What’s up?

I think after that last blog, I wasn’t sure where to go. It is more a teaching than a sharing and I am more comfortable with teachings. When it’s a sharing, I have to figure out what to share. So, since I don’t know, I’ll give you the quick overview of the last two months—we had 1) the major period of discouragement and insecurity 2) planning and schedule madness 3) vacations 4) gearing up for back to school and back to living with a schedule

1) I went through a period of real discouragement. I would sometimes stop and think that this must be spiritual attack and pray and I would have a minor letup in the onslaught of feelings of worthlessness and despair. But any ‘good’ attack will go after a weak area so getting the enemy to clear off was helpful but I was already an emotional basket case at any point that I realized the source of the trouble. I have joked before that I have prosecuting attorneys in my head who are entirely ruthless and they are limited only by my ability to use logic, thus I sometimes pray for ‘angelic lawyers’. But a lot of prayer later, I’m back to a normal level of discouragement and insecurity (which will hopeful approach zero before I die)
2) Strangely, my schedule and that of those people whose lives intersect with mine became complex. I spent more time with my schedule book on the phone negotiating in that 10 day span than I had doing scheduling for the year up to this point.
3) Then we had the actual vacations and pseudo-vacations themselves. Part of the time, my son and I were staying at my mother’s house taking care of her dogs. She told us to rummage for any food we wanted—so we ate steak and I had a delicious bowl of spaghetti and something else that I really enjoyed at the time, that was the good side. The bad side is that I don’t usually sleep well when I’m away from home, and I didn’t sleep well at all. Later, we went to St. Louis. That was good, I hung out with my Dad and got to see where he and his wife had moved to. We went to this cool place called The City Museum—it was part playground and part obstacle course and we had a great time. I know that I’m not unfit, but I need to exercise a lot more than I have been.
4) We are now to the 'gearing up for the new school year' which is going to be at a different building this year. We have my son’s birthday coming up as well, which means a party with children and a visit from my mother-in-law (who I like though I don’t always know what to talk about with her). Plus, we are looking at the budget and trying to decide what expenses we can cut and what is really worth it for us.

So, there it is in a nutshell. I hope that the return to a more predictable schedule will make it easier to make progress on all of my writing tasks. And maybe I’ll blog more often… but no promises.

Women teaching?

I haven’t blogged lately and my husband suggested that I post my thoughts on 1 Tim. 2 (esp. vs. 12) because he feels I have a deep understanding of the passage . I was concerned that it would be too theological and intellectual. (I should have worried about it being too long.) But the reason I spent so much time coming up with a comprehensive and thorough view is the personal nature of the passage.

I remember the first time I read the verses. I was at home, I think I was a senior in high school, and I was in my basement hangout spot, just reading the Bible. I got to the passage and I had that instant, ‘What?’ reaction and so I reread it. And I was so offended I literally threw the Bible across the room. (Now, understand, I was the child who wouldn’t set anything on top of my Bible because it seemed rude to God’s word to just treat it like any old book.)

Wrestling with this passage has led me from feminism to complementarianism to egalitarianism (if you don’t know what I’m talking about then be glad-- there is a rather heated debate about the ‘Biblical’ understanding of women’s roles and relations between the genders). But, through it all, my desire was to be faithful to God, hear the truth and generally do what was right. So I spent time considering the texts, the contexts and the arguments.
Ultimately my study led to a translation of vs. 12 and an understanding of the passage around it that is fair to the Greek, makes sense in the context of both the letter and the Bible, and has the added bonus of NOT NECESSITATING any particular view about men and women.

Vs. 12 is normally translated something like this: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent” which is the NIV rendering. As I studied, I found that the Greek is rather unusual in this verse. Most literally it reads: “Women * teaching neither to permit (give leave) nor to usurp (domineer) men but to be in quietness (silence, tranquility, composure).” Now, several points of note: 1) the * represents a connecting word that ties together women and teaching 2) the ‘neither, nor, but’ construction in Greek is quite stable, meaning I can’t mix and match parts of the phrase 3) the verb tenses are relevant-- all the verbs except teaching are in the infinitive. The traditional rendering pulls apart the sentence structure, ignoring these points. The words themselves are sometimes debated or have several uses, so I listed several options. If I had no preconceived notions about the meaning and just looked at the text, I would take it to be a comment on either the demeanor of women when they teach or the content of their teaching. Then the problem word would be the verb ‘to permit’. When I looked it up, I found it has been translated ‘give leave to do as one wishes’ which here would make some sense, implying that either chaos or permissiveness is the problem. So it would be rendered either A) Women should not teach a permissive wildness nor should women teach rebellion against men but women should teach tranquility and composure or B) When women teach they shouldn’t just give leave to let the students do whatever, nor should they use their teaching time to domineer and disrespect men but when women are teaching they should be tranquil and composed. Given that there is a lot of talk in this letter and the next about false teaching and the immediate context is inappropriate behavior during religious practice, both renderings fit.

Someone who favors a traditional male hierarchy can take translation A and buffer it together with the Titus admonition that older women teach the younger ones to care for their families and be respectful. Those who think that teaching roles should be open to women will see that women are not allowed to use their teaching to encourage chaos or rebellion but should present, persuade and make their points respectfully.

Verse 11 is often used to bolster the hierarchal view but it really says that women should be appropriately composed as students. The word submission there comes from a military term that means ‘one of the troop’-- Paul is telling the women to behave as students, no more, no less. The three verses that follow, 13-16, are obviously, grammatically, meant to connect to his comment in what we see as vs. 12. Some readers try to take them as an appeal to a universal, timeless understanding of men’s hierarchical superiority and women’s incompetence and then they generally ignore verse 15 or take it as a random comment. But that leads to a lot of theological problems, like if women can’t teach because they’re gullible and the first man wasn’t deceived then how do we trust a teacher who knew full well that eating of the tree was sin but did it anyway? Rom. 5 explains the consequence of Adam’s choice for all of humanity, understanding both there and in Gen. that the man ‘was with’ his wife and thus he made his choice for whatever reason.

However, there is a much more natural understanding for the passage if we consider the context. We know the Ephesians worshiped their own version of Artemis. The classic character was convinced that men were the source of evil and to be seduced by a man was to be tainted by him. But in Ephesus, it appears that they had altered and adapted her since most scholars agree that Artemis of the Ephesians was looked to for fertility and for help with childbirth. Those things are known/generally undisputed. I suggest that an obvious choice for the Ephesians to keep some of their earlier beliefs would be to slightly re-render Gen. 1 to make the man the one who caused all of the trouble and to make women the innocent bystanders who then turned back to their beloved Artemis in the time of pregnancy. While I am speculating, this fits with everything known, who people are, and makes sense of the passage here. Paul would be correcting their attempts to synchronistically adapt their Artemis and some specific points of false teaching-- 1) man was there first, it wasn’t his introduction that messed things up 2) Eve made her own choice, no one forced anything on her, she is reaping the consequences of her own decision 3) don’t turn to Artemis again when you’re worried about childbearing, Christ can be relied upon to bring you through it.

From this, I can be reminded by this passage to be appropriate and reverent in all my worship activities, as suggested from vs. 8 through 15, and to not use worship activities to further an agenda either by inappropriate prayers, dress or behavior during teachings. I am reminded that sin is the problem of both men and women, no blame-shifting will do. And that I should ultimately depend on God, not get caught up in power plays, in attempts to gain attention to myself or turn to some other ‘deity.’ As mothers, aunts, and the like, women will be teaching someone and instruction to teach appropriately is useful regardless of what roles one believes should be open to women in the church and the larger society.

To feel real again

I’ve been in the mood to hear Seven Dust lately (happily, my husband happens to have it lying around) and one song in particular sticks with me, Beautiful. Some of the lyrics are (to the best of my knowledge--don’t sue me if I’ve misquoted)

Feel--when I’m in doubt
I need something beautiful
To fill the space we’ve taken up
I need something to feel real again
Before I go numb

(Are you alive?)

I’m struggling-- I find that all the best and most well-meaning Christian teaching in the world is often so out of context for me that it becomes counterproductive. The thing is, I’ve been a Christian for a long time, and I love God-- He knows how fickle and foolish I can be but that like some strange infestation, I keep coming back... and back... and back. But I don’t think there is a clear idea of what it is supposed to look like or feel like when you are an older Christian in a fallen world with the ordinary drives and problems of humanity. In spite of the popular press, we don’t become more ethereal and ‘spiritual’ as we pass the 15 or 20 year mark. We have a handful of things that we know-- that deep profound knowing. I’ve been though some crap but I know God is good-- I know He has always been faithful. That doesn’t mean that fear and anger don’t overwhelm me, it means that they don’t dismantle my relationship with God. And I have the things that I cling to, like the profound nature of His Grace, which I can deliver in full force to others though I struggle to fully receive it-- and it’s not, as some suppose, that I fail to understand the power of sin (usually said in a tight, ominous voice) but that I’ve seen mercy triumph over judgment so many times that I know where to ‘bank my money’. But the thing is, the older I get the more it seems like God invites us to be comfortable with our physical, intellectual and emotional selves, not in the noble and grandiose way that the teachings make it sound but just plain able to be honest with ourselves.

But it’s hard to filter all the ‘good’ advice and ‘good’ teaching that would lead me awry because I’m not a newbie who’s never thought about God before, who’s never needed to rely on Him. It’s like with marriage, at some point differentiating between my agenda and my husband’s agenda is murky. Some of ‘my’ agendas are specifically for him, things that I think are to his benefit, because our lives and futures and pressing concerns have substantial overlap. In the same way, I can’t always tell anymore what is my agenda and what is God’s-- not that I can’t be oblivious and selfish, but my hopes and destiny have been tied to Christ for a long time. They are now intertwined, telling me to sacrifice my agenda and accept God’s is just confusing. I need help teasing out which is which, and it requires subtlety.

This is all a long ramble to say that I’m struggling with the experience that church life is obscuring God for me even as it is the place where I am most likely to be encouraged to pursue God. I need the encouragement, the different perspectives and experiences but the overall feel is one of creating doubt and numbing the raw beauty of God.

I’ve been here before, I’ll push through. The Lord knows that one of my weak links is my relationship with the church as an organization. And like some strange infestation, I keep coming back... and back...