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UPDATED BY REFORMED 4/23 @10:00p.m.
For years after I got married both my wife and I listened to Dr. Laura on talk radio. We both enjoyed her no-nonsense approach to offering advice, and because she typically dealt with marriage, children, and relationships, being a young couple with a budding family we felt it time well spent.
One of the primary precepts of Dr. Laura’s moral code was that children should be raised by their families. It did not necessarily mean it fell to the wife. But simply that children being thrown into institutional daycare as infants and toddlers was an atrocity. When we were first starting out, we got into a rental contract we couldn’t afford and had to send our 1 year old into a daycare for 9 months so my wife could work. It was absolutely heart breaking for her to drop him off each morning and not much easier for me. It came to a head (in my mind) when I went to pick him up one afternoon around 4:00 and walked into the backyard to find my 16 month old son sitting on the concrete playing by himself with a half dozen other little children between 2 and 4 years old around him. He looked dejected and lonely playing by himself as he was far younger than most of the kids….. It was absolutely heart breaking thinking that I was sending my 16 month old little boy out into the world to fend for himself. Shortly thereafter I developed a game plan, my wife quit her job and we pulled him out of daycare for good.
Since then my wife has been home with the critters. She stays with them during the day to support, love, teach, guide and when the need arises discipline them. I go out each day and slay dragons to put food on the table. In that regard we operate in traditional roles.
However I do not see my wife as weaker or easier to deceive. If she is more naïve than me it is because I have lived a VERY hard life and because of this am supremely cynical. She is far less naïve than most men I have met and has intellectual and social gifts that overshadow mine tremendously. I dare say I admire the optimistic prism through which she sees the world and people and if that is naiveté then sign me up!
I say all this to point out that we live out traditional roles in regard to the work place and household. However beyond these superficial situational roles, the distinction disappears.
The distinctive of complementary roles is to me a paradoxical concept. If one is the head and the leader and the other is the helper who is submissive, where does equality fall into that equation? You always hear pastors say that men and women are “equal but different” in regard to gender roles however they proceed to say that women are more easily deceived, the weaker vessel, the helper, a good one is submissive, respectful of her husband etc…. What is said about men? That they are priests and kings of their household, and that they are the “head” of their family.
So submissive, naïve, weaker helper is equal to Strong, King Priest, and Leader?
Although any complementarian pastor may be getting red faced and angry saying that I am misrepresenting the issue and that men must be like Jesus willing to sacrifice their lives for their wives and live as humble servant leaders. There is still an undeniable paradox in the descriptive tone regarding men and women. Men are Kings, women are helpers. Men are Priest and Leaders, women are to be submitted. Another relatively severe problem is that Jesus came to earth because he knew that we couldn’t be like him. We will always fall short right to our dying day. So when you recklessly tie Christ like behavior from men as a necessary component to healthy relationships in marriage where you’ve already stoked chauvinistic thinking in the men empowering them with a kingship, a priesthood and executive leader in their abode….. Well then you can venture a guess that oppression is going to happen at least in a fair number of occurrences…. Thinking anything else would be naïve… and we all know that men aren’t naïve right?
I’ve had this argument with people before and the “goto” for men (women rarely argue this issue) is Paul’s numerous statements in his letters diminishing a woman’s role in the church.
We love to contextualize scripture. Mark Driscoll rented the entire city of Ephesus for a day and globe trotted around Israel so he could develop documentary styled video clips to contextualize his Luke, and Revelations sermons. And pastors love to bring historical & cultural tendencies into context to help parishioners understand better the power or meaning of certain verses. And we do this recklessly so that it seems you can get whatever meaning you want out of whichever verse you want. Like last week I wrote about the "tough text" where Jesus said “Do not make any vows” (Mathew 5:34) and Mark Driscoll was able to postulate that what Jesus meant by “Do not make any vows” was that he sometimes wants us to make vows! Like vows of submission to authority as members, or vows to submit to discipline from leadership..... or making vows to be leaders as part of Driscoll's RMT tour. Driscoll used “context” to establish that Jesus meant the exact opposite of what he said. No means yes in the right context!
However we steer clear of contextualizing Paul. The church loves to study the Apostolic Letters. And the church loves to impart the full weight of prophetic scripture to his words. I honestly fear that too much focus is put on them as the basis for a lot of what churches consider their ‘doctrine’. This ends up nullifying or at least limiting the power of the Gospels. And to those outside the main of the church It is a clear and obvious trend that a fair number of people inside the church seem more like followers of Paul than Christ these days.
And it is understandable why.
Paul spoke in clear terms. Jesus spoke in riddles. Paul said ‘do this, don’t do that’. Jesus said ‘believe in me’. The doctrine of Paul fits into our modern task oriented, productivity based world much better than the doctrine of the Gospels and sadly it shows.
But I would dare say that, when Paul said things like women aren’t supposed to lead, or that women are easily deceived and naïve or that women should be submissive helpers etc…, you have to apply almighty context to these statements and to Paul. Not to say that Paul didn't mean what he said. I would never suggest that a man from the Bible meant something radically different than what he said! But what is his context? What was the cultural mindset out of which he made these statements? Were woman treated with respect and honor. Did men believe in servant leadership to their wives?
NO! Women were viewed as just a notch above livestock!
Daughters were sold to the highest bidder, women who had sex prior to marriage were killed, women who committed adultery were killed, if a woman was raped her assailant had to merely pay her dad a fee and he could keep her, if a man died before producing an heir, his brother took ownership of his wife, and their eyewitness accounts were not recognized by the courts. So if a woman saw a man murder another man, and went to tell the police, they would essentially brush her off.
"Silly, easily deceived woman, what does she know?"
Paul lived right in the middle of an era not unlike fundamentalist Islam (from a gender roles perspective). And he was a celibate priest, raised in an ultra-conservative Jewish family who was hyper zealous about religious tradition. So Paul was not only living in an era similar to Islamic fundamentalism, but he was a religious cleric in that culture.... prior to his conversion.
So is Paul the pillar through which to establish the stature, and strength of women in the church? NO!
Bible based models for women’s roles in the church will ALWAYS render a stone- age looking culture because the Bible was written thousands of years ago when views towards women were crude and ignorant. Do it with anything… slaves, racial purity, racism, treatment of the disabled etc…. Bible based models will always yield something out of the stone- age, because the books were written ages ago.
So where does this leave me? I don’t know. I know that something seems amiss about the way the church supports complementarian roles and something seems amiss in the way it is practiced. Unless I cherry pick the verses that I want to cherry pick, I cannot come to the same conclusion that Piper and Driscoll and the Catholic church are arriving at. Jesus Christ empowered women, stood up for them, protected them and leaned on them. Nothing about Christ and the Gospel's leads me to a diminished helper role for women.... Only if I have my exacto knife out sifting through Paul's letters do I find the scriptural support I need.... and then only in short little snippets which I must cut and paste together to create my framework.
If relationships within the church resembled the way the church describes it with humble servant leader men sacrificing their life in honor and admiration for women, I could/ would lend it some currency. But in my own experience, the louder a church beats the drum of complementary roles, the more oppressive its culture seems to be.
My own take is not completely formed yet. I believe that women are endowed with and seen fully as equals in God’s eyes because of the way Jesus treated them. I do not see anything in Genesis or the Gospels that would lead me to believe otherwise. I believe women’s limited roles in the church and supposed limited roles within the home are a remnant of cultural chauvinism in society and the church and think that Paul’s writings are simply a tool men use to advance a self centered agenda.
I know that what I saw at Mars Hill was oppressive. I know that men in leadership expected their wives to “mind their place” and that the drumbeat was so loud and so steady from the church that no one I knew was modeling servant leadership when the church was constantly telling them they were kings, priests, and leaders. Understanding that many were not leaders it seemed like they resorted to a form of bullying to establish their “authority” in the home. So in practice they were failing horribly…. I cannot imagine how much worse it would be for a single woman in that church…. Erin’s story over at my wife’s blog gives me a fair idea.
Any man who needs his wife to be submissive to him isn’t much of a man in my book. A man is not strong if his wife is weak and submissive. I’d say anyone who needs someone they love to bend their knee to them is an insecure little wimp if they are not willing to earn respect first. Often these complimentary churches push young men and women into marriages when young men still rely on mommy to cook and clean for them.... Yet wives are supposed to honor and respect their wisdom? Because he's equipped with male anatomy? This entitlement attitude, "I'm the leader cuz I'm the man!" attitude typically yields unhealthy dynamics with insecure chihuahua type men lording it over their wives who quietly resign themselves to submission. Largely because every other woman, man and leader in the church is telling them to do so..... Your support will help him become great! Is one of the twitter comments I saw.... yeah or it will embolden him into a tyrant or despot.
And ultimately it rolls gender equality back into the stone age. Secular society cringes in disgust as the church pushes gender roles back to the 30’s, 20’s past women equality into the 1800’s with its so called “gospel centered” doctrine. Secular people are not fooled. “It has nothing to do with the Gospel or Jesus” one secular friend of mine said the other day. “It’s the frickin Elks Club with a crucifix! What a joke!”
One of the primary precepts of Dr. Laura’s moral code was that children should be raised by their families. It did not necessarily mean it fell to the wife. But simply that children being thrown into institutional daycare as infants and toddlers was an atrocity. When we were first starting out, we got into a rental contract we couldn’t afford and had to send our 1 year old into a daycare for 9 months so my wife could work. It was absolutely heart breaking for her to drop him off each morning and not much easier for me. It came to a head (in my mind) when I went to pick him up one afternoon around 4:00 and walked into the backyard to find my 16 month old son sitting on the concrete playing by himself with a half dozen other little children between 2 and 4 years old around him. He looked dejected and lonely playing by himself as he was far younger than most of the kids….. It was absolutely heart breaking thinking that I was sending my 16 month old little boy out into the world to fend for himself. Shortly thereafter I developed a game plan, my wife quit her job and we pulled him out of daycare for good.
Since then my wife has been home with the critters. She stays with them during the day to support, love, teach, guide and when the need arises discipline them. I go out each day and slay dragons to put food on the table. In that regard we operate in traditional roles.
However I do not see my wife as weaker or easier to deceive. If she is more naïve than me it is because I have lived a VERY hard life and because of this am supremely cynical. She is far less naïve than most men I have met and has intellectual and social gifts that overshadow mine tremendously. I dare say I admire the optimistic prism through which she sees the world and people and if that is naiveté then sign me up!
I say all this to point out that we live out traditional roles in regard to the work place and household. However beyond these superficial situational roles, the distinction disappears.
The distinctive of complementary roles is to me a paradoxical concept. If one is the head and the leader and the other is the helper who is submissive, where does equality fall into that equation? You always hear pastors say that men and women are “equal but different” in regard to gender roles however they proceed to say that women are more easily deceived, the weaker vessel, the helper, a good one is submissive, respectful of her husband etc…. What is said about men? That they are priests and kings of their household, and that they are the “head” of their family.
So submissive, naïve, weaker helper is equal to Strong, King Priest, and Leader?
Although any complementarian pastor may be getting red faced and angry saying that I am misrepresenting the issue and that men must be like Jesus willing to sacrifice their lives for their wives and live as humble servant leaders. There is still an undeniable paradox in the descriptive tone regarding men and women. Men are Kings, women are helpers. Men are Priest and Leaders, women are to be submitted. Another relatively severe problem is that Jesus came to earth because he knew that we couldn’t be like him. We will always fall short right to our dying day. So when you recklessly tie Christ like behavior from men as a necessary component to healthy relationships in marriage where you’ve already stoked chauvinistic thinking in the men empowering them with a kingship, a priesthood and executive leader in their abode….. Well then you can venture a guess that oppression is going to happen at least in a fair number of occurrences…. Thinking anything else would be naïve… and we all know that men aren’t naïve right?
I’ve had this argument with people before and the “goto” for men (women rarely argue this issue) is Paul’s numerous statements in his letters diminishing a woman’s role in the church.
We love to contextualize scripture. Mark Driscoll rented the entire city of Ephesus for a day and globe trotted around Israel so he could develop documentary styled video clips to contextualize his Luke, and Revelations sermons. And pastors love to bring historical & cultural tendencies into context to help parishioners understand better the power or meaning of certain verses. And we do this recklessly so that it seems you can get whatever meaning you want out of whichever verse you want. Like last week I wrote about the "tough text" where Jesus said “Do not make any vows” (Mathew 5:34) and Mark Driscoll was able to postulate that what Jesus meant by “Do not make any vows” was that he sometimes wants us to make vows! Like vows of submission to authority as members, or vows to submit to discipline from leadership..... or making vows to be leaders as part of Driscoll's RMT tour. Driscoll used “context” to establish that Jesus meant the exact opposite of what he said. No means yes in the right context!
However we steer clear of contextualizing Paul. The church loves to study the Apostolic Letters. And the church loves to impart the full weight of prophetic scripture to his words. I honestly fear that too much focus is put on them as the basis for a lot of what churches consider their ‘doctrine’. This ends up nullifying or at least limiting the power of the Gospels. And to those outside the main of the church It is a clear and obvious trend that a fair number of people inside the church seem more like followers of Paul than Christ these days.
And it is understandable why.
Paul spoke in clear terms. Jesus spoke in riddles. Paul said ‘do this, don’t do that’. Jesus said ‘believe in me’. The doctrine of Paul fits into our modern task oriented, productivity based world much better than the doctrine of the Gospels and sadly it shows.
But I would dare say that, when Paul said things like women aren’t supposed to lead, or that women are easily deceived and naïve or that women should be submissive helpers etc…, you have to apply almighty context to these statements and to Paul. Not to say that Paul didn't mean what he said. I would never suggest that a man from the Bible meant something radically different than what he said! But what is his context? What was the cultural mindset out of which he made these statements? Were woman treated with respect and honor. Did men believe in servant leadership to their wives?
NO! Women were viewed as just a notch above livestock!
Daughters were sold to the highest bidder, women who had sex prior to marriage were killed, women who committed adultery were killed, if a woman was raped her assailant had to merely pay her dad a fee and he could keep her, if a man died before producing an heir, his brother took ownership of his wife, and their eyewitness accounts were not recognized by the courts. So if a woman saw a man murder another man, and went to tell the police, they would essentially brush her off.
"Silly, easily deceived woman, what does she know?"
Paul lived right in the middle of an era not unlike fundamentalist Islam (from a gender roles perspective). And he was a celibate priest, raised in an ultra-conservative Jewish family who was hyper zealous about religious tradition. So Paul was not only living in an era similar to Islamic fundamentalism, but he was a religious cleric in that culture.... prior to his conversion.
So is Paul the pillar through which to establish the stature, and strength of women in the church? NO!
Bible based models for women’s roles in the church will ALWAYS render a stone- age looking culture because the Bible was written thousands of years ago when views towards women were crude and ignorant. Do it with anything… slaves, racial purity, racism, treatment of the disabled etc…. Bible based models will always yield something out of the stone- age, because the books were written ages ago.
So where does this leave me? I don’t know. I know that something seems amiss about the way the church supports complementarian roles and something seems amiss in the way it is practiced. Unless I cherry pick the verses that I want to cherry pick, I cannot come to the same conclusion that Piper and Driscoll and the Catholic church are arriving at. Jesus Christ empowered women, stood up for them, protected them and leaned on them. Nothing about Christ and the Gospel's leads me to a diminished helper role for women.... Only if I have my exacto knife out sifting through Paul's letters do I find the scriptural support I need.... and then only in short little snippets which I must cut and paste together to create my framework.
If relationships within the church resembled the way the church describes it with humble servant leader men sacrificing their life in honor and admiration for women, I could/ would lend it some currency. But in my own experience, the louder a church beats the drum of complementary roles, the more oppressive its culture seems to be.
My own take is not completely formed yet. I believe that women are endowed with and seen fully as equals in God’s eyes because of the way Jesus treated them. I do not see anything in Genesis or the Gospels that would lead me to believe otherwise. I believe women’s limited roles in the church and supposed limited roles within the home are a remnant of cultural chauvinism in society and the church and think that Paul’s writings are simply a tool men use to advance a self centered agenda.
I know that what I saw at Mars Hill was oppressive. I know that men in leadership expected their wives to “mind their place” and that the drumbeat was so loud and so steady from the church that no one I knew was modeling servant leadership when the church was constantly telling them they were kings, priests, and leaders. Understanding that many were not leaders it seemed like they resorted to a form of bullying to establish their “authority” in the home. So in practice they were failing horribly…. I cannot imagine how much worse it would be for a single woman in that church…. Erin’s story over at my wife’s blog gives me a fair idea.
Any man who needs his wife to be submissive to him isn’t much of a man in my book. A man is not strong if his wife is weak and submissive. I’d say anyone who needs someone they love to bend their knee to them is an insecure little wimp if they are not willing to earn respect first. Often these complimentary churches push young men and women into marriages when young men still rely on mommy to cook and clean for them.... Yet wives are supposed to honor and respect their wisdom? Because he's equipped with male anatomy? This entitlement attitude, "I'm the leader cuz I'm the man!" attitude typically yields unhealthy dynamics with insecure chihuahua type men lording it over their wives who quietly resign themselves to submission. Largely because every other woman, man and leader in the church is telling them to do so..... Your support will help him become great! Is one of the twitter comments I saw.... yeah or it will embolden him into a tyrant or despot.
And ultimately it rolls gender equality back into the stone age. Secular society cringes in disgust as the church pushes gender roles back to the 30’s, 20’s past women equality into the 1800’s with its so called “gospel centered” doctrine. Secular people are not fooled. “It has nothing to do with the Gospel or Jesus” one secular friend of mine said the other day. “It’s the frickin Elks Club with a crucifix! What a joke!”
