When God created humankind, male and female he created them.   And that was a beautiful part of his plan.  Living in harmony together, sharing each other’s goals and plans, and together “ruling the earth and subduing it” was what he had in mind, and what they enjoyed in the garden.

Before I go any further, I need to admit that I am smack dab in the middle of re-thinking God’s design for men and women.  No, I didn’t say I am questioning Scripture, but I am indeed questioning the traditional interpretation of what Scriptures say men and women’s roles should be, both in marriage and in the church.   Remember, I’m smack dab in the middle.  That means I don’t have all the answers, but I’m enjoying asking the questions.  And I am finding myself more and more convinced that the patriarchal life view is contrary to God’s ideal design.

How could I make such a bold statement?  Well, first of all, I guess I should define patriarchialism, as I am referring to it.  It comes from two words, patre meaning father, and arche meaning rules.  So, patriarchy is the thought that men are to rule inequivocably.  (Men rule.  Women drool.)

In its strictest form, patriarchialism says that the only job a woman is fit to do is to have children and be a helper to her husband.  It teaches unquestioned submission to male authority as an endorsement for husbands and male leadership to control women.  Among other things, it says that women are more emotional, and therefore unable to provide good leadership.

I have seen this teaching hurt women, marriages, and churches.  Not only does it silence one of the marriage partners, but it also takes away the voice of half of the members of the body of Christ.  And that cannot be a good thing. 

In my own marriage I tried for years to fit into this traditional view of women and marriage.  And it was detrimental to both me and my husband.  Now we are both beginning to enjoy the benefits of mutual submission and partnership, both as parents, friends, and in our life endeavors.

The conservative church I’ve long been a part of holds dearly to the traditional interpretation of the role of men and women, to the exclusion of almost any other possible way of thinking.  Women are not in any form of visible leadership, and they do not even hand out bulletins in the service, much less hold any office or teaching responsibility.  Several women I know have attempted to be a part of this local church, and they have felt like they are a “half person.”  I’m not making this stuff up.  It is obvious to me, even in the way the male leadership talks, or doesn’t talk, to women, the way they listen, or do not listen to the thoughts and opinions of women.  And I believe it is a distortion of God’s plan.  He doesn’t want half of his children silenced and subordinated, living like a lesser person, due to the abuse of power.

The denomination plans to visit the issue of women serving as deaconesses at their national assembly this coming summer.  For that I am grateful, but a little annoyed also.  They plan to deliberate and discuss the acceptable role of women in the diaconate ministry in the church.  Is is okay for women to be deacons, and if not, let’s make up some rules about what they can and cannot do to be a part of the diaconate ministry.  First of all, like I said, I’m glad they’re talking about this, I really am.  It has been needed for a long time. 

But I’m still a little annoyed.  Can a woman be a deacon?  A deacon is someone who serves, right?  I know it is an official office of the church now, but aren’t we all called to do that?  And if we look closely at a many of the names mentioned in Paul’s letters to the New Testaments churches, what do we think these women were, if not servants, deaconesses?  (See especially Phoebe in Romans 16, as well as many of the other women mentioned in that chapter, as well as the other letters.)  And it is especially disturbing to more and more women in a society where a woman can potentially be president, but she may not be allowed to officially serve in her church. 

Women who love and follow Jesus are naturally going to work in the roles of servants to those who need their individual gifts within and without the church.  They do not need to be sanctioned by the church to do this.  But, not allowing them to be sanctioned by the church sends a very loud message.  And in our post-modern culture, this message is a huge deterrant to the advancement of the gospel.  Now, keep in mind, that I am writing from deep in the Bible belt, in one of the southern states.  We are probably 25 years behind the rest of the country culturally.  In some ways, that can be nice, but in many others it is frustrating and irrelevant.

Two quotes from Dan Allender’s book Intimate Allies will illustrate what I feel is a more healthy approach.  And though Dan is talking specifically about marriage, this will also relate to the church at large.

“A marriage is made up of two equal but profoundly different beings; each reflects the character of God in ways that give a unique picture of his character.”

And later in the same book: “As males and females we are significantly and intriguingly different. . .the differences invite fascinating, unending exploration. The problem with most attempts to define gender is that they do away with mystery to achieve a kind of precision that just is not possible. When we draw up lists to define the female ‘role’ and the male ‘role’, we create a breach in the mystery of the relationship of gender. The results are stifling and artificial. Ultimately we must succumb to the mystery of gender by not defining it too closely and precisely.”

I think it is obvious that this is just what we have done, defining gender and gender roles too closely and precisely. And it has not been a good thing. It has been an outworking of the curse, where God told Eve “he will rule over you.” Let’s not overlook that this is part of the curse. And we are called to be a vehicle for God’s redemptive work, the work of reversing the curse, rather than endorsing the curse by using a scriptural basis for doing so. This serves our own goals and devices. It certainly does not serve the purposes of the gospel.  We really do need each other, males and females, for the messy and wonderful work of redemption, to be seen both in our marriages and in the church at large.

Here’s a well-known and often quoted proverb.  Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it. (Pr. 22:6)

I love the verse, and I love the book of Proverbs.  The book of Proverbs is a book of wisdom, not a book of promises, nor a book of laws.  In other words, the intent of these wisdom sayings is not for us to reduce them to a formula.  If a, then b.  We so often try to do this, and I have tried so hard (unsuccessfully) to find this formula.  Parenting can be so difficult at times, and we really wish we had some clear cut answers.

But I just don’t believe that Scripture is saying, if you make your list of “the way he should go” and then beat it in your child’s head (and on his bottom), you will be guaranteed that he will turn out just the way you want him to and he will be a success spiritually and in every other way.

But how many pep talks, sermons, SS lessons, and Christian parenting books reduce this to a do-able formula?  Lots.

The list looks different depending on what denomination or bent you have, but it can be something like this:

The way he should go:
behave well
sits still in church and school
obey immediately without question
show respect
memorize Scripture and catechisms

Or something like this:

reads well
makes good grades
involved socially
good at sports
nice to other kids and siblings

A couple of weeks back, a friend received some good encouragement at a parenting seminar locally, which I was unable to attend.  She shared that the speaker talked about this verse being often misunderstood.  (If you’re reading, Sensai, thanks again for pointing us to Wisdom.) He offered a different bit of insight into this verse, saying that a better understanding of its meaning would be something like this: “Train a child according to his bent, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

The things on my made-up lists are good, really good. But they are not gospel.  There are no cookie cutter kids.  I have three, and each are as unique as can be.  There is no list of ingredients that make up a perfect kid.  Each is wonderfully made and excitingly surprising in his own gifts and struggles.

Maybe it’s not all about trying to mix up a batch of sugar cookies, all nicely cut-out and iced.  And maybe if Proverbs is a book of wisdom (and I seem to remember something about Christ being our wisdom in 1 Cor. 1:30-31), maybe, just maybe the whole parenting adventure is about getting more Wisdom, more of Jesus.  And maybe our unique, undefinable, un-cookie-cutter kids are there to help us do just that!

“We can do no great things; only small things with great love.” Mother Theresa

“For the garden is the only place there is, but you will not find it until you have looked for it everywhere and found nowhere that is not a desert.” W. H. Auden

“It is only with the heart that one can see right. That which is essential is invisible to the eye.” St. Exupery

“I fled from God and God came with me.” St. Anselm of Caterbury

“What does not satisfy when we find it was not the thing we were desiring.” C.S. Lewis

“What thee does speaks so loud we cannot hear what thee says.”
old Quaker saying

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it arefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness, but in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change; It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, inpenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at the least the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell.” C.S. Lewis

“Then the time came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Anais Nin

“A Red Guitar, 3 chords, and the Truth.” Bono

Remember that old Tina Turner song “What’s Love Got to do with it?” (You can go here and scroll down and listen to it for old times’ sake!) Well, I’ve been pondering that lately, and I’ve decided it’s an indispensible question!

When I was a bit younger, I was convinced that I had mastered the “important” aspects of Christian discipleship, by putting into practice all of the great things I had learned through a college ministry, like quiet times, intercessory prayer, evangelism, and passing on what I had learned through discipling relationships.  So, when I left my staff position with that ministry and headed to graduate school in counseling, I was absolutely floored and flabergasted when my graduate assistant/mentor told me that life was really about learning to be a good friend and love others well.

Honestly, I thought to myself, “You have GOT to be kidding!  That is so irrelevant.  Who cares if you are a good friend or not?  What really counts is making an impact on eternity through evangelism, etc.” 

Well, more than 10 years later, it is impossible for me to disagree more strongly with my “back then self.”  Why all the change?  What has happened in my life since that time to bring about such a radical transformation in the way I think?  Well, for starters, a lot of humbling, a little suffering, and throw in a ton of God’s redemptive, eye-opening work in my life.

What’s love got to do with it?

Listen to these NT verses:

The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

The entire law is summed up in a single command - love. . .

What’s love got to do with it?    Everything.  Absolutely everything.

And if that is true, we need to occupy ourselves with the ultimate task of learning how to love well.  And that is not something we can “just do.”  It is a messy, life-long process that sometimes seems to bring more pain than it is worth.  And it begins with feeling our own need for love and experiencing it in the arms of our Savior.

We love because he first loved us.

Listen to Bono’s expression of this process in U2’s song “The First Time”:

I have a lover, a lover like no other. She got soul, soul, soul, sweet soul. She teach me how to sing. Shows me colors when there’s none to see, gives me hope when I can’t believe. That for the first time I feel love.

I have a brother, when I’m a brother in need. I spend my whole time running. He spends his running after me. I feel myself going down, I just call and he comes around. But for the first time I feel love.

My father is a rich man. He wears a rich man’s cloak. Gave me the keys to his kingdom coming. Gave me a cup of gold. He said, ‘I have many mansions, and there are many rooms to see.’ But I left by the back door and I threw away the key. I threw away the key. For the first time, for the first time, for the first time, I feel love.

What’s love got to do with it?

Without love, the deep, abiding assurance that we are loved, despite the fact that we can’t measure up, despite the fact that over and over we have “left by the back door and threw away the key” , despite all of this we are his beloved.  Without that, all of our doing, all of our righteousness, and all of our efforts to please God are usually performed out of a nagging fear that somehow we need to do more, believe more, serve more, pray more, to be more worthy of his love.

God is love.  And when we live in his love, his love lives in us and through us.  God is pleased when we believe in his love for us.  And God is thrilled to pour out that love to others through us.

What’s love got to do with it?

It is the heart and soul of everything, absolutely everything we are called to as followers of Christ.

From Eph. 3 in the Message:

And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all Christians the extavagant dimensions of Christ’s love.  Reach out and experience the breadth!  Test its length!  Plumb the depths!  Rise to the heights!  Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.

Okay, okay, I admit it.  I have an obsession with U2, like I’m still a teenager at age 38 or something!  Absolutely had to see the new movie on the opening night, and the only problem was that it was too short.  Loved it!  Watched it with chewymom, and we had a fun time in the VIP room of the new fancy spancy movie theater in the nearby town.  We even got a free U23D cap - thanks to my begging! If you love U2 like I do, or if you even like them at all, you’ve gotta see it!  Check out the trailer here.  (But keep in mind it is waaaaay better in 3D!)

I can’t even remember where I first heard about Compassion International, but I know it was in my early single days.  At the time, I was in graduate school, and I desired a way to stay in touch with the needs of the ”rest of the world.”  I wanted a little girl that I could love on and watch grow up as I continued to sponsor her through the years.  That was 1996, and she was 6 years old!  Listen to the letter I have recently received from that same little girl, who is now 18 years old.  (Keep in mind that the letter was originally written in Portuguese and has been translated.  I’m not making grammatical corrections.)

“Dear Sponsors,

How are you?  I loved the picture that you sent to me with you and the kids together.  It is beautiful.  I loved it.  I loved the verse in the post card, and I thank you for praying for me.  I ask you to keep praying not only for me, but for my family and family in Christ.

I am now saying goodbye to you because now Jesus has gave me a wonderful blessing.  It was through you that God gave me this unexpected blessing.  I thank you that sponsored me when I was a child.  You accepted me through letters and presents and is showing me love that I believe that you have until today, not only for me but I also have it for you. 

Today, because God gave me the opportunty to enter in Compassion program, I have the chance to grow more, in my professional and spiritual life.  There is a Compassion program called CDSP in which I participate that gives continuity to my development, the Leadership Development Program.  This program helps the one that has the highest scores to become leaders inside the church.  It also gives the chance to enter in college.  

I ask you to pray more for me and I will be praying for you.  Even though we are far, may we keep one another in mind.  I ask you that just like you sponsored me 11 years ago, you sponsor another child and that you can bless him/her.   Kisses and hugs, I love you all, Eldiane”                                                                                                   

 By the way, this sponsorship has been a lot of fun, and it hasn’t ever been a huge sacrifice.  Compassion is such a great organization and does so much with so little, that it only costs around $30 each month to make a huge impast on the lives of these kids who are steeped in poverty.

We have recently begun to sponsor a little boy from India, and we keep both pictures on the refridgerator.  It is fun to encourage our young children to write to them and pray for them, and also to read their letters to our children, giving us an opportunity to “enlarge” the world a bit for our western kiddos.

I can’t say enough good things about Compassion International, and I would wholeheartedly encourage anyone who possibly can to participate in this wonderful, life-changing partnership!

Remember the words of Christ,  “When you have done it for the least of these, you have done it unto me.”

Sponsor a child online through
Compassion’s Christian child
sponsorship ministry. Search for
a child by age, gender, country,
birthday, special needs and more.

The above quote is one by Mahatma Gandhi that I have recently run across.  It somehow resonated with me, so much so that I bought the bumper sticker!  Now,  I am not suggesting that we as Christians are expected to try to be just like Jesus.  No one can live under such a weight of pressure and guilt.  Neither am I defending Gandhi for his religious beliefs.  But at the same time, we cannot simply dismiss someone with such an enormous impact for good .  If we have integrity, we have to be willing to think hard about what he said about Christians. Phillip Yancey helped me see this in his book The Soul Survivor. 

Listen to a story he retells in that book:

Gandhi and Reverend Andrews, a Presbyterian missionary, were walking together in South Africa.  “The two suddenly find their way blocked by young thugs.  Reverend Andrews takes one look at the menacing gangsters and decides to run for it.  Gandhi stops him.  ‘Doesn’t the New Testament say if an enemy strikes you on the right cheek you should offer him the left?’  Andrews mumbles that he thought the phrase was used metaphorically.  ‘I’m not so sure,’ Gandhi replies.  ‘I suspect he meant you must show courage - be willing to take a blow, several blows, to show you will not strike back nor will you be turned aside.  And when you do that it calls on something in human nature, something that makes his hatred decrease and his respect increase.  I think Christ grasped that and I have seen it work.’”

This active nonviolence that Gandhi preached and practiced brought freedom to the millions of Indians previoiusly called Untouchables.  He began by giving them a new name.  Rather than Untouchables, he called them Harijans, or Children of God.  He called them brothers and stayed in their homes as much as possible.  This was radical because others would not be seen with them and would not dare touch them much less talk to them and fellowship with them.  One hundred million people in India now call themselves by a blessing rather than a curse because of the courage of this man.  He believed in the dignity of each person, women, lepers, lower caste members, children.  The Scriptures make clear that the poor and needy are close to the heart of God, and they were close to Gandhi’s heart as well.  Whatever you think about his religious beliefs, and no matter how much you or I may disagree with his beloved religion of hinduism, he shows us a beautiful picture in a human life lived in humility, peace, and courageous love.

Okay, so why am I writing about Gandhi and asking us to contemplate what he said about “our Christ and our Christians?”

Because I am grieved that we are not showing forth the heart of Christ.  I am grieved that someone like Gandhi could like Christ but not see his likeness in those called by his name.  I am grieved that when Jesus walked this earth, sinners flocked to him as a safe place, and while they still do so today, often the church is not that place at all.  I am grieved that this quote from Gandhi too often reflects the true sentiments of multitudes of people today.

I know there are no perfect churches.  My dad often jokes that if you find a perfect church, don’t let him join it because it won’t be perfect anymore!   (I’m right there with you, dad.)  So I’m not talking about trying harder to be and act and “just do” what Jesus did.

But I am talking about humbling ourselves before him and asking him to search our hearts,  and to show us ourselves and the real Jesus with spiritual eyes.  I am also talking about asking him to make us attractive to “sinners”, for us to be people who “join the rest of the human race.”  To become one follower of Christ that gives someone somewhere a taste of the heart of God.

Rather than try harder to be like Christ, we need the real Christ to show himself in our lives, and that begins with brokenness.   Letting others see the real us.  Letting him shine through the broken places.  Stopping the show of perfection, because it repells those outside the church. (and a lot of those within the church as well!)  Where did we get the idea that we have to “set a good example” anyway?  That usually ends in superficiality at best and  hypocrisy at worst.  Let us admit that we fall short, that yes, the church has failed, that we often don’t show his love.  This type of honesty may be just what it takes to begin to draw others to the perfection of Christ, through our admission of our own imperfection.

In Blue Like Jazz,  Donald Miller tells a story of a few Christian friends building a “confessional booth” on their college campus on the biggest party night of the year.  As people would stroll by, they would begin to talk to them, and instead of encouraging the “sinners” and “party-ers” to confess their sins, the Christians would confess their own failings and apologize to them for the actions of the church over history and even in current events.  It was an interesting and powerful twist, and they made a few friends that night.

So, if anyone is still reading who likes the idea of Christ but can’t stand the Christians you have met or the ones you’ve heard about, please hear my heartfelt apology.  Many claim the name of Christ but do not really follow him.  And those of us who really know him, we screw up all the time in showing his love and acceptance and forgiveness. 

But he is “gentle and humble in heart.”  And if you are weary, like I am, hear his invitation,  “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and you will find rest for your souls.”

This is the only hope I have.  Life has beat me up too much to still believe that I can get my act together and that everyone else should too.   If Christ doesn’t offer hope for real people in the real world with real problems, we should all chuck him and just try to have a good time.

But he does. 

He has done so for me.  Again and again.  And I still need him as much as the first day I met him.  And though I forget him, run from him, rage at him at times, question his plans, and fail to love like he does, he is ALWAYS a safe haven of rest to my weary soul.   And even if you don’t like the Christians you know or know of, I think you would really like this Christ!

I would love to hear your comments, agree or not.

I am tempted all the time to look around at the church in our day and lose hope.  I mean, you look in one direction and you see an irrelevant group of moralists telling the rest of the world to shape up or they’re going to hell.  You look in another direction and see false teachings and additions to Scripture.  Look away again, only to find controlling leadership and powerless religion.  Without a doubt, the American church is sick, very sick.   And while I know God is not wringing his hands with fret over the situation, I do not doubt that his heart breaks with longing over his people to know his healing power.

“I will heal their waywardness and love them freely.”

“If my people will humble themselves and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

The local church I have long been a part of is too quick to point out the sin of “others out there”  or to prescribe ways to keep our sin nature under control.  But where is the raw honesty that admits we are the wicked ones who need healing?  Where is the brokenness over our own need, whether that is the lust for power and control or our lack of love, or obvious sins of the flesh?

What I see in this passage is an assumption that the wicked ways are ours, that we spend less time pointing out sin in others, even those under our care, and more time going to our real Saviour with our own wickedness.

“It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick.”

And in my book that is good news, really good news.  Because God is showing me continually that I am sick, that my ways need healing, and that he is the doctor, a real one, who really wants to heal.  Me.  Us.  His church.

Ever thought about God as a broken-hearted lover?  Someone who has been done wrong, jilted, taken for granted?  Ever heard of the Old Testament book of Hoseah?  It is the story of a prophet of God whom he told to go marry a whore.  Serioiusly.  It’s right there in black and white.  And he told him to take her back again and again when she was unfaithful.  For real.  Down and dirty in real life.  God wanted Hoseah to be a living, breathing, hurting picture of his own relationship with his people, his beloved people.  And Hoseah did just what he said.  (Can you imagine?)  And his wife Gomer had children by other men, and Hoseah was to take them as his own.  Messy, humiliating, heart-breaking stuff.  Material for a sizzling R-rated movie.

Listen to God’s description of his people in Hoseah 2 from the Message:

“Face it, your mother’s been a whore, bringing bastard children into the world.  She said,  I’m off to see my lovers!   She didn’t know that it was I all along who wined and dined and adorned her.  That I was the one who dressed her up in the big-city fashions and jewelry that she wasted on wild Baal-orgies.”

Whew.  I feel tired after reading that.  Tired and a bit embarrassed for her.

And then a most shocking response.  In verse 10 of the same chapter, from the NIV:  ‘So now I will expose her lewdness before the eyes of her lovers, no one will take her out of my hands.”

Did I hear that right?  I get the part about exposing her nakedness, serves her right.  But God, did you just say that your wife went whoring on you and that no one would take her out of your hands?  Didn’t you really mean to tell her to get her act together, clean herself up, and stop sinning, so you can take her back?  Didn’t you rather want to tell her to get away from you because she disgusts you?  How can you possibly still even want to have her “in your hands?”

I think nowhere else do we better see the utter “otherness” and holiness of God than when we see how he treats sinners, like this Gomer.  Like you and me.  And what a comfort that is for real people like Gomer and like you and me.  You know, it reminds me of what a Jewish Galilean once said, something about not coming for the righteous, but for the sinners.  Something about how the healthy don’t need a doctor but the sick do.  And something else about how the Father who sent him is greater than all, and that “no one can snatch them out of my Father’s  hands.”

I can almost hear him saying it to me sometimes,  “Don’t worry.  I’ve got you.”  And that is a great comfort for a Gomer like me.

From the book Bono in coversation with Michka Assayas:

“So you discovered things that, on first glance, you’d rather have kept hidden?  What were those?” (Michka)

“The gauche nature of awe, of worship, the wonderment at the world around you.  Coolness might help in your negotiation with people through the world, but it is impossible to meet God with sunglasses on.  It is impossible to meet God without abandon, without exposing yourself, being raw.” (Bono)

See bono.jpg