Each time I hear of the stumbling of another highly regarded Bible teacher, author, Bible scholar or Christian college professor into inappropriate behaviour – as has allegedly taken place with John Stackhouse, from Crandall University– I’m set back for days. Thankfully the emotional toll is less today than was the case in my earlier days in ministry. I suppose I’ve become jaded.
Today I find myself filling with anger, which I do pray is of the righteous sort!
Sleep is disrupted as I pour out my heart in prayer. How long Lord? I long for the day when females – infants, girls, and women around the world – will be safe to freely walk alone without fear of predators.
Just the other day I read the last few chapters of Judges, chapters 19-25. Be forewarned, these are deeply disturbing passages in Scripture.
Here’s the short version: A concubine leaves her Levite partner to return to her home in Bethlehem. He travels to fetch her. On their return they must find safe lodging. They spend the night with an old man rather than in the city square. Perverse men from the town pound on the door, demanding the male guest be sent out for their pleasure.
You’re getting the jist of the story, aren’t you.
It’s not a surprise to learn that the concubine is given instead. After finding her body at the door stoop the next morning the Levite cuts her brutalized flesh into 12 pieces, sending the parts to the 12 tribes of Israel. They are outraged! How dare this take place among our people! A civil war ensues between the Benjaminites and the enraged 11 tribes.
Eventually, Benjamin is routed. Warriors flee to the hills. Israel descends upon the area to slaughter all in the region, burning towns. Any father giving a daughter in marriage to a Benjaminite brute is to be cursed!
But dear me, the story turned grimmer than before.
How dare we let one of our tribes go into nonexistence for want of a woman! The Israelite fathers hatch a plan. Let the young Benjaminites kidnap 400 virgins – who were left alive after a slaughter at Jabesh-gilead – while they dance at the upcoming festival in Shiloh. They craftily avoid the curse and preserve their pledge!
I wondered if I were reading an ancient text. The account recorded in Judges sounded eerily familiar to the atrocities taking place around the globe: female bodies bought and sold, female bodies butchered and burned, females snatched and trafficked.
But the remedy to save the tribe of Benjamin from extinction reeks of familiar tactics in our churches and institutions today. How often have the predators in the pulpits, in the churches, and in the Christian academy been quietly whisked elsewhere? Too many that I’m aware of. Women have paid the price with more than their bodies.
Have we been duped into believing humanity is improving? I certainly wonder!
The wolves are out there, there’s no hiding that fact! When they’re discovered in our Christian colleges, esteemed seminaries, and in our churches it is a woeful thing that brings my heart low.
This is nothing new for egalitarians. They have grappled with these concerns for decades. I’m a latecomer to the concept of egalitarianism. I’ve repented of my earlier stance of male hierarchy in 2014 when digging into the NT Greek in my undergrad/graduate studies in NT. We are all equal at the foot of the cross. We’re all obligated to serve as the Spirit leads us.
When another brother or sister in Christ falls (I use that term realizing we daily fall short in our lives), when infidelity seems to be the norm, when the news is just another sound byte we scroll past on social media, when we’ve grown complacent to this type of news – my heart weeps for the future of the Church and for the next generation.
I came to a realization the other day after speaking with a young female student that we older women may have let them down.
“If only we’d dress modestly,” she chirped in her innocence. Have we, in a sad way, skirted around the topic. We older women know there’s so much more to keeping the wolves at bay than donning knee-length skirts.
Here’s a thought: What if Paul, when exhorting older women to teach the younger women, meant little about teaching how to cook, clean, care for their hubby and family (all good things to do), but rather intended the experienced women to equip the younger generation to spot the wiles of the wolves before being trapped alone in the woods? To equip them to sort out teachings that are contrary to Scripture rather than sorting a basket of laundry or a drawer of socks (all good things as well).
When Jesus warned about lusting after a woman his audience didn’t imagine the attire of the 21st century. Women, often covered from head-to-toe, were an easily a target to prey upon in the first century as they are today. So what gives!?
Perhaps we’re mistaken when we posit that a complementarian marriage or blame complementarian viewpoint as the culprit behind the breach in relationships and morality. Don’t get me wrong! Male heads glowering over submissive, cowering wives and children is dreadfully wrong. We reason though if only all would embrace egalitarianism all would be well in the home, the church, the academy. Sadly the last decade, and the aforementioned situation facing Stackhouse, a staunch proponent of egalitarianism and mutual ministry for men and women in the church – reveals this theory may be just as problematic as any before.
I want to believe this is a mega-church problem situated in the metropolis far from our country churches. I want to believe it’s celebrities getting too big for their britches, overwhelmed with the limelight. But that’s untrue and we know it!
I’m from the Midwest. I haven’t enough fingers and toes to recount the falls from grace in my nearly 50 years of ministry in the local rural churches. I’ve come to expect it, and that is the most troubling thing of all!
Deep inside I think we all know it’s a heart issue. It’s stubbornness. It’s lack of self-control! It’s pride and selfishness on our part that rules.
We humans are prone to worship. We’re prone to fashion idols. We’re especially prone to worship ourselves, even more so than another. It’s right that we be pulled down from our high perches.
When egalitarianism fails – as all ‘isms throughout history have done- how might we hold back the wolves? What remedy will there be for the human condition?
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