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?

daydreaming

I am not much of a daydreamer, but there is one particular fantasy that I occasionally catch glimpses of in my mind’s eye, and sometimes indulge for a minute or two. I see a little patio table and a couple of chairs tucked between the wild tangles of flowers that make up most of my front yard, comfortably shaded by the canopy of a still-smallish Japanese maple. In my vision, I’m sitting there with my Bible open or some other book in hand, watching a little-bit-older Clara play in the cul-de-sac, when a neighbor on an afternoon stroll stops by to say hello, and another from the next house down sets aside their yard work for a minute to join the conversation. Maybe we are talking about something important and maybe we’re not; maybe it leads to “Bring a lawn chair over and we’ll barbecue” and maybe it doesn’t, but either way, it’s a delicious nibble at that old-fashioned treat, community.

If I really let my imagination run wild, the daydream evolves into a back deck full of people holding Bibles and babies, talking about what we read that week in the Bible180 Challenge—a kind of book club for the Bible, less formal than a Bible study but centered entirely on the Word and the quest to understand it as a cohesive whole. The older kids are running wild in the yard and there’s a pan of dessert on the table, mostly eaten up. The group is peppered with people of every generation, from those wearing the “crown of glory” (see Proverbs 16:31) down to young parents, teenagers, children.

It’s a small and not-at-all-small dream. There are times, in our frantic technological age, when it feels more out of reach than the deepest recesses of Siberia.

I grew up in a place where houses were far apart but neighbors were knit close. Nobody had a board-fenced backyard. Stopping to chat in a driveway or on a porch step was a common day-to-day occurrence.

Moving to my current city was a culture shock I’m still absorbing eight years later: I could throw a rock and hit my neighbor’s house, but have barely interacted with any of them beyond a smile and nod from afar. Add to that being several hours’ drive removed from my entire family and teaching myself to get by on the counterfeit sense of belonging offered by watching old friends’ lives unfold hundreds of miles away on a screen, and it’s little wonder that in my daydreams, I see what a generation or two before me would have just called “normal life.”

My church is sending out missionaries, some to far-flung countries in desperate need of the Gospel. I’m excited for them and for how they will further the Kingdom. I’ve even had a few split-second doubts of “Wait, should I be doing that, too?” But I’m fairly certain I’m not the only one in this country who is in desperate need of the Gospel—and genuine, offline Gospel community.

When I was a kid growing up in Middle-of-Nowhere, Washington, nothing excited me more than the prospect of setting out to explore the unknown. I had few opportunities to travel back then, but I took every single one. And I still love to explore the world and to learn from other cultures—I’ve just found that the Unknown is not where I’m meant to live.

I’d like to be known again, I’d like to know others again, and I think my work is here.

So—who’s up for a Bible book club at my place? I’ll make dessert. ;)

About brotherly love: You don’t need me to write you because you yourselves are taught by God to love one another. In fact, you are doing this toward all the brothers and sisters in the entire region of Macedonia. But we encourage you, brothers and sisters, to do this even more, to seek to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, so that you may behave properly in the presence of outsiders and not be dependent on anyone.

1 Thessalonians 4:9-12

the kingdom of heaven

For most of my life I’ve had dreams that were far larger than my actual potential. Dreams of becoming a famous author, a renowned photographer, a household-name Bible teacher—for as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to be somebody.

The older I get, the smaller and closer to home my dreams become. I think this is due in equal parts to becoming more realistic, more complacent, and more self-aware. I used to be able to conjure up an imaginary version of myself who enjoyed the apparent glamour of doing a nationwide book tour for my New York Times bestseller, but now, exactly nothing sounds appealing about becoming a glorified traveling salesman whose product is me.

As I continually learn from God, watching Him so slowly and patiently do the work of a Farmer cultivating earth’s harvest, the dreams that once seemed so pressing lose their urgency, along with some of their shine. In their place, a fascination with the glorious mundane takes root—and the small spaces where the first rumblings of world-change always begin, person by person, moment by moment, surrender by surrender.

I asked Sam a few weeks ago, “Do you think it’s dumb if my dream job is just to go back to work at Spuds part-time?” It wasn’t so very long ago that the thought of being satisfied with such a small position in life would have been preposterous to me. But doing the manual work of sorting produce and stocking freight, peppered with cheerful interactions with customers, showed me a little of what I think God intended when He designed work as a good and necessary part of human existence. He made us to work, and to glorify Him in the very doing of it, so that it matters little what kind of work it actually is—big or small, grand or humble, meaningful or mundane. It can nourish the soul and magnify the Creator and bear witness of Him to others, regardless.

And the same can be said for the up-and-down, meaningful-as-well-as-mundane work that is child-rearing, though I feel plenty of words have already been spent on this topic, so I don’t know how much I need add. Only sometimes raising a baby feels like racing on a hamster wheel, where the days are made up of three-hour cycles of sleep-feed-play and the weeks stretch out long and changeless, even though the baby is changing invisibly every day. This, too, is the slow and patient work of the kingdom—the tiniest seed, but with the mightiest potential.

I suppose the hardest part of it all is wondering if I can still have a voice from such a small stage. Does anything I write or create really matter if it comes only from the boring “normal,” instead of the grand? I know there are plenty of “Instagram influencers” who have built their whole brand on sharing the boring normal, but it’s just that—a brand. It’s not real normal, blotted with tears of frustration and gapped by voids of loneliness which no filter can conceal. I don’t want to produce fodder for the ever-starving content machine of social media “mom culture.” That isn’t me at all. But I worry that there aren’t many other options for me now that I’ve had a baby. It’s hard enough to build credibility with a broad audience in the Bible teaching realm as a woman—let alone as a mom.

I remember wondering, before Clara was born, if she’d change me into someone completely different from the self I knew. She has, and she hasn’t.

She has certainly helped me along this journey toward the goodness of small-but-deep work. She’s given me an appreciation for how slowly and graciously God does His work, too. She reminds me that “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13:44). There is a treasure in this that is real and lasting and worth every sacrifice, even when to others it just looks like any old field.

But she hasn’t fundamentally altered the person God made me, the person who is a student and a teacher and longs to help others learn who He is through His Word. My days look different now, but the ultimate goal doesn’t, and I pray every day that God will allow Clara’s little soul to be the firstfruits of the calling.

Then some children were brought to Him so that He might lay His hands on them and pray; and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, “Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” After laying His hands on them, He departed from there.

Matthew 19:13-15