Jesus and Gender (eBook)

Introduction

Be warned: there is no end to the making of many books, and much study wearies the body. When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: fear God and keep his commands, because this is for all humanity. For God will bring every act to judgment, including every hidden thing, whether good or evil.

—Ecclesiastes 12:12–14

Like you, we’ve read arguments from every side about relationships and roles and rules between men and women and, honestly, we we’re beginning to think that poor dead horse just needs a proper burial. Which of course begs the question: Why on earth have we written another book on the subject?

In the chapters that follow we’ll answer that question more fully, but for now let us say this: Jesus and Gender was written because a very key aspect—in fact the most important one—has been largely overlooked.

ELYSE’S STORY

Before we explain more about where we’re going, we want to introduce ourselves and share why it matters to us. I am a woman who was saved in 1971 at the age of twenty-one. Yes, that makes me seventy years old as I write this introduction. That also means that I’ve been a Christian for fifty years. I was not raised in a Christian home and really didn’t have any sort of family role models; my father was out of our home early on and my mother worked a full-time job. Hardly the model of a conservative Christian household. Immediately after my conversion, I enrolled in a little Bible college where I earned a Bachelor of Theology degree and met and married my husband, Phil. The churches I attended during those early years didn’t really talk much about women’s or men’s roles. In fact, women could be ordained, and I was encouraged by my leaders and by my husband to pursue whatever God had gifted me to do. Eventually I pursued biblical counseling education and started my writing career.

It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that I began to hear about gender roles and to experience restrictions placed on me in the church. But don’t assume that I pushed back against them. No. In fact, I embraced them wholeheartedly. The more I learned, the more I bought into what I would come to understand as a “complementarian” perspective. It was during those years that I wrote Helper By Design: God’s Perfect Plan for Women in Marriage (Moody, 2003). At the time I wrote that book, of course I really did believe everything I said. And since I’ve written over twenty books, I’ll admit that there are parts of some of them that, let’s just say, I’ve reexamined. Of course, there are bedrock truths I remain committed to—yet there are others I would nuance and still more I turn from today.

One particularly meaningful season was when I came to understand the centrality of the gospel. Sure, in the past I knew it and believed it, but I didn’t really see how fundamental the good news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection was to every area of life. It was then that I wrote Because He Loves Me: How Christ Transforms Our Daily Life (Crossway, 2008), which became central in my thinking. Everything I’ve written since then has been my attempt to apply the truths of the gospel consistently to specific areas of living.1 Then, in 2013 I wrote Found in Him: The Joy of the Incarnation and Our Union with Christ, a deeper look at one facet of the gospel message: the incarnation. My study of God the Son becoming Man has continued as a prevailing paradigm since that time.

However, it was during the writing of Good News for Weary Women: Escaping the Bondage of To-Do Lists, Steps, and Bad Advice (Tyndale, 2014) that I grew to understand how damaging a lot of what had been written about women, their roles, and the implications of those teachings have been to so many. I ran a social media experiment and heard from hundreds of women; over 20,000 women read the post within twenty-four hours. Many responded over the days and weeks that followed. I polled women in a large church and heard the same stories repeatedly about how they had felt ignored, pressured, disrespected, judged, and objectified by their church’s leaders and eventually by their husbands who had bought into the teaching. There wasn’t a place in any woman’s life where she was free from the burdens placed on her simply because she is a woman. These Christian-woman “shoulds” were proof of her godliness and shouted at her from every corner—her home, her church, the Christian culture, and even from her own mind.

By this point in my life, I knew enough about the gospel and what happens to believers when they don’t hear it—when they’re given only law disconnected from Jesus’ perfect keeping of it—that the responses I heard from these women were unfortunately commonplace. Only the gospel has the power to transform lives and lift burdens. The problem with this teaching on gender roles: It is devoid of the good news. Of course women were struggling! Burdens too heavy to bear were being placed on their backs.

I knew I would have to respond. This book is the culmination of these two facets in my ongoing understanding: the centrality of the gospel, especially the incarnation, and my concern that much of the teaching on gender in the church is devoid of the gospel and is therefore soul-crushing and conflict-producing.

ERIC’S STORY

Growing up in small-town Iowa in a traditional home that faithfully attended a conservative Lutheran church shaped my views on women and men. I say that first because none of us approach the Scriptures as blank slates. The idea that we are born “blank slates” or become such at conversion is mistaken—the Bible knows nothing about it. Our cultural environment, family of origin, school, peers, church, marriage, work, and hobbies all impact how we understand what it means to be men and women. We’re primed to affirm some beliefs and be offended by others. Such an admission is no cause for suspicion of interpretation. The first step to accurate reading is awareness of what impacts us.

My father and mother were my first guides. Dad went to work and grilled the hamburgers. Mom did the laundry and cooked in the kitchen. Dad sang in the choir, taught me to hunt, and cried at funerals. Mom beat me in footraces, taught me to cross-stitch, and worked the soil, growing garden vegetables by the sweat of her brow. They both disciplined me, cheered for me, and talked about our faith. They were both tough. They were both tender. They were both parents. Dad was a male, so he was my father. Mom was a female, so she was my mother.

Our church didn’t use words like “manhood” and “womanhood.” It knew nothing of “complementarianism” and “egalitarianism.” Our pastor and elders were always men. Our denomination ordained both men and women as deacons. Men and women taught me in Sunday school. Men and women worked side by side to put on the annual chicken supper. A woman taught my catechism classes while men quizzed me on Scripture memory verses. Women and men read the Old Testament and Epistle readings in the service. The pastor read the Gospel reading and gave the sermon. Men and women were friends with one another, though they often gathered by gender for some activities.

It wasn’t until my college years that I was told there were “roles” for men and women. It was then that I received a copy of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Shortly after this, I got engaged. Wanting to be the best husband that I could be, I purchased the set of John Piper’s 1989 sermon series, “Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.” I absorbed these over the summer, along with material from the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW).

I must confess that I did not approach these resources with an open mind. I had recently read Piper’s Desiring God and Let the Nations Be Glad, and I had listened to dozens of his sermons. He had a profound impact on opening my eyes to God’s beauty and glory, as well as taking the Bible seriously. So, turning to his other sources, I assumed that whatever they said was the truth. Period.

Later, I attended The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, where I received an MDiv in Biblical and Theological Studies. To be honest, I can’t recall ever hearing anything about “biblical manhood and womanhood” in the classroom. There was, however, a particular culture. I only had one female professor during my time on campus (one of my favorites and one of the best). While women were spoken of respectfully in public, it seemed anyone who wasn’t complementarian was suspect.

Early in my time there, the student body received a letter from President Mohler on the subject of female students. It stated in no uncertain terms that the seminary was happy to have female students at every level of study. Those who made female students feel unwelcome would be subject to discipline. It shocked me that there were issues in the seminary body at a level warranting such a communication.

My first few years of pastoral ministry brought conflict regarding how men and women should serve in the church. Seminary had said little to these things, so I dove into materials from CBMW looking for clarification.

I attended conferences and read books that reinforced what I believed. I preached sermons on these matters and even hosted a CBMW conference at a church I pastored. It was at that conference that my conscience began to grow...