In which our regular writers toss around
subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Tom: Immanuel Can
is sending me bad things again. And I’m not entirely sure how to respond. This
time it’s Moody Publishers’ “Post Sunday”, in which Moody extols one of its new
releases. This one is a Hannah Anderson special in which the author holds forth
on the “lameness” of the church. Okay, I can’t stop there: the church is lame (according
to Hannah) because she has crippled herself. In the words of Ms Anderson,
we have failed to equip “Bible women” because we “don’t have a vision for how God
could use them for His glory.”
Help me out here: what are “Bible women”?
Immanuel Can: I don’t know … It could
be a reference to Eve, or Sarah, or Deborah, or possibly to Michal or Jezebel.
Last time I checked, they were all “Bible women”.
But no, that couldn’t be who she means … some of those women were self-starters.
Roles and Rights
Tom: Nope, not who she means, for
sure. These “Bible women” are women who don’t worry about their historical and
biblical place in the local church. As Anderson says:
“Perhaps it’s time we stop talking to women about their ‘rights’ or their ‘roles’. Perhaps it’s time we start talking to them about their responsibilities.”
Now to be fair, I can’t think of a whole lot written about
women’s “rights” in scripture, or about men’s “rights”, for that matter, can
you?
IC: There’s certainly warrant
for a specific set of human rights in scripture, and there is
warrant for distinctive responsibilities or duties for men and
women; but so far as I know, there is nothing from which to ground specific
rights for men and women. Do you know of any, Tom?
Tom: I think some people infer them,
though they are not really there. Some take verses like “Husbands, love your
wives” and read them as “A wife has a right to be loved by her Christian
husband.” But like you said, I see that as the man’s responsibility rather than
anyone’s specific right. Sure, if you have an obedient spouse who is looking to
please God, you are bound to reap certain benefits from that. But that’s very
different from possessing an inalienable right.
A Vision of Bible Women
IC: As you say,
Ms Anderson also claims that we lack a “vision of how God could use
[Bible women] for His glory”. To where do you suppose she expects people to
look to have such a “vision”?
Tom: I wish there
was a link available to her promotional piece so our readers could see the
context in which all this arises. Basically, she’s written a book called Made
for More, the thesis of which appears to be that women are underutilized in
the church. She refers to the church as “one-legged” and seems to think
“rights” and “roles” are the problem.
Now in one sense she has a point, in that teaching women
doctrine and equipping them to teach and evangelize is not a bad thing. The
church does not benefit from ignorance. And women teaching and preaching are
not bad things: it’s WHO they’re teaching and WHERE they’re doing it that’s at issue.
IC: Well, I agree
that conservative churches generally have tended to believe that all members
have spiritual gifts, but also not necessarily to act as if women are gifted.
But in the more modern denominations, this tends to be less the case. In fact,
if anything, these latter groups are now having difficulty engaging their men,
and (at least under the pastorate level) women tend to do almost everything. So
I would think her thesis would only hold in some contexts.
Bible Women and Bible Teaching
Tom: Quite so.
But regardless of what the current practice is where you live or I live, the
fact is that there is zero legitimacy to the term “Bible women” unless the
women in question are doing what the Bible teaches them to do, and doing it
in the context in which it teaches them to do it. There’s no use talking about
teaching women to “show forth the glory and greatness of their God” if we can’t
be bothered to first ask in what particular way God has ordained that they show forth his greatness.
Now as far as Anderson’s book is concerned, I haven’t read
it, and perhaps this short promotional piece she’s written for it fails to do
it justice. But the promo itself has a couple of red flags in just a few short
paragraphs, and it makes me rather cautious about the book.
IC: What are you thinking of?
Waving the Red Flag
Tom: Well, Red Flag 1 is the unwarranted leap from something a South Asian national once said
to her over lunch about equipping women to “carry the gospel into places that
no man can” to the subject of “the place of women in the church”. Nothing wrong with a woman
evangelizing. Never has been, never will be. No woman gifted as an evangelist
is restricted in any way from exercising that gift. She is, in fact, a gift to the church from the Lord Jesus himself. And even women who lack spiritual gifting in that particular area are not only
encouraged but commanded to share the gospel, as we all are.
Nothing about this is new, and nothing about it requires any
reassessment of “the place of women in the church”, since evangelism in
scripture takes place outside the church.
IC: Yes, and this
brings up my point about being self-starters: what keeps “Bible women” from
taking their own opportunities to use their gifts? Is it not better (for both
men and women) to seek out those areas of service for which they will not be
rewarded on earth, and to leave official recognition to chance? Why would
“Bible women” need other people to “catch a vision” of their alleged potential
before they could be of any use to anyone? I’m not seeing that. Now, if Ms Anderson
is complaining of the lack of encouragement of women to use their gifts, I think that’s at least partially legitimate; but if she’s complaining that
without recognition or offices women cannot serve at all, then the same would surely apply to unrecognized
men — and she’d be quite wrong. For recognition is no necessary
part of service.
Tom: Quite so. Gifts are given “to equip the saints for the work of ministry,
for building up the body of Christ”, so we all have a responsibility to encourage and support one another in doing
all the things the Lord has called us to do in his service. Is the church
failing to do that? In many instances, perhaps. But as you say, what keeps us
as individuals from stepping up and simply doing the work we have been equipped
to do?
Stop Talking About Roles
The second red flag in Ms Anderson’s little promotional
blurb is her gentle suggestion that the church stop talking to women about
their roles. But there are very clear differences in male and female
responsibilities in both home and church as delineated by the apostles. So
either she is assuming women already know their biblical roles and don’t need
to be regularly bludgeoned with the teaching of the New Testament or, far more
likely, she would simply like to be rid of New Testament roles in
the church.
IC: She doesn’t seem to give any place to that concern. Whether the “vision” is biblical or not does not form part of her pitch, it seems. I think there are quite a lot of
complainants whose main beef is that their own particular “vision” is not
being caught and realized within their own church.
An Unrealized Vision
Tom: That’s a song I’ve heard many times, and it’s a very normal problem to arise in the church. When your spiritual gift lies in a particular area of service, you tend to be very attuned to those sorts of needs and may tend to feel that everyone else should be involved in that particular area of service too — if they’re really spiritual people. It’s kind of a
“Martha complex”, and with maturity we hopefully learn to rein it in a bit. People dignify
their concerns a bit by calling them “visions”, but they are really just
perceived needs.
IC: I’ve noted the same
phenomenon. People have a natural tendency to claim their particular
gifts — or age group, or gender, or preferred activity — are not
receiving sufficient honor, and to believe that rectifying that is most
pressing need of the local congregation. But this is almost always expressed
from somewhat myopic perspective.
But this I will say on Ms Anderson’s behalf: that if all believers are indeed
gifted, as our theology teaches, then do we not have to be deliberate about
recognizing and encouraging the employment of the gifts of our women, youth and
children? Or is it merely the adult males and elders that should be our focus?
I think the answer to that has to be pretty obvious. And in the current
political environment, being deliberate about giving some priority to those members that tend to receive less honor is not just biblical but is also a good way to defuse discontent. A caution,
though: in so doing, we must be careful not to follow the spirit of the day,
giving honor to people for things for which they have not been biblically appointed
or spiritually gifted. So there’s a balance to be struck there.
Finding a Balance
Tom: Agreed. I think the balance is something like this: As men in the church, we should
surely give honor and preference to our sisters in Christ, and ensure that
they have the tools they need to develop the gifts the Holy Spirit has given them.
But it’s like I mentioned earlier about turning someone
else’s responsibility into my perceived “right”: if I am a woman in the church,
my willingness to use my gift and to serve as best I can should not depend on
whether I am receiving the honor, preference or attention I would like.
If the men in my church or its leadership lack the “vision” to help me develop
and use my gift, that should not hold me back. There are all kinds of resources
out there, and the Lord can use servants, whether or not we get recognized.
IC: Yes. And if you cannot get
started without the vision, support and enthusiasm of your peers, then it’s
quite likely you have misjudged your own gift. You probably are no good at what
you imagine you want to do, since you cannot do it without a lot of help, and
are not inclined to undertake it without recognition.
A Biblical Vision
Tom: Good point.
In the end, each of us stands or falls to his or her own Master. Where judgment
of our work is concerned, there is no such thing as corporate responsibility to
fall back on. When we say, “The church has failed” at something, what we really
mean is that a bunch of people have failed, each of whom is individually accountable to the Head of the Church.
Still, we’ve reached a sad state in the church’s history if
we’re all out there going it alone in the service of Christ.
IC: No, we’re not alone, since
our gifts are to be used for one another, and since we all have responsibility
to care for one another. In fact, all members contributing through the proper
working of the gifts is the thing that is supposed to bring us up to where we should be …
that is, to the biblical vision, called “maturity” and “the fullness of Christ”.
Meanwhile, if we’re waiting for the church to come up to some other “vision” we have for it before we feel we can pitch in, we’ll wait a long time. And if Ms Anderson has a different kind of “vision” and wants the church to satisfy her personal desire to be valued as a “Bible woman” before she’ll exercise her gifts, then frankly, I think she hasn’t got a leg to stand on.
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