This post is rated PG-13, but it's still totally worth your time
So in August, I said this: “Lately, I can’t handle certain boys anymore, and have just quit trying. Seriously. I’m quitting boys because there’s too much other crap going on, and I can’t handle it. Nor do I want to.”
And I thought I meant it, but I guess I didn’t.
I mean it now.
I’m so tired of dealing with guys. I’m just going to quit them. Quit guys altogether. They’re either not getting straightforward rejection or cutting me off in traffic or staring at inappropriate parts of my body or offering to “set me up with somebody” or getting all up in my business, and I don’t appreciate it.
But I suppose the crowning glory was last night, during a discussion about our church with some members of the singles group and one past member. I was trying—and doing a horrible job—of explaining this missional steering committee idea and what we actually do, and how part of our job is discerning how our church can become relevant to our neighborhood and society and how God is at work in our church and city and world, and we have the great opportunity to plug into that if we could be less “it’s all about me” focused. And a male friend commented that he didn’t approve of that discerning scenario. I told him—lovingly—that it didn’t matter, because he wasn’t a member there anymore anyway, so what did he care?
Then, he let me know that he doesn’t like the fact that a young woman is discerning the direction of the church. At which point I believe I reiterated my previous statement. I didn’t get angry about it at the time, but I’ve had a while to think about it since then. (When I told one of my best friends about it last night, I think she was slightly shocked that I wasn’t really upset. So she was upset for me, which is what best friends are for.)
But I think if this friend had attacked my discernment abilities, then I might have agreed with him. I mean, God has been pretty silent since Mission Year, and I have never tried to hide that fact. Actually, this friend and I had just spent part of Friday night discussing this as we were on our way to pee-in-a-hole camping. Instead, however, he attacked my sex and my age.
This makes no sense to me. I know that this friend has one of those the-man-is-in-charge-and-the-woman-does-all-the-submitting philosophies (I think this is partially because he needed a companion to his homosexuals-can-be-counseled-into-heterosexuality philosophy, and I guess they’re a matching set), but I still don’t see what that has to do with my discernment capabilities. I mean, does the fact that I have a vagina instead of a penis make me a bad discerner? Does the penis act like an antenna? Does it allow the man to hear God more clearly? If so, then I missed THAT day of bible class. (But I really would love to hear Roy Parker say the word penis, lol.)
And as far as my age is concerned, I’m not sure that I’ve gotten any better at hearing God as I’ve gotten older. Maybe we should just ask very young kids what God would want us to do. I bet they’ve got some pretty radical and humorous ideas. . .we’ll just have to ask only the male children, I guess.
And, y’know, when my friend made the comment about my age and sex, I think the rest of the people in the room expected my head to explode. But it didn’t—I still love my friend, and I understand that I was doing a really crappy job of explaining the purpose of this steering committee. And I tease him all the time about his conservative-ness. Maybe I expected him to have more faith in me, but I guess I forgot that his conservative views aren't just a joke.
And yet. . .I hope my friend hears God. And I hope God tells him that I’m right. And then I hope God tells him that she really is a woman and to stop thinking with his penis.
Come to think of it, I’d really like to hear God say the word penis, too.
posted by A. Lo @ 6:24 PM
6 Comments:
Does the penis act like an antenna?
This may be the case but it makes an elders meeting awkward because they have to be erect to work like an antenna. Trust me on this one.
What would you pay for a recording of Roy Parker saying penis? Just say the word, it can be done.
lol. Sorry, but I just keep thinking of all the old dudes I know who are elders. Ewww.
And I'm not sure you could put a price on a recording of Roy Parker saying penis. I think that just might be priceless.
Hm.
Shane just did a good class on why the whole church should be upset about that attitude, and Damon & Josh did a good follow-up from Galatians.
Basically, the first argument is that Paul's statements about identity (jew nor greek, slave nor free, male nor female, one in Christ) should be much louder than his prescriptions for the churches of his day (head coverings, no speaking ... um ... except when prophesying ... anyhow). So basically, your buddy should read all the parts of Galatians where Paul brings down the hammer on the Jews about the Gentiles, but replace "Jews and Gentiles" with "men and women". Although be warned, this may do odd things with the passages about circumcision.
The second argument is that Paul's special prescriptions for women were an attempt to keep the church from being so radical that it scared the crap out of the people who weren't part of the church. A Jewish man who walked into a church service where a bunch of women were preaching with their heads uncovered would probably think he had walked into a room with a bunch of prostitutes and their oddly fetishistic johns. So while I'm not so sure that Paul nodding to the culture was a good thing, the argument is that if Paul's recommendations about what people should do in church were at least partly based on what would offend non-Christians, it becomes very clear that what the American church must do is ACTIVELY ENCOURAGE women to speak and lead, otherwise the surrounding culture will immediately label the church as misogynistic and patently oppressive.
But basically, I think these arguments won't address your friend's essential problem, which is that he thinks there is a divinely created hierarchy of power, and that man (being superior) is at the top, and woman (being inferior) is beneath the man. While there is some biblical justification for this opinion, I think it's more of a worldview problem than an interpretation problem. In other words, he needs new experiences, not new arguments.
I agree. I think his is a problem of perspective. However, I'm not sure what experiences would change that. I wonder what would happen if the CoC as a whole changed their minds about this. (I think they will, but not for 20 years or more.) I wonder if he'd change his mind, too, because I think the fact that our tradition is largely patriarchal and misogynistic is reinforcing his opinion.
As is Wild at Heart.
@alo - "As is Wild at Heart."
Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
Blaa.
I think right now the more progressive (relatively speaking) Churches of Christ are trying to reinterpret Scripture in such a way that they still get to say they're holding to exactly what the text says, but with conclusions on the role of women that are more egalitarian.
I'm not sure it's working, and I think the reason is that they're trying to pass off hermeneutics as exegesis. To oversimplify, exegesis refers to what the text meant, and hermeneutics refers to what the text means.
This is what I propose is happening: Many churches feel that Scripture must mean (for us) that women and men are equal in both their value and their roles. Really, this is a hermeneutical decision.
But because most of these churches aren't prepared to say Scripture was wrong (or is irrelevant) on some point, they just assume that what it means for us must also be what it meant when it was written. Armed with this insight, they go to Scripture and find ways for it to mean what they wish it meant. In fact, they ironically claim that it's our modern misunderstandings that cause us to miss the fact that Paul really believed what we do.
Now, if the text actually is egalitarian in its original context, then no wrong has been done. But I, for one, am persuaded that the text contains elements of a sort of idealized egalitarianism pasted on top of the kind of hierarchy of men over women that Matt notes has some biblical justification. I think Paul would say that men and women are equally valuable, but that men are indeed higher on a sort of hierarchy. People today often say this is a contradiction, but that doesn't mean Paul thought it was a contradiction.
In other words, I don't think honest exegesis can lead us to an egalitarian conclusion, as far as the NT is concerned.
However, the church isn't necessarily stranded at this point. Many Christians believe that the text also has to be interpreted for today (hermeneutics), and that its meaning today doesn't necessarily have to be exactly the same as its meaning when it was written.
It seems that from Matt's perspective, certain parts of Scripture actually persuade us that God wants us to set aside other parts of Scripture. I agree with him there.
The problem is, how do we decide the right hermeneutical principles? If we can reinterpret what Scripture means for us –– and reach different conclusions from what it meant when it was written –– then how are we not just ignoring the authority of God and doing whatever we wish? (This is what Matt was just accused of on his blog.
I don't have a straightfoward answer. I can argue that we should only use ideas that are already present within Scripture (and that we can discern exigetically) to reinterpret other parts of Scripture. But after that, the only thing I know that we can do is thoughtfully and prayerfully try to discern what God wants for us. My tendency is to stay as close to what Scripture meant as possible (so that our hermeneutics don't make many changes to our exegetical conclusions), but I haven't found good ways to do that with utter consistency –– so I have to admit there's ambiguity.
In any event, it's not surprising at all that folks at a.lo's church (which I know well) aren't ready to do that. They still intend to follow the Bible literally, meaning that hermeneutics don't interfere.
The problem with this whole situation, from my perspective, is that the more progressive Churches of Christ seem to want to make all their adjustments exegetically, which means they corner themselves into having to reach certain conclusions on what the text meant even if the texts themselves don't quite support such readings.
The Bible faculty at ACU (I love them, but I think a number of them are wrong on this point) have worked in recent years to supply such exegesis. Their goal is of course admirable, but I think their results are skewed by what they want to find.
I think that generally speaking, most people won't be able to hold all this in tension appropriately. That means most people will veer toward either rigidity (pure exegesis) or diffusion (pure hermeneutics). To put it another way, it's extemely difficult to believe the Bible can be wrong and still believe the Bible has authority. I'm not sure how I believe it myself, but I'm pretty sure I do.
The only reason I would have the audacity to make that kind of claim is that I think it's what God wants us to think of Scripture. But how I get to the point of believeing that, I'm not entirely sure. Probably the whole thing is based on experience, like Matt says. I only know that I can't find any other approach that appears to make sense.
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