This Isn't the Way to Debate an Issue

Professor Denny Burk, on his well-known blog espousing a hierarchical view of male-female relations in Christianity, recently wrote a rebuttal of a post by Sarah Bessey (author of Jesus Feminist) in which she pushed back against the view of marriage that says "the husband is head of the home."  Here is a series of quotes from Burk's article that highlights the general stance he took:

The unblushing error of this statement is breathtaking. It is a stark denial of the straightforward teaching of scripture. . . I simply want to point out that egalitarian hermeneutics are not benign. They cater to the egalitarian spirit of the age by suppressing what the Bible actually teaches. . . We are not playing games here. The hermeneutics of egalitarianism are serious error and are harmful.

Retha at Biblical Personhood and Greg at That's It on a Cracker! have done a great job of responding to Burk's actual arguments.  But I would like to talk about something else.

Here are some of the things Sarah Bessey said in the post Burk was writing about, to voice her disagreement with Candace Cameron Bure's new book:

I believe that Candace Cameron Bure is wrong here. . . This method or strategy may well be how her marriage works – and if so, lovely – but it’s not necessarily biblical. . . Not only is the idea that wives alone are to submit to their husbands poor exegesis, it is damaging. It is damaging to the image of God carried in women and in men.

Notice what Burk does that Bessey does not.  Bessey voices in no uncertain terms that she disagrees with the hierarchical (aka "complementarian") way of reading the Bible when it comes to men and women. She states unequivocably that she believes the hierarchical view is "wrong" and "damaging." But what she does not do is attack the moral integrity of the person she is disagreeing with.  She says she believes Bure is in error; she does not call that error "unblushing."  She does not accuse Bure of being in "stark denial" of what the Bible absolutely says. She does not imply that Bure's Christian faith is somehow compromised by "catering to the spirit of the age."

The problem is not that Burk disagrees with Bessey.  The problem is that Burk couches his opponent’s arguments in such terms as “unblushing error” and “stark denial,” indicating that the opposing view isn't just disagreement or even error, but moral failing. And Burk is not the only one to use this method of debate. It starts by assuming there is only one possible way to understand Scripture unless one is actually being morally dishonest– and then uses words of righteous shock at the immorality of those who read the same Scriptures but understand them differently.  This puts the argument on a false footing from the start. The reader is encouraged not to simply examine each argument on its own merit, but to take one side because to do otherwise is sin.

Here are a few other examples, taken at random from various comments on blogs I frequent:

Paul is very clear in his writings about the role of women.Twisting his writings and trusting in feelings is unbiblical.

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[The egalitarian author] has let surrounding culture influence her view rather than the bible. Falling away takes many forms and this article is one of them.

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And another article that blatantly distorts the issue that the Bible clearly states that women are not (repeat: NOT) to be pastors in the churches.

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You ladies have really twisted scripture to fool yourselves that women can preach/teach in an official church setting. . .

This is actually a logical fallacy known as prejudicial language, which is defined as "loaded or emotive terms used to attach value or moral goodness to believing the proposition."  Words such as "twisting scripture" or "blatantly distorts" turn the simple fact of a disagreement on the meaning of a text into a moral crime.

Now of course egalitarian Christians do sometimes also use prejudicial language.  They might say a hierarchical Christian is "throwing his weight around" or "ranting" about authority and submission, for example. But it is hierarchical Christians who seem to be particularly inclined to language that implies or even states outright that those who disagree with them are in rebellion against God or the Bible or are even leaving the faith.  This may have to do with a particular approach to the Bible which theologian Roger E. Olson identifies as Christian fundamentalism (which is the position hierarchical Christians most often adhere to):

To fundamentalists, there can only be one right “biblical” belief about every given important issue of Christian life and thought. The Bible is viewed as a comprehensive source book of revealed doctrines (and ethical rules). Thus, when two Christians disagree about the Bible’s meaning as it pertains to a doctrinal or theological issue, the fundamentalist believes one of them (or both) must necessarily be misinterpreting and even perhaps dishonoring the Bible.

As I have said before, I think this way of looking at the Bible is a foundational misunderstanding of what kind of divinely inspired text the Bible actually is: that it is actually a narrative about God's redemption of mankind, inviting us to become part of the truth of that story by entering that redemption through Christ.  When we look at it that way, we become free to allow differences in belief and practice, because what really matters is Christ's redemption.  As the Bible itself says:  "Those who want to impress people by means of the flesh are trying to compel you to be circumcised. . . [but] neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation." (Gal. 6:12-15.)

To be fair, there are hierarchical Christians who do allow differences and don't resort to prejudicial language; see for example Kathleen Nielson of the Gospel Coalition addressing "My Egalitarian Friends."  Her willingness to admit that egalitarian Christians are simply "different voices . . . affirming love for the Lord and his inspired Word, as well as a desire to see that Word proclaimed with gospel faithfulness to the ends of the earth" makes her continued adherence to complementarianism look stronger than it would if she buttressed her own view by taking verbal pot-shots at the other side.

I myself believe that egalitarianism is a justice issue-- that placing men in a permanent hierarchy above women is fundamentally unjust, and I make no apology for that.  But I will admit that many Christians don't see it that way, and that many of them are sincerely trying to be as faithful to what they believe the Bible teaches as I am trying to be faithful to what I believe the Bible teaches.

The point is that if we truly believe our point of view is right, we should be able to trust it enough to let it argue for itself.  If someone feels the need to make opposing views look immoral and sinful, it can actually make their own view appear weak.

I'm hoping that many complementarians can agree with me (and with their own Kathleen Nielson) about this.  We can, as my grandmother used to say, "disagree without being disagreeable."

In the end we're all disciples of Christ, doing our best to follow Him, right? So let's not bite and devour one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in this: "you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Gal. 5:14-15.

Let's permanently lose terms like "unblushing error" and "twisting scripture."  They're not doing any of us any good.

Christian Cliches: "Lean Not on Your Own Understanding"

When I was part of Maranatha Campus Ministries back in the 1980s, "Lean not on your own understanding" was a cliche they were particularly fond of.  I remember when they were teaching us that Genesis 1:28, where God told the first male and female to "have dominion. . . over every living thing that moves on the earth," was a divine mandate meaning that today Christians are to "have dominion" in society and government, to "take over" for Jesus and make Christian principles and morality the "law of the land."  I remember shaking my head in puzzlement.  That passage doesn't say anything about human beings ruling over other human beings.  According to that passage, there weren't any other human beings back then to have dominion over! I thought.  But when I tried to express some of this to others in the group, their response was, "Lean not on your own understanding."  We were to believe what the Bible said (by which they actually meant what the leaders interpreted the Bible as saying) without question.  We were to think as we were told to think. To do otherwise was not "trusting in the Lord."  It was "leaning on our own understanding."

Another way this cliche is sometimes used is to elevate ideology over practicality; to keep people clinging to a particular "conviction" about how the Christian life is best lived, even if life itself is increasingly showing that the ideological system just doesn't work.  Vyckie Garrison, a former Quiverfull movement member, wrote about this a while back in an open letter where she commiserated with a fellow member who had tragically lost a child during a home birth:

Although we both knew full well that a big part of what makes for better outcomes in natural childbirth is when fully-informed pregnant moms are in control ~ they are listening to their bodies and trusting their instincts ~ as Christian quiverfull women, we also learned to distrust our feelings and we daily practiced dying our own selves, surrendering control, leaving the decision-making to those in rightful authority. . . Looking back, I can clearly see now how verses such as “Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, lean not on your own understanding”. . . set us up as women to doubt our own perceptions ~ to dismiss our fears as irrational or as the devil sowing seeds of distrust. Our deeply beloved belief system denied us an important safety net ~ that of our own feelings. When our bodies and our minds screamed out, “Something is wrong!” our faith calmed us down. . . .

Both of these meanings of "lean not on your own understanding" are spiritually abusive, cliched versions of scripture that divorce the meaning from its context, both biblical and historical. I don't think either of these things is what "lean not on your own understanding" is really about.

The words actually come from Proverbs 3:5-6:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.

This verse is part of a long set of instructions and counsel given by a father and/or mother to a son (see Proverbs 1:8).  Verses 7 and 8 of Proverbs 3 together form a poetic parallel-- a form of Hebrew writing in which two sentences say the same thing in slightly different ways:

Do not be wise in your own eyes;
fear [revere] the Lord and shun evil.
This will bring health to your body
and nourishment to your bones.

"Do not be wise in your own eyes," then, is basically a restatement of "Lean not on your own understanding."  The word "understanding" there is the Hebrew biynah, which refers to the grasp of knowledge. To put it in today's vernacular, what is being said is, "Don't think you have all the answers."

The problem is this.  When "Trust in the Lord with all your heart" comes to actually mean "Trust in what you think the Bible is saying without considering any other interpretation," or "Trust in the doctrines taught by the leaders of your particular movement without question" -- this is the exact opposite of the Proverb's intention.  If we really stop believing we have all the answers, this should make us more willing to question what we think or have been taught to believe. It should make us more open to the evidence and realities around us.  It should increase our sensitivity to such things as gut feelings, which are a different thing than "understanding" and which may very well come from God.

Also, the Proverb says "with all your heart."  What we mean by "heart" and what it meant in Bible times are two different things.  We think "heart" is only about feelings and instincts; we use the word "mind" when we mean our thoughts and reasoning processes.  "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding" thus is easily misinterpreted as advice to focus on our feelings towards God and to leave our reasoning out of it.  But the word translated "heart" is the Hebrew word leb, which refers to the whole inmost self: feelings, thoughts, conscience, memories, inclinations, decisions.  If our whole innermost selves are relying on God rather than on our own understanding-- whether it's our own grasp of knowledge or that of a church leader or an ideological group-- then we can listen to new input and our own reactions, learn facts and knowledge we may not have been aware of, and lean on the Holy Spirit to help us sift through it all.

I believe Paul was expressing the essential meaning of Proverbs 3:5-6 when he said, "Knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves God is known by God." (1 Corinthians 8:1-2.)   This part of Paul's letter is about how "knowledge" about food sacrificed to idols can be destructive to others-- as any form of knowledge can when it becomes elevated into an ideology that trumps actual human needs.

"Lean not on your own understanding" was never meant to support any such ideology. It was never meant to support trusting in our own grasp of knowledge-- even our knowledge of the Bible-- over trusting in the Lord Himself.

Our faith isn't supposed to be in formulas, or in how if we push the right buttons according to our ideologies, everything will be rosy.  It's when we treat faith like that that we're actually leaning on our own understanding.  Not when we're healthily questioning, listening and learning.

So let's stop acting like we have all the answers.  That way we can grow in our understanding rather than leaning on it.

Saved by Being Right: Christianity and Dogmatism

In the Christian group I belonged to in college, we believed we had all the answers.

Other Christians might differ from us in doctrine, but we knew the truth, straight from the Bible. "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it," we would say.  We even knew why everyone didn't see things the same way we did.  They were deceived.  Or they were "in compromise" with sin and were trying to justify themselves.  Or they were "lukewarm" and just didn't want to "pay the price" to really "press forward in the things of God."

I remember the time I mentioned to an older church member that I wondered about young-earth creationism.  I asked her if maybe the earth wasn't six thousand years old.  Maybe God didn't intend the "days" of Genesis 1 to be viewed as 24-hour periods?

She became very upset.  "It was evening, and it was morning, one day," was what the Bible said.  How could I possibly be questioning that?  If we were going to start changing the meaning of Bible words, who knew where it could end?  If we started to believe the wrong things, what would happen to us?

I shut up.  But I couldn't help seeing what was behind her eyes as she put me back on the straight and narrow.

Fear.

Oh, there was fear of the leadership, of course.  No one wanted the pastors to decide a demonic spirit of deception was upon any of us. They would take us into a private room where a group of the most trusted members would spend hours shouting at the demon to come out of us.  In the worst case scenario, we could be subjected to public rebuke in front of the whole congregation, or even be excommunicated.

But the fear went deeper than that.  It was in essence a fear of not believing properly-- a fear that we could find ourselves on a slippery slope towards actually falling away from Christ.

"It's very important what you believe," they told us. Whole sermons were preached on this.  We were saved by faith in Christ, and though we were supposed to enter a trusting personal relationship with Christ through that faith, what "faith" meant, ultimately, was believing the right things.  Hebrews 11:6 was constantly repeated to us:   "But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him."

Belief is high priority in Christianity.  Even apart from the spiritually abusive, controlling segments, it's high priority.  One of the most famous things Jesus said was, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." (John 3:16, Emphasis added.)  And Paul said, "If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9, Emphasis added.)

But there's a problem.  Belief, as most often understood in the modern Western world means "Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something" or "Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons." The word also has a third meaning, "The mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in another," but when we say, "I believe in God" or "I believe in the Resurrection of Christ," that third meaning isn't usually what we're talking about.

But Jesus and Paul spoke of belief primarily in that third sense.  Belief in something as an accepted truth was not nearly as important as trust and confidence-- not in a set of tenets, but in Christ, the Father God and the Holy Spirit.  Belief in doctrine was meant to spring out of that trust-- not the other way around.

If you ask most Christians straight out, they will usually say that they do believe it's trust in Christ that saves them.  And yet so many times, we live our lives as if the really important thing was what we mentally hold to be true-- or even simply that we hold the approved opinions.

And the problem with this, of course, is that if every thought and opinion must be the "right" one according to our religious group, we are in danger of being so right-thinking that we never actually think at all.

Theologian and Bible scholar Peter Enns, Ph.D. says:

The scandal of the Evangelical mind is that degrees, books, papers, and other marks of prestige are valued–provided you come to predetermined conclusions. . . that doctrine determines academic conclusions. 

Evangelicalism is not fundamentally an intellectual organism but an apologetic one. It did not come to be in order to inspire academic exploration but to maintain certain theological distinctives by intellectual means. These intellectual means are circumscribed by Evangelical dogma. . . As an intellectual phenomenon, the Evangelical experiment is a defensive movement.

How many times have you talked to a Christian who asserts that your disagreement with him or her is in fact a moral failing?  That your problem is lack of faithfulness to God or disrespect for the Bible? For many of us, it doesn't seem possible that someone could carefully and prayerfully examine a Bible text and end up honestly seeing it differently than we (and our minister or pastor) see it. 

Christians can come to believe that God gave us minds not for the purpose of learning and exploring the world He gifted to us, or for growing in our understanding of God, God's ways, and ourselves-- but for holding onto to our beliefs and dogmas against all comers. 

"Dogmatism" is the logical fallacy of "[p]roposing that there simply cannot be any other possible way of making sense of and engaging with an issue but the one you represent." Dogmatism is "[t]he unwillingness to even consider the opponent’s argument. . . the assertion that one’s position is so correct that one should not even examine the evidence to the contrary."

Dogmatism in Christianity, I think, comes primarily from fear.  If we believe we are saved by faith, and we define faith primarily in terms of having the right set of beliefs, then anything that challenges those beliefs must be resisted as evil.  Our thinking becomes defensive rather than inquiring, didactic rather than exploratory, closed rather than open.  We see our role as the instructors and correctors of others, rather than as listeners and learners.  

We all want in our heart of hearts to be listened to and understood.  But dogmatism strips us of our ability to listen and understand.  We become fundamentally unable to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. 

In the end, all we have is spiritual pride.  

And the Bible actually warns us against this.  Paul said in 1 Corinthians 8:1-2, "Knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves God is known by God."  And Jesus said to the Pharisees in John 9:41, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains."

We aren't meant to believe we have all the answers, or to believe that's even possible.  We're meant to walk humbly with God, to not think of ourselves more highly than we ought to (Romans 12:3).  We aren't supposed to be one another's mental police, but one another's servants. 

To my readers who are Christians:  if "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:6)," we don't need to be afraid. We can be free to explore, to examine, to seek greater understanding in all things.  Having a difference of opinion is not a slippery slope to heresy. Questioning is not a slippery slope to apostasy.  

Questioning is a way of appreciating the complexity of the universe God placed us in.  And allowing others to think differently is a way of appreciating our own complexity as human beings. 

"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." 1 John 4:18.  It's time to let go of fear of not being right.

Because we're not saved by being right.  We're saved by trusting in Christ.