who learned to ask questions? what's the benefit of the doubt?

This weekend, I finished reading Rachel Held Evans's book Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions, and I must say that it is an impressive memoir in which the author gets at how she has had several, incredibly thoughtful human conversions as an adult.  To me, that's what learning is.  That's awfully important.  When we stop learning, stop changing or "evolving," then we die.  Viewpoints change.  When it comes to religion, to views about sex and gender, to the Bible and what it offers us on religion, on God, on sex and gender, then we can hope our methods for learning, for knowing, for understanding, for believing can adapt some to circumstances over time.  Otherwise we insist on the sort of objectivity that stuck Aristotle in a science that makes females naturally lesser than males.  Otherwise we insist on the sort of arrogant absolutism with "apparently plain meanings of biblical texts" that makes females naturally lesser than males so that the former can only learn from the latter, and not the reverse.

(See how Rachel blogs today, wonderfully and powerfully on the rigid weaknesses of "the complementarian manifesto, the Danvers Statement," endorsed by men like Wayne Grudem and John Piper of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.)

Last week, I posted a few paragraphs excerpted from Rachel's book.  Kristen made a typically astute comment with a question, an important question:

"Rachael saw her father like the Father God; but her mother was so like Christ, and yet she doesn't mention that; only that her mother pointed her to Christ. Why is that?"

So today, I'd like to look at how else Rachel writes about her mother in relation to God.  Is God only a father?  Or is the image and imagination of God as Father as inclusive of Rachel's female parent as it is of her male parent?  Here are a few more paragraphs, a few more pages into Rachel's book, a few more years into her life and her learning, her evolving.  What do you think?  And do you see the image of God, male and female, in either of your own parents?

 

Did you notice how Rachel says her mother influenced her?  What is it her mother teaches her about?  And for whom is she to look out?  What does she encourage her and her sister, as equals, to do?  How does she speak about others and who does she herself stand up to?  And why?  Did you notice how people around Rachel's mother feel when they are around her?  What did Rachel, and Amanda, inherit from their mother?  Why, nonetheless, do some "a lot of good Christian people" try to convince her that her mother's characteristic -- lived and taught and passed on like genetic material -- is "a sort of spiritual liability"?  Whose ways are more like "God's ways"?  Whose are "higher"?  And who is this other woman, also a mother, whom Rachel mentions in the context of speaking about Justice and equality and egalitarianism and the deserved chance to be loved and her own mother?  Who is this one whose life and death rocks Rachel's world?  She is Zarmina; so, who's she?  

(So I'm asking you now to buy Rachel's book and to read it for yourself.  To see whether you and your world might evolve a little too.  To see what and how you might learn something.  Yes, I know Rachel is a woman.  John Piper says it's okay for all of you men to learn from her, a little only.  Just don't let her become your spiritual head.  After you read Rachel's book, then come back over here; and pardon me for linking to a world-rocking video of this other mother, the one that changes Rachel's perspectives in profound ways.  Maybe click this link first and read again a bit more.  Just only then and after that click this link from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan when you are ready and not before, please.  We may never be ready. But what can we learn? Can we evolve?)

"Problem Passages: Genesis 3:16" and (Y)our Reading

Kay Bonikowsky is writing a series of blogposts comparing the teaching on various gender passages in the Bible,"to provide a resource for those searching to understand what they believe."

Today, she's written, "Problem Passages: Genesis 3:16."  Here are a couple of paragraphs she gives as synopses of beliefs:

The Comps believe this consequence of [Eve's then Adam's] sin is the battle of the sexes. Women want to be in charge now, and men, to keep their God-ordained position, will use any means to dominate. As a result, Christian women should learn to stay in their God-ordained role, and Christian men should learn to control their aggression.

and

Egals believe that this verse foretells male oppression upon women; that women, because of this powerful longing or turning, have enabled male oppression throughout history.  This longing is not focused on God, as it was originally created for, but for man. It is misplaced worship; idolatry.

The post gets to the critical Hebrew words, the Greek and Latin and English translations of them, and provides a number of secondary resources for further study.  The author of the post herself has done considerable study and is herself learning and changing.  Be forewarned, then, if you're concerned at all where an honest investigation might take you and how you yourself might turn and turn out.  Of herself, the author notes:

I’ve taught as a complementarian in the past, but recently I’ve given up the charade. I’m not a comp. I am convicted that male patriarchy is a tradition of man, not a mandate of God. I am passionate about it. I believe it is a huge blind spot in the church. But, the times they are a changin’! This little outlet is my way of joining the “reformation” on the place of women in God’s church.

Now, decide whether you yourself can read her post, "Problem Passages: Genesis 3:16."  I'd recommend it.  (But don't say I didn't warn you about what reading the Bible with such intellectual curiosity and openness might do.)

Like Waterboarding for Chocolate

Many more of you may have read (or watched the film version of) Laura Esquivel's novel Como agua para chocolate than have read the chapter of the bible I'm going to blog on a bit. Likewise, many more of you evangelical Christians (of the "complementarian" camp) have camped out in Ephesians 5 than have even considered the bible chapter we'll discuss here. It's Numbers 5. (Or a segment of the fourth book [ בַּמִּדְבָּר, Bamidbar] of the Torah.)

At the end of this post, I'll tell you what got me looking at it again. But there's a more important reason why we all might want to look at this old canonized text:

It suggests that a husband, who suspects the chocolate his wife is eating might have come from another man, may send his allegedly disrespecting wife off to the priest for waterboarding.

Okay, that's a stretch. We don't know if the Jews still had any chocolate left in the desert after breaking free from the Egyptians. And the kind of torture jealous husbands sent their wives off to in the wild-er-ness wasn't exactly waterboarding (if it did involve water and torture). What isn't a stretch is that this is the bible, the word of God giving the words of God to men about what to do with their women who terrorized them and their camp with their dalliances. Writers of the new covenant (or the New Testament) write similar things; and religious bible-believing people like Emerson Eggerichs write books today to get at how married men even today need and deserve and by implication should expect respect from their wives. (Suzanne McCarthy is blogging an entire series on that "love and respect" interpretation after John Hobbins mentioned Eggerichs a couple of times).

So, I invite you to go back to read Numbers 5, or to read it for the first time. I'm drawn back into it because of the Jews' own Greek translation of the text when back in Egypt. The Hebrew language of the masoret text already has enough wordplay, but the Greek of the Septuagint text has even more rhetoric. Look, see for yourself. You tell me whether "male and fe-male" are created equal in Numbers 5, whether in Hebrew or in Hellene. And next post, I'll look at some of the wild liberal translator choices such as the words παρεμβολῆς (par-em-bolEs) and ἐμβαλεῖ (em-balei), like a deadly priest-imposed amniotic fluid embolism for a disrepecting wife, like water torture for a suspicious box of chocolates.