traditions – Page 2 – Hilarey.com

The Wife Follower

Posted on April 4, 2025July 2, 2025 by Hilarey

I’m realizing that questioning the husband-leader-dynamic is part of the larger debate about women in the church. (I’m usually late to the circus.) And although I wish I had gone to a seminary-type college when I was young, so I already knew what was going on, I was raised to distrust women who speak in church. So I wouldn’t have considered it.

In my early doctrine formation, I understood definite roles in the church for men and limitations for women. It shaped my fear that any woman who exercised knowledge in religious matters or in scripture would probably end up becoming the woman who rides the beast, or at least, help bring her to power.

Beliefs surrounding a woman’s role in creation leads to understanding her role in the home and her role in the church body. I recommend reading 3 Female Ghosts in your Church by Jen Wilken to see why it matters how you view women in the church. Each role informs the others.

I don’t know enough about trajectory theory (and I try to avoid using terms to define my beliefs) but I do believe that God met the culture of the Old Testament in their corruption, and instituted laws which sent them toward a direction that was a better way than the one man had come up with. And then, the New Testament brought even more radical change to show that the goal of God’s kingdom was to eliminate social, economic, and biological differences.

In my deepest wound and false belief, I understood that woman was made as a trinket for God’s beloved creation, man. All of God’s interest wasn’t enough for man… Adam needed a pretty helper, too. So, it was only natural for woman to decrease herself and spend her life mitigating his emotions and whims. After all, she was created for helping and making babies. “Ladies, we can’t have kids. Focus on that. Do the one thing we can’t do!” You can reject something as a lie—but not realize how you still live it out. I thought I’d worked through that poison when I wrote Sworn to the Desert, but deep roots take as many years to weed as they do to grow. And the theme I used in that book is a self-girdling tree, a tree choked by its own roots.

In my last blog, I talked about why I don’t think men are called to be spiritual leaders in the sense that they are between their wife and God in any capacity. And calling them leaders, or giving them a role they can’t fill, is damaging. Defined roles hurt both men and women. In the book The Great Sex Rescue, the authors found that believing in clear gender roles in the home correlated with a wife’s diminished sexual pleasure/increased pain. “Women who do not believe traditional gender roles are moral imperatives feel more heard and seen in their marriages. In fact, women who act out the typical breadwinner-homemaker dynamic also feel more seen if they see it as a choice and not a God-given role.”

Fortunately, I always knew my role in the home was my choice. And, I learned that mutual submission is also my choice. But if you think your husband, your church, or your God are demanding you take a knee, then there is definitely going to be some diminishing. And not the “he must increase and I must decrease” diminishing. Check out that book, The Great Sex Rescue.

It might be true that some women want a husband to carry all the burdens and take all the blame. But I believe most women truly desire a partner. I know if I believed someone was in charge of the spirituality of my home—I wouldn’t live at peace with him unless everything was spiritually perfect. All the time. Bitterness would grow over any discontent if I had someone responsible whom I could blame.

Don’t follow him

I’m actually in a unique position to write this because I’m very much in love with my husband of 31 years. I trust him, and in no way is he unworthy of me following him. I couldn’t be who I am as a cook, a writer, or a human without having had his encouragement and space to grow.

But… I’ll never forget waking in the middle of the night and complaining to God that I was frustrated because I felt compelled to follow him at the loss of agency. When I seek counsel and comfort because I’m Awake at Night, and prayer doesn’t work, I often open my bible. I was reading the One-Year-Bible, and curiously, the very next passage was Joshua 7. After Achan’s sin, they brought out the whole family. And stoned them all. And after they stoned them all, they burned them all with fire.

Needless to say, I was not comforted that night knowing God allowed/endorsed Achan’s wife and kids to be eliminated because of his actions. Even though Ezekiel 18:20 says that children will no longer pay for the sins of their parents, I realized there were more examples in the Bible of a man making a bad choice and his is family being destroyed. Haman’s ten sons in Esther, and the men who tried to kill Daniel in a lion’s den through King Darius. They were thrown in with their wives and children.

I used the example in my previous post of Moses’ wife doing his job when he wouldn’t and therefore saving his life. But also consider Abigail, in 1 Samuel 25. She was married to Nabal, and since she knew he was a worthless man (verse 25), she went behind his back and gave provisions to David. She saved all the men of her household because of it. (verse 34)

Kings make tactical alliances, and sometimes wives are alliances. It always strikes me as interesting that David scooped Abigail up. Maybe after the Lord struck Nabal dead, she ran away with David because in a patriarchal society—even a fool for a husband, or becoming one of many wives, was better than no husband. (I have a girlfriend who wondered recently if Abigail lived in caves with David!) Maybe, in her intelligence (verse 3), Abigail had learned how to stay alive by strategically following power… and David was rising.

I know there are warnings to pastors to watch out for women who would lust after them merely because they have authority—and everybody likes followers, and to be pursued—even pastors. So, I wonder if we didn’t have a Shepherd/King down model as in most western churches; would this be such a problem?

We are told not to call anyone father, in a way of showing human spiritual authority one over another. So, as is typical of us rebellious humans, we claim inerrancy to the letter of the law, skip the heart, and rename the guy in charge pastor, instead of father.

Regardless of Abigails’s motives, it just shows me that even though David always returned to “running after God‘s heart,” he liked to collect women. More than just a king making alliances—because he gathered women who were loved by other men (Bathsheba aside) as in the example of when he wanted Michal back because Saul had given her to David first. I’m always struck with pain that Michal’s new husband went along the way, weeping after her, as she was returned to David.

But when you follow a human, you give your power over to them. Don’t follow anyone but God.

If this feels like a side rant, it is. I’ve heard men in the church say they idolize David or want to emulate him. They think as long as they return to running after God’s heart, they can meanwhile destroy all the people in their path and lead like a worldly king.

Sorry: thinking about what it means to be a man who leads meant I was either going to sing “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” or Sponge Bob’s “Now that we are men.”

Partnership

Just because man shouldn’t lead, it doesn’t mean woman should. One of the reasons the Israelites were told not to marry outside of Israel was because the wives of other nations would lead the men to follow other gods.

“During the days of Moses, however, Yahweh was increasingly clear about the marriage of his people, the Israelites, to foreigners. Mosaic law forbade marriage to particular groups of people, as it resulted in wives leading husbands into idol worship (Deut. 7:14). Vindicating the Vixens: Revisiting Sexualized, Vilified, and Marginalized Women of the Bible, p. 61

Taken out of context, no wonder men of the church are over-afraid that women can only lead them to Babylon and to other gods. Never to God Most High. But I believe 1 Timothy 2:12 “I do not permit a woman to exercise authority over a man” is merely talking about this same oppressive, dominating, displacement of power that no believer should hold over another. It was happening in Timothy’s context and needed to be addressed specifically.

Here’s where it changes for us ladies: in the New Testament. Furthering the move from how men ruled the world as each saw fit in his own eyes, toward the direction of bringing God’s kingdom to earth, the disciples gave a woman authority over herself. When Ananias and Sapphira sold land and lied about the total, the apostles didn’t automatically kill the wife because of the husband. She was questioned separately. She was punished for her own sin, not his.

Realizing this, is huge to me. The new century church did not treat the woman as an accoutrement to her husband and throw her in the lion’s den automatically.

Interdependent

A woman came from a side of man, but men come from women. I like the idea of men being told to rise up in the church as, “Dude, pull your weight.” Just because she’s almost capable of doing everything doesn’t mean she should.

Women were segregated into the outer court of the temple, the court for women and Gentiles. Men had greater access if they were circumcised. And priests had even greater access than that. But now that the veil has been torn, 1 Peter 2:9 says we are a kingdom of priests. Men and women, we are priests.

Consider the freewill the church has in relation to “Christ the Head.” Typically, people who believe God demands subjugation (through the threat of eternal torment) end up leaving the church, or hardening and announcing online that everyone is going to hell.

If your men are “leading” you just fine and you’re content with where you’re going, great. Just keep an eye on the road. If not, lead yourself. Both Tamar and Ruth acted when the men in their lives remained passive and they’re named in the line of Christ. And whether he leads on the intimidating side or the passive side, realize that following bad leadership is not being a helpmate.

Following is not helping.

And I think woman is to be a helpmate only so long as her man pursues God, but then a hindrance to him.

My grandma had a plaque on her wall when I was a kid. It said:

Do not walk in front of me, I might not follow.
Do not walk behind me, I might not lead.
Just walk beside me and hold my hand.

I tried to find attribution but I think I remember the plaque said Author Unknown.

I remember the first time I understood this poem. I thought it was a little radical and wondered if my parents knew it was there. (At a very young age, I understood my dad was in charge of everything that mattered.) Sometimes it felt uncomfortable to read it, not quite scandalous, but it was probably my first memory of cognitive dissonance.

So of course I memorized it.

Even though I settled the dissonance by viewing the poem as a picture of friendship, I hope my tendency to lean into something discordant never changes. I don’t want to just hope there aren’t any monsters, or to surround myself with people who agree that there are no monsters—but to find a weapon and clear the house, to investigate what I’m dealing with, even if it’s scary.

Whether or not you’re someone’s helpmate, realize that following a someone other than God is not helping.

Just walk beside me, and hold my hand.

The Husband Leader

Posted on March 21, 2025July 2, 2025 by Hilarey

the husband leader | the wife follower

There was a time early in my marriage when my husband wanted to go into partnership with someone to buy a karate school. We’d just returned from Eastern Europe, where he’d taught martial arts, and we weren’t settled into jobs yet. It was a dream come true for him. We didn’t need money to invest, just our time and name. It provided financially, and would keep us in the small community where our family lived.

My husband was excitedly telling a man from our church about the opportunity. The man glanced over at me. Then said kindly, “What does your bride have to say?” I didn’t want to be yoked to a non-believer. I think he could tell by my face—so he wanted my husband to say it. My husband mumbled something to the effect of “She’s not on board.”

Our friend kept his smile, but something hardened. The gist of his reply was, “God gave you this woman for her insight. Why wouldn’t you listen to her?” And then he explained how every time he hadn’t listened to his wife—things went awry in his life and career.

It was a big deal for my young husband to relinquish that dream. He’d already given up teaching in Europe because I was pregnant. But, I don’t think it was more than a year before the one who purchased the karate school without us cheated on his wife with a student.

The husband is the head of his wife

Scholars spend years on the word and only fully settle the meaning for themselves and the ones who have predetermined to agree to the interpretation. I could look up a lexicon and memorize a Greek word—but I can’t read, much less study and translate Greek, so I won’t touch it.

The verse example of unequally yoked oxen describes the struggle of a believer and a nonbeliever tied together, but it’s also a good image of marriage. A team pulling a load needs to work in unison.

I often hear the military illustration that there needs to be a clear leader in the home. “We need to know who is the head or it will be chaos on the battlefield.” Hopefully, your sanctuary doesn’t mimic war, but, when there’s conflict, I agree the wife can show trust in God by submitting her will to her husband. It can be beautiful for all parties involved—provided there is no abuse. In destructive relationships, all guidelines need caveats, clarification, and exceptions. Enabling someone to sin is to be a contributor to their sin. Even if the sin is against you, it is the work of the enemy to keep someone trapped in sin.

(ESV) Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Eph 5:22-24

Let’s first acknowledge that the church submits to Christ with free will, and when it is from Christ, it is supposed to be an easy yoke. If she is really struggling to lay down her will, it might not be her fault.

When I see Traditional American church culture built around this verse of women submitting, it makes me think of when Vashti didn’t obey the king of Persia in the book of Ester. All the officials were worried their wives might not submit either, so they encouraged the king to get a new wife and sweetened the deal with a beauty contest that stole all the available girls and castrated all the available boys. Humans always try to teach culture as biblical. Then, when it comes to choosing to obey God, we prefer to adhere to current cultural traditions, including church-culture.

So what does the submitting look like? I’ll tell you what it doesn’t look like.

Selfish husbands would rather spend for their own pleasure than buy diapers. Being the “head” isn’t making decisions alone, controlling the money, telling her to be quiet, or suppressing her opinions and desires while he exalts his own. Letting him do these things is not godly submission.

Neither does it mean he initiates all things. What one man can excel in every area? Some men are good at bringing play and fun into the house, some are good at providing, some are good at studying scripture, some initiate exercise. This is one of my irritations of romance novels. Women fantasize about a god-like man who replaces God as her husband, and does all things perfectly. He is handsome, rich, and surprisingly, still interested in her hot mess.

Should a husband lead in an area he is not qualified? Why did God say it is not good for men to be alone? A marriage should counterbalance strengths and weaknesses. Geese fly in a V formation, taking turns facing the brunt of the wind.

I’ve been told in church to submit first, and then he will lead. I’ve also been told that when he doesn’t lead well, let him fail and keep practicing… and tell him he’s doing a good job. (I think that’s only come from pastors who later cheated on their wives. Which is an interesting correlation.) You cannot make someone else follow God. Your submission (especially to his rebellion to God) won’t make him a better leader.

It isn’t godly submission to stand by while he runs your very joint life off a cliff, destroying you along with him. “Keep trying honey, we’ll both be out of jail soon.”

(ESV) In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. Eph 5:28-30

So—women, don’t exalt your will in this joint endeavor of marriage, but I would say if a husband doesn’t relinquish his will to her in equal measure, then he isn’t loving her as Christ loved the church and gave his life for her.

And when we come to that impasse, who should give up their will first? Probably the more godly one. Although, maybe it should be the husband if he doesn’t want his prayer life hindered. Hey, giving up his will first is almost like an example of leading.

Just kidding. Verses (like that) can be destructive weapons out of the whole-Bible context. When you see something confusing, look for the over-correction or clarification, which typically follows a few paragraphs down. And if you’re going to talk about authority in a marriage, include 1 Corinthians 7:14, which says that husbands and wives both have authority over each other.

There’s a difference between submitting your will for peace and stumbling after a blind leader when you have access to a true shepherd.

There were several reasons I didn’t finish and don’t recommend the book, A Woman After God’s Heart, but there’s one example in it I want to highlight. She gets a call from her husband who says he wants to take a job in another country, so he’s uprooting their life. Her immediate reply is “I’ll start packing.” She applauded herself for submitting so quickly and trusting her husband so implicitly. Anyone who loves the idea of change and adventure would probably do the same.

The problem I have with this example is that withholding her opinion and counsel from her husband puts an inordinate amount of responsibility on his shoulders. Remember, it isn’t good for man to be alone. When God is gracious enough to give a man a wife, why wouldn’t that man utilize her wisdom, sensitivity, insight, and counsel? Why would a woman withhold all that from a man she cares about? Because he’s the head? Does that mean he should lead without resources? What about a calculator? Can he have access to that? Or is he just so very in charge?

It makes me think of a loveless marriage in a Regency novel where the woman complains if she wants a new wardrobe or to throw a party, but does not know about the finances. It just becomes a battle of wills for each spouse to get what they want. Don’t call him the leader just so you can blame stuff on him. No one-flesh union. No partnership in financial, logistical, and spiritual burdens.

And here comes the crux of my ire. A spiritual leader? Does that mean he is part of your relationship with God? Are you allowed to have a relationship with God without a husband’s permission? Is he alone responsible for telling the family what God is saying? Should a woman read the Bible without his lead?

Or does this only apply to women with husbands who profess faith? I wonder if our concept of spiritual leadership is just a tradition from when women couldn’t study theology, or couldn’t read at all, and they needed someone literate to help them?

I would say seeking a guide is a problem in the modern church. When people do not search scripture on their own and look to a pastor, or anyone else, to teach them spiritual truth. The hierarchy of church is for structure and organization. It’s logistical—not your access to God. Throw those tables over. Learn how to feed yourself. Each one of us should seek to grow and bring that growth back to the community.

Unless he is using verses as weapons against her or the kids—every believing woman wants her husband to know scripture and to speak it over their life. So yes, let him wash and nourish away. But she needs to be searching on her own to hear God’s voice. She needs to bring scripture to the family table as much as him. It isn’t unfathomable that the reason men were told to “wash their wives in the word” is because they were the ones who needed to be told, and women often naturally seek spiritual things.

Adam was told not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, and even though we don’t see in scripture God directly telling Eve, I like to think maybe God reiterated trusting him when he walked with them in the cool of the evening, and it just isn’t recorded. Eve’s deception was when she trusted the crafty twisting of God’s words. I think men of the church are conditioned and trained to not trust Eve’s daughters, because “Eve was deceived,” but also, because as part of the curse, she probably wants his job and he needs to protect it.

I don’t interpret Genesis 3:16 that women want a Manchild to be responsible for, or to boss around, as a result of the curse. I think “her desire for her husband” is more than interplay and who’s in charge. Eve could have walked with God in the garden, but now she will always have unfulfilled relational longing that she’ll try to satisfy in a husband. So much, that it could be used against her to keep her in a dysfunctional relationship. I see “He will rule over you” as a prophecy from God (this is what men will do), not a command. Life is going to get harder: there will be pain in childbirth, men will dominate, and weeds will grow in the ground. This isn’t the way it was supposed to be.

It’s true that Adam was made before Eve. But Adam is the one who brought sin into the world. Relying on Adam for leadership when it involves disobeying God… still gets you kicked out of the garden.

When Moses was not following God’s instructions, his wife rose up and did his job. Who knows why Moses was ignoring the Lord? Maybe it was apathy, revulsion, laziness or disobedience. But it says the Lord sought to kill Moses because of it. Zipporah circumcised her son. She saved Moses’ life. If a woman knows God’s will differs from her husband’s, she should not submit to the mortal.

I appreciate when churches are careful to emphasize that the husband is a servant-leader because Christ demonstrated servant leadership in the structure of the church. As I said in Uncovered, Christ showed kingdom leadership to the point of Peter’s embarrassment. Christian leadership should not look like the rest of the world, defined by the leader being in charge and everyone politely or fearfully deferring to him.

I know sometimes it’s just semantics to want one word over another. Head, source, leadership, submission. But for marriage: an equally yoked, one-flesh union of mutual submission, why even use the word “leader” if the husband should be (embarrassingly) serving according to the New Testament disruptions of cultural norms? Why would we try to bring back the Roman, Greek or Jewish culture of Jesus’ day when Paul took care to upset it and say there is no more male or female, slave or free in the kingdom?

I know too many women without a believing man in her home. Is she out of luck? What about when the husband is in sin? And then, if suddenly her man comes to church, does he regain control of telling her what church to go to, and when to go? I know mature Christians in decades of marriage where his spirituality leads beautifully. I know people in decades of marriage where this same thinking is detrimental to her and the kids’ relationship with God.

We don’t see this in any other place of structural organization in the church. You don’t allow elders and deacons to rise in the church unless they are mature in their faith. You give an appropriate amount of headship to someone who is tested. You have boundaries until people have stacked opportunity with trust and responsibility. And the more that you can trust them, the more privilege you give them. Don’t lay hands on them too quickly. A new convert shouldn’t be in charge of anything. And some failings and weaknesses should preclude authority in those areas. Why should that look different in the home?

Romans 12:6-8 talks about spiritual gifts. Leadership is one of those gifts, and those who lead are to do it diligently. Your gender does not prevent or mandate your gifting in leadership . Christian men are not leaders just because they are men.

The other day, I asked my husband what he thought leadership looked like in a marriage. He said, to him, it meant “he leads himself.” That is something I would follow. That is tested leadership. Following someone who seeks to follow God. There is a reason I’ve been married to him for three decades. If I was going to let anyone be my spiritual leader, it would be him.

But gosh, the veil has been torn. I have direct access to God.

Now I can sit back and wait for comments asking if my husband read this, and gave me permission to post it.

These Ten Things

Posted on July 19, 2024July 22, 2024 by Hilarey

There was once a woman who perfectly copied her mother’s treasured pot roast recipe. First, she took the roast and cut off both ends. Then she put it in the pan, measuring water carefully… leveling each teaspoon of seasoning with a knife. She always set a precise timer. One day, while teaching the recipe to her daughter, her daughter asked why they needed to cut off the ends of the meat. So she went back to her mother.

“Oh,” her mother replied. “Because a roast doesn’t fit in my small pan.”

Tradition and Ritual

This story came from a pastor who was a product of the 60s Jesus Revolution. He thought traditions were often pointless.

Being a good-western-orthodox Protestant, I grew up scared of ritual and repetition. I also had a healthy distaste for tradition—being so close on the heels of the Jesus-freak movement. Liturgy was not in my vocabulary until my adult son defined it a few years ago.

But I remember the first time I watched a simulcast teacher and during worship they announced how many thousands of people were singing the same praises at that second. Tears flooded my eyes at the unity, the connection, even across culture.

If you consider the number of people who have said the Apostle’s Creed over the years, you realize it binds us with a linking thread, tethering us through wars and renaissance to a faith much older than our country.

Who doesn’t long for things that bring unity and stand the test of time?

I don’t believe God has ceased doing “new” in us or our world systems. I know he is infinite and we have truths still to discover along our trajectory of sanctification. I think he is still over-correcting some of human’s tangents and continually realigning culturally embedded preconceptions.

But I have found a place for tradition and ritual. And I regret dismissing it for so long.

Repetition

Since OCD was diagnosed in my family, I’ve better understood some of my own repetitive tendencies. I’ve learned why counting crochet stitches distracts a troubled mind… or listening to repetitive breath in lap swimming or meditation can clear it. I’ve discovered why the sound of rhythmic footfalls in walking or running soothes even before the endorphins kick in.

I think religious rituals can satisfy this part of the brain through repetition and redirection. Without being given a purpose, the can mind loop negative thoughts. The fears don’t even have to be real—although I’m sure you have plenty of genuine distress to choose from.

I found myself stuck last fall. So, around December, I decided to focus on what good God had put into my literal hands. I used my hands and the sensation of touch to ground myself. It was also symbolic to pull my attention away from the things I could not control. The things outside of my hands.

The idea might have originated from the verse that God inhabits the praises of his people. I assumed that fear would not fit in the same space as his habitation. Not to say there isn’t room for your pain with him—but thankfulness does a good job of organizing your mind. I have a friend who says that you cannot worry and be thankful at the same time.

Ten Things

Start by drawing the pointer finger of your right hand from the base of your left thumb at the palm. Drag it down the length to the end. Consider the tingling sensation of the touch. This counts as one, and say something you are thankful for. Then, move to the first finger, and so on. Five on one hand, five on the other.

Night after night, sometimes trying to go as fast as I could by memorizing them and sometimes reaching, searching for things to be thankful for. I have a friend who starts with her pillow.

I do it while tucked into bed, instead of praying (listing and counting) out my fears and worries. I decided there was plenty of time during the day to beseech God’s intervention and mercy. Looping all day, I wanted a break at night.

I tried not to think of anything except what I considered a blessing. And I typically picked five things I was thankful for about my husband, then five about my day. I did it because he’s my safest person, and during seasons where I need him most—I focus more intensely on driving him away.

When life is comfortable, and I slip into sleep easier, I tend to forget this rhythmic, tactile bedtime ritual. But a friend of mine suggested you need the routine of something already present in the rhythm of your life to remember to go to it when you are under stress.

Recently, this same friend made Protestant Prayer Beads for our writer’s group board members. It was part of a one day retreat she designed based on the book Sacred Pathways.

I’d never even heard of safe, sanctioned, my orthodoxy, non-catholic prayer beads. But maybe that is because even though prayer beads are ancient, the idea of American evangelicals using them is newer. However, I discovered something beautiful about them, similar to my praise-counting ritual.

You cannot get (as) stuck on any prayer because there is another bead to move onto. You’re forced out of the negative, repetitive loop. It surprised me how I was able, in a tactile way, to leave it in God’s hand by moving mine.

We can fortify entire cities on top of one prayer request, thought, sin, or trial… More than getting stuck, it becomes our identity.

Do you want to be healed?

Isn’t it strange in John 5:6 that Jesus asked the man who had “spent a long time in his condition”, “Do you want to be healed?”

I wonder if waiting at the edge of healing is not the same as pursuing it.

I went to Israel with my Mom in 2018 and at the edge of the pool, her pastor reminded us that Jesus asked the paralytic that question before he healed him.

What ten things are you thankful for?

Dismantling Human Tradition

Posted on May 17, 2024April 18, 2025 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.