A Woman's Place is in the...

In a recent book on marriage, sex and friendship by a prominent US pastor, the story of Queen Easter is referred to. The biblical character Vashti is criticized for not submitting to her husband by refusing to parade around naked in front of his drunken friends!? Meanwhile Esther is praised for graciously submitting, by illegally requesting an audience with her husband, who she was forced to marry after he slept with hundreds of other concubines to pick his favorite?! Esther is exemplified as she illustrates ‘the repeated command across all Scripture that wives respectfully submit to their husbands and removes any excuse we have for disrespecting our husbands.’ This whole argument fails massively to understand the context of that story and is picked up by Rachel Held Evans in her blog post ‘Esther and Vashti: The Real Story.’

In her post Evans makes the comment that ‘the modern biblical womanhood movement isn’t as concerned with returning to biblical womanhood as it is with returning to 1950s, pre-feminist America.’ This made me laugh and prompted me to post a couple of lines on a woman’s place actually being...

In my experience there seems to be two schools of thought in regards to biblical womanhood. One camp declares woman of God to be warrior princesses who are epitomized by the woman of Proverbs 31. They are called to be the head and not the tail, above and not beneath, the lender and not the borrower. They are to preach, teach, pray, role model, sort their home out, be beautiful, lead and basically ‘grab life by the balls.’

There seems to be a large degree of ignorance in regards to Proverbs 31 being a personification of wisdom not of a ‘biblical’ woman. Both women and men should aspire to develop wisdom in their lives and its accompanying characteristics as described in Proverbs 31. Or, in other words, men should aspire to be Proverbs 31 women as well! This camp is obviously egalitarian and sees women and men as being equal in value and dignity, different obviously in genetic makeup etc, but more than capable of functioning in any role within society or church or the family setting.

The other camp wants women to sit in quiet submission to their husbands. Here woman are simply not allowed to preach or teach, though they can teach other woman or children, they just can’t teach men. And they are not allowed to read the bible out loud in church if you want to have a look at a link about this. This camp is obviously complementarian and hold to the view that God has created men and women equal in value and dignity and worth, but different, complementary, in function. Men have been called to exercise headship in the home and in the church while women are called to different and complementary functions. It seems to me that the different and complementary functions can be all and everything, from serving in the armed forces, to a political role such as a Prime Minister or President or Congresswoman, to being a stay home mum. Just not heading a home or a family or teaching or preaching (or reading the bible out loud) in church.

I’m obviously an egalitarian. Surely though the choice is not between Egalitarian Proverbs 31 Super Woman and Complementarian 1950’s House Wife? Not a choice between throwing woman into the lime light or hiding woman in the back ground?

My vote is for an egalitarian culture of support, encouragement, admonishment, love, grace, forgiveness, second chances, empowerment and equipping that allows women (and men) to lean into that which inspires, motivates, grips their heart, enlivens and stirs them. Let’s help both women and men to lean into the gifts, talents, abilities and deep passions that they have and to be the best in the niche that they best fit in. Let’s challenge and encourage those (women and men) that sit back when they should stand up, but not force people to be that which they are not gifted, called, inspired or motivated to be. The ideal ‘ministry couple’ is a myth.

Like for men then, a woman’s place is actually the place they feel God has called, gifted and anointed them to be. And like for men, this place is usually worked out in conversations with others, parents, one’s spouse, and with men and women of maturity. And like for anyone, age, stage, gifts, training, anointing, abilities, character, maturity etc are all factors.

TKJG Chapter 10: Creating a Gospel Culture

In this chapter McKnight sketches the gospel, the Story of Jesus completing the Story of Israel, I would say the Story of Humanity. He begins with ‘In the beginning God’ and concludes with recreation and humans governing ‘on God’s behalf in the way of Jesus. Forever.’ You’d have to get a copy of the book to read the few pages for yourself. N.T Wright tells the story in a similar manner in his thesis of the big chapters of the bible. Goheen and Bartholomew tell a similar story in The Drama of Scripture. Gabe Lyons covers it a bit in The Next Christians. Sean Gladding has The Story of God, The Story of Us. The St Luke’swebsite has it though I need to update a couple of lines (but am having technical difficulties doing so) having read this book and some others. Each story is nuanced in slightly different ways. They each tell the gospel. McKnight then encourages us to become people of the story, engage in the traditional church calendar as a way of engaging in the gospel story, realise the church is a continuation of the story, counter the stories of our contemporary context such as individualism and consumerism with the gospel story, embrace the story and be saved and transformed by Jesus as we respond to the story with faith, repentance and baptism. Bear witness to the story in serving others, love and compassion.

TKJG Chapter 9: Gospeling Today

The gospel is first of all framed by Israel’s story. Second, the gospel centres on the Lordship of Jesus. Thirdly, the gospel summons people to respond. Fourthly, the gospel saves and redeems. The gospeling of Acts summons listeners to confess Jesus as Messiah and Lord while our gospeling today tends to persuade sinners to admit their sin and find Jesus as Saviour. The later can be done within the former but too often the former is neglected. That’s not gospeling. You can’t avoid judgement in gospeling but gospeling is not simply escapism from hell, this is a distortion.  Though the gospel deals with sin (and this is not intended to downplay sin), sin is not the major problem the gospel is addressing. If the major answer Jesus offers is the kingdom and eternal life, then the major issues at a stake are to do with the search for God’s kingdom on earth and the absence of God’s abundance in the worldliness of this world. Gospeling thus declares that Jesus is the rightful Lord, summons people to turn from their idols and to worship and live under that Lord who saves. When we reduce the gospel to personal salvation we tear the fabric out of the Big Story. Gospeling isn’t about the sinner’s heart it is about the risen Jesus and his story.

TKJG Chapter 8: The Gospel of Peter

Jesus’ resurrection and the profound experience with the Holy Spirit set about a ‘hermeneutical revolution’ for the apostles. They suddenly had new eyes to reread and reinterpret the Old Testament from the perspective of the Story of Jesus. Acts 13:32-33 “We tell you the good news: What God promised our ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus.” The apostles declare the whole story of Jesus as gospel. Peter reads a Bible (OT) that leads him to see God at work guiding the Story of Israel into the Story of Jesus. True gospeling that conforms to the apostolic gospel leads directly to who Jesus is (as the conclusion of the Israel/humanities story) and summons people to respond in faith, repentance, and baptism.

TKJG Chapter 7: Jesus and the Gospel

Did Jesus preach the gospel? Did Jesus preach himself as the completion of Israel’s story? Jesus declares himself to be at the centre of the kingdom of God, Luke 7:22-23. Jesus was totally into preaching himself as the centre of God’s plan for Israel. Jesus unequivocally and without embarrassment nominated himself as Israel’s president.  Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount understood his teachings to be the consummation and completion and resolution and telos point of the Old Testament Law and the Prophets. Jesus selects 12 disciples and sees the 12 as embodying the fullness of the people of God but himself over the 12. Jesus explained his fate – his death and resurrection – in light of scripture, Daniel 7. Jesus explains himself his story, on the road to Emmaus by beginning with Moses and all the Prophets and explaining all the things the scriptures have said concerning himself, Luke 24:27. Jesus preached himself as the gospel, he was the good news and had good news as the fulfilment of Israel’s story and the inauguration of a whole new chapter of possibility and potential.

TKJG Chapter 6: The Gospel in the Gospels

The early Christians called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John the ‘gospel’ because they are the gospel! The story of Jesus. To call these books the gospel is precisely to express that Jesus himself, the entirety of his acting, teaching, living, rising, and remaining with us is the ‘gospel.’ The four gospels and the gospel are one. The story told in Mark calls hearers to belief in the person who is described in it, Jesus, the Messiah and Son of God, and thus to eternal life; in other words it seeks to be wholly and completely a message of salvation. Luke’s purpose is not merely to narrate the deeds and words of Jesus but to show how these did in fact lead to the experience of salvation and to the formation of the community of the saved. John shows how the principle institutions and feasts of Israel, those annual celebrations that told Israel’s Story and that shaped both memory and identity for every observant Jew, fin their own completion in Jesus. These Gospels do not arrange the story into our way of framing the plan of salvation, and neither do they format the story into our favourite method of persuasion. Instead they declare the Story of Jesus, and that story is the saving, redeeming, liberating story.

TKJG Chapter 5: How Did Salvation Take Over the Gospel?

The creeds articulate what is both implicit and explicit in Paul’s grand statement of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15. Thus, the gospel is the Story of Jesus as the completion of the Story of Israel as found in the Scriptures, and that gospel story formed and framed the earliest Christians. During the much needed and God ordained Reformation, salvation was clarified in regards to its personal application and necessity. What then happened overtime is that the apostolic gospel was reframed in such as way and so successfully (largely as a result of the powerful evangelistic culture of evangelicalism in American revivalism and then later in America’s culture war between fundamentalists and modernists), that today we are losing contact with the gospel culture.