as a beautiful olive tree in the field

I type this while intermittently staring at “Our Lady of the Olives,” which rests against the wall just above my computer screen. It’s a print of a painting by Nicolò Barabino: A white-and-deep-blue clad Mary holding an infant Jesus on her lap, framed by olive branches and a floral-wreath border. The top of the painting says Quasi Oliva Speciosa in Campis.

As a beautiful olive tree in the field.

Serendipitously, Trader Joe’s was selling little potted olive trees today. I bought one. Today is the anniversary of the day my girls and I went to the little white Anglican church for the first time.

One year of being weekly washed in the water of the Word.

One year of dwelling in the body of Christ, and inviting Him to dwell in me, at the sacramental table.

One year running free, unencumbered by the burden of needing to know and be right about everything.

It’s been a year of asking questions (so many questions), learning, and consistently being humbled by the rigidity of my paradigm or the incompleteness of my understanding. A year of noticing how many things I have gotten exactly backward, and never thought twice about before. A year of discovering—as if for the first time—who God is.

Thus, Our Lady of the Olives graces my desk. A reminder that God humbled Himself to come to us fully human: the kind knit together cell by cell in a mother’s womb, the kind birthed through blood and travail, the kind that becomes an inconsolable newborn or a tantruming toddler or a strong-willed child. A reminder that the Father crucially partnered with Mary—and many women before her, all the way back to Eve—to enact redemption, and that for a time, she was His very tabernacle dwelling. Somehow a holy God did not think Himself too good for us, even though we so often think ourselves too good for Him.

A reminder, too, that the Creation project began with a temple garden, lush with life and color and goodness, like the flowers that frame the figures in the painting. That the Creator delights with me in my garden’s blossoms, my children’s antics, my home’s sanctuary. He tabernacles here with us.

I went looking for Him in so many places—across the country, overseas, at a certain type of church, inside a certain version of the Bible, in my own ideas and projects and “glorious purpose”—and though He never abandoned me in any of those things, I found Him here.

Little old here.

Common and nondescript, but simultaneously significant. Like a beautiful olive tree in the field.

Like a little white church on the corner.

toward God's heart, part 6

This post is the conclusion of a series in which I’m answering a question I’ve gotten a lot lately: “Why have you changed your views on complementarian roles?” To return to the introduction to this series, click here.

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The hard part about explaining my evolution and telling my story is that I know the first response of many people will be, “Okay, whatever, but it doesn’t matter because God said so.”

I understand that response. I believe wholeheartedly that what God says is far more important than anything that I will ever say. I love the Bible and have spent many years engrossed in it, meditating on it, learning everything I can from it. God’s Word is incredible. And if you believe that complementarian doctrine is what God commands you to live by, I would never want my opinion to supersede your conscience.

And—

God gave me a powerful brain.

God made me with fierce motherly instincts.

God lets us harvest the fruit our lives have grown, taste it for ourselves, and find out if it’s any good.

And God’s Word purposefully, beautifully reveals God’s heart for humanity through the big story of the Good News and what it means for the kingdom of heaven, for new creation.

I serve a very generous and personal God who created me in His image. My intelligence and intuition are gifts to use for His glory, not hazards to shut down out of fear. The Holy Spirit lives in me, the Risen Christ walks with me. I don’t have to be afraid to ask Him my honest questions and hear His answers because He won’t lead me astray. My Father is good, He cares about my lived experience, and His design for human flourishing (including women’s flourishing) is very good.

I don’t believe that His design is for us to slap a Christian label (complementarianism) onto a highly carnal impulse (chauvinism). In the best cases, the intention behind them is different, but the results are ultimately the same. If the high calling of those who would follow Jesus is to live as citizens of His kingdom now—not only in eternity future—then only genuine equality as God’s image bearers makes any sense. (Or do we expect that men will still be set above women in the next life…?)

You can’t read through the Bible over and over, as I have, and not begin to notice that God isn’t terribly interested in human power structures. He routinely chose to bless latter-born sons rather than firstborns, and do massive Kingdom work through children, foreigners, women, and (gasp!) even foreign women—passing over many more obvious choices from the adult Israelite male population. A teenage virgin and her barren, elderly cousin are the key players who set the stage for the births of the Messiah and the Messiah’s announcer—while Joseph is asked to submit his life and reputation to Mary’s mind-bending role, and Zechariah is silenced by God for his doubts about Elizabeth’s calling.

In the words of Jesus,

“But as for you, do not be called ‘Rabbi,’ because you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. Do not call anyone on earth your father, because you have one Father, who is in heaven. And do not be called masters either, because you have one Master, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You lock up the kingdom of heaven from people. For you don’t go in, and you don’t allow those entering to go in.”

Matthew 23:8-13

When we ask people to simply accept what they don’t understand and distrust their own insight, when we warn them away from asking questions and probing deeper “because God said so,” we aren’t doing them any favors. We are teaching them to be afraid. We are modeling that God is not powerful enough to withstand their curiosity, and communicating that He might turn out to be stupid or disinterested in them if they learn too much, after all. We are setting them up to be brainwashed or abused.

These are cult tactics, not discipleship.

When we require women to accept that God’s heart for them doesn’t apply in their real life because we refuse to embody it, we aren’t loving and honoring them as the Imago Dei. We are treating them as subhuman, a second class. We are proving that we do not believe in the power of the Good News to draw people—male and female—out of their fallen state and into the kingdom of God. We are hamstringing the church, both here and abroad.

This is anti-Christ, not Christian.

My God is not a fool. If the fruit of complementarian theology is rotten, then it does not originate in the good design of God. And my God is not weak; if the stunning sacrifice of His only Son can win the resurrection of my body into eternal life in the new creation, it can certainly win the resurrection of my soul into a new creation here and now. I don’t have to live on the nasty produce of the curse anymore unless I choose to do so.

And neither do you.

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.”

Matthew 7:15-18

toward God's heart, part 5

This post is part of a series in which I’m answering a question I’ve gotten a lot lately: “Why have you changed your views on complementarian roles?” For the introduction to this series, click here.

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The final turning point in my rejection of complementarian theology came a little over a year ago, when my sister and I attended the Hebrew Bible Conference at Multnomah University. We listened to some of the foremost Hebrew Bible scholars in the nation, from Dr. David Andrew Teeter of Harvard Divinity School to Dr. Tim Mackie of BibleProject to Dr. Carmen Joy Imes of Biola University. In addition, there were presentations from a dozen or more graduate students—both men and women.

Each talk was attended by an enthusiastic co-ed audience. Afterward, there was usually time for a short Q&A. It didn’t matter if the presenting scholar was a man or a woman: without exception, the room was spellbound, fascinated, thirsty for the revelation of the Scriptures. Men and women asked thoughtful questions of each speaker, whether male or female. Everyone learned. Everyone gained. Everyone was blessed.

It was the first time in my life I have seen the image of God working as it was intended—with both halves fully present and fully involved, neither one looking down on or trying to dominate the other. Each man who listened to a female speaker lost nothing by taking a learner’s posture and eagerly hearing what she would share. In fact, he—and everyone else—was made better for it.

Clearly, there is a more beautiful way available to us.

That’s why I called this series “Toward God’s Heart.” Even if you can make the most sophisticated argument that Paul’s intention with his letters was to limit the actions of women in churches for all times and all places, even if you can make the strongest case for how churches and families need this gender-based hierarchy to function, even if you believe this is best for men and women and children, I don’t know how you can argue that it’s drawing the Church or the world closer to alignment with the heart of God as revealed to us in the Scriptures in any practical way. I don’t know what specific, beautiful fruit you can point to that will back you up.

We know that the divorce rates and domestic abuse rates in Christian families are both roughly the same as they are in non-Christian households, and that, horrifyingly, abused Christian wives are likely to stay in their marriage an average of 3.5 years longer than others. If we were really building better or more stable families overall, I think we’d see the evidence in the numbers.

We also know that, while being involved in a religious community is scientifically associated with health benefits, those benefits don’t extend to women who are involved in religious systems that are set up to disempower them, such as complementarian churches. That is, women in sexist churches remain at the same baseline of health as women who don’t go to church at all, while women in egalitarian congregations actually enjoy the health benefits of being in a religious community.

From where I sit, there are three possible explanations for the alarming lack of good fruit (and abundance of bad) yielded by complementarian theology:

1. God is stupid, and didn’t know what kind of mess He was making when He designed gender hierarchy to be the way churches and marriages operate.

2. God doesn’t actually care, and is fine with women being collateral damage (or at least being forgotten) if it means His design for the sexes stays in place.

3. God loves and treasures all of His image-bearers, male and female, and His true design is for us to love one another in the same way, patriarchy be damned.

The first leaves me wondering who would worship a God who is both sovereign and stupid. The second leaves me wondering why Jesus bothered to rebuke the Pharisees if God is actually fine with valuing rules and regulations above human beings.

The third leaves me grieved that this is not how more of us know our God.