By Julia Qiuye Zhao

When I was fourteen, a relative gave me a copy of Mabel Hale’s Beautiful Girlhood. First published in 1922, this book combines timeless lessons about honesty, responsibility, self-care and friendship with admonitions about modesty and simplicity in dress, homemaking and obedience to parents and God. Through it all, gentleness, in speech, manner or disposition is seen as the crowning jewel of the “rose” of Christian womanhood. 

An intensely pious teenager, I was captivated. This book was going to be my life guide. I was going to shape my speech, my thoughts, my behavior such that my life reflected the beauty of the “half opened” rose to which the author compared feminine Christian adolescence. Part of that was my desire to resemble the girls on the covers of this and other “classic” books for girls, like Little Women, with blond ringlets, blue eyes and long, flowing dresses. My own dark-haired, dark-eyed Asian self did not quite fit this image of godly “girlhood”, but I could at least speak and act like them.

This led to an attempt to be submissive and soft-spoken at all times. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, early 20th century ideals of white femininity did not work out very well for a Chinese Canadian teenager in a secular, urban context and my experiment with that version of gentleness ended after a few weeks. 

It is not unusual for women and in particular, Asian American women, to be admonished to be gentle. Often religious and cultural forces co-conspire to encourage us to downplay our assertiveness in favor of submission and quietness, diminishing our confidence and causing others to see us as weak or uncommunicative. In light of this, does gentleness have a place in our life of faith and ministry? 

I think it’s necessary to look at gentleness in context. In Galatians 5:22-23, it is listed as one of the fruits of the Spirit which also includes love, joy, peace, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, generosity, faithfulness and self-control. Gentleness is one of the many fruits of the Spirit, which is not specific to any gender. It is subordinate to the lordship of Christ. Taken on their own, any of the fruits of the Spirit can “go rogue” and become idols unto themselves and direct focus away from Christ and the life which he has called us to live. Peace, for example, can become the attempt to avoid conflict and confrontation at all costs. Joy can become a kind of superficial cheerfulness that denies the reality of sin and brokenness and pain. Even love, taken away from being rooted in Christ, can become codependency, enmeshment or inappropriate attachments which draw us away from who and what God has created us to be. 

Just as in Christ we become our truest selves, so perhaps the values named as the fruits of the Spirit, including gentleness, are only so in Christ and under the guidance of the Spirit. As a fruit of the Spirit, gentleness adds grace and tenderness to necessary but painful truths that must be spoken, provides balm in the midst of suffering and is a conduit of God’s love and faithfulness. Taken away from that rootedness in Christ, it can become the conduit to oppression, a means of silencing others and a way to avoid hard truths. 

Any particular virtue, including gentleness and we ourselves, can only be our — and their — best selves when rooted in Christ. And this indeed is good news, because it means that we are never on our own, but always accompanied by the One who loves us enough to live and die and rise again for us, but also that we are freed, to see and rejoice in what is good and holy about ourselves and others while also being free to acknowledge what might be yet unredeemed. Thanks be to God! 

Rev. Dr. Julia Qiuye Zhao was born in China, grew up in Toronto and completed a PhD at the University of Notre Dame before following God’s call into ministry. She completed a MDiv at Princeton Theological Seminary and a certificate in spiritual direction with Oasis Ministries for Spiritual Development in May of 2023. She is ordained as a minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and serves as the Associate Pastor in Residence at First Presbyterian Church in Valparaiso, Indiana. She also serves as a spiritual director in the Asian American community.