A broken tulip

Well, I promised myself I would never do this. Here I am.

In the next months this blog space is going to be primarily taken up with a deep dive into the identity of men and women in relationship to each other in Scripture and in real life.

I want to write this (despite my promise) because writing is sometimes my only path to understanding. It’s been many years for me of digesting many arguments, books, podcasts, thoughts. Many years of working hard to find an understanding from Scripture that would sit still with me and not scuttle off like a beetle every time I had to rely on it. It’s a conversation wrapped up in painful consequences and real life decisions.

I’ve learned, over those years, that I am not the only one who struggles with the North American church’s definitions of the roles—and personhood—of men and women.

I have come to believe that we could use a reawakening of the imagination right here. Whether you are a man or a woman, there is beauty and depth and wonder to how God made us that gets drained away down a pipe somewhere when we turn to the conversation of “men and women in the church”. I want to reclaim that.

What qualifies me to write about this? A decade of burning questions, dissatisfaction with the answers, and digging into the story of Scripture. Do I have answers? No, but I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I want you to see it too.

Many of us let our ideas of the relationships of men and women to each other be shaped by a handful of verses from Paul, with the accompanying grammar and definitions of the Greek words he used (although to be honest, we let someone else, someone smarter, do the parsing and defining of Greek and then we take their word and run with it). What these verses declare then fits into a logical enough framework which draws on the Creation story and one aspect of the gospel of Jesus (death on the cross).

It is enough to satisfy many in the church that they know the will of God for their relationships, their families, for their career choices (if you are a woman), for ministry, and for leadership in the church.

But it hasn’t satisfied me. I’m still not sure what started the itch, which often feels like more of a curse than anything. Once as a very young girl and once as a young woman, I’ve been told that I’m fighting God on this one by questioning the roles of men and women and this is just something that’s hard to accept but that’s what faith is for, so believe. Two separate people, both authority figures, and two very separate situations, but the same message: accept this in faith.

I can’t. I wanted to, but I can’t. This is the point at which people jettison “complementarianism” (the belief that the differences between men and women determine a specific chain of authority within church and home) and settle down with “egalitarianism” (the belief that the differences of men and women aren’t about position or authority). Egalitarians once again point to a handful of verses from Paul, once again get an expert to throw out some grammar and definitions, once again tie their position into a different aspect of Creation and a different aspect of the Gospel.

And yes, that’s a generalization. It’s just one that I’ve seen a lot of in real life. I’m not interested in subscribing to either camp. I’m not interested in a neat position whose definition and proof texts I can memorize to go on my merry way. I’m not interested in the books I’ve been handed where someone claims that they’ve found how well a style of life works for them + Greek texts = change of mind.

I want to know the heart of God. God made us—male and female—in His image. God came to redeem us—male and female—back into what He created us for. God asks us—male and female—to join Him in His work. And this Creation knows our God by how we image Him—male and female—and the world comes to see their Messiah by how we witness Him—male and female.

If in Creation God says He makes the man and woman in His image to rule together, I want to know who this God is, so that I know what to expect in humans at their best as they image Him.

If Paul likens the mystery of marriage to the mystery of Christ and the Church, then I want to know first what the relationship of Christ and the Church is, and then try to understand how marriage reflects that.

My feeling is that, too often, we accept a view of men and women’s roles that we have gathered somehow from life and then we sanctify it by saying—this is what it means to image God, this is what it means to image Christ and the Church.

When we do this, it cripples our theology. It can lead us to believe that our human relationships can show us God more accurately than His own revelation of Himself. It is always dangerous to shrink the Gospel by submitting it to a definition, rather than submitting the definition to the Gospel.

Why don’t we let those two things—who God is, and then more specifically, who God is in relation to humanity—work the other direction to inform our views on men and women?

Because that’s a different conversation. It’s a maddeningly elusive one because it brings us to search for our God Himself, who is ultimately beyond our knowing. It’s a beautiful conversation, though, because He has already come close. If you start with who God is and how He has come to us, that means that every line and story of Scripture flows into the understanding that you’ll bring to a conversation on men and women. Nothing is cut out and segregated here.

Other women have asked me in conversations over the years what my sources are and where I get my ideas on men and women. There is no book I can recommend. There is no secret, either. In allowing everything I learned about God, His Word, and His story to weigh into what it means for me to live as a woman, I ended up with a new way of looking at it all. It’s a very messy and lengthy process, but it was the only way I found.

In the coming weeks I will post thoughts and reflections that have come from this search. I will credit the sources wherever I can.

But first let me acknowledge this: we all write, think, and live out of our own biases. I know that my experiences have profoundly shaped what I easily accept and what I struggle with in coming to Scripture; your experiences do the same for you. For many of us (especially women, I would guess) this topic of gendered relationships and order in the church or home is not merely an intellectual or theological one. It touches on some painful, some beautiful, some demeaning, some affirming moments of our lives. Those moments are the current underneath our conversations that we don’t always acknowledge. It’s too personal. That’s okay. Being a woman (or a man) is a movement of body, heart, and mind—all—towards the light. It’s not going to happen in one conversation. Let that be a reminder to each of us to be humble towards each other in this conversation.

That said, please do feel free to engage in the comments with your own thoughts and reflections, if you wish. If you’d rather email me directly, you can reach me at: abrokentulipinbox@gmail.com

(If you don’t care about this topic, don’t despair — there will be poetry and art postings too. ;))