all who call

I have two children now.

I remember this phase with my first surprisingly well, despite the fact that I was (unknowingly) in a fog of postpartum depression at the time. Thankfully, that’s under control this time, but the newborn stage is still as stretching and demanding as ever. I had almost forgotten how all-consuming it is to be everything to someone: to be their source of food, drink, warmth, hygiene, safety, comfort, even life itself.

There is a familiar loneliness—an inevitable isolation. Even those who have been in these shoes probably don’t quite remember what it was really like. And those who are in them right now are too consumed by them, as I am, to be really available to anyone else. Who can blame them?

And God—it’s hard not to feel like I’m failing Him when I can hear the voices of so many pastors from so many pulpits endlessly reminding us that we need to pray and read our Bibles and go to church, and I have barely gotten us all dressed and fed in a day, let alone done any of that.

But I was reminded lately that I come from a very knowledge-centric tradition of Christianity, and that knowledge is only one small piece of a real relationship. I feel safer in my head than I do in my gut or in my heart, but there is so much more. And if my relationship with God is measured only in how much I know, how much I read, how much I’ve learned, and how much I pray—is it a relationship at all? Or is it just the same old carnal striving to attain wisdom without really needing Him?

And is God cold toward how thin I’m spread? Does He watch me rinsing diapers, calming tantrums, juggling a fussy baby, and putting food on the table and think “How dare she slack off on what matters?” Or is it possible that the God who made me also knows me, knows that He made me highly sensitive to sensory stimuli, knows how frayed I am at the end of a day where it felt like someone was always screaming at me—and has compassion toward me?

There is one name of God that I hold especially dear: El-Roi, “the God who sees.” It’s the first time God is given a name in Scripture, and it is given to Him by a woman who is desperate, utterly at the end of herself, when she meets Him. He calls her by name and asks for her story. Then, instead of rebuking her, He guides her. Instead of judging her, He blesses her.

The psalmist says,

The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth.

Psalm 145:18

It is the nearness of the Lord that I yearn for in these long, yet fleeting, days. I need Him to meet me at the end of myself, call me by name, and listen to my story. And so right now—when I don’t have the words or minutes to form paragraphs-long prayers covering adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication, and all the other “requirements”—I am choosing instead to call.

In the tiniest of moments, there is still room to call upon the Lord. It takes no more than a breath and a few words: “You are the God who sees.” Sometimes this is a cry for help from the One who sees me in my frustration or my exhaustion; sometimes it’s a proclamation that even in the isolation, I am not alone. Every time I breathe this small and powerful prayer, I can picture my loving God looking down on me, seeing it all in its chaos, and offering me His presence, His compassion, His blessing.

For a moment, I am released from the inside of my head, where I keep my Bible scholarship and my endless questions and my spiritual to-do list. I’m washed in the power and presence of the Spirit of God, where there is freedom.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. But we all, with unveiled faces, looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3:17-18

what if you're wrong?

This is one of my favorite questions to ask myself. I’d probably ask it of others, too, if it didn’t sound quite so confrontational—that’s not the way I intend it, but we all hold our beliefs rather personally and it can be hard not to go directly on the defensive when they feel threatened or questioned.

Today, I’m examining a belief I held tightly for the first 20, maybe 24 years of my life—and have held a bit more loosely for the last half-decade or so, as real-life experiences and extensive study have required me to do so. Here it is:

Men and women have different but complementary roles and responsibilities in marriage, family life, and religious leadership.

This is the official Wikipedia definition of the term “complementarianism,” which is Christianese for patriarchalism. In complementarian theology, a selection of Pauline passages and Genesis 1-3 are used to justify the idea that men and women are equal, but women are both naturally created and divinely called to subjugate themselves to men, and men are both naturally created and divinely called to exercise authority over women. Some “softer” complementarians will say that they do not believe women in general must submit to men in general—only a wife to her husband—but that distinction is difficult to support practically, since the same will typically say that within the context of church, women as a group are still expected to submit to the general male leadership of the church, and under no circumstances should a woman be allowed to hold a position of authority over the men in the church.

In any case, complementarianism is the doctrine of gender roles I was taught from a young age all the way through my time in Bible school. It’s about then, suddenly armed with a far broader understanding of God’s Word than I’d ever had before, that this doctrine began to not sit well with me, but every time I was tempted to consider other views I got scared. What if they’re wrong?

It’s been a decade since then. I have more life experience, more church experience, and more importantly, a lot more Bible studying experience now. And slowly, the question bugging me has shifted from “What if they’re wrong?” to “What if I’m wrong?”

What if complementarian theology is wrong?

I’m not a historian, a Greek language scholar, or a PhD in Paul’s epistles. Plenty of incredible people are, and they have put a lot of work into this debate. Paul and Gender by Westfall, The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Barr, and On Purpose by Coleman are all good places to find Biblically-serious treatment of the topic if you are looking for further study.

I’m more interested, for the moment, in asking the uncomfortable questions that may help us examine the quality of the fruit this doctrine has been producing over time.

Let’s consider. If complementarian theology is right, then some of our biggest concerns for the Body of Christ should be:

• Ensuring that those who lead in the church are physically and spiritually qualified to do so.

• Ensuring that men never hear the Word of God preached or taught by a woman.

• Encouraging women to submit themselves to the authority of their husbands and the church.

• Encouraging and equipping men to lead their wives and the church.

If, on the other hand, Scripture favors equality between men and women as image bearers of God and co-rulers over Creation (as Genesis 1-2 and Galatians 3:28 would suggest), then the biggest concerns for the Body of Christ should be:

• Ensuring that those who lead in the church are spiritually qualified to do so.

• Encouraging all believers to submit to God.

• Equipping all believers to know, understand, and share the Word of God.

• Empowering families to reflect the selflessness of Christ in every role.

In the complementarian vision for the Church, men are up front, visible, leading the way for everyone else to follow Christ. Women are behind them, following and making sure the children don’t get left behind. Men who don’t enjoy the role of leader or don’t feel equipped to spiritually direct their homes are required to do it anyway, or at least made to feel sinful for not doing it; women who are gifted in leadership and spiritual shepherding are required to set those gifts aside, or at least relegate them to the nursery and the Pre-K class. What’s taught from the pulpit on Sunday mornings and in co-ed Bible studies throughout the week is reflective of what the male leadership of the church considers important. Topics deemed to be mostly of concern to women are left to the discretion of women-only Bible studies (although these, too, are subject to veto by the board of elders). In this way, the very structure of the church is designed to prevent anyone from questioning or reconsidering its rightness.

But is this the Messianic vision for the Church?

Jesus’s ministry on earth began with a declaration that the Kingdom of Heaven had drawn near. That kingdom began in a paradise called Eden, but humans lost access to its threshold when they disobeyed God’s command—and part of that tragedy was a destruction of the oneness between male and female (see Genesis 3:16). The Kingdom vision of man and woman as two halves of God’s image, ruling together over His Creation, was lost to the suffocating grasp of sin and death, leaving gender hierarchy in its place.

But if Jesus’s death and resurrection defeated sin and death, and if following Him means joining Him in taking back every lost inch of territory for the Kingdom of Heaven, why would we choose to remain in our fallen and divided state as men and women? How can the Church, which is Christ’s Body, animate His heart for the New Creation when we are still clinging so hard to the old?

What if, in the Messianic vision for the Church, men and women are side-by-side, each using their gifts to build up the others, with all eyes set on the selfless example of Christ? There are men teaching and preaching and leading, but there are also men serving invisibly behind the scenes to protect the vulnerable and care for the children; there are women faithfully raising their families and staffing the nursery, but there are also women speaking the truth of God’s Word with strength, clarity, and conviction. Men are educated and enriched by the perspectives brought to them by these women, and the women’s entire experience of life in Christ is finally made abundant when they are set free from the demands of the Pharisees.

What if that is what we are missing when we subscribe to complementarian theology? What if we have tied half the church behind Christ’s back with our gender doctrine? And what if we are wrong?

I struggle to imagine a ministry or aspect of Christian life that would not be enriched if both men and women were equally interested, involved, and obedient in it. But I can clearly see that many ministries and aspects of Christian life are suffering from being lopsided in one direction or the other. Surely a family where both parents exemplify spiritual leadership and mutual respect for one another is better off than a family where that entire responsibility falls to the father? Surely a children’s ministry where both men and women feed into kids’ lives is better off than one where the children are only treated as valuable by women? Surely pastoral counseling for a couple in a broken marriage will be far more effective when a woman’s voice is present, too?

There’s a phrase we all like to pull out when we imagine meeting Jesus face-to-face. “Well done, good and faithful servant.” It comes from the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30—when the master praises his servants for stewarding his resources well in his absence, and even increasing their value. But he says something very different to the servant who, out of fear, buries his master’s money uselessly in the dirt.

What if Christ’s servants and earthly representatives have buried half the wealth of the church under a fallen idea of what it means to be a man or a woman? What will be said to us when King Jesus returns in glory?

We aren’t all called or gifted to be teachers and preachers and leaders. But some of us are. And some of us are women.

We have tried to fit these callings and giftings into the complementarian framework for decades now. And the Church and its testimony are suffering for it. The tree is bearing rotten fruit. It’s time to ask the hard questions.

What if we’ve been wrong?

seen

Seen.

I can’t seem to get away from that word lately.

One of our speakers at MOPS talked about healthy relationships as places we can feel “seen, soothed, and safe.” On a podcast I just listened to, the guest said something like, “The one thing people are more attached to than their deeply-held beliefs is their need to be seen.” And the underlying theme of a book I read recently—On Purpose by Julie Zine Coleman—seems to center around the devastating lack of seen-ness that women in the modern American church experience, due to the questionable ways we have traditionally interpreted the Bible’s controversial passages about women.

As this word has pestered me until I can no longer ignore it, I’ve grown increasingly uncomfortable with two facts:

1. I need to be (and feel) seen—just like every human being who has ever lived. As much as I’d like to think myself superior, or immune, to this innate human need, I am not.

2. I cannot let the need to be and feel seen hold power over me.

If you were raised in evangelical Christianity, as I was—and especially if you are female—you probably know why the need to feel seen makes me feel so uncomfortable: it’s the exact opposite of how I learned to exist in the world. I always thought that the best and most Christian thing I could be was invisible.

After all, what were the “good” women in church always doing? The invisible tasks, like staffing the nursery, teaching children’s church, counting the offering behind a closed office door, or washing dishes in the kitchen while everyone else socialized over the potluck. And which girls were subject to adult disapproval, subtle or otherwise? The ones they thought to be dressing or behaving “for attention.”

But the quest to become invisible in order to feel like a good person is, I think, actually a backward quest to feel seen. That innate need to be known, understood, and cared for can’t be ignored into nonexistence. The longer we ignore it, the more insatiable it becomes, and the more power it gains over us.

For example: If the people that matter to me are only comfortable when I’m small, quiet, and doing the work of a martyr in the background, I’ll do my best to stay that way—because I need to feel seen and accepted by them. Stepping out of that role might catch their attention in the short term, but it could also alienate them in the long term, which would be an earthquake to my sense of self. So in service of being seen, I remain invisible.

But what happens when, in service of remaining invisible, I refuse to become who God has called me to be?

I’m going to make a statement that would lose some Christian authors, speakers, and influencers a lot of money and attention if it were accepted by the church: I don’t think a sinful desire for attention and power is a major stumbling block for Christian women. I think it’s the opposite—the need to be accepted by the group, the need to not be treated like a pariah for having a voice, is what stands in the way of many women walking in obedience to the Lord. At least, it’s what often stands in my way.

The need to be seen for who we are is real and legitimate, and with it comes the terrible vulnerability of being found lacking. I would rather spend my life protected from criticism by an invisibility cloak woven with nursery shifts and dirty dishes than stand up and speak out on behalf of the Good News of the Kingdom (especially when that good news is often unpopular even within the church’s walls). But have I been called to these acts of quiet, invisible service by God, or by my frail flesh?

For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.

Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me His prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was granted to us in Christ Jesus from all eternity…

2 Timothy 1:7-9 (emphasis added)

What might it look like for me to stop living in a spirit of timidity? How could power, love, and discipline change the way I follow the holy calling of God?

As far as specifics go, I don’t know yet. But I know what other seemingly-powerless and invisible women knew long before me: We serve a God who sees, and His is the only judgment that ultimately matters.

So Sarai treated [Hagar] harshly, and she fled from her presence. Now the angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur. He said, “Hagar, Sarai’s maid, where have you come from and where are you going?” And she said, “I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai.” Then the angel of the LORD said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit yourself to her authority.” Moreover, the angel of the LORD said to her, “I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be too many to count.” … Then she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, “You area God who sees”; for she said, “Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him?” Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi [the well of the living one who sees me]; behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered.

Genesis 16:6b-10, 13-14