I’m embroiled once more in that portion of Exodus–the fashioning of the Ark and the Tent and the Clothes. The yards of purple and gold and fine twined linen, the pomegranates, the bells, the heavy weight of jewels. Every time I pass through this section of the scripture I realize how little I know God. So much of my, and I think other people’s, conception of God is packaged up neatly by What Is Practical, by What Works. Surely God must be like a well run hipster nonprofit. You pop in, see everything neatly and efficiently arranged, make your request, get a friendly reply and your need fulfilled with a complementary fair trade coffee thrown in, and then you pop back out, free to go on your way. God waves a cheerful good bye and is happy you came to him for something.
Whereas that isn’t how God is at all. The out working of your life, and the lives of all his people, is of detailed interest to him. What the priest wears and how the tent is arranged isn’t haphazard, it isn’t just anyhow, and it can’t be said to be purely practical. Maybe it works, if that’s what a body is looking for–you can come with your lamb and have its blood poured out and have your sins forgiven, until you sin again–but it isn’t about what works, it’s about the weight of God’s glory and personality, it’s about his perfection and beauty being spattered upon by man’s incredible personal ugliness.
Yesterday I wanted to finish my thought, but the word count was too big and the day was moving along. I boldly announced (because the scriptures do) that it is shameful for a woman to correct a man in public. Several things happened, then, as the day unfolded. Some people, here and there, were troubled and appalled by such an idea. The idea is so foreign, so unusual, they couldn’t even understand the words on the page. Two, that very troubled planned parenthood lady was questioned in hearings and there was apparently a Twitter firestorm of women angry that a man dared to question her at all. And three, at the end of the day, another lady took offense that Doug Wilson notices the relative attractiveness of ladies, how dare he. These three plain, not finely twined, threads may seem to be unrelated but I think they spin away from the same primordial sin–the curse of the fall, that her desire shall be for her husband but he shall rule over her.
The confusion of beauty, of order, of speech, of gender all comes from men wanting the women to stop yammering and the women trying to get the men to do something useful. She is trying to get him to do what she wants, and he wants to be left quiet for a few minutes. It’s an ugly picture–the first ugly strokes making themselves comfortable even before the original sin. Adam was supposed to tell Eve about the fruit, about not eating it. It was the only command. She wasn’t there when God gave it. It was Adam’s job to relay the message, clearly and completely. Why then the adding of ‘do not touch’ to the command not to eat? God didn’t say that. Maybe Eve added it herself, or they came up with it together. But when you come down to it, it was Adam’s fault that the addition was made. He was responsible for the command, and so when Eve garbled it, it was his problem. And if he himself added to it to protect her, it was still his problem.
So, now, the serpent comes to Eve to tempt her, and the plain word of God has already been undermined, and it is Adam’s fault that it was undermined because the word was his responsibility. The serpent successfully tempts Eve and gets her to eat the fruit so that she is pledged, she has given herself freely to sin, to Satan. And all the time, Adam was with her, and he took the fruit and ate it too. Eve sinned, but Adam bears the responsibility for her sin, because the word of God was his responsibility.
Fast forward to Numbers 30 and you have more added to the picture. A woman makes a vow. If the man, her husband or father, hears of it and doesn’t say anything, like Adam, just standing there, with her, but not stopping it, the vow stands and she is pledged to do what she said she would do. But if he does say something, if he takes her vow onto himself, he can cancel the vow so that she is no longer responsible for what she said. Hmmmm, is there anywhere else in the bible where a man takes onto himself the vow of another?
Aaron, of course, does. Jewels representing the sons of Jacob are sewn heavily into his garment so that he will carry them on his heart and bring them before God into the Holy of Holies. Aaron himself is a picture of our Great High Priest, Jesus, who takes our commitments to sin, our vows and pledges of evil, onto himself and does away with them by his own blood. He doesn’t just stand there while we give ourselves to evil, he takes responsibility for us, for our language, our actions.
The shame of a woman correcting a man publicly can be discovered in the lie that it tells of Jesus and the church. The reason you recoil in horror, even if you don’t mean to, from a woman belittling a man in public is because of the ugliness it does to the picture of Christ’s sacrificial appropriation of the sinful vows of the Church. Jesus doesn’t just stand there and do nothing, as Adam did. He doesn’t give an incomplete or garbled account of God’s word and then do nothing as we fall into sin. He takes responsibility for us, takes us onto himself. And because he doesn’t just stand there, helpless, we don’t correct him, we don’t tell him he’s wrong. The helpless man, the rebuking woman, they both tell a terrible lie about the gospel.
And once again, I’ve gone on way too long and will have to tie this all back up together tomorrow. Unwittingly, it must be that I have made for myself a series. Tomorrow I will link all the parts together. Also, I am having a terrible time inserting links. I’m going to post this and then when I can get onto an actual computer I will put in links to the planned parenthood hearing and the Doug Wilson hit. Have a lovely day and check back tomorrow for whatever it is I am trying to say next.
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