In the past few years I have come to question some things that I have been taught all my life in the “conservative” churches of which I’ve been a part. I have not been silent about thinking some of these issues through. A big one for me is the idea of God’s ideal for men and women. I wrote a bit about it here. Frankly, I no longer hold to a strict patriarchal view of Scripture and the Church.
Several months ago, someone who was a bit disturbed by the afore-mentioned post wrote to me and told me basically that this was a clear-cut issue in Scripture. She went on to say that Scripture gives complete freedom for a woman to lead and to hold authority over men in the public arena, but that it would be unbiblical for a woman to hold authority or leadership within the Church. (If you’re reading this, sister, I’m not upset with you, just insist on the freedom to think this through.)
I see several problems with this point of view, which is widely held in my small-town in the Bible belt. First of all, it is totally inconsistent with what we say we believe. Let me illustrate. I come from a reformed background, at least for the last 20 years or so. There have been many rich truths I have learned and been taught through the reformed churches which I have attended. One of the most freeing and important of these is God’s involvement in every arena of our lives. There is no area of our lives in which God is not involved.
This has been important for me personally, because I used to struggle with feeling as though I had more value when I was doing something “spiritual” that when I was not. For example, I struggled for years thinking I should pray and read and share my faith more, but the motivation was out of guilt. I have found this truth that God is involved in all the areas of our lives and that he sees life and the world wholistically to be an extremely freeing one. The person who works a “secular” job has no less value than the person who is a missionary or preacher. We cannot teach this truth that all of life is holy and present this wholistic view of the world and at that same time say that a woman can lead a man in the secular world but not within the church. It is an obvious inconsistency.
Look at Deborah the judge of Israel. I wrote a short post about her here. She was God’s appointed ruler of the nation of Israel - see Judges 4 and 5. If we take the argument of many mainline conservative Christians that a woman can do anything she wants in the secular world, but she may not be allowed to have any real leadership over men within the church, then we have to explain away large parts of this portion of Scripture. Deborah was the leader God raised up to lead Israel at a time when they were doing wickedly. He could have just as easily raised up a man, but for his good purposes, he chose Deborah.
Judges 4:4 says, “Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading Israel at that time.” The chapter goes on to document how she held court under the palm trees, and men and women came to her to settle disputes. You cannot honestly tell me that these disputes were merely “secular” disputes, or that she somehow told the people that she could not answer questions that pertained to spiritual matters because she was a woman. Also, we have the same problem with inconsistency here if we try to separate these matters. If we are reformed, we believe that God rules over all the affairs of men. Finally, she is called a prophetess, which is one who speaks truth. Truth is about as spiritual as you can get. And she clearly tells the leader of the army of Israel that God told him to attack the king of the Canaanites.
So, where is the consistency here? We say that God sees all of life the same, that it is just as holy to change a diaper as it is to preach a sermon, that it is just as pleasing to God when we serve him in a coal mine as when we serve him on the foreign mission field. But out of the other side of our mouths we say that Scripture allows women to be anything they want to be, except a preacher or an elder within the church. Hmmm. Do you seen any problems with this type of reasoning? I do. It cannot be both ways. God is wise and intelligent and consistent. His Word makes sense for all of life.
Could it be that his ideal for men and women relationships is seen more clearly (if we are able to look at it unbiasedly, which is almost impossible for us to do) in the description of life in the Garden of Eden before the fall of man? When both man and woman were given the command to rule the earth and subdue it. Could it be that the portions of Scripture which forbid a woman to lead a man, when studied in the context of social history (in other words as we think them through in the context of the real world in which they were written), righty place the advancement of the gospel over the “rights” of a woman?
This is easy for us to see when we look at the case of slavery. We know that God’s ideal for people made in his image is NOT to be owned as slaves. Yet, when we read the Old Testament, we see Scriptures written 2000 years ago that urge slaves to obey their masters. God was telling those slaves who were owned by other human beings to be faithful to God in the world and station in which they lived. But when the time came, it was right to fight for the end of slavery. Thank God that slavery is largely abolished in the world of the 21st century. I do not know of a single Christian leader who would try to say that slavery is Biblical. Yet, before this great social revolution which brought about freedom from slavery, many many Christians used Scripture to support this idea.
In the same way, is it possible that the issue with women is similar? Is is possible that God told women to live faithfully in the culture in which they existed at that time, and to give us some of the rights that they could have fought for, some rights that he originally wanted them to have and that he would one day restore to them? About a year ago, I read a highly provocative book called Finally Feminist by John Stackhouse, which deeply investigates these questions. While the book is not a once and for all answer to this debate between egalitarians and complementarians, it does a great job of looking at these issues in a meaningful way historically and a faithful way Scripturally. I cannot recommend this book highly enough if this is an important or troubling issue to you. The author does an excellent job of being frank and honest, and he presents a new paradigm with which to look at this issue in Scripture, with the humility of inviting discussion and ongoing scrutiny. He does not claim to have “the” answer, but he has written an important work to help bridge the divide between these two camps of Christians. I certainly still have questions Scripturally about this issue, but he got me thinking. And I believe that is exactly what he wanted to do.
Whatever we do with this issue, we gotta be consistent.
