Hooky & “The Big 5-0″

I never told a soul.  Far as I know, no one knows.  Till now.

Back in my college days – some three decades ago – I decided to cut classes one morning and head for the beach instead of the books.  It was one of those bright, balmy, eighty-degree days for which San Diego is famous.  Sapphire-blue, sun-soaked.  Postcard-perfect.  Especially for playing hooky.

I didn’t plan on bailing out of Western Civilization and Physical Anthropology 101.  But I found myself chugging down the I-8 in the exact opposite direction of Mr. Asmov’s lecture hall.  To put this in context, it was one of two days I “played hooky” in my entire scholastic career.  I’m more of the “nose-to-the-grindstone” type.  Steady.  Responsible.  Reliable.  As impetuous and impulsive as a gimpy snail in a molasses factory.

So why did I suddenly decide to do something as utterly uncharacteristic as spend a gorgeous sunny southern California day at Point Loma, a peninsular seaside community separating San Diego Bay from the Pacific?  I’m not entirely sure.  Maybe I was tired of being “responsible and reliable.”  Maybe I was in a rut and wanted to stir some spontaneity into my schedule.  Maybe I wanted to “carpe diem.”  Seize the day.  Instead of the other way around.

It was a day worth seizing – wading, beachcombing, sand castle-building, tide-pooling.  Soaking up some rays.  Lunching under swaying palms.  Sucking in huge chunks of salt-spiced sea spray.  (Okay, I also finished two essays, a book report, studied for exams and updated my Day Planner to a year out.  Nobody’s perfect.)

Know what I discovered on that hooky day at Point Loma?  Playing hooky is fun.  Delicious.  I don’t remember diddly from most of my lecture notes or Day Planner, but I remember that “hooky day” like it was yesterday.  There was something about seizing the day that was… soul-stretching.  Refreshing.  Recharging.  Energizing. Effervescent.

I loved it.

It’s official.  Today I turn “the big 5-0.”  It feels weird.  Like I should feel …. different somehow.  Older.  Wiser.  “Mature.”  Whatever that means.  On one hand I feel I’m way too young to be that old.  I mean, my mom was fifty!  On the other, it seems my half-century status is supposed to result in pearls of wisdom and sage sagacity.  Kind of like a modern Oracle of Delphi.

Truth is, I’ve never gotten the hang of that oracle thing.  Most of what I’ve learned and gleaned in my five decades isn’t all that earth-shattering: Put God first.  Honor your parents.  Love your spouse.  Hug your kids.  Work hard.  Serve.  Eat chocolate.  They say “you’re only as old as you feel,” which probably puts me somewhere in the Sesame Street demographic.  Also, “age is all in your head.”  Or hair.  Or hips.  Or… joints?

But like I was saying, “the big 5-0” feels weird.  Like I’m suddenly fair game for the other half of that famous “Titus 2” equation.  Well.  I’m not exactly turning cartwheels over that “older woman” bit.  There are still plenty of other “olders” out there, thank you very much.  And if they’re real “olders,” I’ll pass.

Maybe you know the type.  They rehearse their daily litany of moans and groans, aches and pains with the regularity of day following night.  They’ve kept records of all the people who’ve wronged them over the years.  They’re gonna get even one of these days.  Or they spend so much time resting on their laurels and looking back at “the good ‘ole days” that “carpe diem” would give them whiplash.

These are the folks who take life and faith dead serious and you better too, bub, if you know what’s good for you.  Wait a minute. This phenomenon isn’t unique to the Geritol crowd, is it?  Some things transcend age:

- Comparing kids, outfits, income and accessories so the other person always gets short shrift

- Mammoth-sized me-ism

- Excising “I’m sorry” from vocabularies like it’s malignant

- Crammed closets compensating for shallow souls

- External busyness hiding internal barrenness

What did the Lord Jesus say about this?  Plenty.  But an almost-fifty year favorite is John 10:10b:

“… I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

In other words, carpe diem.  Seize the day.  Reach out.   Get real.  Laugh.  Apologize.   Live your life rather than a knock-off version of someone else’s.  Hold hands.  Play hooky once in a while.  Grab your kids and scarf down that second banana split, guilt-free.  (If you can’t find your kids or don’t have any, borrow some.  Jesus did.)

While I’m hoping the cost of cake candles doesn’t break the bank this year, I have some regrets from the past 18, 262 days.  Some shoulda-woulda-couldas.  But I’ve never regretted that hooky day.  Don’t tell anyone, but I sometimes wish I’d taken more.

A few things I can tell you from my perch here in the middle-age rafters is that raspberry white chocolate cheesecake tastes better when it’s shared.  Lucy and Ethel in the bon-bon factory deserve an Emmy.  Toothpaste can’t be squeezed back into the tube.  It’s amazing how much less I know at age 50 than I did at 18.  Family, faith and friends matter most.  Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  And while sapphire-skied, sun-soaked days are perfect for playing hooky, carpe diem is for every day.  Life’s too short not to.

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Back to our “regularly scheduled program” next time.

Happy Birthday!

To The Few. The Proud.  The Marines.

Semper Fi!

Don’t swallow your teeth, but…

Don’t swallow your teeth now, but there are portions of Ware’s essay with which I concur.  No ,really.  “Honest injun.”  An example:

“There can be no competition, no fundamental conflict of purpose if we are to function as the image of God.  Adversarial posturing simply has no place between the man and woman who are both image of God.  The reason for this is simple: both man and woman, as image of God, are called to carry out the unified set of responsibilities God has given.  Since both share in the same responsibilities, both must seek to be unified in their accomplishment.”

I concur with the competition, adversarial and conflict part.  What gives me cause for pause is the seemingly endless stream of “howevers,” “buts,” and the “unity, but only within a top-down hierarchical structure” and similar qualifications within this essay.  It’s as if Ware, et. al., are trying to straddle both sides of the fence at the same time – “equal, but….” and so on.

What’s with that?

Isn’t it troubling – even saddening – that so many men and women who self-identify as “Bible–believing, Evangelical Christians” swallow so much of this material as “biblical” or “divinely designed” without batting an eye?  Or thinking twice?

At the outset of this series (shortly after the discovery of fire, was it? , I said:

I was so stunned by some of the claims and dogmas proffered in this essay – that are routinely lapped up and widely circulated within the `Bible believing, Evangelical community’ sans second thought -  that I felt a review and discussion of some of the salient points was in order.”

Additionally, the implications of Ware’s permanent subordination of women to men views go beyond “stunning” or troubling.  Varnished with a thin veneer of proof-texts and questionable exegesis, they are startling and staggering.  The implications are sobering.  Did Christ come to exchange one straight-jacketed set of rules and restrictions for another?  Did He die and rise again to enact a spiritual apartheid system in which men reign supreme and women are spiritual wanna—bees, “becoming the image of God through the male”? Is not one’s capacity for ministry based on Christ’s victory at Calvary rather than failure at the Fall?  Is spiritual segregation what New Testament Christianity – for either gender – is all about? 

For further reading:

Summaries of the Egalitraian and Complementarian Positions on the Role of Women in the Home and in Christian Ministry. by Bruce Ware

Be Careful Ware You Aim (Note the comments)

  Biblical Womanhood in the Home, ed. by Nancy Leigh DeMoss  (Where’s the companion volume,  Biblical Womanhood Outside the Home?)

  Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, ed. by John Piper & Wayne Grudem

  Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood, ed. by Wayne Grudem

  Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy, ed. by Ronald W. Pierce, et al.

  Equality in Christ, by Richard Hove

  Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth, by Wayne Grudem

  Finally Feminist, by John Stackhouse

  God’s Word to Women, by Katharine C. Bushnell

  Good News for Women, by Rebecca Merrill Groothuis

  Heirs Together, by Patricia Gundry

  Man and Woman in Biblical Perspective, by James B. Hurley

  Men and Women in the Church, by Sarah Sumner

  Paul, Women, and Wives, by Craig S. Keener

  Recovering Biblical Ministry by Women, by George & Dora Winston

  Sacred Marriage, by Gary L. Thomas

  Slaves, Women & Homosexuals, by William J. Webb

  Two Views on Women in Ministry, ed. by James R. Beck and Craig L. Blomberg

  Who Said Women Can’t Teach?, by Charles Trombley

  Woman Be Free, by Patricia Gundry

  Women Caught in the Conflict, by Rebecca M. Groothuis

  Women in Ministry: Silenced or Set Free?, DVD series by Cheryl Schatz

Stay tuned for a slight digression and some special Birthday Greetings next time!

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Check out books, etc. on  new web site:  A Little Lowder.

What I’m NOT arguing…

Okay, okay.  At the outset of this series I mentioned that I intended to address a few salient points vis-à-vis Bruce Ware’s Male and Female Complentarity and the Image of God. Well, you know how Yours Truly gets wound up some times.  But here’s the bottom line:

I am not – repeat, not – arguing for intentional disrespect, contempt, or rank antagonism between the genders.  I am NOT – repeat, NOT - arguing against male leadership in the church or anywhere else, nor am I advocating disrespect or disdain toward male leadership. I am advocating:

- A more biblically balanced, shoulder-to-shoulder, hand-in-hand, mutual approach both in the home, in the church, in the agora and in all of life rather than a top-down, male-dominated hierarchy.  (Can you appreciate the difference?)

-  For “respect and honor” to be evenly distributed between both genders, in whatever role, responsibility or venue God may lead them.

In The Basics of Biblical Equality: Belief and Practice, Rebecca Merrill Groothuis sums this up beautifully:

Biblical equality does not mean that men and women are identical or undifferentiated. God has created and designed men and women to complement and benefit one another, and there do seem to be average differences in behavior (both learned and intrinsic) between women and men.

Biblical equality does mean that gender, in and of itself, neither privileges nor curtails a believer’s gifting or calling to any ministry in the church or home; that all believers in Christ stand on equal ground before God; and that spiritual authority, as biblically defined, is as much a female believer’s privilege and responsibility as it is a male believer’s. All believers stand on the same biblical terms of faith and service, in accordance with the ways in which each one is gifted and called.

Amen?  What do you think?

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There’s more, so don’t touch that dial.

~~~

Check out books, etc. on  new web site:  A Little Lowder.

Male and Female Complementarity, Part 11

- See prior posts for context –

Ware continues, anticipating questions from singles:

“There is one more question singles may rightly ask. How is the headship of the male who is created first in the image of God to be honored by single women and men?”

Among other things, his response includes:

The temporal priority of the male in the image of God means that in general, within male-female relationships among singles, there should be a deference offered to the men by the women of the group, which acknowledges the woman’s reception of her human nature in the image of God through the man, but which also stops short of a full and general submission of women to men. Deference, respect, and honor should be showed to men, but never should there be an expectation that all the women must submit to the men’s wishes.

Question: Why not?  If one maintains that a woman’s reception of her human nature in the image of God comes through the man, why stop short of a “full and general submission of women to men” anywhere?  If that line of reasoning is biblically valid, what grounds does any woman have for not submitting “to the men’s wishes” in any venue or context?

This is just the tip of the iceberg. For more of Ware’s views and some implications, see this round-up.

After wading through the above and other Ware-isms, I concur with this conclusion offered by Molly Alley at Complegaliarian:

That Ware spoke at a large much-lauded conservative church is troubling. That he is praised for “rightly and clearly representing complementarian doctrine” is more troubling. I will admit, after wading through all of these posts, to sitting here with a heavy heart. If this is not an adequate representation of complementarian doctrine for you, and if you live in circles where Ware is considered an authoritative leader, please make your voice heard.

***

Books and other publications available at  new web site on Yola, A Little Lowder.

Male and Female Complementarity, Part 10

- See prior posts for context -

In stark contrast to the top-down male hierarchy suggested by Bruce Ware in Male and Female Complementarity and the Image of God, consider this from Allison Young on Genesis 1-3. She argues in part:

“God created Adam first:

Genesis 1-3 contains nothing that suggests that man, because he was created first, was designated by God to function as the authority, or leader of woman. If we argued on the basis of this claim, then we would have to say that the plants and animals were to have authority over human beings because they came before humankind. Rather, the creation story is ordered so that the more complex beings come last; the climax of creation was human beings. On this basis, it could be concluded that Eve was more complex than Adam. In fact, Eve was the climax of creation, for humankind was not complete until Eve was created. (Emphasis added.)

Those who point to God’s special place for the first-born neglect the many examples in Scripture in which preference is given to the second child over the first: Isaac over Ishmael (Gen. 21), Jacob over Esau (Gen. 27), Rachel over Leah (Gen. 29), Ephraim over Manasseh (Gen. 48), Joseph over his brothers (Gen. 37), David over his brothers (1 Sam. 17). Would we say that John the Baptist was called to have authority over Jesus because he came first?

The purpose of the sequential creation of Adam and then Eve in Genesis 2 is to show the need they have for each other and the unity (“one-flesh”) of their relationship.[1] Adam alone was “not good,” and he was in need of a partner. It was not until Eve was created that the creation of humankind was complete and good.  (Emphasis added.)

Adam calling Eve “woman” does not indicate Adam’s authority over her; rather, it is an expression of the similarities that they share, as Adam exclaims “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called woman, for out of man this one was taken” (Gen. 2:23). In the Hebrew, the man is called ish and the woman ishsha, the similarity in the names being intentional. This is a word play, for just as the man (adam) was formed from the ground (adamah), so the woman (ishsha) was formed from the man (ish). These designations refer to the unity of the relationship to one another. To suggest that when Adam called Eve “woman” implies his authority over her is superimposed on the text. Scripture gives no indication that God gave Adam authority over Eve. Rather, by exclaiming “this one shall be called woman, for out of man this one was taken” Adam was expressing joy at the similarity and unity he shared with Eve, a joy he did not exhibit when encountering the other animals.  (Emphasis added)”

For further reading:

Richard S. Hess, “Equality With and Without Innocence: Genesis 1-3,”

Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity without Hierarchy, (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 2005), 84.

For Further Study:

Beyond Sex Roles, by Gilbert Bilezikian

Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity without Hierarchy, ed. Ronald W. Pierce, Rebecca Merrill Groothuis, with Gordon Fee

Good News for Women: a Biblical Picture of Gender Equality, by Rebecca Merrill Groothuis

“Man and Woman at Creation: A Critique of Complementarian Interpretations,” by Christiane Carlson-Thies

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Join us next time for Ware’s response to the question, How is the headship of the male who is created first in the image of God to be honored by single women and men?”

Male and Female Complementarity, Part 9

Continuing from the last post and Made In His Image, by Lambert Dolphin:

“The originally one human being Adam/Eve was now to be separated into two—differentiated in two separate persons. Both Adam and Eve already existed as a single unit—as the word bara implies. Having already created (bara) the soul and spirit of Adam/Eve, and after having molded the body of the first man, God now makes a division of this one compound man into male and female. Placing Adam into a deep sleep, God took a rib from the side of Adam and made a woman. The Hebrew root (banah), translated made, described God’s making of Eve by taking her out of Adam/Eve. Banah means to construct or build, as when one builds a house or constructs an Ark—this word implies creative artisanship by God. Adam was formed but Eve was made! (Emphasis added)

In summary, after God made “Adam/Eve” in His own image, He subsequently separated the man whom He had made into two—Adam and Eve. Thus, an original unity of “man” was replaced by a division into two complementary opposites. The image of God in our race is therefore carried by the man and the women in equal weight. Whatever other terms we may wish to associate with man being made in the image and likeness of God, the existence of two separate sexes is a very important part of the image of God which we, as men and women, jointly bear. It is as if half of life is to be understood and interpreted from a man’s point of view and half from a woman’s point of view. These two points of view are not identical, they are complementary!

The existence of two sexes and the fact that it takes male and female persons to adequately reflect the nature of God implies that the Being of God is as much masculine as it is feminine. This is a difficult concept because God Himself does not describe Himself as a sexual being. All the persons of the Godhead are called by masculine nouns and pronouns in our English Bibles. Furthermore the godhead consists of a union of three Persons, not two, as in human marriage.”

Tune in next time for some pithy observations from Allison Young on Genesis 1-3.

***

News on my books and other publications will be available soon at my new web site on Yola, A Little Lowder.  Watch for announcements.

Male and Female Complementarity, Part 8

So the Just One created the Adam in His image, in the image of the Just One He created him; male and female He created them. [Bereshit/Genesis 1:27]

From Made in the Image of God by Lambert Dolphin:

“What is puzzling about the above verse is that the first half of the verse implies that the Just One created a single human being, as it states, “He created him”, while the second half of this verse implies that the Just One created two human beings, as it states, “male and female He created them”. One of the ways in which the Bible commentator, Rashi, resolves this difficulty is through citing the midrashic teaching that the Adam was first created as a single androgynous being with two faces and two sides – male and female. (1)

This interpretation can help us to understand the verses which describe the formation of the first woman:

So the Compassionate and Just One cast a deep sleep upon the Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his sides and He filled in flesh in its place. Then the Compassionate and Just One fashioned the side that he had taken from the Adam into a woman, and He brought her to the man. [Bereshit/Genesis 2:21-22]

The Creator took the female side of the Adam and formed a second being known as “woman”. The Hebrew word for “side” in the above verses is tzela. The word tzela can also be translated as a “rib”; however, Rashi and the majority of our Bible commentators translate it as “side”. (2)

Where was the androgynous being called “Adam” created? An answer can be found in the Midrash, which states that Adam was created at the site of the future Temple in Jerusalem:

With an abounding love did the Holy One, blessed be He, love the first human being, as He created him in a pure locality, in the place of the Temple. [Pirkei D'Rabbi Eliezer, chapter 12]

This interpretation is found in other midrashic works, and it indicates that the journey to Zion is a return to the place where the human being was created. And the human being is a union of body and soul, as it is written:

And God formed the human of dust from the ground, and He blew into his nostrils the soul of life; and the human became a living being. [Bereshit/Genesis 2:7]”

Catch the second half at our next post!

.. And for a shameless plug (that has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand):

If you’re into hiking, the outdoors, or the Great Northwest, check out my sister site, Take a Hike.

News on my books and other publications will be available soon at my new web site on Yola, A Little Lowder.  Watch for announcements.

Male and Female Complementarity, Part 7

Citing a “conceptual parallel” between Gen. 5:3 and 1 Cor. 11:7. and the formation of Seth and the woman, Ware makes this assertion in the second paragraph of his fourth indicator (see prior post):

“What is true in both texts, of Seth’s and the woman’s formation respectively, is that they derive their human natures, as Scripture specifically indicates, through the man. Another parallel is clear and is significant: both Seth and Eve are fully and equally the image of God when compared to Adam, who is image of God. So, the present discussion reaffirms and reinforces our earlier declaration that all human beings, women as well as men, children as well as parents, are fully and equally the image of God. But having said this, Scripture indicates in addition to this important point another: God’s design regarding how the woman and how a child become the image of God seems to involve inextricably and intentionally the role of the man’s prior existence as the image of God.”

Among other things, the linkage between Seth and “the woman” – a child and an adult female – is interesting.  Scrutinized closely, doesn’t Ware’s male/female paradigm sound more like the relationship between a parent/child than one between two mature adults?

An aside: I know a woman who feels biblically compelled to request permission from her husband before leaving the house for any reason.  The relationship is characterized by “male priority” in the form of an authoritarian, lord-of-the-manor daddy figure (husband) to the wife’s little girl-child, subservient serf figure.  The husband claims this “relationship” is “divinely designed.”  Is it?  Back to the Ware text.

Question: How can someone be both a derivative and “fully and equally” at the same time?   Is this merely a question of source regarding formation and human nature vs. “image of God-ness,” or something else?

If a female’s “being in the image of God” is dependent upon and defined by her relationship to a male – rather than based on her creation as an independent, unique and fully formed individual – what does she become when no male is around?

During the Civil War, a number of Southern towns were virtually emptied of adult males.  Did the women in these towns stop “being in the image of God” during the war, then regain that “being” after Appomattox Courthouse?  What if all their male relatives were killed?  Ditto WWI.  You can come up with your own examples.  Is suggesting that a female “derives” her human nature “through the man” and “so does her being the image of God” problematic?

Further on, under Male and Female Complementarity as the Image of God, Ware discusses “priority in the concept of the image of God” that “must go to our functioning as God’s representatives who carry out our God-given responsibilities.”  He posits that “… it is essential that man and woman learn to work in a unified manner together to achieve what God has given them to do.”  No elaboration here.  Picking up:

“There can be no competition, no fundamental conflict of purpose if we are to function as the image of God.  Adversial posturing simply has no place between the man and woman who are both image of God.  The reason for this is ismple: both man and woman, as image of God, are called to carry out the unified set of responsibilities God has given.  Since both share in the same responsibilities, both must seek to be unified in their accomplishment.

Four paragraphs later Ware again qualifies this “unity,” citing I Cor. 11:

… while unified in our essential human equality and our common responsibility to do the will God, the temporal priority of the image of God in the man, through whom the woman is formed as a human bearer of God’s image, supports the principle of male-headship in functioning as the image of God persons both men and women are.”

Here we go again…

“Priority” means, “Status established in order of importance or urgency.”  Synonyms include: precedence and precedency.  How can anyone or anything be both “unified” and “equal” if one has higher status, greater importance, or precedence over the other?  How can something or someone be “unified” within a hierarchical pecking-order based on “priority”?

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Stay tuned for Part 8, where we look at the Creation account in Genesis from another perspective.

… And for a shameless plug (that has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand):

If you’re into hiking, the outdoors, or the Great Northwest, check out my sister site, Take a Hike.

Male and Female Complementarity, Part 6

- Continuing from the last post-

Under Male and Female Differentiation as the Image of God, in Bruce Ware’s Male and Female Complementarity and the Image of God, Ware lists four “biblical indicators of a male priority in male and female as God’s image.”  You can read the list yourself.  I’m focusing on indicators three and four.  Number four flows from number three.  Citing Gen. 1:26-27, 5:12 and I Cor. 11:7, Ware concludes indicator three with:

Paul’s point, I believe, is that her glory comes through the man, and as such (implied in 1 Cor. 11:7) she too possesses her full, yet derivative, human nature. But of course, since her human nature comes to be “from the man,” so does her being the image of God likewise come only as God forms her from Adam, whose glory she now is. So there is no contradiction between Gen. 1:27 and 1 Cor. 11:7. Woman with man is created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27), but woman through man has her true human nature and hence her glory (1 Cor. 11:7b), the glory of the man who himself is the image and glory of God (1 Cor. 11:7a).

Is there a point here?

Notice the qualifiers.  Ware uses “but” twice in four sentences as well as “yet”.  His main model seems to be a woman is A, but B… she is C, but D, and so on.  So which is it – door number 1, door number 2, or door number…?  (That Ringling Bros. thing again.)

Notice Ware’s use of “derivative” in relation to a woman’s “full human nature” (again, “full” is qualified by “yet”).  What, she has no human nature of her own?

What about women without a man in their immediate lives – orphans, singles, widows?  What about daughters or wives whose fathers or husbands are abusive, ill, absent, or otherwise incapacitated (say, as the result of a stroke)?  From whom do they “derive” their “full human nature”?  Or are these females half-full in their human-naturedness?  Or half-empty?  This not only sounds as if females aren’t fully formed in the image of God apart from a male, but that they aren’t fully human in nature apart from a male, too.

Think about that for a minute.  Or more.  Now.  Ponder the ramifications.

Sheesh.

Also, bear in mind that “derivative” is “resulting from derivation; copied or adatped from others.”  To “Derive” means “To obtain or receive from a source.”  What else can Ware mean here except that apart from a male, females are a half-step above plant life?

If  females “Derive” – obtain or receive – the “image of God” from a source other than God Himself, doesn’t that make the “other source” a demi-God?  If males are the conduits/source for bestowing “image of God-ness” and “full human nature” upon females, rather than this coming directly from God Himself, haven’t they just made themselves out to be god(s)?  Doesn’t this dilute the majestic, mighty act of creation by the Creator?

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Continued next time.

BTW: If you’re into hiking, the outdoors, or the Great Northwest, check out my sister site, Take a Hike.