Dividing Walls

As we continue to look at the Prism of Manhood and the 3 societal events happening concurrently in our culture, we’re in the thick of the SBC’s vote regarding women in the pastorate. 

With a flood of yellow cards, a wall was built.

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But was it a protective wall or a dividing wall? 
Protective walls are good. 
Dividing walls are not.

Sad to say, sometimes the function of such walls can be remarkably blurry, and the women-in-ministry issue gets clouded by assumptions regarding women. To some church fathers, Eve resembled the spawn of Satan, more like Satan’s henchwoman designed to take down the stoic perfect Adam instead of her being God’s specially-designed suitable helper and part of what was called “very good” by God Himself.

You think I’m joking?  Wish I was.  From early theologian Tertullian (c. 155 – c. 240 AD):
“And do you not know that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert — that is, death — even the Son of God had to die.  (The Apparel of Women, Book I, Chapter 1)

Gotta hand it to those church fathers.  They sure know how to make a woman feel special.

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field.” Matthew 9:37-38

Casting women from their role as man’s most suitable helper, we risk forgetting the baby in the bathwater.  Forgetting Whose harvest it is and Who sent the workers, even ones that don’t look like what you expect or prefer.

Being a woman is not a sin.

Jesus never treated women that way, being so guarded against the sinner by her fallen nature that He lost the humanity of the woman or failed to see her love that worships with tears and pure nard. 

Nor did Jesus worship at the dividing wall, isolate one from another, and tell the Apostle Paul, “Yeah, I kinda thought it would be good to send you to the Gentiles, but then I remembered you’re a Jew and that’s not going to work.  Jews teach Jews.  Women teach women and children.” No, He destroyed the dividing walls of race (but also other dividing walls) by His blood. (Ephesians 2:13-22).

He commended a Canaanite woman’s great faith and healed her daughter as she pleaded in faith for crumbs under the table that provided food for the dogs. (Mark 7:25-30)

Women were the first evangelists, telling Jesus’ brothers that He was risen and would meet them in Galilee just has He had told them. Commissioned as evangelists by an angel, affirmed as teachers by the words of Jesus Himself.  Matthew 28:5-10.

I’d argue that the SBC needs to make room to discuss the biblical role women can play in furthering the Church in today’s world, not compromising the Gospel or reinterpreting it to suit an alphabet soup of ministry destroyers, but legitimate ways women can be suitable helpers in ministry settings beyond women and children. But first it requires seeing women without walls of division, apart from assumptions about Eve’s character or intellect, minus the arrogance in intentionally dismissing the Holy Spirit’s control over gifting, and beyond that aura of suspicion that male leaders seldom harbor with their male counterparts. There will be more to come on this topic because it’s important for the Church.

Questions for further thought:

Only one office per church is “Senior Pastor” in today’s institutional structure.  If the issue is truly authority, how will a “pastor” of evangelism, worship, outreach, or even a teaching pastor be under the authority of a Senior Pastor? Does it apply to both men and women under that authority?

If an angel and Jesus Himself commissioned women to share the Good News, remind the male disciples of what Jesus had taught them all, and commend women for their faith, how can the SBC better reflect what Jesus did?

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The “Prism of Manhood” series includes:

http://seminarygal.com/a-prism-of-manhood/
http://seminarygal.com/andrew-tate-dangerous-masquerade/
http://seminarygal.com/andrew-tate-positive-instruction-silent-conquest/
http://seminarygal.com/tim-ballard-sound-of-freedom/
http://seminarygal.com/misguided-manhood-and-the-church/
http://seminarygal.com/reviving-muscular-christianity/
http://seminarygal.com/biblical-chads/
http://seminarygal.com/riptide-and-a-line-in-the-sand/
http://seminarygal.com/plentiful-harvest-path-of-peace/