The Beauty of Egalitarianism Also Goes Beyond Gender…

I’ve asked this before but, I’ll ask it again: Why is it that Deborah can lead an army but in, God only knows how many, modern day churches a woman can’t lead a bible study?

I’m working on getting better at healthy dialogue which includes learning how to be okay with disagreement regarding heated “issues.” So, I write this with the knowledge that I’m not going to change anyone’s opinion overnight; I write this with the hope and intention that it’ll put words to feelings we’re unable to articulate and that it will encourage those who might otherwise feel alone or ostracized…

I’m unsure why The Gospel Coalition (TGC) has upped their focus on gender in the recent months. Maybe they haven’t? I’ve just been so disconnected from conservative evangelicalism that when an article or topic from TGC somehow makes it into my feed, to the point of which I take notice, I’m lead to believe that there’s some sort of focus or push regarding whatever said topic is…

But, Brett McCracken wrote an article for them titled “The Beauty of Complementarity Goes Beyond Gender.”

He takes a conservative biblical stance on gender and sex; more specifically he says this: “The male and female in Genesis 1–2 point to a creational design for humans that is not just relational in a general sense, but relational in a complementary sense…”

Brett goes on to make the point that because God created Eve for Adam instead of creating a man for Adam that homosexuality was not God’s intent for us. He uses an analogy saying that, “Woman and man are sort of like a lock and key. A lock and a key are meaninglessly different unless they are made to go together. But when together, their difference opens something up, unlocking something fuller and deeper about the human experience.”

He goes on to then compare man to meat and women to bread… as someone who’s not vegan, it never crossed my mind how problematic this actually was until reading Tylor Standley’s recent thoughts on this.

But, I mean, mostly I’d like to refer to the conservative take seen in Brett’s post as irresponsible; as if reducing the complexity of human nature to objects isn’t problematic enough; it’s why the conservative Gospel is not at all the gospel but it’s heresy disguised as light.

If you believe what you believe then you must become more aware and cognizant of what people will do with what you say and how they will use it to either show love or embody hate.

For an institution in which “protects their pulpit” as if it’s Fort Knox, I wouldn’t have expected something so dehumanizingly reductionistic and dangerous.

On Twisting the Words of the Deceased: Karl Barth & C.S. Lewis

The Right seems to conveniently twist the identities of deceased public figures (e.g. MLK, Billy Graham, all the way to Mary Magdalene); I say this because Barth actually had a much different position…