A large majority of men are built with this inherent desire to always be right, always have an answer, and to always be an authority on wisdom and experience. We like to be the decision-makers on just about everything. It’s in our blood, and it is also very much a part of how God created us to function.
But there is this other thing that men have a tendency to do that is exactly the opposite of how God created us to be. We like to take over everything, dominate conversations, use force in both our words and our actions, and we silence the voices of those who bring balance to our chaos. Men, left alone, quite frankly are chaotic.
In the same way that God said “It is not good for man to be alone” because we are in fact created to be in relationship with other people, I believe He also knew it was not good for men to be alone because He knew, that left alone, we would destroy everything God had created beautiful. We’d miss the important opportunities to see the world in a much broader perspective and a more full scope of understanding.
Thus God, in His infinite wisdom, created woman. He created her from Adam’s rib. This is a very important part of how God created woman. God could have just made woman materialize out of nothing. He could have made her from the dust of the earth in the exact same way as He made Adam. He could have made her from Adam’s head or from his big toe.
Why his rib? I think it’s symbolic of something. I heard it put perfectly in this quote from an unknown author:
Woman was created from the rib of man.
She was not created from his head to be above him
Nor was she created from his foot to be trampled by him
She was taken from his side to be his equal,
From beneath his arm to be protected by him,
From near his heart to be loved by him.
I don’t mean to be the constant downer, but this isn’t exactly how many churches portray women today. Women are the silenced members of our church congregations, the ones who are allowed do special music and volunteer to teach Sunday school. They get to cook the food for potlucks, babysit the kids in the nursery, and head up the knitting clubs and women’s Bible studies during the week. But on Sunday, the men preach. That’s when the so-called real authority is displayed. The men have the power. Women have to keep quiet and look pretty. And the longer this mentality thrives inside churches across all denominational affiliations today, the church is only half as effective as it needs to be and is designed to be.
Churches seem to love grabbing a hold of a passage like 1 Corinthians 14:34 about women being silent in the church, and they use a loose understanding of its context to supplant women and place them into a subservient role inside both the home and the church. The Bible also mentions the sad reality that people in those days owned slaves, and America spent much of its early years using those passages to support slavery. It’s amazing what we can do with a Bible taken out of context.
There are these important and distinguishing commands that we receive in the Bible that most people don’t look very closely at these days. There are situational and contextual commands that God and His disciples give us throughout Scripture, and there are also very sweeping generalized commands and truths that God gives us to obey and follow in all circumstances. It’s crucial that we know the difference.
Churches in Corinth were dealing with some pretty heavy stuff in their local congregations when Paul made his famous 1 Corinthians 14:34 remark, and he was speaking to a very specific group of women (who had some issues with gossip) in a very specific church of a very specific part of Corinth. It’s about as relevant to the structure of the church today as God’s specific ark measurements and requirements to Noah were compared to us building or purchasing a speed boat today.
Then there are places when God says pretty sweeping remarks to us, one of which is found in Galatians 3:26-29 which says this:
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
I’m not a theologian or pastor, but that’s a pretty bold and all-encompassing statement in the context of our faith. It seems to presuppose that there is a way that the world looks at all these things and a way in which Jesus and the church reconcile these things.
If the church has become a place for gender and racial inequality, then the church is a very ineffective and incomplete body with missing body parts. Needless to say, it is crippled.
My wife is a youth pastor, and she gets a lot of flack for that, mostly from Christians believe it or not. A guy in my parent’s church once told me, “You better get her in line and put her in her place.” Another guy in Sarah’s dad’s seminary once said to her, “Have you even read the Bible?!”
The most puzzling thing about these attacks is how people react every single time I respond by asking the question, “Where does God say that women can’t be leaders in the church?” After quoting the only two most misquoted passages in the entire Bible about women in the church (1 Corinthians 14:34 and 1 Timothy 2:12), most people start using their own feelings and perspectives to explain the logic and common sense that they believe supports a male-only lead church body. I start to hear things like “Women are too emotional” or “Women only use feelings to interpret Scripture”. My favorite terrible thing someone said to me was “How can she relate to the boys in her youth group?” Clearly all those football analogies and all that talk about “hitting a home run for Jesus” are really resonating with the girls in the youth group.
The problem is not that women break Scripture or disobey God when they take up leadership roles in the church. The problem is that women break societal norms that we as fallible human beings have created everywhere, including in our churches. This makes many of us uncomfortable.
Men don’t like to give up authority. Men don’t like to share the load. Men don’t like to walk hand in hand as equals with women, whether in a business or inside the four walls of a church. It’s part of the fall. It’s part of our messed up imperfections as fallen creatures who take God’s perfect picture and distort all the edges and remove so much of the vibrant colors. Let’s learn to paint in color again and let God take our hands and trace a masterpiece.
No comments:
Post a Comment