Women in Leadership and Why I am again Glad to be an Anabaptist

(I suggest you read the interview before you read my scattered thoughts) Here is a fascinating interview from CNN. I was reminded again of how delighted I am to be an Anabaptist, particularly one who believes in women literally having their heads covered, when Dr. Jones was put in a corner on the issue of the covering and also war and the government. I felt that Janet Parshall should have been a little more definite in stating that women and men are equal in value and importance, they simply have role differences. The example of women not being an afterthought of creation was good. I think that God made woman later than everything else to give Adam time to learn how handicapped and incapable he was without woman.

This interview does clearly highlight how flawed it is to believe that we can just read the Bible and know what is right. Everyone views Scripture through a lens. I believe that Jesus needs to be our lens for interpreting Scripture. He was the fulness of God revealed. It is through this complete revelation of God that we can understand all the rest of Scripture. I did like Dr. Jones’ point that the Scripture and the will not be inconsistent with each other because they are both of God. Jesus is the Logos, the source of all good and truth. He is the Word.

Larry King Live

Should Women Be Pastors?

Aired June 14, 2000 – 9:00 p.m. ET THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight, a Baptist battle over whether women should be pastors. Joining us from Greenville, South Carolina, Dr. Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University; from Nashville, the Reverend Raye Nell Dyer, president of Baptist Women in Ministry; with me in New York, radio talk show short Janet Parshall of “Janet Parshall’s America,” and the Reverend Stan Hastey, executive director of the Alliance of Baptists. It’s all next on LARRY KING LIVE.

Leo Tolstoy Edits My Blog Post

In a previous post I declared my belief that the church should not use the weapon of coercion. I said that while the good can be accomplished with coercion and the sword, it is an evil tool. The state causes good to happen but uses an evil or flawed tool. I said that the weapon of the church is the only way to truly accomplish good with a good weapon.

While I do not retract this, I have been led into a slightly different understanding or perspective on this issue by some of the statements in Leo Tolstoy’s wonderful novel The Resurrection. In it he asks what right men have to imprison and punish others when they themselves are evil. While the evilness of the common prison guard in Tolstoy’s country and time may have been more corrupt than in ours, our society has similar situations. While the prison guards of our day may not themselves visit prostitutes or steal money, some of them would visit a strip club or sue someone to get money regardless of that person’s guilt, and even more of them would consider these things to be okay. The guards hold little moral superiority over those they guard. The same with the judges, policemen, and politicians. While these people may not have committed actions that the law deems evil, they are evil like all are who have not been transformed into the image of Christ.

Tolstoy goes on to say that love and forgiveness are the way that Christians act. Here is where he brings a twist to my previous thinking. It is not purely because the weapon is evil that the church does not use coercion and the sword. Rather, because the church is made up of people who are like Christ, the church does what Christ did/does. The church simply acts out of who they are and offers forgiveness and love. They do not reject the sword only because it is evil, but because it is discordant with the nature of who they now are.

Discussions of a Trite Phrase

While I reject many of the petty bickerings and minute differentiations that generally accompany the statement that “Christianity is a relationship, not a religion”, I agree with the statement in the pure form of its meaning. A religion is a system of practices and dogma whereby one comes to meet the conditions of the divine. Christianity differs in that Christians do not, as the central method of their relationship with the divine, follow a religious system or declare belief in dogma.

Christianity not about pleasing the Divine by actions or beliefs, but rather about becoming like the Divine. It is not about doing, but being, being like Christ. Some may protest casting away salvific actions or beliefs, but I counter by saying that if we become like Jesus Christ (the fullness of the Divine Father) we will do all that is and only what is consistent to the nature of God. We will be like Jesus. This is the essence of Christianity.

Understanding this may revolutionize the way many view Christianity, Mennonitism, salvation, and church. Think how it would alter things if everyone understood that doing the right things does not make you right and if parents and teachers and preachers were not satisfied with a church or youth group full of people doing the right things, but would rather be concerned about the church and youth group being like Christ. Might I add that we must not associate being like Christ simply with doing right things.

You may say I have split hairs. You may say that the difference I have pointed out between Christianity as a religion and a relationship are very minor like so many others. I apologize if I have been a hypocrite, only let my words be heard and the truth that they contain be understood.

Bringing Justice: an excuse for self-preservation

There are many Christians who believe that one can be just and loving in carrying out violence against another human being. They believe it is possible to love someone and kill them yet kill them for a just cause. They believe that there are things so unjust, that the righteous are fully correct in carrying out punishment.

While I can theoretically imagine how this is possible, I have at least one major problem with it. I firmly believe that Christians are to be like Jesus. Christians are to go about life on earth in full adherence to the teachings, principles, and purposes of Jesus life. (This is more fully laid out in my Mennofesto.)

My major problem with Christians who want to kill, albeit for a cause they feel is just, is that this requires an attitude antithetical to that of Christ. Christ clearly demonstrated and taught self denial. Over and over He taught that we should submit to the abuse of others (not return evil for evil, turn the other cheek, not sue). We should not protect our own interests (lend if someone asks, go the extra mile, spread the Gospel). His death was an act of complete abandonment of Himself. He abandoned self preservation and gave complete commitment to the plan of God.

Try as I might, I still find that those Christians who want to kill and use other weapons of this world to bring justice are doing it to a greater or lesser degree for their own preservation or the preservation of their true god, their nation. (And beyond this, Jesus does not call the Church to bring justice through violence, but to bring reconciliation through repentance.) Jesus calls us to surrender ourselves and our bodies completely to Him and Him alone. We are to fully deny the impulse to preserve our bodies, comfortable lives, hobbies, or nation and instead work to build the Kingdom of God. We must sacrifice ourselves for the Kingdom of God and the world. We must love God with all of ourselves and our neighbors with the love that God gives back. We must abandon ourselves to God.