What are you going to do?

A few weeks ago I posed the question “What do you want to do?” From the responses, it is easy to see that some of you are eager to take on the challenge, while there are some who advocate more prayer and more reflection.

Remember that Southern Baptists are the largest Protestant denomination, and what they teach in their seminaries are taught to those who will pastor your church, and influence your denomination. So, while you may not be Baptist, it is likely you will be influenced by what they teach.

I want you to read what two great Baptist men (in my estimation) have to say about challenges.  Please take a minute to read what Marv Knox of the Baptist Standard wrote in his editorial this past week:

“But God never told people to play it safe. Not in this life. God always assigned ominous and dangerous tasks. God told Abram to leave home and family for a new land and future. God set Moses up against the leader of the most powerful nation. God sent the boy David to battle a giant. God commanded the prophets to rebuke wicked kings. In one famous parable, Jesus praised two risk-takers and condemned the person who played it safe (Matthew 25:14-30). Jesus sent his followers into a ferocious world, where they would be persecuted by the religious establishment and challenged by an empire’s army. God repeatedly led the Apostle Paul on dangerous journeys into hostile territories.”

Now read what the great Baptist professor Leon McBeth had to say:

From the Angle of the Future, We Must Loose You

I think the time is past when a man can speak about the role of women. For generations, men have defined you and defined your role. Men have interpreted the Scripture passages about you; men have passed the laws that determine your rights in society; men have interpreted your place in history; men have decided what you could do, say, wear, or own. Men have pronounced the verdict on whether God can call you and if so, to what; men have decided if you could serve as deacons, teachers, or ministers. We have jello-molded you to what we think you ought to be.

I feel very deeply that the time has come for a moratorium of men making authoritative pronouncements about women. You must do your own speaking. You must define your own roles. You must become biblical scholars and interpret for yourselves, and for us, what it means to be a woman; you must research Baptist history and recover your part of the heritage; you must discern how God is dealing with you; you must determine if God is calling you and if so, to what; and you and only you can determine your proper response to God’s call. Leon McBeth (1987)

What are we going to do?

We have our options.  We can play it safe or we take care of our own futures. Dr McBeth laid out the course in 1987 and we have done some of that.  But the opposing voices are very loud.  John Piper, Wayne Grudem, Al Mohler, Mark Driscoll, Paige Patterson, Dorothy Patterson, have drowned out our voices. Those are the voices that echo in our church buildings, and are parroted by young pastors who have learned at their feet.

What are we going to do? What are you going to do?

What can you do?  Commit to 5.  Urge your family and friends to Commit to 5.  Take charge. God will reveal and present other courses. Commit.

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Do as we say, not as we do

This is Memorial Day and many men and women have lost their lives in the past ten years in our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. My heart breaks for their parents, their families, and for their siblings.  Both men and women have been killed or severely injured in this war, which began as a war for our own freedoms, but which became a war to offer freedoms to the Afghans, and Iraqis.

Our sons and daughters have been fighting to obtain and maintain freedom for women in a culture that denies women dignity. It is generally thought that when we leave, women will again lose their fragile hold on civility.  As it is, young girls still face obstacles to get to school all in one piece, and the restrictions on them are tremendously great.  The gains we have fought for will be lost.

We don’t cover our women from head to toe in America because of religious beliefs. But we do in our churches.  We demand that they be ‘covered’ by a male when women teach men.  Beth Moore is reported to have said that she is covered by her husband and her pastor, and thus if some man happens to come into her presence when she is teaching the word of God, she is not asserting authority over him, but is doing what is allowed by this male covering.

I guess we could call it “the Christian burqa.”

Today as we remember those who gave their lives for other women’s freedoms in a country that seeks to deny them the basic necessities of life – health care, education, the right to earn a living – let us not forget that we have a long way to go in our own cities, as is evidenced by our restrictive churches.

The choice is yours

Bill Leonard says in his post “A Baptist Shame” (May 24, 2012):  “But tonight I am ashamed, because I heard a Baptist pastor say things so abhorrent to the gospel of Jesus that I could not keep conscience with my Baptist forebears and remain silent. In what appears to be a May 13 sermon, Charles Worley declared: “Build a great, big, large fence — 150 or 100 mile long — put all the lesbians in there,” Then he continues: “Do the same thing for the queers and the homosexuals and have that fence electrified so they can’t get out. Feed them, and you know what, in a few years, they’ll die out. Do you know why? They can’t reproduce!”

Baptists have a lot to learn about love – the love that Christians are to show other Christians.  Instead, we choose to beat people down.  It is a choice. Just like choosing to limit women from serving in the church.  It is a choice. We can choose the slant we want from the Bible.  We can choose to find those scriptures that tell us to treat others as we would have them treat us, or we can choose to find the scriptures that tell us to stone them to death. The Bible says both, and we must choose.

A friend who is a member of a fundamental church (but which accepts women preachers), sent me an email about American Family and their fight with Home Depot over their stance about homosexuals.  She wanted me and others to boycott Home Depot.  I don’t think Home Depot would notice if I am boycotting them or not because I haven’t been in their store in years. But that is not the point.

The point is that my friend has a brother who is gay.

Her fellow church members probably don’t know that. It is never spoken of in their family.  The man’s mother has condemned her son to hell.

I was thinking about her email today when I came across the above letter from Bill Leonard and what one Baptist pastor chose to say about gays. 

We make choices. Jesus touched the unclean woman, healed the leper, talked with the Samaritan woman, taught Mary at his feet, and demanded that we look at the individual human being before quoting the law. “He who is without guilt, throw the first stone.” Or “You would run to get the oxen out of the ditch, but you love your precious law more than you love this sick person and choose to let them remain sick one more day because it is the Sabbath.”

We make choices when we decide that one interpretation of the Bible is right, even though that choice will forever limit one-half of the congregation from being full members of the family of God. We want it to be right.  We want to prohibit women in our churches.

If we didn’t want to, then we would make the choice to open our hearts and our minds and let the scriptures that speak of love, and Christ’s redemption for all men and women, rule our actions.

I would search for every scripture that gave a son and a brother God’s grace, instead of beating up on him. 

I would search every scripture that gives a woman God’s grace to be a woman in the church, called for service or not, but to be an equal member of God’s family sitting in the pew.

What will you choose? Jesus was all about choices. It is your choice. Will you choose to speak up for the oppressed women in your church? Will you be bold enough to tell others that the Bible that we say is about love, is just that.  It is about love, and you cannot love Christian women and tell them what they can or cannot do.  You must choose.

We have put the fox in charge of the henhouse

Oh well. Ho Hum.  Another pastor is getting his jollies through a hidden camera in the women’s bathroom. “He’s a good man,” the church leaders said.  He is currently on leave from his church – with or without pay is not known – but the damage he has done to all Christianity cannot take a leave.

Two women and a young girl were shown on the tape as they used the bathroom in the Sunrise Christian Reformed Church in Lafayette, Indiana. This pervert had put small cameras in the air fresheners located inside the stalls. I am not sure what kind of air fresheners the church will have to use to get rid of the odor of this soiled pastor.

Have you ever read a story of a female pastor putting hidden cameras in bathrooms to spy on men, or young boys? Have you ever read of a story of a woman pastor molesting young boys?

Yet women cannot be put in authority over a man. 

The Sunrise Christian Reformed Church has taken down its website, and I am sure the majority of those people are as upset as I am about this disrespect of the congregation’s women. What will they do?  Will they write the headquarters of their denomination to express their outrage?  Who in the church will censure this person?

My guess is – nobody.  There is nobody among Baptists who would, or did, censure their own Sammy Nuckolls ,the Southern Baptist evangelist, former camp pastor at Life Way FUGE summer camps who had a great following, and who put a tiny camera in a fake writing pen and left it in the bathroom before the woman of the house went in to take a shower.  Update on story. ”Every time I was with him at a camp, every time I heard him speak, his message was right,” Adam Fisher told WMC-TV. But his heart was rotten because as we read in the story “One of the women prepared to testify against Nuckolls in Mississippi told WMC-TV in Memphis that she was shocked to discover that Nuckolls, whom she and her husband considered a close friend, had been secretly filming her since the very first time she visited his home five-and-a-half years earlier.”  Betrayal.

We have put the fox in charge of the henhouse.

What do you think should be done to censure this pastor?  Should there be some kind of oversight group within denominations, or should this be a civil case only?  What should women do when a pastor, any pastor, abuses the trust placed in them, and photographs women in the bathroom?

What do you want to do?

I’ve posted 304 times on this blog and I’ve called for action.  We can’t stay in this hole.  We can’t keep blogging, fussing, writing comments after comments that say the same thing.  I am grateful for all of you who are so knowledgeable about the scriptures, about life, and about the situation women are in today. I am grateful that you have taken the time to read what I have to say.  But I don’t want to be blogging about this 5 years from now.

What do you want to do?

Do you want to still be reading the same stories 2, 5, 7, 10 years from now?  I don’t. 

I read a blog this week and the preacher-man was extolling his wife of 25 years on their anniversary. But in his blogposts, he wrote about biblical womanhood, and folks, it just makes you sick. His wife has certain roles that she must fit into, and rejoice in it. He has grand roles that he fits into, all greater than hers, of course.  After all, she is a woman, and women can’t do certain things.

Now why do you think a preacher keeps on writing about complementarianism (role-playing men and women)? What pleasure do they get out of it. Do they love feeling superior, because of course that is the positon they have given themselves? Do they get a kick out of telling women that “the Bible says” you have to stay in your role?

What do you want to do?

Do you want to defend yourself, and other women, for another 10 years?

If you are like me – tired of being put down by those in the pulpits, those we look up to as our pastors, and our friends – won’t you help do something about it?

What do you want to do?

Of beer and bastards

The Bastard.

Lost in the world’s wide range; enjoin’d no aim, Prescrib’d no duty, and assign’d no name.”                                                                                                         Richard Savage

We don’t use that word much anymore. It was common enough when I was growing up, and was used to differentiate children born to wedded parents and those who were not. It was frequently used as a cuss word, as J Daniel Kirk used it on his blog when he wrote about the CBE Houston Conference, which you must read.

A Bastard.  The Southern Baptist Convention calls me one.  Churches that do not recognize women as full daughters call women bastards. Look at what the writer of Hebrews says about bastards:

Hebrews 12:8 – But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. (King James Bible)

A bastard is when a father denies his children born to him outside of wedlock. He shows his love for his legal born boys and girls. He neglects the bastard kids. The Hebrews writer tells us that when a father loves all his kids equally – all his girls and all his boys – he treats them all the same way as he treats those legally born.

The father shows that love by disciplining his boys and girls.  If the writer of Hebrews was speaking today he would not emphasize disciplining the kids.  He would say something like this: “Kids, if your parents don’t feed you, if they don’t educate you, if they don’t nurture you, and if they don’t take you to the doctor when you are sick, if they don’t treat every one of you equally, you are not really a part of the family.”  

Exactly.  A bastard. That describes how women are treated in the majority of churches surrounding me.

As a grown up girl, I am not treated like the grown up boys who walk into church on Sunday morning.  Before I step inside I have to lay down my inheritance. No longer does grace cover me.  Oh, my salvation is still sure.  They are quick to tell me that.  Women are equal in salvation.  But that is where it stops.

I am a bastard. I know because my church tells me so.

Hebrews 12:8 – If you aren’t disciplined (treated) like the other children, you aren’t part of the family. (God’s Word translation 1995)

Girls have the necessities (salvation), but not the privileges and the good stuff, and not the responsibilities that the so-called legal kids have. Girls cannot be deacons, girls cannot be preachers.  Girls must submit to boys.  Girls must be quiet. Girls must not have authority over the boys in the family. Girls are bastards in the church family while the boys are the natural born heirs.

If you are tired of being a bastard in your church, tell them so. Point out Hebrews 12:8 and tell them that this verse gives you equality with the sons because you have the same father, and your father loves you equally. 

A thousand times, Yes – says Todd Still

As reported in the Baptist Standard and in the Associated Baptist Press, Dr Todd Still, speaker at the CBE Houston Conference said at our conference:

“Contrary to popular opinion, women not only have a friend in Jesus, but also find a friend in the Apostle Paul.

“It likely comes as little to no surprise that Jesus affirmed the dignity of women, treating them as those created in the divine image, and that women played a pivotal role both in Jesus’ earthly and post-resurrection ministry. It may, however, come as a surprise to some that Paul’s calling of women/wives to silence and submission is tempered—if not trumped—by his affirmation of mutuality, yea equality, of women and wives in marriage and ministry,” he said.

 “Pauline prohibitions and restrictions, I would contend, are occasional exceptions to this general rule,” he said. “As such, they are contextual, not continual; time-bound troubleshooting, not timeless delimiting; a chapter in a book, but not the whole enchilada. More often than not, there is inclusion and embrace, and it is this trajectory that we trace.”

 “If it was the practice of Jesus and Paul to join hands with women in mission and ministry, should this be our contemporary practice as well?” he asked. “Yes, yes and a thousand times yes, we will answer.”

If you believe it is time to say YES! a thousand times Yes! to joining hands with women in mission and ministry, join us!  Be a voice that is heard.