A few quick thoughts on feminism

A few quick thoughts on feminism (a loaded word, I know) in the Church: If you beat someone with a wooden spoon, then try to show them its primary use is for cooking, don't fault them for never seeing the spoon as it was intended. The rise of secular feminism within the church, from what I can see from my small corner of the world, is many times (though not always) in response to a poor construct or a partial framework of God intention for men and women.

Essentially, if you beat someone over the head with theology that was either poorly enacted, poorly constructed, or poorly represented, and then you try to show them how beautiful the theology is at its heart, you're going to lose them. This is because God created us with an innate and beautiful sense of right and wrong. Wrong use of something beautiful results in something ugly. A rose on one end is a beautiful bloom and on the other a prickly weapon.

One of the ways I seek to change the conversation within my realm of influence is to remove the spoon for as long as it takes and show them how cooking at its heart brings life and substance, community and joy. I want to show the beauty of the thing at its starkest form, before I need the help of the spoon. The garlic and onions popping and sizzling on the stovetop while I dice tomatoes and mushrooms. The splash of wine, the story of how it came to be. These things are the beauty of creation in their plain form before I stir and toss with spoons and spatulas.

To follow the analogy, I want to remove what has been misused and made ugly from the situation until we can see the heart of God and the beauty of the Imago Dei and then when those trappings are gone, we can talk about intention for gender roles.

Just a few thoughts. I'm still working them out, but I thought it might help to put them before you so you can see how my brain processes these matters.

An Apology to the Wounded Birds

I'm sorry.

You were sold the story, hook, line, and sinker. Do this, don't do that, build it, tear it down, cover it up, write it over—do it all and then this...

This will happen for you. Or this bad thing, that won't happen for you. Obey, honor, submit, then shut your mouth, don't ask questions, don't dare defy. Do all that and it will go well for you.

And then it didn't. It didn't go well and it went really bad. Really, really bad. On the other side you stood there with nothing. No morals, no laurels, no crowns of glory, all your delight in shambles and your hope in rags. They said it would go well for you and then it didn't.

This is a letter to you, you women who grew up asking how short was too short, how obedient was obedient enough, how submission looked on you, and if every single thing you did was right enough, good enough, pure enough.

This is letter to you, you girls who grew up with mothers barefoot in the kitchen, with fathers stern and unappreciative, with every boy a threat, and every girl a comparison.

This is a letter to you, liberated woman. You came out in college roaring. You threw off the shackles of fundamentalism, of second guessing, of moralism, of theology that bound instead of freed.

This is a letter to you, freed women, ones who are looking for the voices of your sisters, the ones who know it as acutely as you do. Who know the shackles, the questions, the fears, and the injustice of growing up always looking over your shoulder.

I'm sorry.

I am so, so sorry.

I am sorry that something beautiful was perverted by an enemy who steals, kills, and destroys. I am deeply sorry that you felt damaged, a cowering bird in a coyote's world. I am so sorry that you spent your life in front of a fun-house mirror, a distortion of who you truly are. I am not your parent or your pastor, but I am you, and I am sorry.

I know you are looking for strong female voices, women who will lead the charge toward full freedom, birds who have found their flight above the heads of squabbling coyotes. I know you are looking for women who will say that yes, that was wrong, what happened to you. That, yes, the reflection you've been shown is not a true woman, a woman who fears the Lord and loves His word. That, yes, the subservient cloistered crouching woman is nothing like what a daughter of the King ought to look like.

I know you are looking for her.

And so I'm sorry, I'm sorry that I haven't spoken up. I'm sorry that in the face of one perversion, I've let another extreme pass me by without saying anything.

The enemy's favorite tactic is to pervert what is good, and there is none good, no not one. Except Him. And the wholeness of Him cannot be perverted.

Here is my promise to you, my sister, my friend: I promise you I will fight on your behalf. I promise I will fight for truth, for the culmination of all things in the Only One Who Is Good. I promise I will wrestle with theology and that I will not let go of God. That I will not let go until He has changed the names of each of us. Until we do not find our identity in a name or label, but that we find it in the fullness of Christlikeness. I cannot promise we will not walk with a limp, each one of us, but I think our limp will be our mark, our Ebenezer, our fist in the face of the enemy.

I promise to wrestle with the One who promises to lead us through to the other side.

After much prayer, counsel, and time, I've accepted an offer to join the teams of writers over at the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Many of you are encouraged to have my voice there and I know many of you are disappointed in me. My promise to both of you is that my fight is not for equality or distinction, biblical womanhood or feminism, my fight is against the powers of darkness and my delight is to walk in the light.

I believe that CBMW recognizes the lack of a strong young female voices in the Church today and they care about the practical implications of a complementarian view. I am a complementarian, that hasn't changed, but I believe the answers many egalitarians have been pressing for have not been handled well. Unanswered questions, coupled with the distortion of truth many of us grew up with in evangelicalism, only breeds room for more distortions. I do not aim to answer questions, so much as I am to fight for purity of the Gospel. With the Lord's help, I will aim for clarity and consistency, that's my promise to you.

Real Men & Real Women: Tough & Tender

The Young, Restless, & Reformed Complementarian crowd is often caricatured by a flannel shirt wearing bearded young man who gulps craft beers and talks theology from scribbled notes off his moleskine notebook. He quotes Piper and Packer and Paul. He opens doors for his sisters and uses the word "damn" with frequency, except when his simple fundamentalist Baptist mother is around. He never feels completely capable of leading anyone because he feels like he's playing catch-up for all his years of not. He drinks his coffee black.

Because the movement has historically been so stalwartly male, made of all things growly and gruff, there just hasn't been a similar caricature for the female side of YRRC. Though if you were going to attempt a one, she's probably an avid Pinner, crafting the perfect home for her bearded [future] husband, reading Proverbs 31 and feeling like she falls short of everything except being a wife of noble character (and only because the YRR guy wouldn't choose anything less than nobility of character for his wife). She probably shops at Whole Foods, or for the more frugal, Trader Joes. She writes Bible verses on index cards and tacks them to kitchen cabinets.

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One of the enemy's favorite tactics is to take what God has not called ultimate and make it so. If he can confuse the Christians, get them to devour one another, well, he can call it a day. No need for the Crusades part deux, Jesus came to bring a sword, and by golly, the first people we're gonna use it on is one another.

One particular area of glee the enemy is basking in these days is the division he's bringing to the Church concerning gender roles. And he does it by making caricatures rampant.

Humanity is important, which means individuals are important, which means men and women are important, which means what men and women do is important, and if the enemy can make what we do (or have done) more important than what God has done, he will seem to have won this particular battle.

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A concern of mine I see as I stand on the sidelines, and am being invited into the midst, is that we are taking caricatures of men and women and making them ultimate. For the YRR complementarian man, he thinks a principal way of Being A Man is fighting for his sisters: he wants them to be protected and flourishing—only he's a little clumsy at it sometimes and it can come off like he's being a chauvinist. For the complementarian woman, it's to find a husband as quickly as possible—not because she's half a person without him, but because how can she prove she's a distinct helper if she's not helping anyone? For the egalitarian man, he wants to serve his sisters by fighting to give them a voice where traditionally the most a woman can do in the Church is change diapers and hand out bulletins (Note: both tasks are valuable, I'm not knocking them, just how they limit the abundantly distinct gifts of women.). For the egalitarian woman, she has distinct powerful words burgeoning up inside of her and wants desperately to share them with the world; she wants to help, even if she ends up just sounding shrill.

Theologically we're not at all alike, but practically I think we are.

I don't think we all are. But I think we are sort of kind of maybe are.

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Hear me out.

If the enemy's favorite tactic is to distract us by what is not best, so we would miss what is, wouldn't you say he thinks he's succeeding in some respects (Gen. 3.1-5)?

We have brothers who are fighting on behalf of their sisters, wanting to see their strengths utilized and maximized within the bounds of scripture, and we have sisters who want to do what they were created to do: help bring wisdom, counsel, a distinct voice, a feminine voice.

We're not so different after all.

But if we continue to get distracted by terminology, practicality, and sustainability, we're going to lose sight of the beautiful simplicity of the Gospel. I am not saying a theology of gender roles is unimportant here—I'm saying the world and its constructs are dead to us, we boast in the cross alone (Gal. 6.14).

Piper said, "We're not here to make men and women, we're here to make disciples." And my heart leaps inside of me when I hear that. Practice is important, but our practice should be to make disciples in the shadow of the cross, not to make mini-mes. "Come and die" is our mantra, "it's gonna hurt" should be our caveat.

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Are you trying to fit yourself into a caricature of what your church or your theology deems you to be? Can I plead with you to not? You are doing a disservice to your theology, your brothers and sisters, and most of all the Gospel, if you make your position or personality ultimate.

Brothers, help your sisters. Fight for them when they are being marginalized. Fight for them not because you want them to lead you, or because you think it will make you more capable of leading them, but because the more you fight for your sisters, the more they will fight for you, and the more you will contend for the Gospel together as one.

Sisters, fight for your brothers. Help them see things in different distinct ways, help them with gentler tones and aspects of humanity that have been characterized as feminine. There is a deep need in the Church today for strong gentleness, ferocious lovingkindness, and articulate passion, and you are absolutely built to bring it to the table. But bring it for the sake of the Gospel, not your voice.

"Jesus is tough and tender, absolutely will get in the face of wicked, self-righteous leaders, and then hug a child. So when we come to Christ, men get appropriately tougher and appropriately more tender, and the same thing happens with women. It's like the last chapter, the end of a movie. There's a sense that my life makes sense, my experiences make sense. I am a female, but it's a bigger deal than that, I am a part of a greater story, I have a sense that I'm bringing to the table not just my femininity, but my spiritual gifts. I am not just a man, but I'm here to give my life away for the body of Christ. And that only happens when we come to Christ." —Darrin Patrick

For the sake of the gospel, friends, be like Christ. Tough and tender, both for both, all at once, all one in Jesus Christ.

Leading Ladies Everywhere

I am, however, still interested in faith trends. I'm lured by them because I love the culture of heaven and I think it ought to affect the culture of earth, and what are trends if not culture's response to heaven's delay?"

Continue reading Leading Ladies Everywhere over at Project TGM today.

While I am calling to mind the things for which I’m grateful this week, it seems that singleness is topping that list for real. I italicize that because I have exercised that muscle of gratefulness before, but it has never felt familiar, good or right. It has always felt like a cheat, stealing away the best years of my life, chances for babies, young love and all that.

Continue reading Every Single Season over at Single Roots today.

Project TGM: Theology, Gospel, Mission

There was a new kid on the block in 2012 named Project TGM: Theology, Gospel, Mission, and they recently asked to make me the newest kid on the block (and the first woman to join their team.) I jokingly said to them yesterday that I have seven brothers and ain't skeered of them, but I'll be honest, it's a solid line-up over there and I'm humbled they asked me. I hope you'll join me over there today, but also make a habit of heading over there for some great pieces by regular writers (Owen Stracham, professor of Theology and Church History at Boyce College, Logan Gentry, pastor at Apostles Church in New York, and others) and occasional guests.

My inaugural post is up today on how the greatest need for women is not parenting/marriage/singleness advice or tactics, but gospel realignment. Please hop over and give it a look! 

A Better Fruit

I may be a complementarian, but I dole out my respect sparingly enough. I do not believe that every woman needs to submit to every man and I do not believe that every man can righteously wield power over me with wisdom or criticism. I believe that every practical act of ours on earth ought to be a reflection of what happens in the Kingdom. It seems clear that the Trinity beautifully displays a threefold relationship I'm happy to take my part in as helper—equal, but distinct.

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One of the few who has won my hard[ly] earned respect is a pastor who moved to my native north from the Bible-belt to replant a church. He's an author, speaker, and blogger, and never once have I heard him put out anything distracting from the glory of God. Not once, that is, until he stepped on a seeming hornet's nest a few months ago.

He unwittingly quoted someone who had prefaced something controversial before they said it, but he quoted it without the same warning. And well, we'd all like to be able to pull back our words a time or two, wouldn't we? Fortunately it was on a blog and so he removed the entry after a discussion ensued when a fuss was raised from an opposing movement (in this case Christian feminists), and issued an apology.

It was in poor form, I'll give you that. But I took neither offense to it nor did I see the need to address it. Why? Because the most freeing aspect of being a complementarian, for me, is trust. I trust that he has people in his life who will point out any error and, in fact, they did—but nobody seems to want to draw attention to that because it would imply that hierarchal systems actually work without the undo drawing of attention by the masses, gossipmongers, and those who take offense easily.

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It may have taken a few minutes to get here, but what this post is about is trust.

It seems to me that on a very base level the problem of the feminist movement and the patriarchy movement, and indeed sin itself, is principally a lack of trust. We have, from the very beginning, been attempting to wrench what was not given in the search of what was labeled off limits.

The whole garden, every tree and plant, the dominion over the whole earth was ours—everything but this one tree, and yet this one tree is the one Eve took the fruit from and gave it to Adam to share.

From the start we are in search of what is not within our grasp. And if we feel powerless holding onto what does not belong to us, we grasp, we cajole, we plead, and finally in an act of spirited defiance, we take it. We reach high into the branches and we twist that fruit until what looked so good is now so bad, and we eat of it—we dominate in the name of righteousness.

And what happens is not satisfaction. It is not completion. It is not godlike presence or perfection. What happens is that we are immediately found wanting for more and nothing covers us fully enough. We need something more to satisfy.

This, to me, is the major practical flaw in movements that attempt to thwart a design, albeit a design with limits, to attain what was not designed to be ours.

We are never satisfied.

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Isn't that the look of all sin though? Isn't it just, as Augustine said, the reordering of good things until they become ultimate things? Isn't it what happens when we put our hope in a thing or an action or an apology or even a theology, instead of in God himself?

Here is why I am a complementarian (aside from the fact that I think the Bible is clear about it and I'm too tired of all the other mental gymnastics I do to add one more routine): because it goes against my nature to submit to anyone on anything. I'm aware of it so strongly that I war against anything that teaches me to reach for a higher branch of forbidden fruit.

I war against anything God has said clearly it is not right for me to have (I Tim. 2.12). I war against anything that demands action of me I have not been fit to act on (I Peter 3.7). I war against anything that says if one person has something I ought to have it too (Rom. 12.3). The truth is trust is where I belong, it is where I am safest, where I am held, where I am known, where I rest, and most of all where He has made His glory known to me.

You may call me foolish or underfoot, you may even accuse me of being blinded by my male leadership, and I am okay with that, because here is what I know: I am seen and noted, I am chosen and delivered, I am full of the Father's design, the Groom's love, and Spirit's help. The more I trust, the further into Himself He takes me.

I eat fruit from low-slung tree branches and it is juicy and full and ripe in its season.

And it is good because He has said it is good.

[If you have thoughts about this, feel free to email them to me. I do not have comments open on any of my posts, but I don't want you to think I'm not open to discussion. I am, just not on this page. Try here!]