the beginning and the end

My studies over the last few weeks and months have had me turning over the idea of “the beginning and the end” in a variety of ways. This is a familiar phrase from a few different Biblical passages, perhaps most famously the Book of Revelation, when Jesus claims this title for Himself:

“Behold, I am coming soon, and My reward is with Me, to give to each one according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”

Revelation 22:12-13

Interestingly, the last couple chapters of Revelation act as a mirrored bookend with Genesis 1-2—the beginning and the end of the story. They match, and they tell us so much about what comes in between. Genesis begins a conversation about who God is and how He intended Creation to work; Revelation then offers the final say on who God is and how He intends the New Creation to work. The middle is … messy, full of questions and contradictions and moments of uncertainty, where we watch humanity fail to carry out God’s intentions again and again.

It has me thinking about how we view the Bible generally: As the beginning of the conversation, or the end?

Most of the time, I’ve noticed, we use it as the end. To doubters, we hand verses. To questioners, we respond with verses. To people who would ask us to see something in shades of gray rather than black-and-white, we give verses.

We effortlessly throw verses at anyone who disagrees with us, makes us uncomfortable, or asks us to think about a different possibility—and not because we want to open the floor for discussion or better understanding, but to silence debate, stay in our comfort zones, and have the last word. The Bible becomes a clumsy battering club in our denominational disputes and culture wars, leaving little space for it to act as the precise, soul-piercing blade of the Spirit it claims to be.

And the more time I spend with the Bible, the less convinced I am that we are “accurately handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15) when we use it in this way.

One of the things I love and hate about being a lifelong believer who grew up in church is that I “know” all the answers—the church answers, that is. This is helpful when it comes to constructing and corroborating doctrine, or avoiding blatant heresies, but it’s much less so when all those clean and pat church answers cloud my ability to recognize the complex and uncomfortable questions God is actually asking.

In other words—I’m well-trained in using the Bible as an end. But what about learning to let it be the beginning?

What happens when we let the Bible speak on its own terms, unfettered by our pre-determined bounds of doctrine? What happens when we let God tell us who He is, uncontained by our neat boxes of divine attributes? What would we learn about who He is, what He is doing, and how He wants us to reflect Him if we stopped trying to tell Him—and everyone else—who He is allowed to be and what He is allowed to ask of us?

Of course, I know there is a vitally important place for right doctrine. It matters that we relate to Yahweh rightly, and we know a lot about how to do that (and how not to do it) from the Scriptures. But an honest reading of the Bible won’t let us hold our “right answers” very tightly. It will challenge them and question them and throw them into turmoil at nearly every turn. It will demand of us to think and feel and undo and rebuild. It will constantly force our conversation-ending verse-wielding back into a place of humility and uncertainty, where there is room for an incomprehensible God and His creative work.

The Bible is an end: It has the authority to define God and tell us His story. It has the true answers we are looking for. But if that’s all it is—if the conversation has no beginning—then we will miss the messy riches of the middle, the parts where we have to wrestle with God and leave marked by the encounter to receive the blessing. We miss the questions it would ask of us. We miss the lifelong journey of discovery and delight it promises, because we were too mired down in making sure we “knew it all.”

I’m noticing that the more I learn, the less I know. As God increases in my perception, I decrease. Every new discovery or epiphany simply expands the universe of what I don’t understand. With every answer comes a thousand more questions.

This, I think, is as it should be.

what if you're wrong?

This is one of my favorite questions to ask myself. I’d probably ask it of others, too, if it didn’t sound quite so confrontational—that’s not the way I intend it, but we all hold our beliefs rather personally and it can be hard not to go directly on the defensive when they feel threatened or questioned.

Today, I’m examining a belief I held tightly for the first 20, maybe 24 years of my life—and have held a bit more loosely for the last half-decade or so, as real-life experiences and extensive study have required me to do so. Here it is:

Men and women have different but complementary roles and responsibilities in marriage, family life, and religious leadership.

This is the official Wikipedia definition of the term “complementarianism,” which is Christianese for patriarchalism. In complementarian theology, a selection of Pauline passages and Genesis 1-3 are used to justify the idea that men and women are equal, but women are both naturally created and divinely called to subjugate themselves to men, and men are both naturally created and divinely called to exercise authority over women. Some “softer” complementarians will say that they do not believe women in general must submit to men in general—only a wife to her husband—but that distinction is difficult to support practically, since the same will typically say that within the context of church, women as a group are still expected to submit to the general male leadership of the church, and under no circumstances should a woman be allowed to hold a position of authority over the men in the church.

In any case, complementarianism is the doctrine of gender roles I was taught from a young age all the way through my time in Bible school. It’s about then, suddenly armed with a far broader understanding of God’s Word than I’d ever had before, that this doctrine began to not sit well with me, but every time I was tempted to consider other views I got scared. What if they’re wrong?

It’s been a decade since then. I have more life experience, more church experience, and more importantly, a lot more Bible studying experience now. And slowly, the question bugging me has shifted from “What if they’re wrong?” to “What if I’m wrong?”

What if complementarian theology is wrong?

I’m not a historian, a Greek language scholar, or a PhD in Paul’s epistles. Plenty of incredible people are, and they have put a lot of work into this debate. Paul and Gender by Westfall, The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Barr, and On Purpose by Coleman are all good places to find Biblically-serious treatment of the topic if you are looking for further study.

I’m more interested, for the moment, in asking the uncomfortable questions that may help us examine the quality of the fruit this doctrine has been producing over time.

Let’s consider. If complementarian theology is right, then some of our biggest concerns for the Body of Christ should be:

• Ensuring that those who lead in the church are physically and spiritually qualified to do so.

• Ensuring that men never hear the Word of God preached or taught by a woman.

• Encouraging women to submit themselves to the authority of their husbands and the church.

• Encouraging and equipping men to lead their wives and the church.

If, on the other hand, Scripture favors equality between men and women as image bearers of God and co-rulers over Creation (as Genesis 1-2 and Galatians 3:28 would suggest), then the biggest concerns for the Body of Christ should be:

• Ensuring that those who lead in the church are spiritually qualified to do so.

• Encouraging all believers to submit to God.

• Equipping all believers to know, understand, and share the Word of God.

• Empowering families to reflect the selflessness of Christ in every role.

In the complementarian vision for the Church, men are up front, visible, leading the way for everyone else to follow Christ. Women are behind them, following and making sure the children don’t get left behind. Men who don’t enjoy the role of leader or don’t feel equipped to spiritually direct their homes are required to do it anyway, or at least made to feel sinful for not doing it; women who are gifted in leadership and spiritual shepherding are required to set those gifts aside, or at least relegate them to the nursery and the Pre-K class. What’s taught from the pulpit on Sunday mornings and in co-ed Bible studies throughout the week is reflective of what the male leadership of the church considers important. Topics deemed to be mostly of concern to women are left to the discretion of women-only Bible studies (although these, too, are subject to veto by the board of elders). In this way, the very structure of the church is designed to prevent anyone from questioning or reconsidering its rightness.

But is this the Messianic vision for the Church?

Jesus’s ministry on earth began with a declaration that the Kingdom of Heaven had drawn near. That kingdom began in a paradise called Eden, but humans lost access to its threshold when they disobeyed God’s command—and part of that tragedy was a destruction of the oneness between male and female (see Genesis 3:16). The Kingdom vision of man and woman as two halves of God’s image, ruling together over His Creation, was lost to the suffocating grasp of sin and death, leaving gender hierarchy in its place.

But if Jesus’s death and resurrection defeated sin and death, and if following Him means joining Him in taking back every lost inch of territory for the Kingdom of Heaven, why would we choose to remain in our fallen and divided state as men and women? How can the Church, which is Christ’s Body, animate His heart for the New Creation when we are still clinging so hard to the old?

What if, in the Messianic vision for the Church, men and women are side-by-side, each using their gifts to build up the others, with all eyes set on the selfless example of Christ? There are men teaching and preaching and leading, but there are also men serving invisibly behind the scenes to protect the vulnerable and care for the children; there are women faithfully raising their families and staffing the nursery, but there are also women speaking the truth of God’s Word with strength, clarity, and conviction. Men are educated and enriched by the perspectives brought to them by these women, and the women’s entire experience of life in Christ is finally made abundant when they are set free from the demands of the Pharisees.

What if that is what we are missing when we subscribe to complementarian theology? What if we have tied half the church behind Christ’s back with our gender doctrine? And what if we are wrong?

I struggle to imagine a ministry or aspect of Christian life that would not be enriched if both men and women were equally interested, involved, and obedient in it. But I can clearly see that many ministries and aspects of Christian life are suffering from being lopsided in one direction or the other. Surely a family where both parents exemplify spiritual leadership and mutual respect for one another is better off than a family where that entire responsibility falls to the father? Surely a children’s ministry where both men and women feed into kids’ lives is better off than one where the children are only treated as valuable by women? Surely pastoral counseling for a couple in a broken marriage will be far more effective when a woman’s voice is present, too?

There’s a phrase we all like to pull out when we imagine meeting Jesus face-to-face. “Well done, good and faithful servant.” It comes from the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30—when the master praises his servants for stewarding his resources well in his absence, and even increasing their value. But he says something very different to the servant who, out of fear, buries his master’s money uselessly in the dirt.

What if Christ’s servants and earthly representatives have buried half the wealth of the church under a fallen idea of what it means to be a man or a woman? What will be said to us when King Jesus returns in glory?

We aren’t all called or gifted to be teachers and preachers and leaders. But some of us are. And some of us are women.

We have tried to fit these callings and giftings into the complementarian framework for decades now. And the Church and its testimony are suffering for it. The tree is bearing rotten fruit. It’s time to ask the hard questions.

What if we’ve been wrong?

the good news

Rider on the White Horse by Robert Wright

It’s dark. I can only see my fellow humans as dim, shadowy shapes in a sick reddish light. I hate them, and at the same time I cower among them, using them as a fleshly shield against the pain that never lets up. I’m so used to it now that I have almost grown numb: the moment-by-moment stings of my master’s cruel prod, which I can’t stop running into even though it hurts every time. It’s like a drug, destroying me even as it wraps me tighter in its grip, and I know there is no hope. This is my existence. This was yesterday, this is today, this will be tomorrow. Darkness. Pain. The haunting, but somehow also stupid, moans of the bodies around me as they, too, endlessly run back into the stinging prod.

Every once in a while, I’ll watch blankly as one of these human shapes strikes down another in a cold rage. Death is a near and familiar companion. Sometimes it almost seems like a friend. 

What’s that? Something breaks up the endless chaos of red and shadow. It’s white, even brilliant–it hurts my unaccustomed eyes, piercing straight through me like a knife-beam of light, a thing I have never seen. I blink, but it’s still there, getting closer and bigger and spilling radiant white light over this shadowy valley of death. The bodies around me crush in and scatter like rats, desperate to avoid revelation, desperate to hide from whatever it means to be seen. I instinctively cower back, too, even though I can feel the prod sink into my spine. It’s too bright. It’s too much. I can’t see. I cover my face with my hands and fall facedown on the ground, stumbling over the bodies of the dead, thinking that if only I can be dead, too, I will be spared this probing, blinding light–whatever it is.

Then there’s a voice.

It’s no voice I have ever heard. It doesn’t hiss or snarl, like my masters. It doesn’t moan, like my fellow humans. This voice thunders.

“Get up! You, follow Me!”

I am shaking uncontrollably, but this is a command that overpowers every instinct of self-preservation in my body. I instantly rise to my feet. Still shielding my face from the light, I look up, seeking the Source of this voice.

And in that moment the light shifts from blinding to brilliant. I can see. I can see Him. He is a King, a Conqueror, riding astride a white horse. He wields a sword, but the blade is clean; only his robes are dripping with blood–blood that seems to have come from a wound in His own side, from scars in His own hands.

There are words written into His robe. “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”

He rides forward until I can feel His horse’s breath on my neck. I am still shaking, but I can’t move–can’t so much as bow my head. It’s as if, by seeing Him, I can suddenly see myself clearly.

And I am dead. Dead in my trespasses and sins. I cannot escape this hell that I live in or this master of sin and death that I serve. The pain that I was numb to moments ago is now excruciating, and it’s only sheer terror that keeps me from writhing in agony in His presence.

As if separated from my own body, I am vaguely aware that He has leaned down and taken my hand in His, and somewhere in the recesses of my mind I become conscious of the bloody hole in the middle of His palm.

He speaks again at last, but this time, His voice is as gentle as a rippling brook. “Little girl, I say to you, get up.”

And there falls away from my eyes something like scales. My vision becomes clear for the first time in my existence. I can see the massive army behind the King, a cavalry all clothed in white. And I realize why He is here: to win this dead hellscape for His kingdom. I can either surrender or die.

And I have already been dead once. Whatever this King might do to me, I would rather be on His side than return to the reign of death.

“I surrender.”

Instead of binding my wrists and banishing me from His presence, wretch that I am, I hear Him give orders that I be clothed in white and given a mount. The whole army breaks into cheers of celebration, and I feel tears of what must be joy stream hot down my face as the embrace of what must be love wraps around my soul. I am alive, and I am at peace. I am His.

I fall into the ranks of the rest of the army. We are forward-bound behind our King, spilling the light into more dead and dark places, gathering up everyone who will surrender on our way and welcoming them into what must be a family.

My King has come, and He is taking back all Creation from the power of sin and death. My allegiance is to Him now—Him alone. Hallelujah.