Male Headship: a Comparison with Christian Teachings of Long Ago

Over the last three years or so, I have read a number of essays online in support of male headship in the church and home, and interacted with many supporters of male headship in comments on forums and blogs.  The comments made to me and others by supporters of male headship as God's divine plan and design, usually fall into a few general categories.  These are as follows:

That the Church has traditionally, for 2000 years prior to the the current age, supported male headship.

That there is nothing wrong with male headship itself, and that protests against it are really about the abuse of male headship by some men, and not male headship itself.

That those who oppose male headship are capitulating to our modern, godless culture.

That women are designed by God to be under male headship and are happiest when they embrace that design.

That the early chapters of the Book of Genesis establish God's principle of male headship. 

That the entire Bible clearly and plainly supports male headship, and those who resist it are going against the Word of God. 

I have by and large addressed the actual substance of most of these arguments in many of my blog posts here.  Today I'd like to look at them in another way.

I want to make it clear from the start that I am not judging the motives of any of my complementarian brothers and sisters, except insofar as I am commenting on common motives of the human race in general, in its fallen condition which I and my fellow egalitarians also share.  I am not comparing the morals of complementarianism or of complementarians, to the morals of any other group.  I am not calling anyone a racist.  I am not questioning the sincerity of anyone's Christianity or the way they follow Christ.  

But I want to look at the arguments above, by comparing them to the arguments of another group from 150 years ago in the United States.  I want to point out that the makers of those 150-year-old arguments were, according to every criteria an evangelical Christian would use  today, devoted and upstanding followers of Christ.  Many of the people who sincerely made these arguments will, I have no doubt, meet us one day in the new heavens and new earth, as our brothers and sisters, lovers of Christ and dearly loved by Him.  But they were mistaken-- and I believe every reader of mine, egalitarian or complementarian, Christian or non-Christian, will agree that they were mistaken.

I refer to the arguments in the book (available at Google Books online) called A Scriptural, Ecclesiastical and Historical View of Slavery, by John Henry Hopkins, D.D., L.L.D., New York: WI Pooley & Co. (1864).


Before beginning, however, I would like to state why I am making this comparison by quoting egalitarian Christian leader Kevin Giles, who attended a complementarian Christian conference in Melbourne, Australia in October 2010.  His thoughts are recorded on Google Docs in this reply entitled "Kevin Giles replies to the Melbourne Hierarchical-Complementarians," and he states on pages 32-33 this profound thought regarding human sinfulness and weakness as it has played out historically for thousands of years (human weakness in which I share just like everyone else):

"Once [human] power over others is attained, it is only relinquished when it becomes impossible to maintain.  The more pressure applied to share power, the more reasons are thought up to justify the power held, and the more hostility to opponents is shown. . .  [I]n the southern states of America in the 19th century evangelicals led the opposition to the emancipation of the slaves, insisting the Bible sanctioned and endorsed slavery. . . They found much in scripture to support their ideas.  Nearly all the evangelical clergy in the Old South were convinced that slavery was taught in the Bible, and many in the northern states as well.  It took a civil war and the loss of over a million lives before these Christian men were forced to give up their power over their black slaves, and it took nearly 150 years before the Southern Baptists openly admitted they had been wrong to appeal to the Bible to justify slavery.  Men resist at all costs giving up power over others.  Another example is Apartheid.  In South Africa the Apartheid ideology was devised and institutionalized by Reformed Christians.  They wrote extensively, arguing that the Bible taught the separation of the races and that some should rule over others.  Appeal was made to a supposed 'order of creation' that set white men over black and coloured people.  These white Reformed Christians only relinquished power when the economic and political pressures became impossible to withstand.  Now in South Africa is is hard to find a Reformed pastor or theologian who is not ashamed that such repeated and insistent appeal to the Bible was made to justify what is unjustifiable.  It is undeniable that as a general principal, men resist at all cost giving up power over others.  And if they are Christians, try to find justification for their power by appeal to the Bible."  [Emphasis added.]


As a white person, I belong to a race that has, male and female alike, historically resisted at all costs giving up power over others.   Recognizing me as a fellow-traveler in human frailty, my readers will, I hope-- in a spirit of intellectual detachment-- simply read the general arguments listed below, followed by quotes from Rev. Hopkins' book in a similar vein, and see the similarities.  (All emphasized words in the quotes below were emphasized in the original.)

The Church has traditionally, for 2000 years prior to the the current age, supported male headship.

"But the Word of God has not changed; the doctrine of the Apostles has not changed. . . I do not respect your departure from the old and well-settled rule of the Church. . . . I know that the doctrine of that Church was clear and unanimous on the lawfulness of slavery for eighteen centuries together . . ." p. 47.

 There is nothing wrong with male headship itself, and protests against it are really about the abuse of male headship by some men, and not male headship itself. 

"[My] whole object . . . was to prove, from the Bible, that in the relation of master and slave there was necessarily no sin whatever.  The sin, if any, lay in the treatment of the slave, and not in the relation itself.  Of course, it was liable to abuse, as all human relations must be. But . . . thousands of our Christian brethren who held slaves were treating them with kindness and justice, according to the Apostle's rule. . .  I held it to be a cruel and absurd charge to accuse them as sinners against the Divine law, when they were only doing what the Word of God allowed, under the Constitution and established code of their country."  p. 45.

Those who oppose male headship are capitulating to our modern, godless culture. 

"Who are we, that in our modern wisdom presume to set aside the Word of God . . . and invent for ourselves a 'higher law' than those holy Scriptures which are given to us as 'a light to our feet and a lamp to our paths,' in the darkness of a sinful and polluted world?" p. 16.

"In religious truth or reverence for the Bible, the age in which we live is prolific in daring and impious innovation. . . We have heard the increasing clamor against the Bible, sometimes from the devotees of geological speculation, sometimes from the bold deniers of miracle and prophecy, and, not least upon the list, from the loud-tongued apostles of anti-slavery." p.48.

Women are designed by God to be under male headship and are happiest when they embrace that design.

"The eldest son of a royal family is in due time king, and his brothers forthwith become his subjects.  Why should not the same principle obtain in the races of mankind, if the Almighty has so willed it?  The Anglo-Saxon race is king; why should not the African race be subject, and subject in the way for which it is best adapted, and in which it may be more safe, more useful and more happy than in any other which has yet been opened to it, in the annals of the world?" p. 32.

The early chapters of the Book of Genesis establish God's principle of male headship. 

"The first appearance of slavery in the Bible is the wonderful prediction of the patriarch Noah: 'Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren' . . . the fulfillment was reserved for his posterity, after they had lost the knowledge of God and become utterly polluted by the abominations of heathen idolatry.  The Almighty, foreseeing this total degradation of the race, ordered them to servitude or slavery under the descendants of Shem and Japeth, doubtless because He judged it to be their fittest condition.  And all history proves how accurately the prediction has been accomplished, even to the present day."  p. 7.

The entire Bible clearly and plainly supports male headship, and those who resist it are going against the Word of God. 

"[We must refer] the question to the only infallible criterion -- the Word of God. . . . I proceed, accordingly, to the evidence of the sacred Scriptures, which, long ago, produced complete conviction in my own mind, and must, as I regard it, be equally conclusive to every candid and sincere inquirer." p. 7.

"[We condemn] the loud and bitter denunciations of our anti-slavery preachers and politicians, calling themselves Christians. . . For they. . . set themselves against the Word of God in this matter. . . . " p. 16.


Having finished this, I'm very much afraid that I cannot help but have given offense-- and I sincerely apologize.  But I believe this comparison is one that I, in all honestly and in my best integrity, have to make.  If anyone thinks I am pointing fingers, my last blog post "My Wish-I-Hadn'ts" will show you that my other three fingers are to the best of my ability, pointing back straight at me.

I know that our Lord Jesus has mercy on us all.

My Wish-I-Hadn'ts

I have, over the course of years that I've been a Christian, changed the way I think about a large number of things.  Some of the beliefs I used to hold caused me to treat people (or even myself) in ways that I'm sure now were not what Jesus wanted.  Though I'm sure I have His grace and forgiveness for these things, that doesn't change the harm I now believe I did.  So here are some of my regrets.  Some of them, as I look back, make me laugh or shake my head; others make me very sad.  If anyone who reads this was affected by any of these things, I hope you already know how truly sorry I am. 

So here, in no particular order, are my Wish-I-Hadn'ts:

I wish I hadn't kept bothering my Catholic co-worker with invitations to my church's events, even though she had told me she had her own faith.  I thought I was trying to get her away from a false religion.  She thought I was just plain annoying.

I wish I hadn't had my pastor preach a how-to-get-saved sermon at my wedding, to the captive audience of relatives and friends who had only come to see me get married.

I wish I hadn't told my non-Christian co-worker that all men liked to be the leaders in relationships, and it took a strong woman to let them.  She didn't say anything, just gave me a funny look.

I wish I hadn't told a good friend who was engaged to be married, that she shouldn't marry the man because he'd been divorced.  We were never good friends again after that.

I wish I hadn't made friends with a girl in college for no other reason than that I wanted to convert her.  I'm glad she never found out.  (She also never converted.)

I wish I hadn't bought into the idea that any music with a rock beat-- even Christian rock-- was of the devil.  I wish I hadn't thrown away my Neil Diamond records, my Simon and Garfunkel , and even my Imperials gospel albums.

I wish I hadn't participated with the rest of the Christian audience at a creation vs. evolution debate, in jeering, booing and hissing the evolutionary scientist, so that he went away knowing Christian audiences had no kindness, no manners and no willingness to listen to points of view other than their own.

I wish I hadn't listened to my pastor when he told me it could damage me spiritually to go see The Return of the Jedi-- so that I didn't find out until years after the final movie appeared in the theatres, how the Star War series ended.

I wish I hadn't given my dad the book Evidence that Demands a Verdict for his birthday, instead of giving him a present he would have really enjoyed.

I wish I hadn't written my Christian friend who came out as gay, a letter that he never forgave me for-- a letter so judgmental and so ignorant of what he was going through, that we never spoke again.

I wish I hadn't rejected a nice shirt my mom gave me as a gift, because the picture on it looked a little "New Age" to me.   I wish I hadn't conveyed my judgment against this shirt and my lack of gratitude to my poor mom so very plainly.

I wish I hadn't treated Christians who went to other churches-- including my own sister!-- as if they just weren't as spiritual or enlightened as we were.

I wish I hadn't been so conscientious in my duties towards younger members of my church that I was supposed to be "discipling"-- but had just let them know that I'd be there for them if they needed anything, and otherwise had just let them live their lives without my oversight or interference.

I wish I hadn't joined the others in my church in shunning those who decided to leave.



So there it is.

I don't think I'm the only one who has regrets like this-- in fact, certain segments of Christianity still strongly encourage their members to act just like I acted.  So I have to ask the question-- if a form of Christianity actually leads people like me to do unloving, inconsiderate, Pharisee-like things that Jesus would not want us to do-- how well is that kind of Christianity actually following its Lord?

Perhaps we all ought to let that be our litmus test.

Forgotten Women in Church History: Katherine Zell

The Protestant Reformation is known for repudiating the Roman Catholic medieval idea that virginity was spiritually superior to marriage and family. This was good for women in that the basic roles to which they were largely confined were no longer considered base and unspiritual.  However, the Reformation's strong stance against monastic living, and their shutting down of convents, cut off for Protestant women what had been the main avenue for women's ministry.  A woman of exceptional spirituality and intelligence could no longer distinguish herself through the monastic system, as had St. Lioba or Hildegard of Bingen .  However, Protestant women still found ways to circumvent the restrictions placed upon them by Protestant teachings.   One way was to marry a Protestant leader, and this was how Katherine Zell (1497-1562) found a place for her ministry.

I was unable to find any information about Katherine Zell's early life: where she was born, who her parents were, or any other detail.  In this the Reformation bias against women in ministry may play a part, for while Roman Catholic research and documentation of the complete lives of their saints seems equally zealous for both  males and females, an early Reformation woman like Zell seems to have become of interest to Protestant historians only upon her marriage to Lutheran preacher (and former Catholic priest) Matthew Zell.  The only information I could find about Katherine Zell's early life comes from her own lips:

"Ever since I was 10 years old I have been a student and sort of church mother, much given to attending sermons.  I loved and frequented the company of learned men, and I conversed much with them, not about dancing, masquerades, and worldly pleasures, but about the Kingdom of God."

Matthew Zell was eventually excommunicated from the Catholic church for getting married, but Katherine defended her marriage by pointing out that Catholic priests of the time were notorious for their mistresses and their seductions, and that marriage to a priest was a woman's ministry that "uplifted the moral degradation of the clergy."  Matthew Zell certainly appeared to consider his wife his partner and companion in ministry: as Katherine put it, "My husband and I have never had an unpleasant 15 minutes.  We could have no greater honor than to die rejected of men and from two crosses to speak to each other words of comfort."

Katherine's primary ministry was the sheltering of Protestant refugees and traveling ministers.  According to church historian Philip Shaff in his History of the Christian Church, Reformation ministers reported that "she conversed with them on theology so intelligently that they ranked her above many doctors."  To opponents who insisted that she should keep silent, she said:

"You remind me that the Apostle Paul told women to be silent in the church.  I would remind you of the word of this same apostle that in Christ there is no longer male and female, and of the prophecy of Joel: 'I will pour forth My Spirit on all flesh and your sons and your daughters will prophesy."   

She added, with a touch of sarcasm,

I do not pretend to be John the Baptist rebuking the Pharisees.  I do not claim to be Nathan upbraiding David.  I aspire only to be Balaam's ass, castigating his master."

Katherine was also deeply involved in ministry to the poor, and she wrote many hymns, which she published in pamphlet form specifically for the common people of Germany.  But perhaps her most startling contribution was her kindness and inclusiveness towards those Christians who differed from her own group in non-essential doctrines-- a position that was not only ahead of its time, but received castigation from Protestants and Catholics alike.  To her greatest critic, Lutheran minister Ludwig Rabus, she wrote,

"Consider the poor Anabaptists, who are so furiously and ferociously persecuted. Must the authorities everywhere be incited against them, as the hunter drives his dog against wild animals? Against those who acknowledge Christ the Lord in very much the same way we do and over which we broke with the papacy? Just because they cannot agree with us on lesser things, is this any reason to persecute them and in them Christ, in whom they fervently believe and have often pro fessed in misery, in prison, and under the torments of fire and water?

Governments may punish criminals, but they should not force and govern belief which is a matter for the heart and conscience not for temporal authorities."

Katherine also stated emphatically that

"Anyone who acknowledges Christ as the true Son of God and the sole Savior of mankind is welcome at my board."

At the end of her life Katherine showed her commitment to this position by conducting a secret funeral service for a woman disciple of the "radical" sect of the followers of Kaspar Scwenkenfeld, even though she was old and gravely ill.  The city council of the town announced that they would publicly reprimand her for this as soon as she recovered from her illness.  She did not recover, however, and died at the age of 65.

Amanda at Cheese-Wearing Theology pointed out not long ago that the opposition to women such as Zell was largely because of their gender, not their teachings, and that if a male clergy member presented a similar teaching based on the same texts, his teaching would be accepted while hers was rejected.   I cannot help but wonder how the history of the Reformation might have been different if male Reforming leaders had been willing to give Katherine Zell's ideas about tolerance and freedom of conscience, the weight they might have given them if she were a man.  Perhaps the bloody persecutions of the Anabaptists and other sects could have been curtailed or even stopped.  Perhaps the sentiment "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity," which was coined by Lutheran Protestant Rupertus Meldenius more than 100 years after Katherine's death, might much sooner have become a Protestant ideal.

It seems clear to me that when Christ's church as a whole, or groups within His church, refuse to listen to the voices of their women, wisdom from God can be lost-- wisdom that could have spared much sorrow and harm.  Let Katherine Zell's life and teachings speak to us even now, and remind us of the voices that need to be heard.


Sources:

http://www.rpmministries.org/2010/09/women-of-the-reformation-part-2-katherine-zell%E2%80%94speaking-truth-to-power/

http://dev.prenhall.com/divisions/hss/app/BW_TEST/Western_History/documents/Catherine_Zell_Letter_to_Ludwig_Rabus_1556-1558.htm

http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/augustine/quote.html

Tucker and Liefeld, Daughters of the Church, Zondervan Publishing House (1987), pp. 182-184.

"Don't Talk About It"

I was in college, living in an ex-fraternity house made over into a Christian boarding house for members of Maranatha Campus Ministries.  It was 1983 or 84.

The leaders of Maranatha, Bob Weiner and Joe Smith, had come up with another new revelation that they said was from God.  They took their text from John 15:8:

"By this is My Father glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples."

Bob Weiner and Joe Smith said that by "bearing fruit," Jesus meant "making converts."  This meant, they said, that the more converts to Christ you made, the more you had "proved to be His disciple."  Therefore, those of us who had never made a convert were not really disciples of Christ.  Oh, we were saved all right, and we would go to heaven when we died, but were were all a sort of lesser follower of Jesus.  Not bearing fruit.  Not proving ourselves.  Not quite measuring up.

I and some of my friends were very upset when we heard this new teaching.  We were accustomed to taking every word uttered by Bob or Joe as the very truth of God.  They had taught us "total commitment" to Jesus, to our leaders, and to our brothers and sisters in the church.  To follow Jesus as He wanted, we must follow Him with our whole hearts, not being "lukewarm" like so many who claimed to be Christians were.

I had embraced total commitment and believed I was following with my whole heart.  But suddenly now, even that wasn't quite good enough.

I began to search the Scriptures.  Could the passage really mean what they said it did?  On the other hand, should I be questioning my leaders?  Feeling a little guilty, but also remembering that they had also taught us to read the Bible for ourselves, I looked at every passage where "fruit" was mentioned in the New Testament.  It didn't seem to bear out what they were saying.  Somewhat relieved (maybe I was a real disciple after all!), I determined to wait for Joe Smith's upcoming visit to our fellowship.  Surely if I put my questions before him, he would see where I was coming from and maybe even get back together with Bob Weiner to discuss it again.

A few weeks later, Joe Smith arrived.  We  had spent the time before his arrival scrubbing the ex-frat house from top to bottom, preparing and handing out flyers for the meetings, and praying, praying, praying for lots of new people to come, be converted, and become members of Maranatha.  Since I was also carrying a full course load of college credits and trying to keep up with my regular household chores, I hadn't had much time to think about what I would say to Joe Smith after the meeting.

I don't remember what he preached about.   But afterwards, when other church members were clustering around the great man praising him for the sermon and receiving his blessings, I approached him, shaking inside, and asked if we could speak in private for a moment.  With a kind, fatherly look, he agreed and we stepped apart a little from the meeting room, out into the foyer.

Nervously I asked him about the new revelation, about what "bearing fruit" meant.  I told him that when I had looked it up in the New Testament, in all other passages where "fruit" was mentioned in terms of "bearing" it, it seemed to be talking character traits-- about the fruits of the Holy Spirit from Galatians 5:22-23, like love, joy, peace, patience, etc.  I told him that in every other passage where "fruit" was mentioned in terms of converts to Christ, it was spoken of in terms of "gathering," not "bearing."  I also asked if he thought "proving" to be a disciple really meant "proving to Jesus' satisfaction that you were a disciple" and not "proving to the world to be Jesus' disciple."

Joe Smith let me babble on for a few minutes.  The look of kind, fatherly attention never left his face. Then, in just a few words, he let me know that I was wrong.  "I discern that you are not letting Jesus' words into your heart," he said.  "You are not responding to His words-- you are only reacting.   You need to stop, listen to the truth of what we're teaching, and let it go deep inside you.  Do you understand?"

Speechlessly I nodded.  Joe Smith was telling me that not only was I wrong about what I thought the Bible said, but that I needed to stop fighting the truth that I was not a full, true disciple of Jesus.  I needed to let this truth sink deep inside me.  I felt myself letting it do so.  And as I did, I began to weep uncontrollably.

Joe Smith smiled.  "That's it.  Let the Spirit of God touch you."

How could I tell him that I was weeping not because I felt the Spirit of God touching me, not because the truth was sinking in and changing me, but because I now believed I was a second-class follower of Jesus, a person Christ was not really satisfied with?  That all my efforts to follow Him with my whole heart were in vain unless I could make a convert?  That since I could never seem to speak the right words to make someone else want to follow Jesus, I probably never would be a real disciple?

My tears were tears of despair.

I couldn't tell him.  Blindly I turned and stumbled up the two flights of stairs to my own room in the Maranatha house.  I sank down onto the floor, and cried and cried.

After about 20 minutes of hard crying, I felt a stirring in my heart.  Then four short words out of nowhere flooded into my mind, along with a deep warmth that filled my heart to the brim.  "Daughter.  He is wrong."

A wordless conviction filled me with assurance that I knew was not from myself.  Jesus did absolutely consider me His disciple.  He was fully satisfied with me.  Joe Smith and Bob Weiner could be wrong.  They were wrong.

My tears vanished, and joy welled up inside me as I wiped my face and blew my nose.  I got up from the floor and went downstairs to help serve food.  As I ran down the steps, the deep assurance filled me again.  Joe Smith was wrong, and God had spoken to me.  I was Christ's disciple no matter what any human being said.  Even if they called themselves prophets.

But I told no one.

Not even my friends, who I knew were also upset by the new teaching.  Not my pastor, or pastor's wife.  Certainly not Joe Smith!  A leader was never to be spoken against, in public or in private.  To speak out would be to rebel against his God-given authority and to shame myself by showing a rebellious heart.

So I held my joy inside me, drinking of the certainty that my leaders could be wrong, in the privacy of my own heart.  I never felt the same way about them again.  I continued to read the Bible for myself, and if something they said didn't make sense to me, I no longer felt obligated to believe it.

I guess for me, it was the beginning of the end of Maranatha Campus Ministries.  Years later, the group would dissolve under protests from some of the pastors of individual churches that the upper leadership was too authoritarian.  But my own freedom began that night, and as I rested in the vine (as the actual context of Jesus' words about "bearing fruit" in John 15:8 said to do), I did indeed bear fruit.  Fruit of strength in my own heart instead of dependence on others.  Fruit of confidence in my relationship with Christ.  Fruit of compassion for others who were being made miserable by destructive teachings.

And fruit of understanding-- first-hand understanding-- of what "spiritual abuse" meant.

Joe Smith was right and I was wrong, because Joe Smith was big and I was small.  Because Joe Smith was a leader and I was an underling.  Because Joe Smith was an authority, and I was a nobody.

No words against Joe Smith were ever to be spoken.  If I spoke them, it was I-- not Joe-- who was in the wrong.  Joe Smith could never be in the wrong, because he was in authority.  

Spiritual abuse.

This last week, a prominent Christian leader was forced to resign amid allegations that he was having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, a prior victim of sexual abuse, who had come to him for pastoral care.  Some blog sites devoted to exposing and helping victims of spiritual abuse have posted stories about it.  And some of the comments on these sites have taken a page right out of Maranatha Campus Ministries' old book.

How dare you post something like this about a man of God?  Who do you think you are?  

This girl consented, didn't she?  And anyway, no sin is worse than any other sin in God's eyes.  We need to show mercy to this pastor.  After all, "love covers a multitude of sins."  [The fact that Jesus placed greater emphasis upon offending "one of these little ones" than on any other sin, is not taken into account. Matt. 18:6]

This pastor is a godly man!  Don't contribute to the rumors! We shouldn't be judging him, we should be praying for him and his family! [No mention is made of possibly praying for the 17-year-old girl and her family.]

You don't know what you're talking about.  God will be angry with you for bearing false witness. 

This is an internal matter for the church involved.  Stay out of it.  You are casting stones at a man of God.  You should just be quiet. 

Counselors for adult children of alcoholics will say that one of the features of a dysfunctional, codependent family is the "don't talk about it" message.

Be quiet.  This is family business and no one else's.  How dare you talk like that about your father? 

Keep the secret.  Sweep it under the carpet.  No one must see.  No one must know.

But it isn't only families that can be dysfunctional.  Churches can be, too.  And when they are, they will tell their members this same thing.  The result is what's called "enabling:"

An enabler is a person who by their actions make it easier for an addict to continue their self-destructive behavior.


It is possible to become addicted to authority.  A person who is so addicted will uphold his or her authority at all costs, even at the expense of those whom their position of authority was created to serve.   And the person who is addicted will encourage his or her followers in enabling behaviors, to make it easier to hold onto his or her authority.  When religion, God or the Bible are used to encourage enabling, in ways that bring shame, harm or misery to the enablers, this is spiritual abuse.

I agree that this pastor needs help-- but not at the expense of his victim.  And "don't talk about it" will help neither of them.  It will only perpetuate the girl's shame and misery, and enable the pastor to continue in his abusive, dysfunctional behaviors.   In Ephesians 5:1-13 Paul talks about relating to other professing Christians who commit heinous sins.  He says in verse 11-13:

"And do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them.  For it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret.  But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that is visible is light."

Paul is not saying, "The person who did the deed is a Christian, and therefore we need to keep this quiet."  He is not saying, "The deed is disgraceful, therefore you will be disgraced if you speak of it."  He is saying, "The disgraceful deed must be exposed in all its disgrace, precisely because it is so disgraceful even to speak about!"

Yes, it is disgraceful to speak of a pastor entering a sexual relationship with a vulnerable member of his flock whom he was supposed to be helping.  But it is not disgraceful to the person speaking.  It is disgraceful to the person doing the deed spoken of.   However it also brings the deed out into the light, which is the only place where healing can happen.  

I'm not saying it's ok to have a free-for-all of name-calling and abusive words about this pastor.  Two wrongs don't make a right.  But in the light is where the enabling stops.  In the light is where the perpetrator must face himself and his deeds.  In the light is where the victim can see that the shame is not hers to bear.

So to those who are saying, "Don't talk about it," I say this.

Do talk about it.  Stop sweeping it under the carpet.  The stories must be told.  Stop shaming those who tell them.  The person who is in the wrong is not above the rest of us.  He needs the light just as much as anyone.

"For the fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth."  Eph. 5:9.

What About Birth Control?

Most of Protestant Christianity has taken a laissez faire attitude towards birth control in modern times, giving individuals freedom of conscience to decide for themselves whether or not to use it.  But in recent years, movements like "Quiverfull" have begun to preach decisively against birth control.  They say that the Bible says we are to receive as many children as God blesses us with, and that birth control is against His plan.  Using a question-and-answer format, I'm going to take a close look at the Scriptures they use, and also at the whole of the Bible, to see if their restrictions on freedom of conscience in this area actually hold up.

I'll start with the passage on children being a blessing, Psalm 127:3.

Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, so are the children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them; they shall not be ashamed, but shall speak with the enemies in the gate.

Children are indeed a blessing from God!  This is not the real question, however.  The question is, does the Bible teach that if we just let nature take its course, the amount of children we will have will be God’s plan for us?

Look at the curse that comes upon Eve after the Fall, in Genesis 3:16: “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. . .”

The King James Version here brings out very well what the original language actually said. A Hebrew interlinear, which gives a direct, word-for-word translation, reads this way: “I am increasing grief of you and pregnancy of you; in grief shall you give birth.” (Emphasis added.) There are actually two different Hebrew words translated “grief” in this verse (“sorrow” in the King James). They are synonyms, both meaning “labor, hardship, painful toil.” The first of these words is also used of Adam in Gen. 3:17-18, where God says to him, “in sorrow [painful toil] shalt thou eat of it [the ground] all the days of thy life; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.” God is telling the couple that the result of their sin is hardship, labor and toil.

The words to Eve in Gen 3:16 comprise a Hebrew poetic structure in which the whole of the phrase, “multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children” refers to the whole process of childbearing, from conception to birth. It is not just talking about “pain in childbirth,” as many other translations say. The hardship and painful toil includes the whole process. This would include everything that is difficult or goes wrong for women in pregnancy, from conception to childbirth. It would include pain in labor, certainly; but it also includes miscarriage, stillbirth, difficulty in conception, and even, naturally, the "multiplication" of conceptions themselves-- the ability of the woman’s body to conceive more frequently than is safe or healthy for her, sometimes before she has even recovered from the last pregnancy.

The writers of the Old Testament recognized children as a blessing—but they also recognized all of the different hardships of childbearing (and of course, these are different for different women). “Multiply thy sorrows and thy conception” can mean pain and hardship in conception is increased, but it can also mean that conceptions themselves are increased. The fact that some women cannot conceive is part of the curse. But the fact that some women’s bodies can conceive more often than they can bear in safety and health, is also shown in the Bible to be a result of the curse; it was not God’s original plan.

But Christ came to bring justification to us from the sin that brought death and sorrow to humanity (Romans 5:12). And even before Christ came– through the ages, in fact– men have invented tools to help them deal with the toils and sorrows of tilling the ground. There is no passage in the Bible that says God, in His mercy, ever forbade men to use those tools. Neither does the Bible say God has forbidden women to decrease the toils and sorrows of their particular struggles with conception and childbirth. God does not forbid women to decrease their pain in childbirth through the tools of medication. Neither does God forbid women to decrease their conceptions through the tools of birth control.

Q:  But there was no birth control in Bible times except for coitus interruptus, and in Genesis 38:9-10, God struck Onan dead for “spilling his seed on the ground.“ This must have been about Onan’s crime of birth control ~ since the penalty for simply not giving your brother’s widow a child was only public humiliation, according to Deuteronomy 25:7.

Actually, there were many other kinds of birth control used in Bible times. The Ebers Papyrus of Egypt, which dates from 1500 BC, lists a number of barrier methods. Here is a translation of one of them: “To make a woman not become pregnant for one year, two years or three years, acacia leaves are ground fine with honey, lint is moistened therewith and placed in her vulva.”  Eerdman’s Handbook to the Bible places the Hebrews’ time in Egypt (between Joseph and Moses) from 1700-1300 BC. It is impossible, given the Israelites’ presence in Egypt during the same period that the Ebers Papyrus was written, that the Israelites could have been completely unfamiliar with the methods set forth in this papyrus. And yet the Bible says nothing whatsoever about any of these Egyptian remedies. The only time a method of birth control is mentioned is the story of Onan. I'd like to take closer look at that story.

And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother’s wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the Lord, wherefore he slew him also. Genesis 38:8-10

The context of this passage is Onan’s unwillingness to fulfill his duty in that culture to his brother’s widow. Onan married his brother’s widow and “went in unto“ her as a husband to a wife– but then emitted on the ground, “lest that he should give seed to his brother. This is sometimes compared with Deuteronomy 25:7, where the consequences of refusing to take a brother’s widow as wife are not death, but only public shame. But the situation in Deuteronomy 25 involves only refusing to marry the widow. What Onan did was much worse. He went ahead and married her, but then selfishly refused to raise a child that would be considered legally his brother’s and not his own. It wasn’t that he didn’t want children; it’s that he wanted children only for his own profit! But the woman could not marry anyone else. His act consigned her to childlessness whether she liked it or not. And it was a great deception for Onan to pretend to do his duty to his brother outwardly, but then to go back on it in the privacy of the home. It was not for simple birth control that Omar was judged by God. It was for fraud, greed, deception and covenant-breaking. The birth control was the means by which the crime was committed. The birth control itself was not the crime.

Since this is the only place in the Bible that a method of birth control is even mentioned, and since the Bible is silent about all other then-known methods of birth control– how can we say that the Bible, implicitly or expressly, forbids birth control? The vast majority of details about individual life and choices are neither commanded nor forbidden by the Bible. God permits people to decide where to live, what kind of houses to build, what to do for a living– there are no commands, explicit or implicit, forbidding these choices. Where the Bible makes no command regarding an issue of personal choice, then to take a certain position, insist it is God’s will, and expect everyone else to follow, is unfairly adding to the Scriptures and curtailing others’ freedom in Christ. (Romans 14:2-4, Galatians 5:1.)

Q:  But Psalm 127:3 still says children are a blessing! Even if we don’t have to have more than our bodies can safely bear, shouldn’t we seek to bear as many as we safely can? Isn’t the use of birth control for any other reason than the woman’s health, willfully rejecting the blessing of God and therefore choosing instead the curse of barrenness?

If “A” is a blessing, it does not necessarily follow that “Not A” is not a blessing. The apostle Paul makes it clear that choosing not to marry or have children is a lifestyle blessed by God just as much as marriage is. “I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I.” I Corinthians 7:7-8. Paul’s use of the word “widows” here makes it clear that by “men” he means not just males, but both sexes. It is a gift of God for both men and women to remain unmarried and childless, as he was. This too is a blessing from God, for “the unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit.” I Corinthians 7:34.

Also, if something is a blessing, it does not follow that an unlimited amount of that something is an unlimited blessing. The Bible says nothing like this– and it is contrary to plain logic. In Genesis 13:6, it tells of how Abraham and Lot were blessed of God with wealth, including sheep and cattle– but when “their substance was great” to the point where the land could not support all their flocks and herds, they were forced to separate from one another. Clearly the sheep and cattle were not an unlimited blessing, when they became too numerous for the land to support them.

We must also ask ourselves: are we being good stewards of the resources God has given us, when we have more children than we can financially support? Is it loving to the children we already have, to keep having more, beyond the point where we can give adequate attention to them all? Romans 8:14 says that those who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God. Rather than laying down a law for ourselves about never preventing conception by any means, perhaps we should prayerfully seek to be led by the Spirit as to when we should conceive, and when we shouldn’t. After all, Paul counseled in I Corinthians 7:26 that in times of distress, it is better not to make major changes in our lives. It is not always God’s best to have more, and more, and more children.

Q:  But doesn’t Malachi 2:15 say that the primary purpose for which the Lord created the institution of marriage was to “seek a godly seed”?

Here's Malachi 2:15 in its immediate context.

Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem, for Judah hath profaned the holiness of the Lord which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god. . . And this ye have done again, covering the altar of the Lord with weeping, and with crying out, inso much that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth it with good will at your hand. Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously; yet she is thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant. And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Malachi 2:11-15.

The context in Malachi 2:15 is about how the men of Judah, upon returning to the Promised Land following exile in Babylon, abandoned their wives in order to marry younger women from the peoples who lived in the Promised Land, who served idols. The passage makes two main points: 1) they were being treacherous to their wives: “She is thy companion and the wife of thy covenant,” and 2) they were profaning the holiness of the Lord by marrying “the daughter of a strange god.”

This passage is not about the primary purpose of marriage, but about the sins of covenant-breaking and idolatry. But if a “primary purpose” of marriage applies at all here, it is stated to be “companionship.” The original wives of the men of Judah are spoken of as companions to their husbands– not as mothers of their children. The Lord views this covenant made with a woman, for companionship, to be just as holy and binding as any other covenant.

As for “a godly seed,” the emphasis here is on “godly,” not on “seed.” God made men and women of Judah one in marriage so that their seed might be godly– as opposed to the seed that might come from marriage to a “daughter of a strange god,” who might choose to serve the idols of their mother’s people.

Q:  But modern birth control methods are dangerous and can be abortifacient! And natural family planning isn’t very effective. Besides, the Bible says it is God Who opens and closes the womb. Shouldn’t we trust Him with our family planning and not take matters into our own hands?

Modern birth control methods are actually pretty safe when used with a doctor's advice.  It is my understanding there is no actual medical support for the idea that hormonal birth control is abortifacient.  But even if it were, there are non-hormonal methods that work very well instead. The diaphragm, for instance, is a barrier method that has been around for decades, is safe and effective when used carefully, and is completely non-hormonal.  A woman's doctor can help her find the type of birth control that is safest for her and that she feels most comfortable with.

And as for God opening and closing the womb, there are only a few Bible texts that speak of this. Genesis 20:18 says that God “closed the wombs” of all the women in Abimilek’s household because Abimilek had taken Abraham’s wife Sarah (thinking she was his sister). Then in verse 20, Abraham prays to God, and God heals them so that they can conceive again. Genesis 29:31 and Genesis 30:22 refer to God opening the wombs of women who had previously been barren (Leah and Rachel). Afterwards they both had more than one child. The text does not say God had to reopen their wombs each time. Finally, 1 Sam 1:5-6 says that God had closed Hannah’s womb, but when she prayed, God “remembered” her and she conceived (verse 19). Later the text says God “visited” Hannah so that she had three more sons and two daughters (1 Samuel 2:21).

Reading these texts together, they do not indicate at all that God opens every woman’s womb each time she conceives, or that He closes every woman’s womb every time she does not conceive. These texts are not about normal female fertility at all. Instead they speak specifically of barrenness and God’s specific acts to cause or heal barrenness at certain times, in certain women, for reasons unique to each situation. The human writers of the Bible texts knew, as we know today, that conception occurs after sexual intercourse and is based on a woman’s menstrual cycle. As with many other physical laws of our world, God set it up to work this way.

One other verse speaks of God giving conception to a woman: Ruth 4:13, in which God causes Ruth to conceive Obed, the source of David’s line of kings. This verse is speaking about a specific birth to a specific woman for a specific purpose in God’s plan. Again, Bible simply doesn’t say that God directly acts to give conception to every woman who conceives, or directly acts to stop conception in every woman who does not conceive.

As I said, there are many things in our world that God designed to work on their own. In Matthew 4:6-7, when Jesus was in the wilderness being tempted by the devil, the devil suggested that Jesus cast Himself down from the top of the temple, trusting in God to send angels to bear Him up. Jesus answered, “It is written, thou shalt not tempt [test] the Lord thy God.” Jesus knew that the Father had set up the world so that gravity would cause anyone who threw himself off the temple to die. It was set up that way, and it was going to work that way unless God directly stepped in. It was wrong, Jesus said, to force God to do a miracle.

In the same way God has set up normal female fertility so that a woman’s ovaries will release an egg to be fertilized once a month. If a fertile woman has sexual intercourse with a fertile man during a period when an egg is in her fallopian tubes, she is going to conceive. It’s not unlike the game of “Russian Roulette.” In Russian Roulette, two people will put a bullet into one chamber of a six-shooter gun, and then take turns to point the gun at their own heads and pull the trigger. If the bullet is in the right chamber when the trigger is pulled, that gun is going to go off. If you play Russian Roulette and want to live, you are certainly “tempting God”!

Having sexual intercourse without birth control is not “trusting God.” It’s more like playing Russian Roulette. If the egg is in the right place at the right time, conception will occur. For it not to occur, God would have to do a miracle. Jesus said it’s wrong to force God into doing a miracle. Tempting God is not trusting God. If you’re in a position where a pregnancy would be a hardship and a sorrow (though this isn’t to say you wouldn’t welcome the child if it came!), you don’t have to play Russian Roulette with your womb every month.

As I said before, trusting God actually means being led by the Spirit of God. Romans 8:14-16. God wants us to pray to Him for guidance on when it’s a good time to have a child, and when it’s not—just as we would with any other major decision in our lives.

So to people involved in Christian movements like Quiverfull, I would say this.  Children were precious in the Old Covenant, but in the New Covenant, Christ shows them to be so much more than simply “arrows” for their fathers. In Matthew 19:14 He makes it plain that He loves and calls children to places in His kingdom as individuals in their own right. So if we already have children, few or many, God desires that we should care for them and love them with all our hearts (Matthew 18:1-6). But if we are feeling under pressure from other Christians to have even more– Galatians 5:1 says, “Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” 

Parenting is a high calling, but no one has the right to add to Scripture and claim there is only one way to serve God– not for men, and not for women either. It is being “a new creature” that matters, says Galatians 6:15, not how many– or even whether– you have children.  Each Christian couple should be free in their own consciences to decide together when-- and whether-- to have children.


For more information see:

Eerdman’s Handbook to the Bible, Lion Publishing.

Ancient Inventions, Peter James and Nick Thorpe, Random House, 1994.

Household: Family and Household in Ancient Israel, by Michael Kruse: http://krusekronicle.typepad.com/kruse_kronicle/2007/06/household-famil.html

The Scripture-4-All Online Interlinear Hebrew Bible:http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/OTpdf/gen3.pdf

The Message of God's Kingdom: Foundational Equality

Luke 3:4-6 tells of how the ministry of Jesus began with the appearance of John the Baptist, preaching a message from Isaiah 40:4:

A voice of one calling in the desert,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.
Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill made low.
The crooked roads shall become straight,
the rough ways smooth.
And all mankind will see God’s salvation.'

This passage speaks in terms of land, roads and paths as a metaphor for God's salvation. God will fill up the low places and bring down the high places, straighten the crooked and smooth the rough. It envisions the coming God's salvation (the coming of the Messiah which John was proclaiming) in terms of a great leveling. Applying the metaphor to humanity, then:  the message is that human differences in status, one higher and one lower, will no longer matter. Paul speaks of the same sort of thing in 1 Corinthians 1:26-29: "Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him."

And this isn't just about everyone being the same in what we call "spiritual salvation" -- being saved by grace through faith. Joel prophesied this in Joel 2:28-29 (which Peter then preached in Acts 2:16-21 as having been fulfilled):

I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days.

Not just in salvation, but in the pouring out of the Spirit, God promises to bless all His people.  "There is no favoritism with God," says Ephesians 6:9 (which, as Retha over at Biblical Personhood so beautifully points out, is the concluding sentence of Paul's household codes in Ephesians, showing us that Paul was teaching his readers how to work within a human system of favoritism, not God's).

In the Old Covenant, God set aside one people, then one family out of one tribe of those people for priesthood, and another family out of another tribe of those people for kingship.  But now we are in the New Covenant.  Members of every tribe and language and people and nation are made into "a kingdom and priests to serve our God."  Revelation 5:9-10.  Peter said in Acts 10:34, after God had poured out His Spirit on Gentiles, "I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts those from every nation who fear him and do what is right."

Paul states this as a foundational truth of the Kingdom of God in 2 Corinthians 5:16-17: "So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view [other translations say, "according to the flesh"].  Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come.  The old is gone, the new is here!"  Paul tells the Galatians that he "opposed [Peter] to his face. . . for before certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles.  But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles. . . ." (Galatians 2:11-12).  Peter was regarding both the Gentiles and himself from a worldly point of view, or according to the flesh.

But Paul explains later in the same letter, "So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. . . there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. . . . [W]hen the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship."  Galatians 3:28-4:5  A footnote in my Bible adds, "The Greek word for adoption to sonship is a legal term referring to the full legal standing of an adopted male heir in Roman culture."  Paul is saying that all who are in Christ Jesus-- Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female-- have received the same promise of the adoption to sonship.  No one who has faith in Christ has any lesser legal standing, powers or privileges than anyone else. 

This is why Paul counsels the believers in Philippians 2:3, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.  Rather, in humility value others above yourselves." Jesus had taught in Matthew 18:2-4, Mark 10:15 and Luke 18:7 that everyone who wants to enter the Kingdom of God must do it as a little child.  Little children had no status, powers or privileges in that day, so Jesus' words amounted to a statement that we all must lay down our earthly status, powers and privileges in order to enter the new creation Kingdom.

The essence of the Kingdom message is this:  "Stop looking at yourself in terms of status, or lack thereof.  Stop regarding others in terms of their power or position.  Stop expecting to be treated with respect based on your status in the world, and learn to treat all others with respect-- regardless of their status in the world." Paul made it especially clear that he understood this when he refused to have followers who said, "I am of Paul," stating that those who insisted on distinguishing leaders or having jealousy of place or position were "mere infants" and "still worldly."  This idea is so pervasive throughout the entire New Testament that it must be regarded as one of its foundational teachings.

But many Christians believe that God, universally and timelessly, has chosen men to have leadership authority in the church and home, and women to be followers under that authority.   Some even consider it an essential tenet of Christianity that men are meant to lead and women are meant to follow-- so much so that they question whether those who disagree are truly committed to biblical Christianity.  They base this doctrine on a few short texts: 1 Timothy 2:12-15, 1 Corinthians 11:3, 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, Ephesians 5:22-23, Colossians 3:18, Titus 2:4-5 and 1 Peter 3:1-6.  They believe these seven texts create an exception to the Kingdom message of no favoritism: that in this one area, we are to view certain believers according to the flesh.   They say that Galatians 3:28 refers only to spiritual salvation.  They say that Joel 2:28-29 and Acts 2:16-21 restrict the outpouring of the Spirit to only what is mentioned in those verses: prophecy, visions and dreams.  They say that God does not and will not pour out any spiritual leadership gifts upon women, except so that they may lead other women.

Apparently the idea is that though we must become as little children to enter the Kingdom, the Kingdom itself then confers upon men, based on their maleness alone, new powers, privileges and status that women cannot have.

What we tend to forget is that we're in a completely different situation than the original readers of the New Testament.  We live in a society where men no longer are considered to have primacy and power, and where women are no longer relegated to the home and children.   It's easy, therefore, to read these verses as if they were against the mutuality of our culture: as if they were counter-cultural statements about God's divine plan for the Kingdom-- statements that place male authority firmly within the Kingdom, to be held against all modern cultural changes.

But how would these passages read if you had always lived in a society where women were required to be not just submissive, but obedient to their husbands?  Where freeborn little boys grew up knowing they would one day become masters of their homes, wives, children and slaves?  Where women were not only forbidden to teach (except in the temples of their goddesses), but viewed as less than fully virtuous if they spoke in public at all?

I think if we lived in those days, it would be much clearer that in light of the Kingdom principle that all believers have the same status before God, the New Testament writers were teaching believers to make necessary concessions for the sake of the church's reputation in the cultures they lived in, and yet without compromising new-creation mutuality.   If you were a new believer in the early 1st century, might you not be saying, "My husband/master has become a believer and has laid down his earthly status.  Does this mean I still have to follow the Emperor's law and obey him?"  Peter's words in 1 Peter 2:12-13 encapsulate the New Testament response: "Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds. . . Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human authority."  

As I look back upon history, it seems to me that the Kingdom principle of the equality of believers has had a profound effect, over time, on the notion of the equality of all human beings.  It is not that our modern culture, by insisting on the full, functional equality of women, has somehow corrupted the Kingdom message as it should be understood in the church.  On the contrary-- the church, ever since the passing of the first Apostles, has been finding ways to exclude women from Kingdom equality.  But our Western cultures today, having imbibed deeply of the Kingdom teaching of equality and applied it to all humanity, are now calling out the church on her hypocrisy.

Maybe it's time we listened.

My Cousin's Bar Mitzvah

"Isaac, called to the Torah as a Bar Mitzvah, July 7, 2012."

These words, printed on cards at my 12-year-old cousin's entrance into Jewish adulthood, marked the beautiful celebration my family and I participated in last week.

"Torah," of course, means the first five books of the Hebrew Bible-- what Christians call "the Law."  But it turns out that the word "torah" doesn't mean "law."  It means "learning," and Jewish people treat the Torah as a tremendous gift of God to be celebrated with delight and reverence.  In fact, they treat all forms of learning with joy, and a person's individual, special learning or talent in any area is called his or her "torah."  "Bar mitzvah" means "son of commandment," and it refers both to the ceremony and to the boy undergoing it (a girl would be a "bat mitzvah").  Years of study and preparation go into this one day of joyous fulfillment.

My family isn't Jewish, nor is my husband's-- but each of us has a relative who married someone Jewish.  My Jewish relatives have always lived far away, so I had never been to a bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah before.  I was deeply impressed.

The bar mitzvah started the evening before, at the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath.  We went to the local temple and were led in song by a warm, kind woman rabbi dressed in flowing purple, playing the guitar.  She showed us that temple's Torah-- a tall scroll wrapped in cream-colored velvet with gold thread, topped with silver covers for the two poles, kept in a beautiful wooden cabinet called an "ark."  The Torah was made of lambskins, sewn together with deer sinews, and written by hand in ancient Hebrew by a scribe who used ink made of oak galls, as Torahs have been made for thousands of years.  (My cousin learned to make this ink as part of his studies.)  The rabbi seemed lit from within by joy and peace as she sang the ancient prayers in Hebrew, which we tried our best to follow in our transliterated prayer books.   The English translations of many of the prayers were familiar, from the Psalms or other portions of what I know as the Old Testament.  Shabbat shalom -- peaceful sabbath-- were the words on everyone's lips.

After the service we each drank a small cup of wine or grape juice to consecrate the Shabbat, and then a long, braided rope of sweet bread called "challah" was shared.  When the bread was broken, we each reached out and touched the person next to us until everyone was touching someone who was touching the challah.  Then we shared the bread by taking a piece, tearing off a small bit, and passing it to the person next to us.  I felt a strong sense of community and connectedness as we did this.  It made me wish my own church's communion ceremony could be shared more in this way, so that it would be communion not only with the Spirit of God, but also with one another.

The next day we met in the morning at a local lodge, since there were too many of us to fit in the temple.  Dressed in our best, we again followed the songs in the prayer books as the rabbi led them.   Isaac was introduced as the Bar Mitvah, and was given a new tallit (prayer shawl) and yarmulke (prayer hat) by his parents.  Then the Torah, which had been brought to the lodge for the event and placed in a temporary "ark" (a table with blankets over it) was carefully uncovered and given to  Isaac's mother.  She carried the Torah in procession through the aisles, as people reached out with their prayer books or the tassels of their prayer shawls and touched it, then kissed the book or shawl.  I was again struck by all the joy, and the naturalness with which people enjoyed their traditions.  Evangelical churches tend to pride themselves on not having traditions (though we have them, just the same-- we just don't call them that), and I couldn't help feeling that we are missing something, or have lost it.  The evangelical branch of Christianity originally turned from tradition and liturgy because of a feeling that the traditions and liturgies had become more important than the meanings behind them-- but I felt no sense of that in this ceremony or the people celebrating it.  They knew the difference, and they were not afraid of tradition, but let it help them realize the meaning behind it, not obscure it.

After the procession the Torah was brought back to the stage, or "bimah,"and reverently "undressed" by removing its silver caps and velvet cover, then unrolled on the table. Then groups of people were called to the stage-- Isaac's cousins, aunts and uncles, teachers, etc.-- where a representative of the group would read in English a portion of the story being shared (it was the story from Numbers 22 about Balaam and King Balak who tried to get him to curse the Israelites as they passed through Moab).  Then a Jewish person would chant or sing a portion directly from the Torah in Hebrew, using a silver pointer to find the words on the scroll.  The rabbi would bless each group, which would then leave the stage as the next group came on.  As Isaac's cousin by marriage, I was in one of the groups.  The rabbi enjoyed very much seeing the multitude of Isaac's family and blessing us all.

Finally, Isaac himself was called to read from the Torah for the first time.  He did very well, and I can only imagine his emotion as he performed this rite of passage into adulthood.  His parents gave him words of advice from their favorite quotations (his father broke down in tears, which was very sweet and moving), and the rabbi blessed them. Isaac then gave a teaching from research he had done, and then the Torah was "dressed" and rolled up again and given to Isaac to carry in procession though the aisles a second time.

The ceremony concluded with a delightful play, in costume, by Isaac and his friends, re-enacting the story of Balaam, his donkey, the angel, and king Balak.  If I tell you that Balak's emissaries were re-cast as mafia thugs, bribing Balaam with a briefcase full of play money, you will get some idea of the tone.  We all laughed and laughed.

I was so proud of Isaac; he handled himself confidently and well throughout the whole event, which lasted two hours!

We had a light luncheon of traditional Jewish foods, and later that evening a huge party with feasting and dancing and people being lifted on chairs and carried around. Great fun. There was a cake made to look like a Torah scroll, and cookies with Stars of David on them.   My family and I helped clean up, and went back exhausted and happy to the aunt-and-uncle's house where we were staying.

I think the thing that made the greatest impression on me was how easy it was to worship with these spiritual cousins of my own faith.  I felt the presence of God in the singing, and I easily entered into the enthusiasm of the praise.  The Jewish worshipers so clearly loved God and one another.  Also, it was fun!  I'll always remember this event as one of mingled holiness and joy, in the celebration of faith and family.  I'm honored to have been a part of it.