Tag: churchyard

In All Your Right-Rightness

Posted on by Hilarey

I know several women who hate women’s retreats. It is an interesting event. I’ve had some good times and some not so great.

One I went to as a new mama had worship led by a husband and wife team the first night. He was our church’s worship pastor, and they typically sang together. After the message, the husband dressed up as an old lady to perform a comic skit like a Titus 2 older woman teaching us younger women. He held up his wife’s size-4 Christmas red negligee and said in his falsetto, “If we were having trouble with our husbands looking at naughty pictures on the new World Wide Web thing, we should just wear one of these…”

Forget the fact that I was less than three months from giving birth to my third child and regularly fell into a bed containing every known human bodily fluid… even at age 24, I knew you could not work hard enough to thwart someone else’s contrary desires when they wanted to sin. No one had ever stopped me from sinning when I wanted it. In that moment, I had a violent daydream of throwing over my chair and slamming the door on my way out. However, I’d brought a new friend whom I’d just led to the Lord. I could neither leave her there nor explain to her why we were storming out with our nursing babies.

My daydream must have reflected in my body language because an older woman behind me leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “Shhh. I’ll take care of it.”

Older men and women, speak when you see something. Your voice is needed.

On the last night of the women’s retreat, when only women were there, the worship leader kept declaring that she could feel the Spirit saying to her He wanted to do something really special. She said He was moving in our midst and had something unique for us that night.

I looked at my friend and asked her if she wanted to walk down to the lake to be baptized. She was so new to the faith that she didn’t even know about water baptism. But if it was the next step in declaring her faith—she wanted it.

When I went forward to tell the worship leader that I believed what the Spirit had for us was an impromptu baptism, she froze. When she could finally form a response, it was that she just didn’t know if women were authorized to baptize people. She suggested we wait. She would call her husband, and he would come back in the morning… we could do it first thing. I felt a little too raw to invite back the guy who blamed men’s porn use on the level of their wives’ sexiness, so I opted out.

When we returned to church the following Sunday, after our lead pastor preached on “forgiveness for the brethren” (likely thanks to the older woman behind me who took care of it*) I asked him what he thought about women baptizing people. I was genuinely curious, and completely content to live within the bounds of all the restrictions placed on women.

As a side note, I feel like men in leadership never throw each other under the bus as a professional courtesy since everyone eventually misspeaks and their turn is coming. They call it a conviction to “not touch the Lord’s anointed,” and mostly just preach forgiveness, and it’s easy to be misunderstood from the pulpit. But shepherds who don’t address it publicly are complicit. If an error was publicly clarified when preachers publicly misspoke, we would have more reverent speakers and, more importantly, congregations who were practiced at discerning truth.

My pastor told me he thought it was a good practice that when the Bible is silent on a subject, we should not speak additional rules. He did not see scripture ever saying that women could not baptize someone. Now, I see a hypothetical situation where a woman would not be able to let a man plunge her under the water.

The responsibility and consequence of leading is daunting, so I had no ill feelings toward the worship pastor’s wife who was scared about what role a woman could take. At the time, I merely saw it as quenching the spirit, not a gender issue.

I say merely, but we shouldn’t be cavalier in our interactions with the Spirit who knows the mind of God. We’re warned that it’s unforgivable to blaspheme the Spirit (think repeatedly ignoring and mis-attributing his conviction, even unto death) and Thessalonians talks about extinguishing, quenching or stifling the spirit, maybe by, or in addition to, despising prophecy. Don’t quench the Spirit; we don’t comprehend the ramifications.

But that’s just so scary: walking in the uncharted instead of the written law, letting the Holy Spirit out to play in all the uncontrolled, untamed possibility. What if we can’t control or tame the believers filled with the Spirit?!

We are to discern the will of God


We have mugs and cards that include the middle two phrases of Romans 12:1-2. “Don’t be conformed to the world,” and “renew your mind.” But notice the bookends. As an act of worship—become equipped to discern the will of God.

Here it is: “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.”

Philippians 1:9-10 also tells us the goal is to have the ability to discern, or as the Common English Bible states it, decide what really matters.

I know there’s danger when considering experience as truth instead of a fixed point of reference. And some faith movements base truth on feelings instead of doctrine. For example, “I feel good in my heart about doing this, even though the Bible condemns it.” That’s dangerous, because I know I’m creative enough to justify anything.

So, how do we follow the rules when so much is not specifically written down, like whether or not a woman can baptize someone?

What really matters


A few years ago, my Sunday school teacher was talking about the Sabbath and following the 10 Commandments. I asked him, “Didn’t God prophesy that under the new covenant, he would write the law on our hearts?” He sighed, “Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean we don’t still have to practice the Sabbath.”

It’s a common thought—but both Paul and James cautioned that if we seek to follow one part of the law, in order to be justified by it, we have to follow all of it. Seeking to be justified means you are presenting your case before God to show how worthy you are. But I would also look at it another way. Violating others with your temper while you tout sexual purity makes a mockery of Christianity to unbelievers. Keep the whole law or don’t advertise your holiness.

And even more difficult than the 613 Old Testament laws is the idea of truly embracing what Christ called the greatest commandment. Ingesting the command to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul—no dark corners withheld. And then swallowing the sincere conviction to love the icky neighbor you think you’re better than as yourself. If we filtered every action through those two, we would not hurt so many others, or so readily justify war.

The right wrongness


I’m not saying to ignore the law. Jesus said whoever sets aside the least command or teaches others to do the same will be the least in heaven in Matthew 5:19-20. But he finishes with the warning that you are going to need more righteousness than those who keep and teach the laws to enter heaven.

What I believe really matters: is don’t scramble to do right before God at the expense of humans.

The law love in Romans 14 talks about holding fast to your conviction regarding what you eat. It had to do with meat killed in ritual worship of gods. Paul says your freedom to eat meat sacrificed to idols could cause a brother or sister to stumble. And if you cause someone to stumble, you’re not walking according to love.

We could look at this verse about meat in a couple of ways. First, we could count it up as a law we accidentally always followed, and brag about how holy we are because our burger was not killed in worship of Jupiter. (Although, the next generation might say it was slaughtered on the altar of capitalism.) Or second, we could argue that the Bible is irrelevant to our modern lives.

But even though we don’t have a pagan temple in the middle of our city sacrificing animals to Jupiter, the heart of this message is still relevant if we sympathize with the emotional reaction a first century, new believer might have felt if they previously took part in those rituals. (We participate in a symbolic and often emotional ritual when we celebrate the Eucharist.) The first-century new convert no longer wants to be associated with their former deity. They see participation as returning to enslavement.

In contrast, you want them to see that they’re not subjugated to the faith system they left. They have freedom in Christ to eat anything and glorify God for the food.

You both actually want the same thing, but there’s an impasse about how to get there. Do you eat the meat to show them your freedom? “Do not destroy, by what you eat, someone for whom Christ died,” and a few verses later, “Do not tear down God‘s work because of food.” Even though you can eat it and they should be able to eat it, doing what is right is not as important as loving them.

Your rules, lack of rules, extra convictions, and obedience to the law should not destroy the faith of someone for whom Christ died. The law of love supersedes.

Here’s how I might see this applying today. One believer is convicted that we should not exploit the crops of indigenous people, destroy the earth we’re supposed to steward with packaging and transporting food, or eat animals who show affection and fear. When I’m with someone who has a strong conviction and looks to me as a believer to uphold their idea of godliness—maybe, according to my faith—I should eat as them as a way to eat with them.

Yet, even this is not a rule. There might come a time when someone is weeping over their plate and they need to be set free. Your dogmatism, coupled with thinking that you are more right, will cause just as much pain by abstaining. Oh, the wildness of the Holy Spirit. You’re just going to have to pray in the moment for direction. But it is from him, you’re going to be free, and it’s going to be in love.

The wrong rightness

Pharisee is a word for evangelicals that conjures an evil villain for anyone who went to Sunday school as a child. And we quickly condemn the caricature as a bad guy. But ignore the bearded guy with fringes on his garment and substitute the word Pastor or Shepherd for the word Pharisee. They were the spiritual leaders and scripture interpreters.

Plus, if you’ve been in a religious space more than a minute, you’re more likely to be a Pharisee than not. Afterall, we are the church.

Ask yourself if all the men who’d dedicated their lives to studying scripture and leading Israel were actually filled with bloodlust and hate. Could some of them have been trying very hard to do what was right before God? I think the Pharisees and Sadducees really wanted to do the most-right, right-thing all the time. And, they desired to lead correctly.

But here’s how that played out. They were so careful to pinch off a portion of their herb garden, to tithe mint and rue and follow the law—but then when their elderly parents needed financial help they said, “Sorry, I already gave to God anything I might have given to you.” Jesus condemned this, but not because he was against tithing.

The Pharisees also wanted to honor the Sabbath. Don’t underestimate how important this was.

Super brief and ignorant summary of a volatile topic: God wanted his creation to rest every seventh day, to let the earth rest every seven years by not farming, and to return all property and release all slaves every 49 years (7×7) and call the following year, the 50th, The Year of Jubilee. This was so important to God that when Israel failed to do it, they were exiled to Babylon for 70 years to pay recompense for the 490 years of disobedience. The exile let the land rest for the missed Sabbaths. Even though there had been some loss of Jewish control over part of the land during the divided Kingdom after Solomon died and the Assyrian Conquest, being conquered and exiled by Babylon was the most decisive loss of Jewish sovereignty. Jewish ownership of the land was tied to obedience to God’s covenant; as promised, it was revoked when they disobeyed.

This is how it looks to me when spiritual leaders and scripture interpreters use Sunday morning to emphasize their stance on hermeneutics. Parsing out every jot and tittle, concerned with reading doctrinal statements to make sure everyone knows where they stand on issues. Angst for correctness while people leave the sanctuary in tears. Good thing you’re right, church, and everybody knows it. You’re doing great keeping the law.

Exodus 19:5-6 | Deuteronomy 4:40 | Deuteronomy 28:1-9 | Joshua 1:7-8

So, sticking to the Sabbath was a pretty significant doctrine when Israel was occupied by Rome and Jesus walked the earth. I think we downplay the sincere angst the spiritual leaders would have felt. Keep this in mind when you picture them insisting on keeping the Sabbath. The stakes are high. The leaders must keep everyone in exactitude with the law.

You are not supposed to work on the Sabbath. And Jesus kept breaking this rule in preference to human need. In this scene, Jesus and his disciples are walking through a field, hungry. Some disciples grab grain and eat it raw. Technically, this is harvesting.

Technically right, and technically righteous.

Yet, weren’t they a little off? Lifting hand from bowl-to-mouth wasn’t less work than lifting from plant-to-mouth.

The Pharisees had so much zeal for correctness; instead of discerning what truly mattered.

So, about those rules…

The Pharisees should have tithed and shown mercy. But when it comes down to it, God desires mercy over sacrifice. Jesus told the Pharisees to ponder the concept because he didn’t come for the people who get it right.

The world will know we are Christ-disciples by our love, but sometimes it seems like churches would rather be known by their doctrinal statements.

I had this concept affirmed on a podcast recently where the guest, Amy Byrd, discussed having to do some internal work about what drew her to a particular denomination where she worshiped for 15 years. She described her belief that “theological precision brought her closer to God, that precision was sanctification…”

So here I wrestle, one foot out of an issue-driven church convinced that sanctification is through adherence to gender roles. The spiritual leaders and law interpreters reiterate doctrines with zeal and fervor. They have good hearts, and much is at stake.

When my husband and I lived in Prague, we spent time with missionaries who often ignored the interpretations of their sending church. For whatever reason, they let me know when they were doing it. I also have friends who went to missionary school. While they were drowning in doctrinal precision, they were told by other missionaries, “Don’t worry, it’s different on the field.” I bet household codes are just not as important in trenches. I think church is just a thing you do on Sunday; the rest of the week is beyond the churchyard.

Christ called John the Baptist a reed in the wind when John doubted and wanted clarification. I feel camaraderie with John.

Because the winds of doctrine that buffet us are also inside the church. The issues the local church wants to exalt will knock you around just as much, and enough wind will uproot a strong tree. I want to bend on the extraneous, non-salvation issues, rather than push someone who Christ died for to the snapping point. After all, Christ did not come to break off the bruised reeds or snuff out the smoldering wicks.

Here’s to living the windy wild. Mercy, not sacrifice. Love, not getting it right.

Oh, but you should still Sabbath…

Uncovering Paul

Posted on by Hilarey

Soon after 9-11, my oldest came home and prayed for the Muslims because “They make their ladies cover-up their heads.” I’m not sure where he got this, but people were turning all Muslims into caricatures of chaotic evil. It is interesting that this most grievous thing was given to my six-year-old as a prayer-worthy concern.

I first wrote about questioning my pastor regarding head coverings in my post Uncovered, and lately I realize that there have been very few pastors I haven’t asked multiple questions or wanted to dialogue “Why is (this) so?” In that instance, he didn’t know. And I don’t think he really cared. I mean, it applied to a different gender, culture and time than he did. Neither did it affect his authority to operate in the church.

Recently, I found great pleasure reading the book Vindicating the Vixens: Revisiting Sexualized, Marginalized and Vilified Women of the Bible, edited by Sandra Glahn. It was so beneficial (to me) to clarify the context of several Bible stories—and it’s the same reason I’m also enjoying Paul and Gender—Reclaiming the Apostle’s Vision for Men and Women of the Church by Cynthia Long Westfall. I’ve only just started it, and like Vindicating the Vixens, the first chapter is bringing me a completely different world-view/paradigm/cultural lens to Paul.

A fiction author I love once wrote a character to say she had no problem with Jesus. It was Paul she didn’t like. My feelings bordered on mutual—but I’ve been pressing into trusting that God is good. So, if a thing isn’t good—either it isn’t from God, or it’s misunderstood. So I ask, seek, knock, clarify. Lately, that’s manifested as reading Paul and Gender and switching my Bible app to track scripture through “the life of Paul.” So I can press in for the good about his writings.

I already knew Paul’s command in 1 Corinthians 11 to keep a woman’s head covered was more about protection and equality for the first century church than keeping a modern woman subservient in a display of culturally irrelevant, historic modesty.

Still, my head covering ignorance and a western context of systemic power disparity and exclusion made the passage difficult to digest. America’s lens was refined by beliefs like “all women are born that they may acknowledge themselves as inferior in consequence to the superiority of the male sex,” from John Calvin. So of course we looked at 1 Corinthians and said, yeah—Paul wants the women’s heads covered as a symbol of male authority. Men don’t need it since they’re directly under God… See that Calvin quote, and more, compiled by a blog I follow here.

So as we chew on the meat and spit out the gristle from our Western Schism church fathers, I love how Paul and Gender paints a more wholistic backdrop. Here, I hope to lay some of it out and evoke a metaphor of my own*. This is just one take on the passage, and I think people will study it more and more—now that women can officially open a bank account. I have to remember that only happened the year I was born. This is only the first generation of people entering seminary with an inherent interest instead of “Not my gender… doesn’t affect me.”

Our American belief is that a woman would never want to cover her head. In the breathtaking book A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, the heroine receives a hijab. (My heart swells just thinking of that story.) Her initial reaction is that she feels treasured and protected. This was my first inkling of a different take on head coverings.

But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved (NIV)

Let’s set the scene of the church in Corinth. Paul and Gender said “A woman of Corinth” was a euphemism for a prostitute.

From other reading, I’ve also understood that the setting is a time and culture where men can penetrate anyone they conquer or are in charge of—and it isn’t considered rape, homosexuality or adultery. It was culturally benign for them, like a spayed or neutered humpy dog. Merely a socially acceptable display of power.

And how do they know if a particular woman is off-limits? Her hair is hidden. A veil is the signal defining which women are protected and which are sexually at risk in this city where men with money and power can dominate anyone. If this conjures #MeToo and Epstein Island…the difference is: it isn’t socially acceptable. It doesn’t sit well with us.

Additionally, the veil maintains social class order. From the women’s perspectives, it’s hierarchy showing who has value. This woman is worthy and protected. This one is lesser, usable, discardable. For sale. We know social oppression was going on because the Corinthian church was jealous and quarreling with each other. Paul suggested they were doing more harm than good when they gathered because one would be drunk and another would go hungry during the Lord’s Supper. Paul and Gender said the law forbid a slave or a prostitute from covering her hair. So imagine the social oppression of a woman who had “no right” to cover up. “Who does she think she is?”

With head-coverings, a certain kind of man can scan a room and immediately see which woman he could have, and who is off-limits. Incidentally, modern men who are terrified of androgynous and transgender clothing still make me think of the certain type of person who wants to walk into a room and quickly ascertain who he could potentially dominate. I think it makes them uncomfortable not to know who they can fight or sleep with immediately.

Ok, still building the stage. Now take the cultural example of human (not chicken) breasts. In some places in the world, a woman’s exposed breasts aren’t immodest. But use our Western sensibilities and imagine a topless (topfree) photo in a magazine or behind a paywall—a picture of a woman’s breasts makes her “available.” You can see her nakedness so you can consider having her, imagine having her, or pretend.

Take that into a house church. They’re using the language of fictive kinship, calling each other brother and sister. And, at home, mom and sis take their veils off. And some guy thinks, “I’m curious what so-and-so’s wife looks like uncovered. After all, we’re, ahem, family.”

Let’s have all the ladies take off their veils!

Now, sister, stand before the congregation. Not a bare-chested home church in Indonesia at the turn of the 19th century, but a gathering in America. You’re about to deliver a message from God, to speak and to prophesy to the congregation. But first, they want you to take off your shirt. Since many of the Corinthians believers are “lower status,” the ex (or current) sex slave you’re sitting next too—I’ve seen her naked. And you’re my family. I should see you. Now stand straight and give the message with uncovered areola and nipple.

Just let that visceral feeling you have land and settle for a minute. It might give you a bit of empathy for the forced unveiling of a Muslim woman or a first century Corinth lady.

Modesty is cultural. If the woman has never had her hair exposed, it drapes her in a sexually vulnerable, naked sensation (and possibly position, depending on the crowd.) In Corinth, it would have felt shameful to some women. As shameful as having her head shaved—the punishment for infidelity and promiscuity. Shame is a particularly difficult emotion in that it is so isolating. Flowing hair would have been highly arousing to some listeners. I imagine some brothers in the church wouldn’t even hear your message if you stood bare-chested before them—even though boobies are available to see anytime, online. (I guess for some it wouldn’t even matter if you’re covered up. They still know you have ’em and they’ll look right through your shirt!)

Now, a slave girl whose entire life has been exposed and marked by her availability, low class and low worth, stands before the crowd and speaks to a congregation. A group which possibly includes her owners. In any other context, they are her social superiors and her uncovered head is the blatant visual reminder.

Paul’s directive is “all you all” women wear veils.

Equality in the church. Protection in the church.

Paul said something different to Timothy regarding the women of Ephesus who ostentatiously flaunted wealth and status. He told them to show appropriate situational propriety in their adornments like braided hair. But to Corinth, he addresses their specific issue and says, “Here, in the gathering of believers, no one is low class. No one is unprotected. No one is sexually available. Listen to her words and don’t look at her like that, Corinthians.”

A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man (NIV)

Additionally, there’s a contrast with the directive that the men should not cover their head. Paul and Gender suggests that a man of high status would want to be invisible when in a posture of supplication. It was the cultural norm for him to cover that up. Paul says, rather, males are to be vulnerable, with their “spiritual transformation is on display.”

A man’s uncovered head doesn’t bring up sexuality to the imagination of the hearers, it lowers him from his elevated status to equal, to fellow believer. “Exchange a covering of pride for exposed humility, all you men who could dominate anyone.” This would have been as jarring as some of the other things Paul said to them, such as, “You are all the bride of Christ.”

But here’s an even lovelier thing about this letter from Paul! He gives it to the Corinthian church as a non-contentious individual church decision. Because the other churches aren’t dealing with it. Verse 16.

Paul wants the church to learn to discern and make decisions because it will one day judge the world and angels.

Paul and Gender, page 35 says, “Women and men were supposed to be learning to exercise good judgment in ordinary matters in preparation for future responsibilities. Therefore, if women were (correctly) refusing to submit to suggestions or directions to not veil or to remove their veils, the Corinthian Church needed to be convinced that women should be allowed to use their own judgment or follow their own convictions in this matter.”

How can I not love Paul for this?

Westfall also asserts that the veil is a demonstration of her choice, her authority over herself. She writes, “However, as the subject of the sentence, the nominative woman is the subject of the infinitive, the one who has authority.”

It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own head, because of the angels (NIV)

So the Corinthian head covered is a symbol of her own authority over her own head as she stands before God and the heavenly realm. This is why (counter-culturally) Paul tells a lowly slave girl to illegally wear a veil when she prophesies over the congregation in the privacy of a house church.

This unmarried girl is not veiled to signify the authority of men. She is elevated to equal status to the rest of the congregation before the Lord. Because God uses the things this world despises to shame the powerful. And she gets to make her own choice if she wants to display her hair when she edifies, strengthens, encourages, comforts and instructs the people**.

Diving into scripture like this reveals God’s intentions regarding our interdependence and treatment of each other—not to split hairs over hair scarves and cleavage. When a woman enters the four walls of your church building with more or less covering indicative of the life and culture she lives—remember:

Don’t look at her that way. Listen to her words.

*Thoughts from Paul and Gender are mingled with my own. So if there is something incorrect or irritating—assume it is me and not the book or the author.
**I was raised in a congregation and spent time in churches that believed in Cessation. Looking back now, I wonder if the doctrine has a purpose to maintain control from the top down, with the added benefit of avoiding a text which refers to women instructing men. I cannot find a compelling reason to believe in the cessation of (some) gifts, because prophecy (specifically) is the only gift that shows up in every list I can find regarding spiritual gifts. And, we’re warned to not suppress it. See 1 Corinthians 12:7-11, 27-30, Romans 12:6-8 & Ephesians 4:11-13. Keep reading the first letter to Corinthians to see details about how prophecy should look.

1 Corinthians 14
Vs 3 the one who prophesies speaks to people for their strengthening, encouraging and comfort
Vs 5 so that the church may be edified
Vs 22 it’s for believers
Vs 24-25 it’s for unbelievers to be convicted of sin, their hearts and secrets laid bare, it incites worship
Vs 29 two or three should do it taking turns, it should be weighed for truth
Vs 31 says prophecy is for instruction and encouragement, and all should have a turn

You’ll notice, a few verses later, Paul says women should be silent in church. Which contradicts Chapter 11 if you think Paul tells all women to prophesy and all women to be silent in the same letter. I assume Paul and Gender will cover this, but I haven’t gotten to it yet. The explanation I’ve previously heard is that verse 34 & 35 had to do with women who’d never previously sat in a learning environment or studied spiritual things. They were randomly interrupting the service, calling out questions across the room. He tells them to wait and go home to ask their husbands instead of being disruptive. If you get too fixated on the inerrant letter of your translation—you would think only married women get to ask clarifying questions and single women have to wonder about God until they have a husband. All of chapter 14 chapter is about removing disruptions and creating order while using tounges and prophecy, so this makes more sense than women being told not to speak unless they are prophesying, but men can interrupt willy-nilly.

prayers in cracks of the wailing wall, 2018

Kicking Bricks & Flipping Tables

Posted on by Hilarey

I’ve heard foundations cannot be changed. (I feel like this is said when people describe how America was started as a Christian nation and therefore it could never not be a Christian nation.) But sometimes houses are moved from their foundations and placed in other areas. You can also lift a house and pour a new foundation—it’s just very costly.

So before you need to relocate the whole structure, I think it’s a good policy to not assume that you have a totality of the gospel already inside of you. Sometimes I prefer to seek affirmation for things I already believe, but when I approach the Bible with curiosity rather than angrily seeking confirmation—I usually enjoy it more. (Although, looking for something you know can be healing when it refutes lies. And a little confirmation bias does give a jolt of dopamine.)

I’m not an architect or an engineer, but my simple understanding is that if there is a crack in your foundation, it doesn’t mean you should heap more weight on top. When you do that, and the earthquake comes, you’re more likely to lose your faith completely.

Although they have built thousands of years on top of the stones where Jesus walked.

prayers in cracks of the wailing wall, 2018
My trip to (and under) the wailing wall in 2018.

Be willing to walk around the house and kick the bricks, checking for cracks in your foundation. Because we repeat so many things that are not actually biblical.

Not a Lender Nor a Borrower Be

One thing I was told with such authority was, “the Bible says to never lend or borrow.” I keep digital notes when something comes up during my Bible reading. That way, I can see them wherever I go, and add to them whenever I have space to process. The words I jot down could be anything from beautiful, resonating, irritating, confusing… but I especially like to add things that contradict either my paradigm or something else I’ve read in the Bible. This is how I kick the bricks of my foundation.

The first time I read, “You will lend to many nations, but borrow from none” in Deuteronomy 28:12, I thought to myself, “this contradicts not a lender nor a borrow or be.” So I did a quick search: “What does the Bible have to say about lending?” (I love digital Bibles.)

It says to not be tight-fisted to the poor. And when (not if) you lend, do not charge interest. I should lend.

I can’t find it telling me not to borrow, either. It says “the borrower is a slave to the lender” in Proverbs. Therefore, I want to have prudence when I decide to borrow because I am giving over my freedom until the debt is paid.

Proverbs is a collection of truths perceived by a wise person, but I don’t ever want to take one verse from it and turn it into a non-negotiable mantra. Otherwise I would get whiplash when I read chapter 26 verses four and then five.

As it turns out, the scripture “not a lender nor a borrower be” is from Hamlet. You can watch the Skipper sing it on Gilligan’s Island here.

My girlfriend calls that “the pizza bible.” You just say things you want or believe with authority and call it scripture. The bible says to bring me a pizza.

But you can also eat from the pizza bible it by taking things out of context.

Happy Good Friday

The Jesus who resonates most with me right now is the one who flips tables at the beginning of Holy Week. Sometimes I need to pull back and ask if I’m really called to flip everything I see over on its side. But to me, the God who comes down and passionately removes the gatekeepers restricting access to him is a God who sees and understands.

Black and white thinking from English translations only (or even worse, fixating on a single version) and taking it out of context means you could take a verse like 1 Timothy 1:10 and…

if you read ESV, you would come to the conclusion that it’s only immoral for men to practice homosexuality.

if you read the KJV, you would understand that only menstealers are immoral—it is fine to kidnap women.

We lose so much in English translations because we have humankind or mankind written as “men.” It lands in our mind as “not women” because it isn’t built into English to see humans/genders in the word “man.”

When I read the New Testament in Spanish, it reads differently. Yesterday, I got to sit with someone who reads/studies it in Greek. And his take was fascinatingly different from my ESV.

Personal Application

So, kicking your bricks… After you check if it’s actually in the Bible… see if it aligns with the context of the message, then in context with the heart of God. If it doesn’t work with your understanding of the heart of God… write it down rather than throw the baby Jesus out with the bathwater.

The next step is to ask, what does this mean for me in 21st century America versus the time and people it was written for?

Because you could write Paul’s advice to Timothy, “take a little wine for your stomach” on a 3X5 card and tape it to your bathroom mirror. And the morning you have a nervous belly because you need to drive a bus full of teenagers up a mountain road, you decide to take the inerrant scripture literally, regardless of the context of who it was written for, assume it is all directly for you, pour a mug of wine, and get behind the wheel.

There needs to be room for the Holy Spirit to tell you if it applies.

The friend I visited with yesterday mentioned that it is a little narcissistic to take every jot and tittle written for the New Testament church as directly applying to me, in America, today.

I have to take this to heart. Because there was such an emphasis on “where does the Bible say that” in my youth, I remember looking down on women who wore braids. I mean, it literally says don’t braid your hair in the ESV. And I have always wanted to correctly handle the Word of God. It just turns out there is more nuance than looking up a verse.

So much pain happens when you listen to what other people tell you God has said—instead of picking up the Bible and finding out for yourself. Then judging it according to the whole heart of God using the heart, mind and soul he gave you.

Your Villain… a Caricature

Posted on by Hilarey

Is the enemy chaotic-evil and unredeemable?

I learned in a writing class that no one is a hundred percent evil, so, writing your novel’s villain that way will actually make him less threatening. That kind of antagonist is comical—a caricature like Snidely Whiplash.

If you aren’t old enough to remember the cartoon that made me fear handlebar mustaches, Wikipedia says of him, “Whiplash is obsessed with tying young women to railroad tracks; he has no reason to do so and realizes no gain, profit or advantage, but is simply compelled to do it.”

The writing class suggestion was to show your villain do something kind. The instructor mentioned a scene where a bad guy stops on the way into the house where he planned evil, to pet a kitten. (I think the example came from a book or movie, but I can’t remember where.)

Even better, give the killer something he loves. Or a complicated emotion, like a desire to protect something in the midst of his mayhem. This makes him more realistic, and therefore, scarier.

I’ll tell you, I have met abusive people who were overly dramatic and affectionate to their dog in public. “Animals trust me, you should too…” as though dogs don’t lick an abusive hand. So, making the antagonist more realistic this way rang true for me when crafting fictional characters.

Relatable

Besides the realism, another reason a complicated villain becomes scarier is that you can see yourself in them. But isn’t it unnerving if they’re too redeemable? It’s hard to cheer at their destruction if you see yourself in them.

We want God to take us as a package and hope the redeemable outweighs the rest. He wouldn’t annihilate me if there is something redeemable, right? (Part of coming to faith is realizing that the only thing redeemable is Christ’s covering, and any good you’ve done was a work he created you to do.)

But what if that measurement of being redeemable tipped in favor of someone you hated? Could you still call them an enemy or go to war with them? Could you desire their destruction?

Un-relatable

I think it would be too hard to justify war if you thought of the people as redeemable. You need to view them as evil with nothing salvageable. And I think one way we do this is to disregard individual faces, to see them as a whole. They are collectively unredeemable.

And the first step to seeing them as a collective is to name them.

Us and them

I think of conversations I heard when I was a child regarding people we’d gone to war against. Pejoratives serve the purpose of naming, grouping, and defacing. They enable the speaker and the listener to disassociate the humanity of the one being discussed. It tips the scales. It lowers them from your status of being made in the image of God, a divine image bearer.

You might never use a slur but still say the nationality, religion, sexuality or politics of your “enemy” like it is a cuss word and mean the same thing.

You make them a caricature of a villain.

But maybe even Russians love their kids, too

I remember my grandma’s fear when she mentioned The Bataan Death March by the Japanese during World War II. It’s a story that loses some of its shock, though, when you look at the United States’ inhumanity during the Trail of Tears. For several summers we hosted Japanese exchange students, and they were no longer some less-than-human group from a foreign place. They were kids. With faces. If you want to see this working for Israeli and Palestinian teens, check out Friends of Roots.

Governments plan and execute war. Unless we are the government, our responsibility is different. Psalm 131:1 says, My heart is not proud, LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.

The matters I should be concerning myself with are how I think of and speak of other humans. Both those in my sphere, and those on the other side of the world. Even if the other group wants to destroy my country, take my money and my freedom. Even if they are my enemy. If I only love those who love me, what good is that to me? Just because salvation is free, why do we think everything after is easy?

Made in the image of God

I can speak from experience what it feels like to be less than. A false doctrine I had to put into words to unearth was that God made man for himself, and woman was a trinket that he made for his beloved (man). I really stumbled over 1 Corinthians 11:9 when I was a young mom coming back to Christ. Learning that woman is made in the image of God, not just created for man, gave me identity and joy. And when man does not value woman as equal, he is not acting out the hand of God. It elevated me, and I’ll never let that identity go. We’re a tool of the enemy if we ever let anyone believe they are less than a divine image bearer, with equal worth and status.

A fool

I used to be confused why Proverbs spent so much ink on defining and calling out who is a fool—but Jesus said if you called someone a fool; you were in danger of hell-fire. It felt like a contradiction since I could see so many fools by Proverb’s standards.

Partly from the Bible Project’s Sermon on the Mount series, I’ve come to understand Christ’s intent as: don’t even start down that path of lowering someone in status. Declaring someone unworthy is the first step to murder. How you speak of your antagonist is one way to live out the call to love your enemy, as we’re told to do in Matthew 5:43-48. And the names you use to describe your enemy can either deface them or remind you of their God-given status.

We’ve been told to judge people’s fruit and actions because there is demonic evil in the world. Still, discerning evil does not excuse you from loving your enemy. If we have the law written in our hearts, we have different expectations, regardless of how the world operates.

My point is to tread carefully anytime you use labels for yourself and others. Because that path leads to disassociating their humanity, their status as image of God.

All humanity is capable of evil

No villain is a caricature. We are each capable of atrocity by starting down the path of looking at someone as less than ourself. We should remember Christ’s warning wherever we think, “They’re an idiot.”

We should think of the danger of hell-fire when we use a slur or dehumanize a group either for their political agenda, nationality, or religion. Yep, even their religion.

Well, unless you are not a bondservant of the Lord’s. Then you can do whatever you want with your body, mind and money.

Dismantling Human Tradition

Posted on by Hilarey

When I was young, I told my mom a name I wanted to give to a future child. Her quick response was that if my future husband had ever known someone by that name—and didn’t like the person—he wouldn’t want the memory of them in his home.

The same name, the same word, can have different connotations.

The term “Deconstruction” has taken on a definition all its own in Christendom. It is basic etymology. As words popularize and morph meaning, they assume new preconceptions and sometimes baggage.

Maybe you know someone who deconstructed and ran screaming from the faith, destroying others. So, you hate the concept. It is scarier to watch someone else do it, but this is where westerners get to experience “Though none go with me, I still will follow.”

When God reveals a lie that I’ve believed, it’s usually painful. But it is an exhilarating process and increases my faith. The writers in my critique group who wrote for Love Inspired Suspense always incorporated a lie that their heroes and heroines believed: to be overcome before the end of the novel.

But what happens when it isn’t just a lie about your worthiness or purpose, but a lie about your faith? And what if it’s a dozen at once, more confusion than you can handle, so you are not sure if you can trust what is truth from your entire foundation?

I feel like continuing to build upon lies because you don’t want to lose your faith is more dangerous than realizing that you have something weak in the foundation and then inspecting or tearing it down.

A few years ago, some of my foundational bricks eroded.

An existential crisis of faith can become a spring cleaning if you don’t fear what you’ll find. Be more afraid of ignoring it. Deconstruction for me was merely inspecting which bricks were made of hay and stubble, fingering them out of the foundation, and replacing them with something worthy.

I guess that’s more like dismantling. When you want to keep all the good parts of a machine but pull every piece out and line them up to find the broken cog and replace it.

When terms take on baggage, we can try renaming them. But that’s just semantics. If everyone started using the new term, replacing deconstruction with dismantling or something else, it would just morph in definition and still offend some and not others.

Dismantling Human Tradition

For me, deconstruction was not questioning the Bible. But it has involved not fixating on single word inerrancy and literalism. Because it’s a simplistic translation that says Eve was created from Adam’s rib. Man doesn’t have one missing rib and, metaphorically, the word could mean side. As in, a side of man that is no longer in him is now embodied in woman.

But more than multiple translations of a single word—I’ve had to wrestle with the way the Bible was deciphered in our country and era. It was through the lens of human tradition that made me assume what certain things in the Bible meant.

As I’ve altered my view on eternal conscious torment I realized my belief can reinforce my understanding of scripture when I’m reading.

Some form of deconstruction has to happen to every believer. At least everyone who comes to faith as a child or is raised under someone else’s faith. That’s how to make what you’ve heard your own faith.

We also need to dissect things we’ve heard that were just a tangent of someone else’s faith journey. A situation where you never heard the resolution, only the plaguing question. “Why did he have to die?”

Or maybe we only heard the answer to something, but not the process. This is frequent in the New Testament. We’re often given a specific answer to a specific question in a context that is not explained, because everyone knew it. “Women cover your heads.”

Misunderstood

Premarital sex in the church comes with a lot of shame, so I remember someone quoting to me, “The marriage bed is sacred.” It was lovely… very redeeming… and good in the moment I first heard it. But it was also quoted to imply that “everything goes” in the marriage bed. If you’re married, it’s kosher…

Without the whole-Bible framework, this example of misquoting scripture can become license for anything. Because the verse is actually a command to, “Keep the marriage bed sacred.” Imagine my surprise when I found it written very different than free-license. Keep the marriage bed sacred is a lot more congruent with the whole of scripture which says God will judge fornicators and adulterers.

The Letter of the Law But Not the Heart

Scripture does not need to be misquoted to be taken out of the whole-heart of the gospel. If you read that someone cannot deny their spouse intimacy without also applying God’s design for equality, consent, and selfless love, it allows marital rape and oppression.

Or the popularly quoted OT scripture that a girl must marry her rapist. At the time, and still in some current cultures, a rape victim was utterly destroyed. She became ineligible for marriage, and since children were the only way to provide for her future, she would be completely destitute. So, giving her “raised status” as a wife, in a home, and then not being allowed to divorce her actually redeemed her living needs.

This is why I bristle when someone wants to look up a scripture to prove a point.

Be careful when you accept thoughts and statements that sound biblical. Be careful when you quote a portion of the text without the whole-heart, or use it as a weapon against yourself or others. You might lay a brick of stubble in someone’s foundation.

Also, be wary of taking your interpretation or personal directive as prescriptive law. Just because God revealed to you that you should not masturbate, it doesn’t mean you should tell the whole high school youth group that masturbation is sin. Rather, share how God can speak individually through the heart of scripture for a specific need in the moment.

Acts 18:24-26 says Apollos was mighty in scripture and knew many things but a husband and wife team, Priscilla and Aquila, took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.

More Accurately

Some many people have used the verse “God hates divorce” as a weapon. God hates me, or God hates that a person got divorced. It’s quoted with disregard that God is speaking about hating the violence of divorce against the vulnerable, inside of a covenant which should protect them. Doesn’t it make more sense that he hated the blood on the garments of men who abused women by treating them like objects and divorcing them?

Yet, my grandma couldn’t teach Sunday school because she’d been divorced. That’s human tradition.

The Bible Project App has a great series right now about the Sermon on the Mount. You listen to a pleasant reading of scripture, a snippet of a discussion, and a short video commentary each week while working through the passage.

Week 20 speaks to divorce, and it helped me wrestle with some of the misquoted verses and lies I’ve always had. (Week 18 also validated why looking at someone with lust dehumanizes them.)

The Bible Project unpacks the specific question surrounding that cultural debate of divorce. It speaks to a situation which doesn’t align perfectly today, since men can’t cast aside their wives without income and protection because she ruins dinner. But when we take this reply from Jesus and repeat the Bible literally word for word, we think the only legit reason for divorce is infidelity.

Human tradition uses the Bible to justify social power. Dismantling and deconstruction can remove the barbs of weaponized, incomplete thoughts from scripture to see the larger context of God’s provision for humanity. Dismantling human tradition has been beautiful. I am meeting a good God.

Deconstruction isn’t just pulling the entire structure down because of tragedy or tough things you don’t understand. It’s testing all the bricks with fire. And even if most of them burn up—can’t God build from the ground anew? All we need is the cornerstone. Hold on to Christ and wrestle with everything else.

You don’t need a brick that says “7 day creation with dinosaurs.” You don’t need a brick that says “musical instruments and dim lighting followed by a 35 minute, three-point sermon.”

I mean… wasn’t the Jesus freak movement just removing the bricks that said, “men can’t have long hair” and, “you must wear shoes to church?”

Don’t fear the wilderness if your worthless structure is burning down. Let human traditions turn to ash, keep only the cornerstone.