As the Spirit has worked in the Lake Highlands Church over the last thirty years we have reexamined the ways we had interpreted Scripture that had led us to oppressive conclusions for women.
Our study revealed a systematic disempowerment of women, in part because we did not put the story of women into the True Story of the world, which begins in Genesis 1:1. Instead we jumped in 860 pages into the New International Version Bible and quoted passages that were thousands of years into the story, namely Paul’s first letter to Corinth. This means we began with the “shut up” passages instead of beginning with women as co-equal, divine image-bearers in one-flesh intimacy with their male counterparts. Where you begin will determine where you conclude, and we began in the wrong place. Our trajectory was a dead end from the start.
What’s more, we did not discern that the power struggle of domination and manipulation between the sexes was the result of sin. Domination and manipulation was not prescribed by the Lord God, it was merely a description of what the descent into self-worship did to the relationship between the sexes (Genesis 3:16). It did not describe the divine intention.
We remained ignorant of the horrendous bondage women were trapped in until the time of Jesus. Therefore, we were generally unaware that Jesus redeemed women from the curse of sin, discipled women, and filled women with the Spirit.
Furthermore, we had taught that we no longer live in the time when the Spirit gifts the church with spiritual gifts. Therefore, all the references to women praying, prophesying, teaching, and working as apostles were considered totally irrelevant for women in today’s church. We considered the era of Spirit-gifting a dispensation that had passed; that was then and now is now. We ignored the witness of women as to how God’s Spirit was gifting them to minister in today’s church, except the limited role of ministering to women and children.
We had read one side of the correspondence Paul sent to the church in Corinth and to Timothy at Ephesus, and we made eternal laws out of language in these occasional letters that was addressed to a specific disorder in these local churches. We seldom questioned the foolishness of making a law for the church for all time based on words for a specific occasion that we did not fully comprehend. As free men and women in Christ, we found ourselves tied up by laws that we had created.
We placed Paul’s occasional corrective letters above the biblical doctrine of the creation of women and Jesus’ liberation of women. We were oblivious to the biblical witness of the creation and liberation of women because we had not begun our study of women where the Bible begins the story of women.
Using the same scheme of biblical interpretation as our slaveholding forefathers had used in the 19th century to defend slavery, we silenced women with the words “women must not speak in the churches.” Similarly, the slaveholders quoted the verse, “Slaves, be obedient to your masters.” Both commandments were lifted out of occasional letters in ancient cultural and political contexts, and were separated from the redemptive storyline that runs from the creation of male and female to the liberating work of Jesus.
So we began to ask ourselves hard questions, and we prayed and begged for the Spirit to lead us and mature us in Christ.
