Too often I know the times I should have remained silent.
There is nothing edifying in expressing my frustrations regarding this. I don't have any better handle on the "ideal" than does anyone else. There are things I can't explain satisfactorily and there are things the "traditional" stance can't explain. I'm normally a logical person, but I have to admit that in part, I have to rely on my gut, my instinctual reaction to the damage I've seen done by clinging to tightly to the way things have always been done.
But I've seen haste fling people into deep chasms as well.
I don't know what the "right" answer is. I just cannot believe that God gives a gift in order to frustrate it, that the good news is a burden, that a God who is no respecter of persons has divided them pink from blue with walls made of the same stuff that used to divide black from white.
I would rather God had simply said that women are inferior, second class and faulty -- as Aquinas, Chrysostom, Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, Jerome and others among the fathers of the church believed. If he had simply spelled it out, I could swallow it. How could I object? It would be as useless and senseless as bucking at the commandment "thou shalt not murder." I would much rather he'd simply said it rather than leaving us the nice, confusing grey area muddied by culture and perspective.
Maybe, along the lines of Calvinist doctrine, I simply have a gimped up soul, incapable of realizing and accepting the 'truth' of the matter, unable to acquiesce to the required life -- too unspiritual to be regenerate. I am certainly not beyond that suspicion and even at times that conviction. There must be some explanation for why the things my church promotes as God's word concerning women seem to me inherently wrong. If they are in fact the words of God, the problem must then be me.
And so I run headlong again into the brick wall.
1 comment:
Q
I am amazed by some of you comments on Mikes blog and your own post. Still waters run deep.
Last week I said I had never really been bothered by women being silent in the church. The more I think about it, I know that is not exactly true. In 1990 I was appointed by the ACU Students Association's executive board to be one of the first female Spiritual Life Chairs. In the past when it was a ChairMAN (not WOMAN) the person in this position did chapel announcments often and spoke once or twice a year in chapel as well as at the Tuesday Night Devo in addition to heading a committee to over see the senates spiritual matters. I was never asked to speak in chapel...big shock! Once when doing an anouncement before the officail chapel program started, I read a scripture that I felt went with the announcment. I was not trying to be cavilier, honestly! it just didn't occer to me what I had done. I was a sophomore in college getting some very unhappy mail from elders and ACU alum. I had the support of the Deans and the chapel committee for that matter, because it was not intentional.
It blew over, I don't feel too scarred. But I remember one man saying I was hurting the reputation of the school, THE church, and the Kingdom by reading God's word. WOW!
I also remember thinking I would be a great youth minister, but at that time there were only summer intearn positions for women. The intearn positions were sorta like womens college sports..great while they lasted but no real opportunities in the professional circles.
We will all slowly bang our heads against that brick wall in hopes that it will crack before we do! You have a gift. Don't let your gender keep you from doing what God made you to do.
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