The contents of this post will become increasingly serious. I
will begin by telling you about three things I recently experienced that
reminded me of the same concept.
One: While I was walking to my car one morning, I noticed a small little lump on the ground in the empty carport space next to mine. As I got closer, I noticed that it was a living creature—a baby bird that had fallen out of a nest. (There are several nests in my carport.) After pouring it some water, driving away, and letting the light bulb finally go off in my head that the bird wouldn’t find its way back to its nest on its own, I made a U-turn and returned to the bird, who was now hobbling along under the carport. I grabbed a stepstool from my apartment, set it up under the nest, and deposited the little thing back into the nest. It took a couple of tries because I’m rather short, and the carport ceiling is rather tall, but as far as I can tell, the little bird has survived OK since being returned to its home. Everyone has flown away now, so I hope he or she is living his or her best life now.
Two: I like to eat Greek yogurt as an afternoon snack—a
specific brand that has no sugar added. One day, I decided to try their banana
creme flavor. The taste for each spoonful in my mouth had three stages: good,
horrible, and OK. Eating it was a weird experience: Ooo, this is interesting
OH MY GOSH THIS IS AWFUL Huh. Nice aftertaste. Not sure what they did to
it, but I won’t be buying that particular flavor again!
Three: While I was driving home from work one day, the
weather was rainy and traffic was very congested. Then a downpour hit, and I
understood why the cars were moving so slowly. The sky dumped so much rain that
you could barely see the car in front of you. Total whiteout. Then the hail
began to fall. Probably at least ten or fifteen minutes of pea-to-marble-size
hail while you could barely see anything. I turned off my stereo and sang a
worship song, which turned into me praying rather loudly, because the last
thing I needed was hail damage on any of my car’s windows. Thankfully, the hail
finally stopped, my car and I made it home in one piece with no broken windows,
and about an hour later the rain stopped and the sun came out. As if the scary
storm that I had just driven through were only a distant memory.
Application: “My brethren, count it all joy when you
fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.
But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete,
lacking nothing” (James 1:2-4 NKJV).
Or here’s a fun translation: “Dear brothers and
sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity
for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has
a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed,
you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing” (James 1:2-4 NLT).
I think it’s interesting that the Bible says to let a trial
run its course, so it can help grow you up. Pushing through a hard situation is
one way that God develops patience or endurance in us. When I was eating that
weird yogurt flavor (it was just weird, not expired), in order to get to the
pleasant aftertaste, I had to endure the horrible taste that came right before
it. When I was stuck in the hailstorm, I had to keep driving until the hail
stopped and I returned home safely. If I didn’t endure the awful yogurt flavor,
and if I had just thrown it away instead, I would have wasted a snack. If I had
stopped my car under a bridge during the hailstorm (like a couple of cars were
unlawfully stopped), I would have dishonored the drivers behind me, and I would
have gotten in trouble if the police had seen me.
My imagination ran wild with that baby bird. How did it fall
from the nest? Was there not enough room for all the growing little birdies inside
it? Did the baby bird get curious and lean too far out? Or did it try to fly before
it was mature enough to fly?
People can do a lot of harm when they try to fly before
their time. In the almost forty years that I’ve been a Christian, I’ve seen immature
Christians get promoted to leadership positions before they were mature enough to
handle it. Sometimes they rise to the occasion and allow God to grow them up in
the process. But other times they just fall out of the nest—and drag innocent
people along with them.
Delayed Reaction
A couple of weeks ago, headlines and articles on my newsfeed
reported that the Southern Baptist Convention voted to ban female pastors in
their denomination. Yes, I’m just now commenting on this, but I’m sorry. How is
this news? I grew up Southern Baptist. I already know how they feel about
women. For years they’ve treated us like the only thing we’re good for is having
babies and keeping house. That’s one reason why I’m not Baptist anymore.
The memes and articles I saw displayed pictures of women voting
in favor of banning themselves from pastoring, and I even saw a comment or two
from a woman who was standing on a very misunderstood, misinterpreted Bible passage:
“Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to
speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. And if they
want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is
shameful for women to speak in church” (1 Corinthians 14:34-35 NKJV).
But what if the woman doesn’t have a husband? Is she just
supposed to not learn anything? Of course not. Paul was addressing a very
specific situation in the Corinthian church whose worship services apparently
were very disorderly. When I read those two verses in context, instead of
taking them out of context and building an entire theology on it like I’m some
kind of cult leader, that is how I interpret it.
When one interprets the Bible, it’s important to take the
entire canon into consideration. The Bible as a whole, even while being written
in the context of patriarchal societies, tells stories of women who were in
leadership roles:
- Miriam the worship leader (Exodus 15:20-21)
- Deborah the judge (Judges 4:4-9)
- Jael the spontaneous military hero (Judges 4:17-22)
- Mary the virgin, who was told about Jesus’ birth before Joseph was (Matthew 1:18-23; Luke 1:26-38)
Not to mention, Paul also didn’t stipulate in his list of pastors,
prophets, evangelists, teachers, and apostles (Ephesians 4:11 NKJV) that only
men are allowed to be gifted spiritually. He also exhorted the church in
Galatia to correct the new degree of legalism they had created for themselves: “There
is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither
male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28 NKJV).
If you forbid women from being pastors, in addition to being
out of line with Scripture, you’re creating two situations on a practical
level. Firstly, who would I talk to about my problems if I can’t talk to a female
pastor? Are you requiring me, a woman, to have a sensitive and possibly
inappropriate conversation with a male pastor about my issues? That could
possibly open the door for temptation for both of us. Sure, I could meet with
him and his wife, but if I don’t know his wife, I would be sharing the contents
of my soul with a stranger. In recent years, I have been very blessed to be
able to go to female pastors when I’ve needed to talk something out. Yes, some
women are gifted in this area, and God connects them with other women on
purpose. Secondly, if you announce that your entire denomination is officially
not allowing women to be pastors, you might lose church members. There are
plenty of other denominations (or non-denominations) that allow all people to develop
their callings, regardless of gender.
I don’t mean to offend you or hurt your feelings if you’re
Baptist. I’ve known a lot of awesome Baptists in my life. I just hope your
church is treating you right. Those headlines and articles mentioned that Beth
Moore was concerned about SBC churches caring more about disallowing females
from pastoring than about removing abuses from their congregations. A couple of
the Baptist churches that I grew up in allowed abuses to happen to me. I was
treated as an object, and when I reported the behavior to someone I trusted, I
was told to keep quiet. So, naturally, the abuse spread to more women.
I’ll bet the story would have been different if the genders
were switched. I think if a married old lady couldn’t keep herself away from a cute
teenage boy, and she did inappropriate things to him in empty Sunday School
rooms or empty church offices while nobody was watching, he would have been
protected if he had told on her. That dirty old lady would have been labeled as
a predator and as an adulteress faster than you could say Jiminy church scandal,
and the abuse would have ended.
But when it’s a cute teenage girl, the abuse is ignored. Because
all she’s good for is having babies and keeping house.
And the real tragedy happens when she believes that about
herself. When I saw photos of Baptist women voting with their husbands in the
memes and articles, I was shocked for a second but then remembered my own
attitude when I was younger. After I went off to college, I started leading small
groups with other students, and our church environment often discussed the topic
of “submission.” I remember telling a roommate once that submitting is easy; you
just do what the guy says to do. She told me that was lazy.
In hindsight, I can see she was right. That was lazy. In
real life, when you’re leading a small group, or working at a job, or hanging
out with friends, you submit to authority (Romans 13:1), and you submit to one
another (Ephesians 5:21), but you don’t just do what the guys say to do because
they’re male and you’re female. That’s an issue for married people to wrestle
through (Ephesians 5:22), and I won’t talk anymore about that, because I’ve
never been married and therefore don’t have the foggiest idea how that works. But
I do know that working with other people when making decisions is a very respectful
process when you submit it to God and decide to love one another through it
all.
Women are not second-class citizens. We are good for more
than just having babies and keeping house (and yes, those are respectable
callings in and of themselves), and God can call us and assign us to do whatever
He wants. If God gave us a calling that’s different than other women’s, it’s OK
to let God help us figure it out and refine us until we’re ready to walk in it.
Fifty
Sometimes you just gotta stay in the trial for as long as
God wants you to stay in it. You gotta wait out the storm until you make it
through the other side. Then you’ll be grown-up enough to tackle the next
assignment He has for you. In the process, you’ll find that His dreams for you
are bigger than you could have ever dreamed for yourself. Then you’ll want to
dream along with Him.
I used to blog a lot more often. If you followed my blog
about ten or fifteen years ago, you got an earful (or an eyeful) of all the
things that used to hurt me and bother me. A lot of those things still hurt and
bother me, but they don’t emotionally cripple me like they used to. I feel more
settled now at age fifty. I’m glad I waited for the yogurt flavor to get good. I’m glad I
gripped onto the steering wheel and cried out to God as He led me out of the
storm. I’m glad I let Him nudge me out of the nest, and I’m glad it’s time to
fly now.
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