toward God's heart, part 5
/This post is part of a series in which I’m answering a question I’ve gotten a lot lately: “Why have you changed your views on complementarian roles?” For the introduction to this series, click here.
The final turning point in my rejection of complementarian theology came a little over a year ago, when my sister and I attended the Hebrew Bible Conference at Multnomah University. We listened to some of the foremost Hebrew Bible scholars in the nation, from Dr. David Andrew Teeter of Harvard Divinity School to Dr. Tim Mackie of BibleProject to Dr. Carmen Joy Imes of Biola University. In addition, there were presentations from a dozen or more graduate students—both men and women.
Each talk was attended by an enthusiastic co-ed audience. Afterward, there was usually time for a short Q&A. It didn’t matter if the presenting scholar was a man or a woman: without exception, the room was spellbound, fascinated, thirsty for the revelation of the Scriptures. Men and women asked thoughtful questions of each speaker, whether male or female. Everyone learned. Everyone gained. Everyone was blessed.
It was the first time in my life I have seen the image of God working as it was intended—with both halves fully present and fully involved, neither one looking down on or trying to dominate the other. Each man who listened to a female speaker lost nothing by taking a learner’s posture and eagerly hearing what she would share. In fact, he—and everyone else—was made better for it.
Clearly, there is a more beautiful way available to us.
That’s why I called this series “Toward God’s Heart.” Even if you can make the most sophisticated argument that Paul’s intention with his letters was to limit the actions of women in churches for all times and all places, even if you can make the strongest case for how churches and families need this gender-based hierarchy to function, even if you believe this is best for men and women and children, I don’t know how you can argue that it’s drawing the Church or the world closer to alignment with the heart of God as revealed to us in the Scriptures in any practical way. I don’t know what specific, beautiful fruit you can point to that will back you up.
We know that the divorce rates and domestic abuse rates in Christian families are both roughly the same as they are in non-Christian households, and that, horrifyingly, abused Christian wives are likely to stay in their marriage an average of 3.5 years longer than others. If we were really building better or more stable families overall, I think we’d see the evidence in the numbers.
We also know that, while being involved in a religious community is scientifically associated with health benefits, those benefits don’t extend to women who are involved in religious systems that are set up to disempower them, such as complementarian churches. That is, women in sexist churches remain at the same baseline of health as women who don’t go to church at all, while women in egalitarian congregations actually enjoy the health benefits of being in a religious community.
From where I sit, there are three possible explanations for the alarming lack of good fruit (and abundance of bad) yielded by complementarian theology:
God is stupid, and didn’t know what kind of mess He was making when He designed gender hierarchy to be the way churches and marriages operate.
God doesn’t actually care, and is fine with women being collateral damage (or at least being forgotten) if it means His design for the sexes stays in place.
God loves and treasures all of His image-bearers, male and female, and His true design is for us to love one another in the same way, patriarchy be damned.
The first leaves me wondering who would worship a God who is both sovereign and stupid. The second leaves me wondering why Jesus bothered to rebuke the Pharisees if God is actually fine with valuing rules and regulations above human beings.
The third leaves me grieved that this is not how more of us know our God.
