Ladies of the Judges #6 - conclusion of the series

The Four Ladies of the Book of Judges #6

Conclusions concerning the Series

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            Having completed my writing on the four Ladies of the Book of Judges, I want to write something of a conclusion to the series to explain what I have tried to do with the series.  I want to explain where I have written what will be hopefully a core of biblical exegesis encouraging to all Christians.  Hopefully readers of all Christian persuasions will have found some encouragement in seeing how Christ’s life and ministry seems to have been anticipated in the lives and experiences, sometimes wonderful and glorious and sometimes macabre and heart-rending and even grotesque, but always in some way or fashion anticipating Christ in his earthly life and ministry.  I hope thus the description of how Deborah, Jael, Jephthah’s daughter and the Levite and his concubine did this for those who read what I had to say.

Secondly I also wrote in the hope of gently exploring certain themes that would be controversial for various Christian readers, because they are issues over which our modern church experiences division.  I have tried to do this not because I wanted to create further division in the church of Christ, but because I hoped to encourage diverse groups with diverse perspectives to come together over the Biblical witness to mankind.  I believe that in our modern Christianity we tend to easily accept division over theology.  I believe theology is essential to the well-being of the church.  If we are to express what we believe we must have articles of faith which we express to others.  But we are too easily divided by our theological differences.  A different spirit characterized the early church because they believed theology was essential to the well-being of the Christian faith.  We tend to tolerate differences of theology without ever trying to address the divisions in belief partly because we think theology is nothing more than what we believe individually and so that is alright because everything is relative.  But the early church believed that the church was united in Christ through the proper proclamation of the Gospel.  Therefore theological divisions were regarded as possible indications that the Gospel itself was at stake.  The early church often dealt with such theological differences by forming councils.  This included the first church council held by the Apostles at Jerusalem in Acts 15, and then later in the seven ecumenical councils of the Church within the Roman Empire prior to the Great Schism in 1054.  The early church, within the first millennium of the Church’s history came together to deal with differences and potential points of division by contemplating the Scriptures as they addressed the issues, the history of the church’s tradition reflected in what had been believed everywhere and in all times and places, and in accord with reason of the leaders within the Church struggling to formulate a consensus perspective that would differentiate the right understanding and spirit to guide the churches according to the gathered wisdom of the church meeting in council.  Since I am not a clergyman, I can raise such issues around a Scripture passage in the hope that others in Christ will further consider these issues and the church will in its various manifestations in our modern era consider and contemplate such issues in the hope of moving toward a consensus perspective.  Such a perspective can only be forged by engaging one another regarding the principles guiding what we believe and while patiently listening to one another in an attempt to respectfully hash out viewpoints prior to trying to determine who is right and wrong.  The Church is not built by reacting with emotion, or by creating straw-men representing differing perspectives in the Church.  Rather the church will be edified when church leaders gather together not to compromise but to contemplate issues with a sense of urgency in the hope of discovering the truth that binds, ties together, and unites God’s people in Jesus Christ.

I have found myself increasingly divided within myself regarding differing gender issues as addressed within modern Christianity and regarding the nature of a progressive versus traditional perception of the Scriptures and tradition.  I almost forced myself to read some things by “progressive feminist Christians” sort of expecting to find some strange concoction that I could easily see through as far less than Christian.  Instead I found explorations of themes which caught my attention and there were in these writings certain things described of wounds that I had felt in my own Christian life.  Instead of discovering craziness I discovered that I had wounds festering up in my Christian life that they helped me to understand so that healing could begin.  For me the article that especially brought this to my attention was an article on the purity codes written by a young woman who had been home-schooled and from what she had said was in the sort of churches much of her life like those I had been in much of my life.  She had bought into a popular view of male-female relationships which scorned “dating.”  By the time she was finishing college without much experiencing any sort of real growth in dealing with the opposite gender, she revolted against a number of elements within her background.  I began to realize that I had experienced some of the same sort of experiences within a similar sort of church background.  For me the issue was more how we dealt with lusts in men.  In my Reformed background, sin was taken very seriously and often we were told how to look upon a woman with lust was as if to commit adultery already in our heart.  In my background the preacher was tempted to use Jesus’ teaching on lust primarily as a text showing the evil of our hearts.  But from a pastoral perspective that is not at all a complete view of attraction.  A preacher concerned only with using such a passage to bring people under the conviction of sin can create an unintended mindset that sees all attraction as something basically evil.  I remember a pastor at one time wondering why so many church members ended up dating and marrying non-believers.  I feel I know why now.  As a man it is a relief to imagine that the woman doesn’t mind that you find her attractive and doesn’t imagine that means you have some horrible lust problem.  For the gal it is sort of nice not to have to figure out what role you are going to play when the non-Christian guy seems to just like you and wants to be with you and you have the pressure relieved of having to fulfill the dreams of the latest book on the perfect relationship.  It would seem that in our hunger to guide young people into an “ideal” relationship with their future marriage partner we have for all too many of our young people created impossible scenarios not meant for normal people who have this need to cautiously explore and grow in friendships until a mature relationship may be entered fully expecting God’s grace and provision through good and bad, richer or poorer, etc.  We have a plethora of well-meaning books creating ideals for young men and women.  But the men and women themselves don’t fit into ideals for simply fit into individual expressions of what it means to be human.  Humanity takes priority over idealisms.    I want to clarify that in my situation, very often it was me and not my pastors that took ideals to their absurd extremes.  But a culture of wanting to see the evil in our hearts rather than yearning to live our lives as liberated redeemed human beings has caused numerous mischiefs in the lives of young and also older people in our Evangelical churches.

The young person undergoing such struggles quite often can’t diagnose what it is that is causing them to struggle and flounder.  Often when questions are formed regarding feelings that have been identified, the person asking those questions is referred back to that very idealism as their needed answer, even as it is that which has been slowly creating a volcano in their inner being.  For a number of women who have gone through such an experience they found “feminism” extremely liberating as it treated their individuality seriously as nothing they had ever experienced before.  Often what they have discovered in “feminism” is something entirely different than how members of their old churches have thought when they speak of “feminism.”  They had grown up in what were male led churches where women were described in terms of the roles they fulfilled not the persons whom they were meant to become through God’s love for them as individual human beings, but almost as things fitting their roles in the church and family as they were to be directed by some more knowing man.  I hope in saying these things Christian ministers and churchmen can understand how there are many church experiences, and sometimes especially in conservative and evangelical expressions of Christianity some women are given the message, probably not intentionally but even so are given the feeling, that being a woman makes them a second class citizen in the kingdom of God.  There is a sense that a woman is a role-player and not someone loved for their own person.  That is something I don’t think Jesus ever allowed the three women named Mary or the one named Martha to ever feel.  That is something the Apostle Paul never let Lydia or Priscilla feel; and likewise the Apostle Paul rejoiced that St. Timothy was reared spiritually by his mother Eunice and his grand-mother Lois whom the Apostle Paul spoke of on a first name basis.  There are some things Paul spoke of that have to be dealt with, but of first importance is that we see that Paul, our Lord Jesus Christ, and God all really liked women and affirmed that women were to be affirmed and not treated as a ministry’s after-thought, or just some object meant to help men.  I do not expect that churches in our modern era are going to come overnight to a unified perspective about all the specific possible roles for women.  But I think it is very important to realize that sometimes churches and ministries have failed to affirm that God’s love for women as women is every bit as real as his love for “the men” of the church.  I fear that under some ministries you would get the feeling that God loved preacher men first of all, and then the other men in a congregation, and like the Syro-Phoenician woman, the women ought to rejoice that they get the left-over scraps.  I hope none of this is intentional.  But such messages seem to be conveyed more than we who are conservative or traditional sometimes understand.  These are things that need discussed.  But these are things which usually build up until one person or the other feels they cannot openly discuss their wounds, so they find a more hospitable place, and sometimes those who do express their questions and concerns are not given a thoughtful patient hearing, but are treated as if contemptuous of the faith.  It is important I think that such questions are understood to exist.  Very often as much as all the ideology built up to express divisions in a theological or philosophical or sociological or political description there is this sense that deep down the problem is that one is viewed solely as a thing not all that valuable instead of being affirmed and loved as a unique loved by God human being.

I have sought in this series to place an emphasis on the Biblical doctrine of the seed-sowing woman found promised in Genesis 3:15 in description of how God would bring a redeemer through the seed of woman.  This doctrine ultimately is fulfilled in the Theotokos, meaning “God-bearer.”  Mary brings God into the world by giving birth to Jesus Christ.  I truly believe that in that birth the virgin represents not just herself but all faithful women who believed the promise given in Genesis 3:15.  That is where theologically and in the Gospel we can begin to build a positive message of affirmation for all women under the proclamation of the Gospel.  As I tried to stress with the prophetess Deborah, her claim to being a mother in Israel was not merely about bringing babies into the world, but representing the hope of Israel, the expected redemption God was to bring about in his promise expressed in Genesis 3:15.  Being a woman of God is about carrying hope in one’s figurative womb until hope at last gives birth to reality.  Lois and Eunice were God-bearers to the soul of young Timothy.  Priscilla was a God-bearer in her taking Apollos to the side and explaining the Gospel more clearly to him.   Deborah was a God-bearer in deciding between disputants a judgment underneath the tree where she judged Israel.  Being a mother in the sense of Theotokos is as much as a Teresa caring for the poor of Calcutta and a Fannie Crosby writing a hymn as it is bringing an infant into the world, and of course never should that be treated as anything less than truly glorious.  However we slice and dice some of the questions being raised in our day in our churches, every pastor of every church should spend time considering how he or she if that be the case may insure that every woman in the congregation is encouraged to blossom and bloom with the ability to use every gift God has given them in a life of joy and creativity and bringing forth of glory to God.

I wonder if during the Protestant Reformation, the Reformers had succeeded in maintaining the Biblical perspective of “Theotokos” theology if a different sort of Reformation might have resulted.  In the Reformation, Protestant theology acknowledged Christ especially as Prophet, Priest, and King.  Because Protestantism held to these three offices, Protestant theology generally viewed these three offices which Christ fulfilled in Christocentric ways.  But during the Reformation there was a divorce allowed to take place in Protestant theology between Patriarchy and Theotokos.  Then patriarchy became a doctrine divorced from the person of Christ as if all that patriarchy meant was male leadership of the church and male leadership in the home.  But in reality, one of the titles into which Christ was born by being born of the virgin was “eternal father, and prince of peace.”  Jesus Christ is now the patriarch, the eternal father of humankind, the second Adam, the firstborn of the creation in God’s redemption.  I wonder how different the spirit of Evangelicalism and my own Reformed background within the Church would have been if instead of declaring Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King; the Reformers would have described him as Patriarch, Prophet, Priest, and King.  I suspect that our entire perception of what patriarchy means would have been described in much more Christ-centered expressions than sometimes is now the case.

I would hope that many of us will learn to overcome the instinct to protect ourselves by simply retreating to our own camps, but will seek to build understanding with others, to cultivate friendships, to understand varied experiences, and to seek to have a common mind in the spirit of God, the mind of Christ, and in a common life unto God the Father.  We will begin to seek out the Scriptures to find common ground and understanding with one another rather than proof-texts against each other.  That is my dream for the divided church of this day and time.