Wolves Among Us (34 page)

Her whole body went cold. She couldn’t move her arms. The light was brilliant yellow against the black void.

“Take this.”

A hand grabbed hers and forced the handle of the torch into her palm. Her fingers closed around it out of instinct.

“Start it,” he said.

His hand grabbed hers again, forcing it down, pointing the torch at the ground.

The flames lit a narrow stream of fluid, flames shooting down a straight line before bursting into a starburst of rivers.

At the end of each river of flames, women stood chained upright to wooden posts. They screamed when they saw Amber-Marie holding the torch. Flames shot along the rivers, igniting the pyres of wood beneath their feet.

“Why?” they howled, hair blowing straight up, carried above their heads by the smoke. The flames ate up the pyres, igniting their long skirts. They would die, all of them.

Amber-Marie had killed them. The vision of the burning women grew brighter, and she shielded her eyes, looking for the man in the shadows. He stepped into the light, and she sank to her knees in terror. His face was more beautiful than she expected, smooth like a newborn’s, with dead, dull gray eyes. He lowered his face to hers as he spoke.

“What do I love more than innuendo, rumor, half-truth? Do you even remember the feel, the smell, of real truth? Or do all your words stink of burning flesh?”

“I don’t understand.”

He patted her head. “Of course you don’t. I just love you for that.”

When Amber-Marie opened her eyes, Mariskka was sitting beside her. Amber-Marie was lying on a hard board, with tubes and strange hoses dangling from the ceiling of the vehicle. She understood. She was in an ambulance, but Mariskka was not the patient. Amber-Marie was. “I didn’t see an angel,” Amber-Marie said. “Or I did. But not like yours. I don’t want to go back.”

The paramedic shook his head. He missed as he tried to land the IV needle in her veins. A different paramedic shoved a clipboard to Mariskka, who took it and signed where he had scrawled an X next to the waivers and permissions.

“What did you see?” Mariskka asked.

“I saw … words. What words have done.”

The heart rate monitor flat-lined, and paramedics shoved Mariskka away. One straddled Amber-Marie and began chest compressions.

Mariskka sat with her back against the side of the ambulance, the men and the tubes and wires blending into a whirlpool of motion. At her feet, Amber-Marie’s bag flopped open. Inside was Mariskka’s manuscript.

She released the bolt holding the ambulance doors closed. The doors swung open as the ambulance took a corner. She didn’t listen to the screams as she reached for the manuscript, flinging it out into the streets, watching the pages scatter. Some floated in unexpected directions; others sank and landed without any air to move them. No one in the streets moved to gather them. It was just more litter in this city of accidents and betrayals. The heart monitor registered a return to life for Amber-Marie.

Mariskka shut the doors and sat back, waiting for whatever would come next.

Author’s Note

Based on conservative estimates, we can say that for every word on these pages you just read, one woman was chained to a stake and set on fire. In Germany alone it is estimated that twenty-four thousand women were burned alive for witchcraft. These witch hunts were fueled in large part by the textbook for witch hunters, the
Malleus Maleficarum
, written by two monks. The
Malleus
could be considered one of the first best-selling books. What can explain the infamous “success” of the
Malleus
?

• Women were excluded from leadership in church.

• There was no readily available translation of the Bible in a commoner’s language (until William Tyndale risked his life to produce one).

• Commoners couldn’t read anyway.

• Women were often specifically banned from reading the Scripture.

• Denied a voice in the church and persecuted for their distinct gender differences, women frequently turned to folk magic for help.

• The attraction between men and women is a powerful, mysterious chemistry that every generation continually seeks to understand and control.

Gender Roles and the Church

According to medieval religious belief, evil existed outside of men and inside of women. This theory was the backbone of witch hunts. When the Age of Enlightenment swept through Europe, these theories about witchcraft and women’s nature were discredited—and the church lost its credibility too. This is why teaching about gender differences and gender roles must be undertaken with extreme care and extreme attention to the Scriptures. We must be careful never to put words into God’s mouth.

The reality is that no one understands the complete truth about men and women, our chemistry together, and how each gender is a unique reflection of the divine nature of God. But we do know this—when we finally see God’s face in heaven, we will fully understand ourselves, each other, and God: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12).

When half-truths, incomplete truths, or our best guesses are taught from the pulpit as if they are Scripture, we wreck the credibility of the church. We also shame both men and women into believing they are not normal. One expert on gender roles and sexuality told me that young girls raised in church sometimes believe they are abnormal if they have strong desires. After all, the modern church often teaches that women are more emotional than carnal and don’t tend to have strong sexual urges like men. A woman or girl who doesn’t agree is subtly labeled abnormal. If men, on the other hand, are emotional, they are labeled as “feminine.” Church leaders decry the “feminization of the church” as if femininity were a bad thing, as if the church was meant to be a strictly masculine organization, reflecting a strictly masculine God. Such half-truths leave us little room to discover God in ourselves or one another.

I had a chance to chat over email about these issues with one of my favorite nonfiction authors, Jonalyn Grace Fincher. I’ll close this section of our discussion with her thoughts:

Gender differences come in handy when we find ourselves baffled by those closest to us. Isn’t it so much easier to blame something we can’t control for our problems? For instance, when a man and woman get close (this is especially true in marriage), they discover those annoying differences about each other. Wouldn’t we rather locate these irreconcilable differences in gender or sex instead of personal growth?

I’ve often heard married couples give up understanding or intimacy by discounting the baffling differences in the opposite sex—“Oh, men are all like that,” or, “Maybe this is just a woman thing.” Instead we could push into knowing one another and realize most of the gender differences are due to culture, family of origin, personality, or unique life experiences.

I wouldn’t say the church at large leads the charge in defining gender roles because our Eastern Orthodox and Catholic brothers and sisters do not clamor to put the hard lines down around the differences. However, many churches where men (and their women) fear losing their power tend to define what women and men can and cannot do. The more fear, the more strictly the roles are delineated. For instance, I’ve been saddened how many gender-defining books are fueled by a misunderstanding and fear of feminism.

Lingering Effects

One other issue of particular interest to historians about the medieval witch hunts was the lurid connection between women’s sexuality and their prosecution for witchcraft. Not only were many of the accused women molested in the name of “interrogation,” but the witch hunts blamed women for sexual crimes in a way that still permeates our culture today. The prevailing medieval social theory was that women “made” men sin. According to the theory, if women weren’t so carnal and tempting, men would have no trouble staying pure. Today women are still held responsible for sexual crime in many of the same ways. The shame of reporting a rape and the fear of being accused of tempting a man beyond what he can bear still keeps women silent and rapists free. Our justice system continues to operate with a double standard when prostitution is involved too. Women are arrested for prostitution at nearly three times the rate that men are arrested for solicitation.

But why should you and I care about prostitution arrests or subtle slurs on “femininity” within the church? Because history has shown us, time and again, that even little twists on truth can end with plenty of destruction. From the garden of Eden to the witch hunts of the Inquisition, to the persecution of Jews, to cults and suicide pacts, half-truths and best guesses leave a wake of pain.

The issues of gender roles and religious thought are so much more complex than I can cover here. If you want a beautiful, thoughtful exploration of gender roles and differences, I recommend you read Jonalyn Grace Fincher’s excellent book
Ruby Slippers: How the Soul of a Woman Brings Her Home.
You can also learn more about her work at
Soulation.org
. Jonalyn writes about these issues with passion and searing intellect.

Which Witch?

The vast majority of witch-hunt victims were not witches, but true witchcraft has always played a role in history. Throughout history, many women have practiced folk magic because they were denied access to education, medicine, and the courts. Women relied on the promise of magic to fight disease, keep their children alive, and bring justice to the afflicted. Wherever women were powerless and excluded, magic seemed to offer help.

Today, you and I live in an age of unprecedented abundance and access to law, medicine, and education. So why is witchcraft often cited as the fastest growing religion in America?

I decided to find out.

I contacted a local New Age bookstore, and they invited me to sit in on a regular meeting of local witches. I was given free rein to ask any question. I came to the meeting with a notebook, a pen, and plenty of prayer. I worried that the witches would be strange, hostile, or want to hurt me because I was a Christian.

I left the meeting burdened with sorrow and with a tender spot in my heart for these women. The women I met—these witches—were just like the women I knew in church. Lovely, wounded, searching, fascinated by a world beyond our own, generous, and open. These women were my neighbors, fellow taxpayers, and part of my larger community. We were much more alike than I would have guessed.

In fact, all the women I spoke with that day grew up in church. Each expressed a strong awareness, early on, of the hypocrisy rampant in churches. (This is, of course, a plague affecting every church across the world. I don’t think Christian hypocrisy disproves the validity of Christ and Christianity. Rather, it proves it.)

At my meeting with the witches, the women said something else that shocked me. Most of the women had experienced a strange supernatural event as a child. One woman saw spirits. One was plagued by bad visions. Each had sought help, or information, from others in the church and church leaders. Each received no help, no counseling, no information. So the women turned to the only people willing to listen, explain, and help: the local occult bookstore.

Many of these witches now say that persecution, especially from Christians, is part of their everyday lives. One woman received death threats that included Scripture. Stories of hostility from Christians toward these witches broke my heart. If you want to reach out to a practicing witch or Wiccan, know that they most likely have been abused or berated in the name of Christianity. As with any opportunity to evangelize, we must
earn
the right to tell others of our experiences or opinions.