Women Teaching and Pastoring and Why Paul Wrote What He Did About It

 Something I haven't much touched on about is the role of women among a community of disciples. The truth is, I've kind of ignored it, but that probably isn't the best way to approach it or anything for that matter. Though, in a way, it's kind of resolving itself.

     I was initially taught that women shouldn't be teaching or holding authority over men within a church or denomination, and if they did so it was unbiblical and a violation of Scripture. This is, very much, the traditional view, and is the reason why so many churches and denominations still refuse to ordain women as pastors or priests.

     This view is based primarily on two passages in the New Testament. Both are found in letters written by Paul. The first is 1 Corinthians 14:33b-36. The second is 1 Timothy 2:11-12. Jesus Himself never said anything about excluding women from teaching positions or positions of authority, although all twelve of His Apostles were men specifically. Because the two passages against it are found in Paul's writings, He is often seen as a misogynist and he and his writings maligned by those who support women's ordination. The truth is, Paul was anything but a misogynist.

     Paul's worldview regarding any member of a community of disciples can be summed up in his letter to the Galatians, chapter 3 verse 28, which reads, "There is not one Judean neither Greek, not one slave neither free person, not one male and female; because you are all one person within the Anointed Yeshua." In Paul's mind, all were the same in the body of Christ. All held the same Spirit, the same Logos and were members of the same Logos. Jesus Himself shares a similar sentiment when He says in Luke that, "in the resurrection they will neither be married nor given in marriage." That is, there will be neither male nor female.

      This is part of a deeper truth. God is neither male nor female, and His Logos of which we all share a part is also neither male nor female. Male and female are attributes of the flesh. The Logos is eternal, ageless, and outside of time. The attributes of the flesh are impermanent and will pass away. Paul and Jesus both were concerned with the disciples living in the eternal, not the impermanent.

     So, what are we to make of Paul's statements then regarding women and teaching or leadership roles? First, Paul didn't write the passage in 1 Corinthians. It was inserted later. How can I possibly say this? When you read Paul's writings in the original language over and over again, you get used to the way he speaks. You get his rhythms and vocabulary and even patterns of thought. The passage in 1 Corinthians doesn't read anything like Paul's speech. It sticks out like a sore thumb among his words. In some manuscripts, it's not even in this position, but appended to the end of a different chapter. Furthermore, it breaks the natural flow of thought and context of the chapter. Someone inserted it after the letter was written for their own agenda.

     Second, Paul did write the passage in 2 Timothy. This is his wording and flow of thought. But what he means and how it's too often translated are two different things. You also have to understand the cultural context of the period. Women had few rights. They had more rights in Roman society than they did in Judean society, but even then they were still relegated to second class citizens and legally had to be under the authority of a man, either their father or their husband if they wanted any legal standing. This isn't too dissimilar to a woman's legal standing in the United States prior to the twentieth century and the early parts of it, or in the United Kingdom. It was only in the latter part of the twentieth century that they could even open their own bank accounts or purchase their own land. They had no legal standing in a court either without a man's authority. And so this is the cultural and legal reality Paul is trying to advise Timothy in.

      But what did he mean in the actual verses? "Let a woman learn with all stillness with all submission; and I don't allow a woman to teach neither to dominate [also "murder"] a man, but to be with stillness." First, the word usually translated as "silence", and here I have rendered "stillness", actually means to be still, at rest, quiet. It's the word used by the Eastern Orthodox Church to describe their mystics and meditation techniques, "hesychia". One who is in a state of meditation is "with stillness".  Furthermore, "with all submission." To whom or what is one submitted when they are meditating? The Spirit of Christ.  The second word of note in the Greek is "authenteo," usually translated as merely to "hold authority over," but this is a softening of the word's meaning. It literally means "to dominate, have total power over," and also "to murder." The force of this word is to have another's life in their hands. Consider the culture. It is the same with his instructions on hair and veiling. Paul wasn't trying to limit these sisters because he was misogynistic. He was trying to protect them from a society that would destroy them if they became "too free" in that society's eyes. Women who weren't veiled were either slaves or whores. Women who were too outspoken were put in their place. Women who attempted to dominate men often found themselves dead. Paul was trying to prevent that. He was protecting them from the realities of the world they lived in, and they knew it.

     Twenty first century America is a different world and society entirely from the first century Roman Empire. We've gone through a lot of painful but necessary evolution where the place of women in society is concerned, and their rights. There is no reason whatsoever, culturally speaking, that women cannot be in positions of authority or teaching positions in our society. The truth is, women frequently bring a compassion and wisdom in their leadership and teaching that male leaders and teachers don't. They bring a more whole, more well rounded picture of God's love and personality, as they were intended to.

     I could also bring up the number of women writers, deaconesses, and teachers in the ancient church and the church throughout the centuries, and even heroines in the Old Testament, all of whom have contributed significantly and beautifully to its spiritual life. All of whom were clearly moved by the Spirit to do these things.

     To sum this up, yes, women can and should be allowed to teach and hold ordained positions. No, Paul wasn't a misogynist. He was trying to protect his sisters from those who were.

The Disciple's Response to the Murders of Alex and Nicole by ICE

 People are angry, and that anger is justified. There's no getting around that. Right have been violated. The Constitution has been violated. People have been murdered by federal law enforcement on the street in broad daylight.

     How should a disciple of Jesus Christ respond? First question to ask, "What did Jesus teach?" Second question to ask, "What did Jesus do? What example did He set?" A following question, "What example did His immediate disciples set based on what He taught them?"

     Neither Jesus nor His disciples were strangers to shocking abuses of power and violence against them or others. Whether it came from the Judean religious leadership, the Herods, or from Roman authorities, they saw it every day. They experienced it themselves. Unjust beatings and humiliations, kangaroo court trials, mob violence, and executions on a whim. Consider Stephen's brutal death in Acts. Consider how many times Paul was beaten. Consider Peter and John's arrest by the Sanhedrin. This was the world they lived in.

     How did they respond to all of this? Did they attempt to hurt or injure their attackers? Did they attempt to rebel against the governing authorities? Did Jesus when He was arrested?

     Be angry and do not "sin". Do not let the sun go down on your wrath. Return no one evil for evil. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. "Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing."

     Every fiber of my flesh tells me to respond with anger, outrage, and it burns towards violence in response. Violence meant to protect the innocent, at least in my mind. Protect the people I love, the people who didn't deserve this, what remains of the ideals of the country I was raised in. Anger begins to become hatred for those causing the harm, and it becomes incredibly difficult to really "see" them and "love them as myself." This is my flesh's threat response in action, and it is overwhelming. But it is born from the flesh. Understandable. Justifiable even. But it is born from the flesh.

     The disciple of Jesus Christ cannot operate from the flesh and remain a disciple. Jesus and His disciples taught operating from the Spirit, the Logos; cooperation with and submission to the God who is love of whom we all share a piece, a part, a shred. With whom we are one. He taught the most important thing was to love the other person no matter who it was or what they had done. To forgive so many times you lose count. To not judge. His compassion had no limit, even for those shredding His skin with a whip, beating the hell out of Him, and nailing Him to a wooden cross. This was the example He set. This is what God is truly like.

     Alex Pretti was a child of God and carried His logos. So was and did the man who shot him. God loves both of them. Nicole Good was a child of God and carried His logos. So was and did Jonathan Ross. God loves both of them too. Alex and Nicole are now in His presence and are safe from all harm. But God wants the men who killed them in His presence too, made right and restored from what led them to this. God's love does not end when someone commits an atrocity. It sets out to redeem and restore them from the serious error and malfunction that's causing it. That is God's justice, restoration and reconciliation.

     If we are going to be disciples of Jesus Christ, we must not cooperate with our flesh's threat response. We must disengage from it, neutralize it, and instead cooperate with that God born nature that is inside each one of us. We must love, even those who try to destroy us.

When Jesus Had Compassion On Demons

 Turned to the story of the Gerasene demoniac in Luke this morning. I think a lot of folks just see this as Jesus casting out a lot more demons than normal from someone. I think I did when I heard this story growing up. But there's a lot more going on here that you're not really taught to catch. Jesus isn't just showing mercy to the demonized man. He's also showing mercy and compassion to the demons themselves. 

     It is the demons who first address Him and beg Him not to "torment" them. In the Greek, this is an interesting word, "basanizo". It literally means "to interrogate harshly". To examine by torture. Imagine interrogating someone by waterboarding and you've got it, but the emphasis is on the interrogation, not the torture. 

     The demons are begging for mercy from Him, and it gives Him pause. He stops what He was doing, commanding them to leave, and asks what the demon's name is. He treats the demon like a person, not a thing or a monster. It's here he learns that there are a lot of them in this man. The word in the Greek text isn't Greek, it's Latin, "legion". That's an interesting choice for Luke to use this specific word. It suggests that this man might have been speaking Latin at the time, and the nearby settlement was a Roman one. That they were farming pigs is also a clue these were not Judean settlers.

     The demons beg Him not to send them into the Abyss. In this day and worldview, this would have been another term for Tartaros, the hellish zone of the Underworld where monsters, Titans, and the truly monstrous human souls were consigned. They know He can do it. But they also appear to believe that He might show mercy on them. Isn't that fascinating? The demons trust who He is enough that they know He might show mercy on them. The context I think we're missing here through our own learned prejudices is that, and what Jesus Himself recognized, is that the demons themselves were suffering too. Perhaps they were trapped with the man just as much as the man was trapped with them. Maybe what we're missing here is that the demons were the ones asking Him for help, not the man who wasn't in control at the time.

     (This reminds me of a case of Dissociative Identity Disorder I once heard about from my Abnormal Psychology professor in college. It was actually one of her patients. The alternate identities came to the psychologist looking for help when they couldn't rouse the person's main or original identity or self. They were actually scared for that personality, didn't know what to do, and sought the therapist ought themselves.)

     And that trust was not misplaced. Notice they ask Him to send them into the pigs. Why can't they just leave and do it themselves? Because they're trapped there. And Jesus has compassion. He doesn't send them into the Abyss. He doesn't "torment" them further. He just releases them from the man, and the man from them. He sees their suffering as well as the man's and He has compassion on all of them.

     But the demons are not "healed". They receive the mercy they ask for, but they are still suffering, still angry, still fearful, and once in control of the pigs, the pigs destroy themselves. This wasn't Jesus' doing. This was the demons' doing to the pigs and themselves through their own choices.

     The man however is free from the demons. He begs to go with Jesus, but Jesus tells him to go home and tell them what happened to him. I could be wrong, but I suspect this is because the man is a Roman. This is more of an act of compassion than it seems. The man has been suffering for a long time, and he needs to time to be with his own people and heal rather than come under scrutiny as a gentile following Jesus.

Fallout and the Problem of Evil

 If you're a Fallout player, chances are you're also a fan of the Amazon T.V. series. They've done an amazing job of it. In the most recent episode there's a scene where the main villain has taken people from the wasteland and plugged a mind control device into the back of their heads in order to reprogram them into happy, harmless, productive members of his ideal of society. In this episode, one of the main characters, Lucy, who also happens to be his daughter, is abhorred that he's done this. She's abhorred that he's taken away their free wills, their personalities, and everything which made them who they were and turned them into whom he thinks they should be. Are they happier? They certainly think so, but they're no longer the people they were. To underscore his justification for it, he brings in two members of rival gangs already implanted with the devices. These devices haven't been activated yet. The two begin to try and kill each other. Lucy tries to get them to see reason, to talk them down, but they're not even listening. Her father then tells her, all you have to do to make them stop is "push the button."

     One of the arguments against both the goodness of God and His omnipotence is the question, "Why does God allow evil and suffering?" Honestly, this episode of Fallout illustrates the answer perfectly. Yes, He could "push the button," but it would be just as much an abomination to Him as it was to Lucy if not more so. In order to totally eliminate "evil" in the world, He'd have to wipe our personalities and take away our free wills. He'd have to do to us what her father was doing to the Wastelanders without their consent, violating them, and in the process destroy each and every individual. Honestly, only human beings would think that was an appropriate solution to the problem of evil and suffering.

     Lucy couldn't handle it. She pushed the button to get them to stop. But that's a button that God will never push. He wants our voluntary cooperation and will not violate or destroy our free will to get it. So yes, He will let us hurt ourselves and each other, because the consequences of the alternative are unthinkable to Love Himself.

A Message From The Lord, "You Still Aren't Listening..."

 This message was given to me tonight from the Lord. It wouldn't let me go. Believe me or don't. Here it is:

“You still aren’t listening. You harvest what you plant. If you plant apple seeds, will they grow a banana tree? If you plant carrot seeds, will they produce a rose bush? Again and again, I’ve told you how you are to live, what is the best way to live, and you refuse to do it. I told you explicitly to love your neighbor as yourself. I told you explicitly to love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and to not return evil for evil, because I will be the one to repay. You did not listen. If you planted cruelty, why do you expect mercy to grow? If you planted greed, why do you expect to harvest generosity? Rotten trees can’t produce healthy fruit, and healthy trees don’t produce rotten fruit. That’s not a moral lesson, it’s a fact of nature. Why did you expect good, healthy fruit from a rotten, diseased tree? Did I do that to you? No, you planted it there yourself and kept telling yourselves that it would give you superior fruit any day now. A rotten tree! You have let these things grow unchecked and now they are coming ripe and you don’t understand why you are getting the fruit you are! Did I do this? No, of course not! Why would I give you diseased fruit? Why would any good parent give their children rotten food? No, you did this yourself, and now you must satisfy yourself with its rot. I told you what to plant and how, and you did not listen. But now, please listen, I’m begging you. Do justice for the poor, the outcast, the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner. Love one another and be merciful to the person you don’t know. Don’t return harm for harm, but give back compassion, love, and mercy to those who abuse you. Only then will you be acting like My children. I’m begging you, turn around before anything worse happens. It won’t be Me doing it, but it will be the harvest that you yourselves planted, and it will be terrible. If you plant hatred, you will harvest suffering to your own destruction. Doesn’t even your own history teach you this? Even if you don’t see it, your children and your grandchildren will, and you will bring it upon them. Not because I wish it, but because you planted it. Uproot these rotten crops and plant healthy ones that will preserve you and yours. Love, don’t judge, forgive, be fair to one another. I’m begging you. Listen to Me this time.”

Jesus Christ is No Myth

 Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, Yeshua m'N'zareth was born on or around May 1st, 0006 C.E. during the governorship of Quirinius over Syria, the reign of Caesar Augustus over the Roman Empire, and most likely the last days of the rule of Herod Archelaus. He was born during the census of Quirinius in 6 CE when the Kingdom of Judea was divided by the empire into Iudaea, Samaria, Galilaia, the Decapolis, and the coastal cities with Caesarea as the local seat of imperial power. He was crucified on April 3rd, 0033 CE.

     From the DNA testing on the blood samples taken from His burial cloth, he shared a common ancestry with the modern Druze population that live near present day Nazareth in Israel through his mother. His blood type was AB. From an analysis of the image on that shroud, he was 5'8" tall give or take.

     Most importantly, he existed in history. While there are many stories and many assumptions about Him, the fact remains that He was and remains a real person who lived in the early first century. He was really born. He really taught, and He really left an impact on everyone who heard and knew Him.

     The man Himself was no myth, and HIs disciples passed down His teachings both orally and in writing, teaching others to follow His Way of living. We know this from both their writings and the writings their own students left behind. 

     It is this Jesus, the very real, very historical human being that I choose to follow, chasing Him down as best I can to separate Him from all other versions of myth, legend, and outright fabrication. It is this Jesus who rebuked the Pharisees and Sadducees, the political and religious leaders who had previously driven Judea into a civil war. It is this Jesus who ate with outcasts, taught voluntary poverty, detachment, and love for all others no matter who they were. It is this Jesus who prayed for His disciples to be one with Himself, the God and Father, and each other, and taught them how to live in that union. It is this Jesus whose coin covered eyes watch us hauntingly from the photographic negative of His burial shroud.

     Sometimes, I think that many Christians forget He is no myth. Sometimes I think they like their own version of Jesus, whatever that may be, instead of the photographic and DNA evidence of the man whose image was burned into the very tips of the fibers of His burial shroud by the intense, split-second flash of coherent light emanating from His corpse as it vanished from its folds on April 5th, 33 CE. I think they prefer the comfort of being able to control the narrative of their version of Jesus better than the narrative of the Man with genetic ties to ancient Nazareth whose face and image stares at us still two thousand years later.

     No matter what anyone says about Him, no matter how they might try and obfuscate, corrupt, twist, or invent Him all over again, or just pretend He never existed at all because they're so angry at "Christians;" no matter any of this, He is no myth. He is not a myth or a legend which belongs to Evangelical Christians, Catholics, Orthodox, or any other religious sect. He wasn't European, He wasn't African, he wasn't whatever you want Him to be. He was an almost 28 year old, Syriac and Greek speaking Middle Eastern man with ancestry near Nazareth and culturally first century Judean who walked the length and breadth of first century Roman Judea, Galilee, Samaria, the Decapolis, and the Coastline for almost three years teaching and demonstrating love, compassion, and how a human being is supposed to live, who was arrested by his own religious and political leaders and railroaded into being crucified by the governing authority under threat of riots. His birth was no myth. His death was no myth. And, as His burial shroud remains empty to this day and only one event could have caused the three dimensional image of His corpse to have imprinted on it, His resurrection was no myth either. A person may scream and cry and shout about it all they want. These facts remain true.

     And because He is no myth, He is the Man whom I will strive to emulate, mimic, and be like. He is the Man that I have taken oaths to. Not someone's interpretation of Him, not someone's version of Him, the historical Man Himself.

     Because He is no myth.