ordinary handsome figure roaming the garden. God did not see him as good enough; thus, he said. It is not good that the man should be alone (Gen. 2:18). Man was alone; he could not do all that God would want to be done in the garden. This means that with him alone in the garden, God would not have accomplished his creation purpose. There would have been a historical gap. Adam lived for 930 years on earth. If not for the making of the woman, and when Adam was dead, the earth could have been without a soul, and God’s creation would have become extinct. This could not be God’s plan for creation.

And God saw everything that he made, and behold it was very good (Gen. 1:13) It was only after he made the woman, Eve, that he saw goodness in his creation. Eve was made for knowledge of good; she was made to add beauty to what God had created. The woman was made for direction; she was made for the fulfillment of God’s plan on earth. The woman was filled with knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. The Bible says, And when Adam knew Eve his wife…she conceived and bare…a son from the Lord (Gen. 5:4B). And begat a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called him Seth. It was by the fruit of knowledge that the earth came to know God and how he created the heavens and the earth and everything that was created was by him. The existence on earth as planned by God is through the knowledge of God himself as the Creator of things. It is only with knowledge that we can know God and whom he is in order that we serve and worship him.

Causes and Events of Creation

Has the scriptures and history told the whole truths as to the center stage position and the role played by the woman in the events following creation of human beings on earth? The men who were authors of the books of the Bible scriptures failed to trace the origin of knowledge and wisdom to the right source. The authors wrote with wisdom and knowledge but could not identify properly the source of their knowledge. They wrote and recorded events but failed to trace these events to their causes. For every event, there must be a cause. If there is no cause, events cannot produce themselves. Could the earth replenish of its own accord? God said, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth (Gen. 3:28). Adam by himself, not having knowledge of good, could never have accomplished the injunctions given by God in this and other aspect of God’s plan on earth.

In the Bible scripture (Gen. 5:1–2), it says, This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him-male and female created he them, and called their name Adam in the day when they were created. Reading through the two verses, we can observe that the writer mixed up pronouns and coherence and avoided sequence. The author wrote them, but when he named, he named Adam only. He should have Adam and Eve since he said male and female created he them." It is not fair to say them while mentioning the name of one instead of two of them. The author went on in Genesis 5:3 to trace the genealogical generations of Adam and his descendants. He traced from Abraham’s son, Seth, who lived for 912 years, down to Noah, who lived for 500 years. The author wrote just mentioned all names of the male descendants but did not, at any point, mention the name of even one wretched woman to represent all the mothers who suffered the pains of nine months pregnancy to bring forth these generations of men. Could it be true that only male children were born to these generations of Adam? It could never have been God’s inspirational directive that the woman was to be left out in the scheme of events, even though the causes of these events were of her fruitfulness. Could the authors be so selfishly ignorant? Or that they lacked knowledge? Could it have been a sociocultural tendency of their society to ignore the females of their society?

It could be true that in order for men to wrestle knowledge, power, and position from the woman, they used a systematic relegation of women and did everything to put women to near extinction. The authors of the old did not wish to give credit to the woman for whatever roles she played in the history of genealogy and the sourcing of knowledge of good and evil from the tree of knowledge. But be it credit or discredit, Eve did receive a measure of punishment from God, the Creator, for her role in the sourcing of knowledge of good and evil from the tree of knowledge. It was Eve that ate the fruit first; she saw that it was good and gave to Adam. The authors deliberately omitting her in order to obliviate her from the history that could not be written if Eve was never created. She was indeed the mother of all creation. It is therefore unfair to try to remove her from any historical events in the course of evolution.

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Men-Focus of the Bible

The Bible stories were mainly written about men, the things they said, did, and or left undone. Women were generally left out of the scheme of things. When women were presented at all, they were referred to as stereotypes, as if all women were either saints, whores, or invincible. It is quite dehumanizing to note that only the men dominated the scenes of history and the scriptures. It is worth noting that at any point of history, half of the world’s population was made up of females. Why then did authors focus their stories only on men to the total exclusion of the woman? Two famous Bible stories were told, which were of exemplary and remarkable influence on the history of the Israelites as they advanced within the promises of God. The story of David and Goliath had been magnified, written, and told everywhere and how it influenced the evolution of the people during the reign of King Saul. The story of Jael and Sisera was about an ordinary woman who killed the commander of the Canaanite army when the Israelites were advancing toward Canaan. Sisera was comparable to Goliath of the Philistines.

This story was as world famous as it was a landmark in the history of the people of God. This very all-important accomplishment of the woman Jael, who was comparable to the accomplishment of David, but this story was almost untold, virtually unnoticed, and its significance not highlighted in the scriptures. It is true in the scriptures that men were the target audience and character at the time when Bible stories were written. The stories were just those that dealt with matters of importance to the menfolk. Women stories on the contrary were just oral tradition, not worthy to be written down in books. They were stories orally passed down from one generation to the next, from grandmother to mother, and from mother to daughter and down the line. Many of such very striking accomplishments of women got lost as they were forgotten. Women and the affairs of the female folks have been treated in this manner and even up until the present time.

This book is not about to ignore male characters or to challenge what things have been written about men. Men are part of the plan of God just as the women are. The book is actually trying to point out the shortcomings in the manner the stories were one-sided. The history of the Bible, for whatever unknown reason, tried to exclude women and their roles in scripture, religion, and history of the origin of the earth and the people who inhabited it (men and women alike). The events of the Bible scriptures happened thousands of years ago and dealt with universal themes relevant of the people (men and women) at all times.

There were stories of passion, rage, war, jealousy, loyalty, happiness, grief, and destruction. These events described human events such as childbirth, death, battles, and migrations. There were all sorts of women from every social level: queens and peasant girls, slaves and princesses, saints and sinners. When taken together, these stories cover every human experiences of women and men alike. What is considered offensive is that in these universal events the players being men and women, the part played by women were ignored and disregarded and swept under the carpet. This was in essence what the Bible stories and the scriptures did to the woman.

Women Featured Only to the Advantage of Men

In the books of the Bible, the authors relegated the women. They mentioned women in passing when it was convenient for them to make a point and only when they had no choice, but to do so, for their story to flow. The slight mention of Sarah, Abraham’s wife, was because she had to be the mother of all nations in fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. Sarah had to be mentioned because she bore the child of prophecy, Isaac, the covenant son, the father of nations. The name Hagar, the handmaid of Sarah, came up because she was the mother of Ishmael, blessed by God to father the Ishmaelite. It was important for the author to note Hagar because she was one of the first women to whom an angel appeared. Among the women mentioned was Rebecca; the authors had no choice but to do so, because of the notable role she played in the history of the genealogical progression of the Bible story—her role in the fulfillment of the scriptures, the active part she played by choosing Jacob instead of Esau, the display of intellect and wisdom in the scheme to have Isaac bless Jacob in place of Esau, his senior brother. It was the part she played that projected Jacob, whose linage produced Juda, the great-grandfather of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David. History and the scriptures failed to project the women in the scheme of events. The male dominance in the history of civilization, religion, economic, and social