A Cloth of Many Colors

I thought this was beautiful: 

“Out of the leftovers of the fabric of history, women will make a cloth of many colors. This cloth will force both church and society to notice the variety of ways there are to be women. Women will demonstrate that the wonderful diversity of human character, accepted in the case of men, also exists among women. All women are not from one mold. Women do not have a common eye or voice or language. Out of the poverty of women’s presence in history many creative portraits of women’s history are coming alive…” 

“…Power sharing is a prerequisite for the realization of co-responsibility. Created equally human, God made women and men stewards of creation and gave us authority to jointly fill the earth and manage it. The present state of the partnership of men and women in all cultures, on all continents, and in all churches, is in a state of sin. The one-sided development of the source of human authority has reduced stewardship to dominion, husbanding to control, and complementarity to the paternal determining the scope of being for the maternal. Patriarchy has distorted partnership…” 

“…Women’s struggle for presence has gone on for centuries. Now the churches are being called to participate in the endeavor….The churches will show their solidarity with women when they demonstrate a new understanding of power and their willingness to share its exercise with the whole community of people. “ 

- Mercy Amba Oduyoye

Discovered in Mystics, Visionaries, and Prophets: A Historical Anthology of Women's Spiritual Writings, edited by Shawn Madigan

Read anything beautiful lately? Feel free to share! 

The Absurd Legalism of Gender Roles: Exhibit C – “As long as I can’t see her…”

Exhibit A: The black belt should step aside (because she’s a girl!)

Exhibit B: Boys playing with dolls unravels the moral fabric of society

Exhibit C:  A woman can teach me as long as I can’t see her

Scot McKnight was the first person to draw my attention to the fact that “anyone who thinks it is wrong for a woman to teach in a church can be consistent with that point of view only if they refuse to learn from women scholars” (The Blue Parakeet, p. 148).  And it was Scot who, on his blog this week, pointed his readers to a podcast interview in which John Piper responds to the question, “Do you use commentaries written by women?” 

(So before anyone criticizes me as being a "shrill," "irrational" woman picking on John Piper, please remember that Scot has been discussing this for several years as well.)

Now, in the past, we’ve discussed the sort of hermeneutical gymnastics involved in John Piper’s bizarre, half-hearted affirmation of Beth Moore as a teacher, and we’ve discussed, at length, the context of 1 Timothy 2 and why it should not be used to silence women from preaching the gospel and leading in the church. 

Today I want to look at Piper’s response to this question about commentaries written by women to show just how absurd the legalism of hierarchal gender roles can become. 

Ironically, Piper’s primary measure of appropriateness is whether a man feels threatened by a woman’s teaching. This is something you will hear from time to time from this camp: when in doubt, it all comes down to the degree to which a man senses he is maintaining his authority. As long as the men still feel in control, some degree of teaching from women may be permissible. 

But what about men like my husband, or my pastor, or Scot, who are not threatened by the intelligent, thoughtful contributions of women in leadership?  What about men who enjoy and appreciate partnerships with women and whose sense of calling and security is not dependent upon my subjugation? Why enforce these roles onto them?  

As Dan has told me on many occasions, for him, it is far less insulting to be under the authority of a woman than it is to be subjected to the suggestion that his fragile ego cannot handle it. “I’m just not that insecure,” he likes to say. “Learning from a woman doesn’t make me feel like 'less of a man.' Why would it?” 

Piper argues that a woman can teach a man so long as her teaching is “impersonal,” “indirect,” and “removed”—essentially, so long as it is easy for him to forget she is a woman. 

Regarding a woman who has written a biblical commentary, he explains: “She’s not looking at me, and directing me…as woman. There is this interposition of this phenomenon called ‘book’ that puts her out of my sight and, in a sense, takes away the dimension of her female personhood, whereas if she were standing right in front of me and teaching me as my shepherd…I couldn’t make that separation" (emphasis mine).

As a woman, I find this profoundly dehumanizing.  

No, as a human being, I find this profoundly dehumanizing. 

Piper is essentially arguing that so long as he does not have to acknowledge my humanity, so long as I keep a safe distance so he is unaware of the pitch of my voice and the presence of my breasts, he can, perhaps, learn something about the Bible from me. So long as I am not “in-his-face” (his words) with my femaleness, it will be easier for him to treat me as someone worth learning from; it will be easier for him to treat me like a man. 

How are women to interpret this as anything other than a statement on the inherent inferiority of their natures?   What else are we to conclude when a man without any biblical training or calling from the Spirit is considered more qualified to preach the gospel by virtue of being a man than a woman with extensive training, years of practice, remarkable giftedness, and a profound sense of calling? Is this not legalism? Is it not straining a gnat and swallowing a camel? 

And what on earth is Piper to do with women like Priscilla, who the apostle Paul lauded as one of his coworkers, and whose teaching of Apollos was both direct and personal? What about Huldah, the prophet? Did King Josiah close his eyes so he would forget she was a woman as she read and interpreted Scripture in his presence, explaining, directly and personally, how that Scripture would affect Israel and its king?  And what does Piper do with Deboarah, a woman who essentially took on the role of drill sergeant he is so keen to avoid (not to mention judge, warrior, and commander-in-chief), and is celebrated in Scripture for doing so? 

This is the absurd legalism of gender roles:  Not even the Bible’s most celebrated women can fit into them. 

I’ll conclude with some words of encouragement from Dorothy Sayers. (Men who would be offended by hearing this from her in person will be happy to know she is dead and her words are safely tucked away in an essay entitled “Are Women Human?”) 

"Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man—there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronized; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as ‘The women, God help us!’ or “The ladies, God bless them!’; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unselfconscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and Jesus that there was anything ‘funny’ about woman’s nature."  

"But we might easily deduce it from His contemporaries, and from His prophets before Him, and from His Church to this day. Women are not human; nobody shall persuade that they are human; let them say what they like, we will not believe, though One rose from the dead."

Perhaps we could push beyond these legalistic gender roles if we spent less time worrying about “acting like men” and “acting like women,” and more time acting like Jesus. 

[Latter we'll look at Exhibit D, in which women are advised not to work outside of the home, even if it's more practical for their family.]

For more on 1 Timothy 2, see:  "For the Sake of the Gospel, Let Women Speak" See also, "Is Patriarchy really God's dream for the world?"

Please keep the comments civil!

Mary Magdalene, The Witness

I’ll be taking the weekend off to observe Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter. This reflection on Mary Magdalene is from A Year of Biblical Womanhood. For more stories like this one, check out last year’s Women of the Passion series.

***

Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news:
“I have seen the Lord!”

—John 20:18

The story of how Mary Magdalene became known as a prostitute is a complicated one.

One of six Marys that followed Jesus as a disciple, she was distinguished from the others through identification with her hometown of Magdala, a fishing village off the coast of the sea of Galilee. According to the gospels of Mark and Luke, Jesus cleansed Mary of seven demons, (a backstory infinitely more complicated and mysterious than prostitution, if you ask me), after which Mary became a devoted disciple, mentioned by Luke in the same context as the twelve, who traveled with Jesus and helped finance his ministry.

In 597 pope Gregory the Great delivered a homily on Luke’s gospel in which he combined Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany (Martha’s sister), suggesting that this Mary was the same woman who wept at Jesus’ feet in Luke 7, and that one of the seven demons Jesus excised from her was sexual immorality. The idea caught on and was perpetuated in medieval art and literature, which often portrayed Mary as a weeping, penitent prostitute. In fact, the English word maudlin, meaning “weak and sentimental,” finds its derivation in this distorted image of Mary Magdalene. In 1969, the Vatican formally restated the Gospels’ distinction between Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the sinful woman of Luke 7, although it seems Martin Scorsese, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Mel Gibson have yet to get the message.

A cynic might suggest that this mistake and its subsequent popularity represent a deliberate attempt to typecast and discredit a woman whose role in the gospel story is so critical and so revolutionary that the eastern orthodox Church refers to Mary Magdalene as equal to the apostles.

Although she appears to have been a critical part of Jesus’ early ministry, Mary Magdalene’s extraordinary faithfulness shines most brightly in the story of the passion. After Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, his male disciples abandoned him. Judas delivered him over to the authorities for a bribe. Peter denied him three times. And only John, described as “the apostle whom Jesus loved,” was present at the crucifixion.

But Mary Magdalene and the band of women who followed Jesus and supported his ministry are described by all four gospel writers as being present during the savior’s darkest hours. Even after Jesus took his last breath, and all hope of redemption seemed lost, the women stayed by their teacher and their friend and prepared his body for burial. It is precisely because they were present, loyal even through failure, that the women who followed Jesus were the first to witness the event that would define Christianity: the resurrection.

Gospel accounts vary, but all four identify Mary Magdalene as among the first witnesses of the empty tomb. According to the synoptic Gospels, she and a group of women rose early that fateful morning, three days after Jesus had died, to anoint the body with spices and per- fumes. When they arrived at the tomb, they were met by divine messengers guarding the entrance, who declared that Jesus had risen from the dead, just as he said he would. The women immediately left the tomb behind and, “with fear and great joy” (Matthew 28:8), ran to tell the other disciples. Luke notes that on their way, they remembered what Jesus had taught them about resurrection, confirmation of the fact that these women had been present for some of Christ’s most important and intimate revelations and that they took these teachings to heart.

But when the breathless women arrived at the home where the disciples had gathered, the men did not believe them. Women were considered unreliable witnesses at the time (a fact that perhaps explains why the apostle Paul omitted the women from the resurrection account entirely in his letter to the Corinthian church), so their proclamation of the good news was dismissed by the men as an “idle tale,” the type of silly gossip typical of uneducated women. Perhaps the men invoked the widely held belief that, just like their sister Eve, women were easily duped.

A few, however, were curious enough to take a look at the tomb, and so, according to John’s account, Mary returned with peter and another disciple to the place she had encountered the messengers. The men saw for them-selves an empty grave and a pile of linen wrappings folded neatly within it, and conceded to the women that the tomb was indeed empty. However, John 20:9 notes, “they still did not understand from scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.”

The men returned to report what they had seen to the rest of the disciples, leaving Mary behind. Perhaps disciples posited the theory that Jesus’ body had been stolen, for John wrote that Mary, once so full of breathless excitement and impassioned belief, now stood outside the tomb, crying.

Angels appeared and asked her what was wrong.

“They have taken my Lord away,” she told them, fully accepting the disciple’s dismissal of her “idle tale” of

The angels were then joined by a mysterious man, whom Mary assumed to be the gardener. He, too, asked why she was crying.

“Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him,” she pleaded (v. 15).

Only when he called her by her name did she recognize the man as Jesus.

“Mary,” he said.


“Rabboni!” she cried.


“Do not hold on to me,” Jesus urged as she fell before his feet, “for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’”

And so again, Mary Magdalene ran to the house where the disciples were staying and told them she had seen the risen savior face-to-face. “I have seen the Lord!” she declared. But it was not until Jesus appeared to the men in person, allowing them to touch the wounds in his hands and side, that they finally believed. Far from being easily deceived, women were the first to make the connection between Christ’s teachings from scripture and his resurrection, and the first to believe these teachings when they mattered the most. For her valor in twice sharing the good news to the skeptical male disciples, the early church honored Mary Magdalene with the title of Apostle to the Apostles.

That Christ ushered in this new era of life and liberation in the presence of women, and that he sent them out as the first witnesses of the complete gospel story, is perhaps the boldest, most overt affirmation of their equality in his kingdom that Jesus ever delivered. And yet too many Easter services begin with a man standing before a congregation of Christians and shouting, “he is risen!” to a chorused response of “he is risen indeed!” Were we to honor the symbolic details of the text, that distinction would always belong to a woman.

***

This was an excerpt from A Year of Biblical Womanhood.

For more reflections on the women surrounding Jesus’ passion, check out last year’s series, The Women of the Passion:

Part 1: The Woman at Bethany Anoints Jesus

“We cannot know for sure whether the woman who anointed Jesus saw her actions as a prelude to her teacher’s upcoming death and burial.  I suspect she knew instinctively, the way that women know these things, that a man who dines at a leper’s house, who allows a woman to touch him with her hair, who rebukes Pharisees and befriends prostitutes, would not survive for long in the world in which she lived.”

 Part 2: Mary’s Heart is Pierced (Again)

"The cross is a complicated, frightening thing. There, the God of the Universe experienced every imaginable suffering of his creation, right down to the sense of isolation and betrayal when the Divine seems far away. Because of the cross, God fellowships in our suffering, and we fellowship in his. Because of the cross, we can never say that God doesn’t understand. In this moment, when Mary’s eyes locked with the eyes of the boy she once nursed, once tickled, once watched fall asleep, I imagine that Jesus understood the suffering of mothers, perhaps the most powerful suffering of all."

Part 3: The Women Wait 

"They had no idea how, without the help of men, they could ever move away that heavy stone. But as soon as the blue light of dawn seeped through the windows in the morning, the women rose and, in an act of radical friendship and faith, went to the tomb anyway..."

Part 4: Mary Magdalene – Apostle to the Apostles 

“Far from being easily deceived, women were the first to make the connection between Christ’s teachings from Scripture and his resurrection, and the first to believe these teachings when they mattered the most. For her valor in twice sharing the good news to the skeptical male disciples, the early church honored Mary Magdalene with the title of Apostle to the Apostles." 

Wishing you all a lovely Holy Week! (See also: "Holy Week for Doubters")

Guys and Dolls: Exhibit B for the absurd legalism of gender roles

A couple of weeks ago we discussed the absurd legalism of gender roles, as exemplified by John Piper’s illustration that a woman with a black belt should not intervene if she and a male friend are attacked, for according to Piper, it is the man’s divinely ordained role to protect her.

Piper is one of the founders of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood—a flagship organization for the complementarian movement in America—which is now led by Owen Strachan. (Strachan made headlines not too long ago when he referred to stay-at-home-dads as “man fails.”)

This week Strachan provided yet another illustration of legalistic gender roles by critiquing an episode of Sesame Street in which the character “Baby Bear” is told he should not be embarrassed for playing with a baby doll. Strachan pointed to this scene as an example of how “the basic foundations of the Protestant worldview are under assault.” Sesame Street, he says, is on “the frontlines of the gender wars” and this scene represents a “disastrous teaching on sexuality and gender.”

Caryn Rivadeneira wrote an excellent response at Her.Meneutics that says just about everything that needs to be said about why we shouldn’t shame little boys for nurturing and caring for baby dolls. (As did Kristen Rosser.) But I also want to point to a response from Micah J. Murray entitled “Boys and Dolls: A Father’s Response”

Micah writes:

At the heart of Owen Strachan’s argument is the idea that Baby Bear’s actions are contrary to Biblical manhood and womanhood. I’ve read the Bible. And I agree with Owen that God created men and woman as equal but distinct, with unique strengths and callings. The problem is, “biblical” as Owen Strachan uses it, really means “Protestant America in the 1950′s according to Norman Rockwell” (my words, not his). The Bible never says “boys shouldn’t play with dolls.” That’s a cultural construct that Owen is projecting back onto the Bible.

You know what is Biblical? God says that He will comfort His people “as a mother comforts her child.” (see Isaiah 66:13) Jesus says that He longed to gather the children of Jerusalem “like a mother hen gathers her babies under her wings” (see Mathew 23:37). The Apostle Paul described himself as a mother in labor, struggling to give life to the church. (see Galatians 4:19). The concept of gender differences is Biblical. What’s un-Biblical is the idea that caring for a baby is somehow not masculine...

This is why it matters, Owen.  Because you and the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood are in the midst of a very important conversation about how to live out our masculinity and femininity in the twenty-first century. But instead of approaching it as a conversation, you’ve defined it as a battle. Those on the other side of the issue from you sometimes accuse complementarians of wanting to revert to outdated patriarchal notions of gender roles. And when you write things like this, you validate their accusations.

Because this isn’t about “what the Bible says about masculinity”, it’s about your assumption that “dolls are for girls” and your assertion that anyone who disagrees is attacking our moral foundation. If you want to blog about that, about your opinion that we should raise our kids according to some rather arbitrary gender stereotypes, that’s your business. But you dragged the Gospel into it. You claimed that the Bible supported your assumption. And it doesn’t. Read the rest of the post.

It was encouraging to see someone from a more conservative perspective weigh in on this…and with a wise and thoughtful post.  But it does point to the problem of inconsistency within the complementarian movement.

When I write a post about gender equality, for example, I try to point to very specific quotes from complementarian leaders in order to avoid creating a straw man and to focus the conversation around one or two ideas. But it never fails: Any sort of engagement with complementrarian ideas is immediately followed by the accusation that “that’s not what complementarians really believe” or “you’re pointing to an extreme example” or “you’ve created a straw man.”

Now, today’s example comes from the leader of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which I (and many others) consider to be a mainstream expression of complementarian values. And yet I have a feeling that there may be complementarians out there, who, like Micah, do not consider it “foolish” for boys to play with dolls and who are concerned by how these sort of gender stereotypes are put forth as “biblical manhood.”

So my question for complementarians is this: Does the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood represent you? Does Owen Strachan? If not, what organizations or leaders do? What do you see as the future of complementarianism? If I’m not engaging folks like Strachan, Piper, Driscoll, and Grudem, whom should I be engaging? Mary Kassian? Tim and Kathy Keller?

And, by way of a challenge: Since there is diversity within the movement, I think we could all really benefit from seeing more of it in the form of complementarians calling out the most extreme expressions of that view. Sometimes I get the idea that there are complementarians who are concerned by some of what is being taught, but are afraid to speak up.

I’m sticking to my position on gender equality in the home and Church—(which doesn’t mean I don’t think there are differences between men and women, by the way; it just means I am reluctant to declare those differences universal and prescriptive or indicative of some sort of God-ordained hierarchy between men and women)—but I want to “fight fair” if you will, especially with folks I consider to be my brothers and sisters in Christ.

So who are complementarians looking to for leadership these days? I know what the internet says (by way of stats), but I’d like to hear what you say.

A message that made my day...

I received this message from Emily Simonson, a senior at Cascade Christian High School in  Puyallup, Washington: 

I read A Year of Biblical Womanhood a few months ago at the recommendation of my female mentor. At first I was a little skeptical (the phrase “biblical womanhood” can be a little alarming for any girl who’s been raised in the Christian church) but now, I am incredibly glad she put the book in my hands. For me, it was three hundred and fifty two pages of affirmation, which probably explains why I shared it with those I thought would benefit from it: my best friend, my Bible teacher, and inadvertently it seems, one of my best guy friends. He overheard my teacher and me discussing the concept of “Eshet Chayil” one day after class, and he asked to hear more. Though he hadn’t read the book, he voiced his support of praising a woman for who she is, not what she does. We talked about how sad it is that girls (and boys) are judged solely on their performance, and how we hoped to be good examples to our underclassmen in this area. This short, five-minute conversation occurred three months ago and while it was profound, I naturally assumed he had forgotten all about it.

He hadn’t.

Today, over fifty senior girls received carnations in various hues encouraging them to remember that “charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised” (Proverbs 31:30). None of us had any idea this would happen, and as a carnation was placed on each desk, every girl’s face began with bewilderment and transformed to joy. Eshet Chayil became the buzz word of the day, and as girls discovered what it meant, they were even more impressed by this random act of kindness. I came to find out (mostly through coercion) that my friend had been the mastermind behind the whole project: he picked out the flowers, got our teacher’s approval, and recruited his fellow senior boys to help deliver them. There was no ego involved; the boys simply wanted to humbly affirm their female classmates and sisters in Christ. For many girls, Valentine’s Day normally involves copious amounts of insecurity and anxiety, but instead I saw many smiles as girls walked down the halls with their flowers. Today, women of valor were honored by MEN of valor.

***

How cool is that? I think we should call these "valor flowers." 

Thanks so much, Emily, for sharing this story. 

Learn more about "eshet chayil" in A Year of Biblical Womanhood.
See also: "Women of Valor: It's About Character, Not Roles"