taste and see

The other night I scanned through my entire blog archive, pulling a few articles here or there for potential use in a future project, and it was fascinating to see how much I have changed as a person and a writer and a student of the Bible over the last 7.5 years and 200+ blog posts. I started out a little naive, a little too sure, and twenty-two years old—a fresh-faced newlywed with no children, yet to experience profound loss, betrayal, despair, or sacrifice.

I am grateful that God does not give us a preview of our lives.

But being able to look back now, as I sit here 7+ years older, family expanded to four, and permanently altered by simply having survived the year 2018 (and its repercussions), I can see now the blessings He is crafting out of the pain.

There is softness in me where I once had only hard edges. There are questions where I once had too many arrogant answers. There’s prayer and surrender and release of control in some of the places I used to grip with white knuckles; there is color—not mere shades of gray, but brilliant, living color—in areas I could only ever see in black and white before.

And He has done it all so graciously, so gradually, that even though I look back from here and the difference is stark, I felt His shaping work as only the gentlest of touches in the interim.

Last week while I was standing in the customer service line at Costco was the first time in my memory that I ever desired, from a true joy and delight unadulterated by guilt, to talk about Jesus with total strangers. I have known the Gospel for my entire life, but only in the last few weeks has it become Good News to me—that my King has come, that He has conquered sin and death, and that He has set free those captive and oppressed into jubilee.

And that I, even I, count as one of the freed: Freed from the condemnation of self-righteous men, like the adulteress; freed from the invisibility of being female, like the woman who washed Jesus’s feet with her tears; freed from the deep pain of being unloved and uncared for, like the woman at the well; freed from chronic isolation and suffering, like the woman with the ongoing hemorrhage; freed from the grip of sin and death, like Mary Magdalene. And it’s not “freed” in the way I’ve sometimes heard the word used, as if this were only a metaphorical freedom from the spiritual burden of such circumstances while I wait to die and go to heaven where my freedom will become a reality. This freedom is a reality for today. Jesus, becoming human and knowing what it is to suffer a human life and death, sees us in our shackles of wrong and being wronged, and does not ask us to stay in them.

The news is good, and it’s good for everyone. Even for these women, even for today’s women, even for me.

I’ve tasted the fruit of the True Vine—and now, anything less, even if it’s produced within the Church itself, is acrid on my tongue.

Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.
Psalm 34:8

a poisonous doctrine

I recently asked a (male) proponent of complementarianism these questions: What is some beautiful, kingdom fruit you’ve seen complementarian theology bear for Christ? How have the women in your life, specifically, been blessed by it?

His answer was precisely the generic statement I expected: he talked about greater stability and less power struggle in the home, wives who were better loved/protected/contented, and children who had “strong guidance and a firm foundation.” Putting aside that I could point to dozens of examples of families who would fit that exact description from the outside while their members were suffering on the inside, I think his response reveals how utterly and completely the conservative Christian church has missed the point of Paul’s vision for marriage and family in the New Testament. In our service of the complementarian doctrine, we have killed and buried the kingdom ideal.

(Note: I use the pronouns “we” and “our” because I am currently, and have always been, a faithful attendee of a conservative Christian church. I was also until quite recently a complementarian. In writing this, I hope to acknowledge the ways I, too, have contributed to the problems I now see.)

A favorite passage cited by complementarians (including the one I was conversing with) is Ephesians 5:21-33. This is the famous “Wives, be subject to your own husbands” and “Husbands, love your wives” text that made books like Love & Respect by Emerson Eggerichs an unfortunate default for evangelical marriage and pre-marital counseling for an entire generation. The feeling for complementarians is, generally, that egalitarian thinkers are trying to argue with something Paul has very plainly stated. But is it so plain?

Countless incredible Greek scholars have already done the technical work in understanding the exact grammar and vocabulary Paul used in this passage (you can find one such overview here). I’m not here to throw around words like hypotasso as if I have any business doing so—rather, what I want to do is ask: What was Paul’s intent for the audience of Ephesians 5? And what, then, is the meaning for us?

We know that the Ephesian church existed in a highly stratified society. Men ruled the Greco-Roman world; women were a class beneath them, and children were lower still, followed finally by slaves. Everyone in the church at Ephesus knew where they fell on the spectrum of power and importance.

And then Paul said,

Be filled with the Spirit . . . submitting to one another in the fear of Christ.

- Ephesians 5:18b, 21 CSB

Greater stability, reduced power struggle, wives who seem to be more protected and contented, and children with firm foundations—it’s all exactly the kind of fruit I’d expect complementarian theology to produce. And I have two problems with that.

First, as I alluded to before, plenty of this fruit looks shiny, red, and juicy on the outside only to reveal a flesh of worms and rot when you bite into it. Of course there is more stability and less power struggle in a home where only one person—the husband/father—has the ultimate power. But is that a good thing? Are we looking for conflict-free marriages or for good marriages? I know from experience that they are not the same thing.

And of course the wives in these families appear “safe,” “protected,” and “contented.” They are operating under a religious requirement to defer to their men. If a wife felt unsafe with her husband, or even discontented within their relationship, what could she do with that information? Certainly not bring it to the attention of her husband or her complementarian church leaders!

And of course the children appear to be standing on a firm foundation. They have been raised on the belief that they are naturally evil and need to be emotionally (sometimes physically) beaten into submission. Do they dare even find out what might happen if they test boundaries, throw a tantrum, or assert their independence like developmentally normal children?

But my second problem is an even bigger one: This “fruit” doesn’t just miss Paul’s heart for Christian families and the church, it fundamentally opposes it.

Because in Ephesians 5 (and Colossians 3, and 1 Corinthians 7, and so on), Paul is not reinforcing the secular gender roles and power dynamics that have plagued humanity since the Fall. He is tearing them down.

Be filled with the Spirit . . . submitting to one another in the fear of Christ. Wives, to your own husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, he himself is the Savior of the body. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. . . . In the same way, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.”

Ephesians 5:18b, 21-25, 28

Can you see it? Can you pull away the haze of complementarianism, set aside the words that aren’t even in the passage (“lead,” “obey,” “follow,” “authority,” “responsibility”), and see?

See the Roman man on his pedestal, all of society existing several notches beneath him. See him touched by the transforming power of the Spirit of God and suddenly he steps down so that he can better reach the hand of his wife to pull her up. See her, likewise transformed, refusing to become corrupted by this newfound status.

Can you see them now? They are standing together, one flesh, on level ground.

They are equals. And not only equals in worth with unequal roles, as some complementarians have tried to parse, but one unit. One flesh, head and body, each dead without the other, both halves of the whole image of God. One.

This may be a tough pill to swallow for a certain population of conservative American Christian, but Paul didn’t write Ephesians 5 to shore up the image of strong masculine leadership over meek wives and well-behaved children. He wasn’t worried about how good your family looks on Sundays, or any other day of the week.

And he certainly didn’t intend for it to be used as the sacred text of patriarchy.

Instead, he paints for us a picture of marriages that can be defined by a unified pursuit of Christ rather than a paranoia of usurpation; of women who see themselves with the value Christ’s sacrifice places on them, which no one can remove; of men who, imitating Christ, set their rights and power aside to raise up the oppressed and powerless.

It is stunning—because it’s a reflection of the ministry of Jesus in the Gospels, a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven on earth. And that makes truly beautiful kingdom fruit.

But we are never going to taste it, let alone get to share it with the hungry around us, if we continue to spend our energy defending a poisonous doctrine.

the news is good, after all

Tonight, as my three-year-old and I were praying before her bedtime, she noticed that I ended the prayer with, “… and please teach Clara to want to follow Jesus.” I could no sooner get the word “amen” out of my mouth than she began peppering me with questions: “Why did you say Clara follow Jesus? Where is Jesus? Can we see Jesus? Why do I have to follow Him? Will you come, too, so I won’t be lonesome? When is God going to let us come see Him? On Saturday? Can we ask Him when we can come?”

It always strikes me in these moments how precious the work before me is, and how fragile. She is so completely trusting right now; whatever I say or do, she soaks up like a little sponge. Even if she doesn’t know it, her entire view of who God is and what He has done is being formed right now. And, God help me, I’m one of its foremost architects. Can I teach her what is true without breaking that gloriously innocent faith?

I want to paint for her a picture of our dazzling hope, of watching the horizon for the return of the King. I want to show her what it means to live on earth as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. I want her to follow Jesus because He is gentle, and loving, and good—because He’s the victor over our captors, Sin and Death, and because He’s invited us into freedom through the power of His resurrection.

And I find, as I meditate on these things, that I need these truths as much as she does. I don’t remember a time when I had her peaceful curiosity; I was a much more anxious child—merely hearing words like “death” and “hell” left me consumed by fear. I didn’t want to follow Jesus, I had to follow Jesus if I were to escape the horrible fate I deserved. For so long, when people shared what they said was the “Good News,” all I heard was terrible news: “You’re a dirty, rotten sinner and you better ask Jesus into your heart so you don’t go to hell!”

It’s taken reading the Bible many times over to start chipping away at that fearful understanding of the Gospel. To begin to see God as overwhelmingly good and gracious and kind rather than angry, manipulative, and spiteful.

But now that I see it—now that I can see His radiant goodness chasing away the threatening shadows of a fear-based faith—I cannot unsee it. It’s as if I had been walking around in a dark room my whole life and never even noticed until someone turned on the light. He is good! He is King! He has won! And He has invited me to share in the victory! The news is good, after all.

That’s the news I want to share with Clara. I want her to trust the goodness of God as completely in ten, twenty, ninety years as she does now at three. I want her to be eagerly asking “When can we go see God?” every day of her life, fearless of what might be required of her before she gets there.

And maybe, along the way, I’ll learn to do the same.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you change and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. “Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

Matthew 18:1-4