Paul the Feminist

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote, it is well for a man not to touch a woman. - 1 Corinthians 7.1

Paul gets a bad rap. 

Careful Bible scholars and casual Bible readers alike often dismiss him as a crabbed old chauvinist who relegates women to the back of the biblical bus and tolerates marriage only as a concession to uncontrollable randiness. 1 Corinthians 7.1 presents a case in point as the Apostle to the Gentiles seems to echo that great theologian, Norm Peterson of the television show "Cheers," who once quipped, "Women: Can't live with 'em, pass the beer nuts."

Roy E. Ciampa, professor of New Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary offers an insight that might cast Paul in a new, even radical, light. Ciampa has uncovered twenty-one uses of the Greek verb "touch" as a synonym for sexual contact. He sorts them into nine categories:

• sex for the sake of pleasure alone
• using people, such as household slaves, for one's sexual gratification
• sex with a defenseless woman
• sex with a virgin placed under one's care
• sex with a woman during her menstrual cycle
• pederasty 
• incest
• rape
• adultery

Dr. Ciampa draws the following conclusions: First, it is never fruitful; it is never used of procreation. Next, it is never mutual; it is something a person in power does to, not with, the object of desire.

In this light, Paul's "It is well for a man not to touch a woman" takes on the same tenor as our modern prohibition, "Don't drink and drive." We all understand the implication: coffee yes, Mad Dog 20/20 no. Paul does not forbid or even throw shade on sex within marriage as some sort of concession to human frailty. Instead, he says:

• No sexual harassment in the workplace.
• No purchasing sex from a powerless victim. (Addendum: In all purchased sex, the one purchased is powerless. Prostitution aggravates adultery by adding exploitation.)
• No rape.
• No child molestation. 
• No forcing sex on a spouse who is not physically responsive. (Yes, "I have a headache" is a valid objection. Yes, spousal rape is a real thing.)
• In general, no sex that is not both marital and mutual.

This is a needed word in a day of rampant sexual harassment and exploitation, but I think we can make an even wider application. In general, Paul prohibits the unilateral use of power in any way that harms the less-powerful person in the exchange; indeed, I would add, without the consent of the less-powerful person in the exchange. The proper prepositions to govern power are always "for" and "with," never "to." What that might mean in the workplace, the home, and the church, will take some prayer and pondering.

(For more information, see "How is the Euphemism of 'Touching' Used in Greek?" by Roy E. Ciampa.)

Carry Me And I'll Drum It Through

But Moses' hands grew weary; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; so his hands were steady until the sun set. - Exodus 17.12

One of the most famous works of art to emerge from the tragedy of America’s Civil War is Truman Howe Bartlett’s bronze, “Carry Me and I’ll Drum it Through.” It depicts a Union soldier, lean, battered, but determined, marching forward into battle. On his shoulder perches a child, a drummer-boy who brandishes his sticks defiantly above his head.

The statue embodies an apocryphal tale from an unknown battle. Both sides in that terrible conflict relied on drum-beats to signal orders to troops in the thick of combat. Where the black-powder fog of musket-fire obscured visual signals and the roar of artillery overwhelmed a commander’s shouts, the staccato taps of dead wood on dried skin conveyed vital information about troop movements. Lives and victory depended on the children who volunteered for this hazardous duty.

According to the story, an infantryman encountered one such lad with a minie-ball wound through his thigh. Though ordered to the rear, the little fellow refused and instead cried to the soldier, “Carry me and I’ll drum it through!”

As Israel’s ranks charged forward to face the Amalekites, Moses understood that conquest depended on good communication. Aloft on the high ground he flourished defiant hands aloft and signaled the army’s needs to the heavenly Commander in Chief. Dried bones in dying flesh beat out the tattoo of intercession. As long as the lines of communication lasted, God’s people drove back their foes. When, wounded with weariness, Moses let his signaling fall silent, confusion swept the ranks. Rather than fall back and seek rest, the mighty prophet turned to his seconds, Aaron and Hur, and pled, in essence, “Carry me and I’ll drum it through!”

For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, Paul warns the Ephesians, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Eph 6.12) In this ceaseless struggle the smoke of forgetfulness overwhelms memory and the roar of conflicting voices confuses advice. Victory ultimately rests on reinforcements from Headquarters and the spiritual battle wearies our fainting flesh. In such moments, the wise Christian turns to her sisters and pleads, not for an excuse, but for assistance. Our Lord never promised victory to the solitary soldier, but to the church - the called-out assembly of mutual fellowship - which can besiege and conquer the very gates of Hell. (Mt 16.18)

Weary with warfare? Retreat means defeat. Instead, turn to those with whom you march in formation and call out, “Carry me and I’ll pray it through!”

Divine Abortion

I once read about a pastor whose liturgy called for the reading of a Psalm at the end of Sunday worship, then the pronouncement of a parting benediction. A lectionary selected the reading for each week. As the service flowed smoothly toward its conclusion, the pastor, swathed in robe and stole, entered the pulpit to waft the lovely words of divinely inspired Hebrew poetry over the congregation. Unfortunately, a busy week of pastoral duties had prevented her from checking in advance which particular Psalm appeared in that week’s rotation. Thus it transpired that the minister’s final two words to the assembled saints were:

O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!

followed by:

Go forth in peace to love and serve the Lord!

Bummer!

The 137th Psalm horrifies us, as it should, but perhaps for the wrong reasons. We think we are too good for it; perhaps we are not in fact good enough.

Two factors come into play: First of all, the ancients did exactly this kind of thing as a means of exterminating an enemy nation: no sons, no successors. (See 2 K 25.7.) Second, we must remember that this is a poem. In his commentary on the passage, John Goldingay asserts that “Daughter of Babylon,” while literally accurate, would better be translated, “Madame Babylon,” or even “Mother Babylon.” This makes sense in light of John’s metaphor on Revelation 17.5. Thus the “infants” in question are not the literal babies of actual Babylonian women, but the future of the empire itself.

While that reading may produce a sigh of relief, it shouldn’t.

Taken this way, Psalm 137 becomes a manifesto against systemic injustice. The psalmist recognizes that the deaths of this or that Babylonian ruler or soldier will not suffice. As with a drama, putting different actors in the same role will not flip the script. No matter who plays King Claudius in Hamlet, there’s still something rotten in the state of Denmark. The removal of this or that bad person, even the repentance from this or that bad action, offers far too civilized a response to injustice. Only spiritual genocide will do the job.

C. S. Lewis claims that if we understand these infants to be the small seeds sown by our sin nature, “the advice of the Psalm is the best: Knock the little bastards’ brains out.” True, but Lewis reads as individual what the psalmist experienced as systemic. God’s Word incites us to rage in prayer against every organized entity, every culture, every power that thrives on the subjugation of others.

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn writes in The Gulag Archipelago, “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own being?”

That line also cuts through every human institution - every school, every committee, every government, every church. And who is willing to bash the brains out of the very things that insure the survival of our way of life?

Go forth in peace to love and serve the Lord.

Church Growth - No, Really

Barry Cox is a church planter - literally.

On his property near Cambridge, New Zealand, Cox has created a sanctuary that consists of living trees that grow on an iron framework and create a house of worship that is truly alive. Cut leaf alders form the roof. Copper sheen forms the walls. A camellia hedge creates a surrounding courtyard. Once the young plants grow strong enough to support the structure, caretakers plan to disassemble the iron skeleton.

We use a lot of organic language to talk about the church: Churches are either "alive" or "dead," either "growing" or "dying." Cox's building provides a physical embodiment of many of the Scripture's images regarding the Body of Christ: Peter compares us toliving stones. . .built into a spiritual house (1 Peter 2.5.) John hears the risen Christ promise the church the congregation in ancient Philadelphia that if you conquer, I will make you a pillar in the temple of my God; you will never go out of it. (Rev 3.12).  rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. Paul exhorts the Colossians to be  rooted and built up in him (Col 2.7), and sees himself and other pastors as gardeners: I planted, Apollos watered (1 Cor 3.6). And, of course, we have the master metaphor from the Master himself: I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15.5)

Baptists love to remind each other that the building is not the church; the church is the community of saints. We might realize this metaphor more fully if we pondered Cox's planted parable. If I see my fellow-believers organically rather than organizationally, I might care for the in a different, perhaps even in a better, way. I might think less about hectoring them to go forward, and work harder at helping them go deep. I might still see the need to prune them back, but feel less compulsion to pluck them up. I might view them less as resources and more as responsibilities. I might even realize that although they needed a guiding framework in their youth (Be imitators of me), the goal is that they outgrow the guide (just as I also am of Christ. - 1 Cor. 11.1).

For more information on the Tree Church, see Tree Church and A One Hundred Seat Church Constructed From Living Trees.