A Window into the Past: Women, Greco-Roman Society, and The Pastorals (pt. II)

A brief history of Corinth:

Corinth in Brief

Prior to the Roman conquering in 146 B.C., “Corinth had been a leading center of Greek power.…In 44 B.C.E, Caesar refounded Corinth as a Roman colony,” and during Paul’s day, Corinth was officially, according to architecture and inscription, Roman (Keener 6-7).  Alan Johnson writes, “…the city’s architecture looked Roman, it was governed by a Roman civic structure, and it was inhabited largely by Roman people—a small contingent of Caesar’s military veterans, many freedmen and women, and urban plebeians” (14).  F. F. Bruce adds, “…its citizens were Romans, probably freemen from Italy, but the population was augmented by Greeks and Levantines, including Jews” (Bruce 19).  “Evidence for the prominence of Roman, rather than Greek, patterns of culture in the most respected mores….[is the] clear example concern[ing] the wearing of hoods by women in public, especially in public worship, as well as the issue of head covering (just possibly an issue about hair) for men (1 Cor 11:2-16)….” (Thiselton 5).

In the first century, “…the city was a bustling commercial crossroads for Europe and Asia.  Ships from the west traveling from Italy through the Corinthian Gulf would head for the port of Lechaeum, Corinth’s eastern harbor.  Those from the east could harbor at Cenchreae, which faced eastward toward the Saronic gulf, which eventually led to the Aegean Se and Asia.  An ancient cargo roadway a few miles to the north connected the western sea lanes with the eastern across the isthmus at is narrowest point…” (Johnson 15).  In addition to being the primary harbor for ships, Corinth was also known for the manufacturing of goods (Johnson 15).  Keener notes, “Its location on the Isthmus had long involved Corinth in trade….Local banking, artisans, and finally the current provincial seat would have further augmented the city’s wealth” (7).

Bruce provides some insight into “Old Corinth” Prior to Roman conquering,

Old Corinth had been a by-word for licentiousness, and this hotch-potch of races would have hastened the process by which the new Corinth acquired an equally unsavoury reputation.  AM Hunter says that in the popular mind Corinth suggested ‘culture and courtesans… “Corinthian words” implied pretensions to philosophy and letters, and to ‘Corinthianize’ was popular Greek for ‘go to the devil’….[Corinth] acquired a reputation for luxury, and its name became proverbial for sexual license.  It was a centre of the worship of Aphrodite, whose temple stood on the summit of the Acrocointhus… (18).

Even after Rome conquered Corinth and turned it from Greek ways to Roman ways, Corinth was able regain its wealth (Bruce 18).  However, with the return of its wealth  “…the old reputation for sexual laxity also returned: the temple of Aphrodite was staffed by 1, 000 female slaves dedicated to her worship, who are said to have made the city a tourist attraction and enhanced its prosperity (Strabo, Geog. Viii. Vi. 20)” (Bruce 18-9).

Though there was a vast amount of wealth in Corinth, Horsley observes that there was a ‘gulf’ between the scant wealthy and powerful and the larger, poorer population (31).  He writes,

Despite this, or perhaps partly because of this, Greek society—and even more so Roman society—was obsessed with rank and status…. women were subordinated to and under the power of their husbands and masters.  In Corinth the lower strata must have been every bit as concerned with their status as the elite scrambling for provincial honors and imperial favor (Horsley 31).

Keener makes the point that “condescending below” one’s social classes “was considered shameful in terms of social intercourse” (8).

However, though there was a vast gap between the haves and the have-nots, Johnson proclaims that  growth between the classes was possible, “…at Corinth the culture allowed a rapid rise in social status for many people.  Power (to achieve goals), education, wealth, knowledge, religious and moral purity, family and ethnic group position, and local community status were prized goals in this highly status conscious society” (18).  “‘Corinth was a city where public boasting and self-promotion had become an art form.  The Corinthian people thus lived with an honor-shame cultural orientation, where public recognition was often more important than facts…’” (Witherington qtd. in Thiselton 13).

In fact, this status seeking tendency was not localized in the pagan society surrounding the budding churches in Corinth, Johnson observes,

Many characteristics of the cultural life of first-century Corinth were seeping into the life of the Christian community.  Instead of being transformed by Christian values and viewpoints, they were behaving like their counterparts in the pagan society around them.  Status seeking, self-promotion, a competitive drive for adulation and success, even use of the Christian church as a means of self-promotion and advancement are themes that reoccur though out the letter.  There was a spirit of self-satisfaction and boasting, a spirit of having arrived and not needing anything else (4:6-8).  Those without means were being marginalized, neglected and even humiliated in the church’s meetings (11;7-34; 12:21-26).  A wrong notion of Christian freedom, more like the ‘freedom’ of the surrounding culture, was prevailing in their relationships with each other and toward the wider culture (6:12; 8:9; 10:23) (Johnson 22-3).

It is not naïve to assume that there was a predominance of Greco-Roman ways and thoughts that were infiltrating the Corinthian churches and are the reasons why Paul treats those Corinthian questions in the manner in which he does (Morris 18).  “Only when Paul went to Corinth did he encounter a Hellenistic urban ethos that was both the product of and fully assimilated into the Roman imperial order” (Horsley 28).

It is typically understood by scholars that the Corinthians, as a society, were immensely concerned with Sophia, and the effects Sophia had on their social relations.  “Their strong enlightened consciousness freed them from the parochial prejudices of conventional moral codes.  Spiritual experiences in particular were given for the satisfaction, illumination, and personal fulfillment of the individual” (Horsley 37).  Horsley notes, “The Corinthian’s exalted spiritual status and immortality gained from their intimate relationship with Sophia had significant implications for mundane social relations.  On the one hand, for some Corinthians the all-important cultivation of their relationship with heavenly Sophia required devoting their energies to the spiritual life” (Horsley 37).  The intimacy with Sophia was not restricted to men, but was available to women, as well.  Intimacy with Sophia as described by Horsley above meant, “devoting their [men’s and women’s] energies to the spiritual life.”  Therefore, as Horsley comments, “…intimacy with Sophia meant avoidance of marital/sexual relations, and perhaps, by implication, liberation from confining subordination in a traditional patriarchal marriage for women” (Horsley 37).

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Why Sarah?

I’ve always read the story of Sarah and the casting out of Hagar as Sarah being nagging, and, sometimes, just down right mean. I saw it as petty. But then, last summer, I was given an opportunity to preach on Gen 21, and during research and writing the sermon, I saw something new. Sarah wasn’t being mean, she was defending the promise (this is what Luther tells us). Rather than, “just get that servant girl and her son out of here!”, I saw, “…it’s about the promise…the promise, dear husband!”  But then there was another question: why Sarah? Why would she care about the promise so much as to protect and defend it? Why would she be the one to remember?

Here’s my answer:*

God is the God of the Promise

In Gen. 21:1 we read, “The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised.” What was it that the Lord had promised both Sarah and Abraham? A Child—he would give them a child in their old age. We know this from Gen. 18:9-15,

“They said to him, “Where is Sarah your wife?” And he said, “She is in the tent.” The Lord said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?” The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.” But Sarah denied it, saying, “I did not laugh,” for she was afraid. He said, “No, but you did laugh.”

One of my favorite verses is Gen 18:15. She flat out denies that she laughed…and Moses records it. Moses, inspired to record such an interaction, leaves one of our stately matriarchs completely human.

According to a webMD article, “‘Laughter isn’t under our conscious control…We don’t choose to laugh in the same way we choose to speak…” Sarah’s proof of this. Sarah’s laugh is an immediate and subconscious response to over-hearing the promise of a son the Lord makes to Abraham—and she uncontrollably scoffs…in disbelief. We’ve all done this. (scoffed in disbelief)

So Sarah laughs because she doesn’t believe what the Lord was promising. According to her, she is too old to have a child. Moses tells us that the way of woman had ceased. In her words, “I am worn out…” What a way to describe yourself. The word translated as “worn-out” in Gen 18:12 can also be rendered “used-up” or “exhausted.” Synonyms for “worn-out” are “spent,” “stale,” “deteriorated,” “destroyed,” “used,” and “useless.”

In Sarah’s eyes, she was—in her advanced age—“useless” because she could no longer bare children—because that possibility had ceased for her.  She had been created to bring forth children and she didn’t; in her opinion, this failure rendered her “useless.” Years of longing, years of praying, years of begging and yearning produced nothing. No child. Years of suffering through hope delayed in light of the physical possibility to produce a child give way to the concrete evidence that that possibility is now over.

For Sarah, there was no longer any reason or evidence or proof to hope for such a thing—it was over; it was impossible. So she laughs, because the words of the Lord being spoken contradict plain fact and promote the impossible. She laughs in disbelief. (no way! You’ve got to be kidding! What?!). Now, if the Lord appeared to Daniel and said, “this time next year Lauren will have a son” there would be NO laughter and most like wailing and gnashing of teeth (why?!!?), because it’s possible. It could happen. What could happen carries significantly far less comedic value than what flat-out could NOT happen. But the God Sarah worshipped, the one that was speaking with Abraham at that moment is the God of the promise. For, as I’ve said a million times before (at least!) with God, His promises are future facts. What He says, happens (Let there be….and there was!).

I’ve spent a lot of time in a passage of scripture that isn’t part of our reading because I need to set the scene for when we come back to chapter 21 (our passage). I want to paint with vibrant and bold colors where Sarah was prior holding the child in her arms, prior to nursing this child, prior to, how Luther referred to Isaac, “the promise [which has] now been made flesh” (4).

“The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. And Sarah said, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me.” And she said, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age” (Gen 21:1-7)

 

The promise has now been made flesh. The long awaited yearned for child is here.  The Lord, who questioned why she had laughed in chapter 18, has now fulfilled His promise and has given her a tangible reason to laugh but this time rather than laughing out of scoffing disbelief, she laughs because of hope and joy fulfilled. Because of God’s promise—and His faithfulness to that promise—Sarah is no longer the cursed one (barrenness would have been seen as a curse (Luther 11)) but as the blessed-one.

Now, finally, our passage:

The child grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.” The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring” (Gen 21:8-13)

“But Sarah…” At some point Sarah notices and sees something. One day, Sarah looks upon the two boys her Isaac (the promise made flesh) and Ishmael (Abraham legitimate first born) and something dawns on her. And she speaks up. “Cast out this slave woman and her son” she says to Abraham. She continues, “for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.” While Ishmael had a promise made about him (Gen 17:20: “As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation.”), it was not the promise, the promise of the established covenant; Sarah “makes a very fine distinction between her own son and Hagar’s” (Luther 20).

Luther writes about Sarah at this point, “It is her purpose to prevent Ishmael from coming into the inheritance together with Isaac” (20). Rather than allow both sons to be heirs, Sarah steps up and speaks out to protect the promise; Isaac would be the heir, and not Ishmael. According to Sarah, Hagar and her son, Ishmael had to go. Rather than being petty and possessive, Sarah is protecting the promise. And so is God, “But God said to Abraham, ‘Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you…” “[Sarah] is compelled by God’s command to undertake something contrary to her husband’s will” (Luther 23) [Abraham was very distressed]. Luther writes, “Abraham had not given such careful consideration to the promise. Therefore God repeats it…” (24).

Why does Sarah give more consideration to the promise than Abraham does? Why does Sarah seem to remember it more vividly than her husband? Luther makes the point that Sarah was alert and keen to the promise and Abraham wasn’t. (“But Sarah has her way and accomplishes what she had undertaken, for she looked more closely at the promise and understood it more clearly than Abraham did” (36)).

I’ll fill in the gaps. Why Sarah and not Abraham? Because, the woman, who has suffered from deferred hope and years upon years of longing for a child, when she holds that child that has been given to her by the very word of God and with that child there is a spoken promise, she remembers. She remembers it every day she looks into his eyes. The woman who suffers barrenness (infertility and loss) suffers the one-two punch of a broken and fallen world. Every month she is reminded of what hasn’t happened or what was and is now no longer. A woman who suffers in this way cannot hold the living, fleshy baby—the baby promised by the very word of God–and not think: God is faithful.  The Heir is born.

I have three children, but I’ve also lost three pregnancies. After our last loss, four years ago, I kept hearing “Nehemiah” a name of an old-testament minor prophet, a name which means “No more tears.” I went three years with that word and with the feeling that we weren’t finished yet, we weren’t finished having children. But month after month proved that we were finished, and the tears came every month. And then in January of 2014, there was hope. I was pregnant. In October, we held our daughter, a near 10lb pile of screaming baby, and I heard it again, “No more tears.” 9 months later, rocking her before a nap or nursing her at 2AM I hear it again and again, “No more tears.” Every time I look at her, I hear it. God is faithful. No more tears.

So, if it is so with me, how much more with Sarah? I was still (barely) at child-bearing age; but Sarah was 90. Every time Sarah looked at Isaac she remembered the promise. God had promised the impossible and had made the impossible possible, and she couldn’t forget it so she reminds her husband. “The Promise, dear husband, is with Isaac.” It is by the promise that rescue and salvation come and not through the flesh and bone of birth right. True heirs are heirs of the promise. “‘Through Isaac shall your descendants be named,’ not through Ishmael; that is, the people of God are not those who have the physical succession but those who have the promise and believe it” (Luther 33).

God is a God of the promise.

*this is the first part of the sermon that was not published yesterday (2.9.15) with the rest of the sermon that went up on http://www.mbird.com (read it here).

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εν τω Χριστω

Do you know how many times Paul uses the phrase “in Christ” in his letters? A lot.

He uses it so often that I’d say it’s one of his favorite prepositional phrases! One of my New Testament Exegesis professors, during a class on Ephesians, made special note to point out how many times Paul uses it in the first couple of chapters of the book. The phrase was used so frequently that it struck my professor strongly: Paul’s trying to make a point, the believer is in Christ, and Paul is taking every opportunity to not-so-subtly remind them of this fact.

You might not notice it in the English, but when you’re busy parsing out every word (case, number, person, tense, mood…etc), a repeated phrase starts to jump out at you. εν Χριστω…εν Τω Χριστω…εν Χριστω….in Christ…in Christ…in Christ. One of the things we had to do in that particular exegesis class was to discuss how phrases/nouns/verbs were functioning in the sentence. Was the verb past tense? present? future? pluperfect passive? What about the noun: nominative, dative, genitive, or accusative? Each aspect of each word adds a different layer of color to the word. It can be quite fascinating at times and at other times you’d sound your exhausted student yawp: IT’S JUST “THE”! “THE”! JUST “THE”!

Εν Χριστω while looking quite simple packs a little bit of a verbal punch. This particular prepositional phrase (remember, prepositions are anything you can do with a box; a prepositional phrase is when a preposition has a direct object) is in the Dative case–typically the case of the indirect object, that’s a rough and simplistic way to define it so don’t go tweeting that ;)–what’s important to know (and maybe even exhausting, ha!) is that datives themselves have functions; so there are different types of datives that, when that function is sussed out, add dimension to the otherwise bland, saltine-y prepositional phrase. In our case, εν Χριστω is a “dative of sphere/location”. The believer, by faith, is _in_ Christ. It’s your location, your address, your 411.

That’s pretty cool, isn’t it?

I’ve always read that particular dative of location as being shielded by Christ’s robes, hidden in him, cloaked (etc). I’ve always seen it as my imputation of righteousness, that I, by faith in Him, am _in_ Him (by the power of the Holy Spirit) and thus the Father sees me by seeing His son, thus he sees a Lauren who is spotless, her scarlet robes now bleached white by blood of the Lamb, his beloved, purified daughter (all of it His doing and none of it mine).

But is that all?

I don’t mean to imply that that isn’t enough, because, gosh, it certainly is, isn’t it? But that’s not how my brain works–the faulty brain He gave me to keep pushing traditional ways of understanding things; sometimes, I just think, think, and think some more about one little thing and then something happens and that airy upstairs (my head) fills with light: AH HA! What if…

Recently a dear friend wrote to me that she was tired and finding it hard to feel “full” (within herself) to turn around and pour herself out for others–a common parental feeling, perpetual emptiness in the midst of an unceasing demand to pour one’s self out for your children and spouse. Yet, she added, the Lord was continually bringing one scripture to mind, which was “This is the day the Lord has made, rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps 118:24), whereupon she confessed, “The truth of Jesus doesn’t make my heart rejoice in that area” (area being: pouring one’s self out for others while running on empty). Then I started writing back.  I wrote, “Maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe you have the space to just be in that area.” And then one of those light filling moments occurred as I was walking away from the computer to do something; I stopped and darted back and wrote (almost frantically): “wait.” (punctuation aside…i was pretty amped up at this point.) What had caught my attention was “rejoicing in”…rejoicing in the day that the Lord had made, essentially, is rejoicing _in_ the Lord, in Jesus…in Christ. Sometimes it’s rejoicing because of what Christ has done; but what I heard that moment was rejoicing because of where she is, which is in Christ and that means she was free to be, to _just_ be as she was. She was free to be exhausted and spent and grumpy about it because of her location, in Christ.

In Christ there is no need for fake smiles, no need for grinning and bearing it, no demand for some saccharine sweet joy cloaked in some cheap wrapper of happiness. In Christ, you can just BE, as is. In Christ you can confess your bitter feelings, your anger, your hurt, your exhaustion, your just plain grumpiness for no other reason than just because, because it’s a real place located in time and space that is–in the truest sense of the word–safe that has been created for you to just be. And it’s always confession, the freedom to confess (to say it like it is), rather than trying to grab bulls by horns or pretending like things are different that weakens cement strongholds on our hearts. And therein, therein that tired, angry, grumpy heart, therein the freedom for that heart to be just that in Christ, comes the first fruits of real rejoicing…rejoicing εν τω Χριστω.

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No More

Driving my husband to work, I heard something on a Christian radio station that he had set the car radio to. There’s a reason why I don’t listen to Christian radio (apart from my Pandora Waterdeep station), and what I heard this morning reinforced my desire NOT to listen to Christian radio. The statement was one of those statements that made me simultaneously deeply embarrassed and deeply angry; I slunk down in the driver’s seat a little bit and growled. Grrrr…

The nice thing was that my husband was as baffled and put-off by the statement as I was; solidarity in unity.

In a discussion of some books from the 60’s that were being considered as reasons why we are in the current cultural climate we are in terms of gender and gender relations and feminism, one of the personalities said: Look, in Galatians 3 we read there is neither Jew or Gentile man or woman; this here is speaking to complimentarianism, men and women are equal in image, dignity, worth, value but have different functions…

My husband and I looked at each other, “What did he just say?!”

We didn’t have an issue with the whole “equal but different”; I advocate for the same thing. While we both knew where he was going with his thoughts on “equal but different”, that wasn’t the idea that that made our jaws drop. What made our jaws drop was this: Galatians 3 is about complimentarianism. My husband’s astute response was: if anything, that passage lends itself more toward “egalitarianism” than “complimentarianism”. He’s right (my husband’s very smart). The passage in Galatians 3 where Paul says, “ There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female,for you are all one in Christ Jesus” certainly does lend itself more to “egalitarianism” than “complementarianism” in that that portion of scripture is part of the unity out of plurality, all one, heirs of Christ, discussion. No where there does Paul discuss the equal-but-differentness of the couplings. The radio personality was just wrong. Out of all the passages of scripture one could pick from to argue _for_ “complimentarianism”, that IS NOT one of them; it’s not even close to being one of them. The breaking down of the barriers between segregated classes, races, genders, is gone, according to Paul: in Christ all are ONE.

So why did my feather’s ruffle so much at the comment? Because of both what my husband pointed out and this: both the terms “complimentarian” and “egalitarian” are recent man made terms often imposed on the the bible to try to make sense of things, to group like to like, to make a statement. “I’m an egalitarian” should tell you, in short, that I hold certain things to be true about gender and the distinction and likeness therein; “I’m a complimentarian” tells you the something similar about the person: what they hold to be true about gender and gender relations. They are terms to deal with the radical freedom the Gospel brings to human beings and all of their relationships. To say, “I’m an egalitarian” says: men and women are equal ontologically speaking; “I’m a complimentarian” says: men and women are compliments ontologically speaking. But the terms are so ambiguous that you have radically different shades of each. For instance, take my own marriage: we are very progressive when it comes to women and men and the relationship between the two: we don’t believe that men are better leaders than women, we don’t believe that substantially speaking there’s a secret authority gene given to men, we don’t believe in gender stereo-types, we affirm strong women _and_ strong men, we affirm the good that the feminist movement brought, etc. But, I stay home with the kids and he goes to work; I take care of the house and meals, and he brings home the “bacon”; i love making our home a sanctuary for him and my children to come home to and he makes that possible. Using my own marriage as an example, you can see that our life disturbs the neat and clean lines a term like “egalitarian” would like to create. I’ve also seen “complimentarian” relationships look _just_ like mine. In my immediate circle of friends who claim “complimentarian” status, I’ve never seen the husband assert his “authority” over his wife; they always come to decisions the same way we do: by the power of the holy spirit, bringing unity where there is division. In my immediate circle of friends who claim “egalitarian” status, I’ve never seen a confusion of gender or a rejection of proper orientation of man toward woman and woman toward man. So, I’m left to ask:

Is there actually such a things as “complimentarian” and “egalitarian”?

And to ask further:

Is it even helpful to bifurcate Christianity with these terms?

My answers to both: no. In order for “complimentarian” and “egalitarian” to be true and real, something has to be asserted that just won’t ever be asserted between two people who _just_ love each other. And, when we are fighting on so many grounds to maintain the truth of the Gospel, do we need the minutia of “in-fighting” and trying to uphold man-made, ambiguous, and unhelpful terminology? I’d say we don’t.

Here’s how I see it, and I’ll end with this: the terminology is wrought with problems and should be dismissed completely. Rather than defining our marriages as “complimentarian” or “egalitarian”, why not: Christian? Gospel centered? Or, better yet, “I’m married to an amazing man/woman and I can’t believe they love me.”  We don’t need more boxes to fill and lines delineated; the body of Christ is unique in that it is unity OUT OF diversity, this applies to marriages, too. There are no two marriages that look the same, not all men like _one_ type of woman, and vice versa. Marriages, like the people that inhabit them, will look different and will sound different, but it will be the presence of the Holy Spirit, the tangible brokenness of each member, their individual and mutual need for Christ that will be the beautiful and pleasing aroma of unity and similarity.

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A Window into the Past: Women, Greco-Roman Society, and The Pastorals (pt. I)

Hunker down and get comfortable…this is gonna be a long ride.

What I’m going to post over the next several weeks are portions of a paper I wrote while working on my MDiv (Master of Divinity, the first of two masters I have in theology and biblical studies). I’ll be upfront and honest about one thing: I didn’t perform as well on this paper as I typically did on papers; I received a B for it. The one reason I’ll offer for the lower grade was twofold: I not only exceeded the page limit by a whopping 19 pages (gah!) but I also didn’t have a thesis statement. In my opinion, I couldn’t have a concise, single statement that would coherently gather all 8 texts concerning the “house-codes” and women in the pastoral epistles while remaining true to each individual text in its own right. Was Paul merely saying the same thing over and over to different people? I’m not prone to affirm with a yes. While the language is similar, each context, having its own issues begs for nuanced responses. Paul’s approach in Crete (the book of Titus) manifests a different situation than, say, the one in Corinth.

But with that said, I don’t want to sound like I think that the text and Paul himself are barred down and locked in the past. Yes, both the cultural context and the “then” audience are important to understand for they do dictate a lot of our understanding of the text and what is going on. But, _you_ are now the audience, the hearers, and you play a vital role, too, not just in peering into the past, but receiving the words that have traveled from 50 AD to 2015, because the word moves through history, breaking through time and space barriers, longing to be heard, causing you to hear it and pulling you into to this grand story. You are now in that house church in Thessoloniki, caught up in the Gospel, the freedom it brings, the wonder and the excitement and you are now listening to a letter being read to you from St. Paul.

Now, to move on to the subject of this “series”…some things to cover before I continue:

1. I’ll be posting short segments, pieces really. I’d rather err in readability and digestibility and having more posts in a series, than trying to be efficient. Also, I suck at trying to be efficient in word economy especially with my own work–yes, I’m an editor, but I can’t edit my own work.

2. The paper was written in 2006. As I go, I’ll make some edits or expound where I can, but mostly I’ll be cutting and pasting from the document. It’s primarily exegesis and history; so, I don’t think I’ll have much to add or edit. But again, every thinker, writer, author, eventually disagrees with their historical counterpart one way or another…thinking to themselves: i can’t believe I wrote THAT?!?!

3.  Even though i exceeded the imposed page limit by 19 pages, this work is by no means a comprehensive work (though it sure felt like it at the time…). I’m also not an “expert” in the field of Greek antiquity, Paul, exegesis, or gender issues. I’m a thinker and I can do exegesis, and I can make educated deductions about things I read and apply them…but I’m not an expert.

So, with no further ado…here we go!

Let’s start with the views of women Greek and Roman antiquity:

The View of Women in Greece

Being a woman in ancient Greece was everything short of glamorous. Philo explains that women were strictly created for the indoor life, a life of seclusion (qtd. in Sly 196); she was not to be a too interested about the matters other than her own household, and “She should not shew herself off like a vagrant in the streets before the eyes of other men, except when she has to go to the temple (hieron), and even then she should…go… when most people have gone home (Spec. 3.171-174)” (qtd. in Sly 196-7).

Ancient Greek literature provides a perfect portrait of the typical male understanding of women during that time,

….women were considered more subject to those chaotic natural forces upon which humans depend, more passionate and less rational, and thus more volatile and potentially destructive unless subordinated to the controls of reason and culture. At the same time, women are lovely and alluring, shining with the pleasures of Eros and the charms of Aphrodite; they possess a power upon which men are dependent and to which they are intensely attracted. In short, the power of woman is the power of Eros, the creative and destructive force of nature both inside our souls and out in the world, a force terrible and beautiful—‘death and undecaying life,’ as Sophocles describes Aphrodite (Thornton 41).

Woman as the “force terrible and beautiful” was subject to the “controls of reason and culture” that were man’s; that which was incapable of being understood (woman) was confined (by man) to a status equal to that of a slave. Pandora, from Greek literature, embodies the above description of why women were not just relegated to an inferior position, but were, in a sense, feared,

Pandora is the first woman created….She is fashioned by Hephasitus, the craftsman god, as an ‘evil thing’ hidden in the semblance of ‘bashful minded.’ Athena teaches her the woman’s arts of needlework and weaving, while Aphrodite gave her sexual allure, the power to arouse ‘cruel longing and limb-devouring cares.’ And the trickster god Hermes provides her with a ‘bitch’s mind and a deceptive character’ and ‘lies and wily words.’ This ‘sheer trap’ is the ancestress of women, a ‘plague to men who eat bread’ (Thornton 41).

Using Pandora as an example, B.S. Thornton writes,

…her sexual power, both attractive and duplicitous, but also necessary for humanity in order to reproduce and have the children who will protect them from what Hesiod calls ‘deadly old age.’ Man’s dependence on nature and its procreative power animates this fear of women, for women seem to be more intimate with that ambiguous power, creative and destructive all at once (Thornton 41).

Helen provided another example of the “terribleness” of woman and her duplicitous nature, “The most famous woman from Greek myth, Helen, perhaps best exemplifies woman’ double character—her seductive allure and destructive capacity. Helen is not just the most beautiful woman, but the most sexually beautiful woman in the world…Terrible is the likeness of her face to immortal goddesses’” (Thornton 42-3).

Though Pandora and Helen embodied the reason for control over women because of their inherent “duplicitous” nature, there was, however, an alternative and a more preferred figure of woman from ancient Greek literature: Penelope. Penelope, from the “Odyssey”, was the archetypal wife, Thornton writes, “…the hallmark of Penelope’s character is the virtue that was most capable or reining in the power of Eros, the virtue most important for a wife to possess: rational self-control, the ability to restrain her appetites out of loyalty to her husband and her household” (Thornton 53).

Though scarce in advocates, there was another opinion of women.   Plato, in his “The Republic”, discusses the need for women who are the wives of the guards to be trained for warfare and schooled like the men,

Actually, they are to be not only wives, but guards themselves…the women of the guards are capable of making a creative contribution to building up the community, but…not… through family life. He is opposed to the prevailing view that they are meant by nature only to bear children, bring them up, and look after the household ….Now, if they are to do the same work as men, they should have the same upbringing …and education…Therefore the women of the ruling class must be schooled in ‘music’ and gymnastics just like the men, and also trained for war (Jaeger 244).

Though Plato is talking about a specific societal-class of women, his understanding that women would be a valuable asset to the guards if they were trained in a similar fashion is incredible; his contradiction to the normal role of women as strictly child bearers and homebodies is encouraging. Plato defends his argument is terms of “different equipment”,

A man who is not equipped to be a cobbler is not to do the same work as a man who is. But if one a man is bald and another has a fine head of hair, they might both (despite that particular difference in their equipment) be qualified to become cobblers. No doubt the natural difference between men and women influences their lives more profoundly than that, but still they may both be equally well equipped for the same vocation (Jaeger 245).

Though, Plato expresses that woman can be “equally well equipped for the same vocation,” he contends that man is still superior over woman in every area “…even in those which are declared to be woman’s province by those who maintain she is a domestic creature—cookery, baking, and weaving; but there is no one work which man or woman alone can do and which is impossible for the other sex” (Jaeger 245-6). According to Plato, though men and women can be equally trained, woman will fall short to man, even in her own sphere. Ultimately, Plato does not lag too far behind his contemporaries on the subject of women.

The View of Women in Rome

Roman women were cut from a different cloth than Greek women. Though they did not bear their own names—like we do in our culture, and bore the feminine version of their father’s name, (i.e., Julius/Julia, “If a man had more than one daughter, the second would be designated ‘Secunda’, the third ‘Tertia,’ and so on”) (Ball 197)— under the empire, they did have more social freedom than the Greek women. Albert Ball writes, “Because they weren’t bound to the house the way Greek women were, Roman women seem not to have been content to play mother and homemaker….By Augusts’ day, women reclined on couches at dinner beside their husbands instead of sitting by their feet or on chairs” (198). These somewhat ‘liberated’ women could run the family business when their husbands passed, (under the reign of Claudius) bought and sold property, and could remain single, but they could not vote (Ball 197). Around 44 B.C., Bruce Winter says that there was

…evidence of a ‘new’ type of woman…in certain circles in Rome. Both in ostensibly factual texts and in imaginative writing a new kind of woman appears precisely at the time of Cicero and Caesar: a woman in high position, who nevertheless claims for herself the indulgence in sexuality of a woman of pleasure. What could have given rise to such a change in the traditional behavior of married women? Wives still brought to marriage the all-important dowry but could now retain their own property. It was also possible for them to terminate the marriage, and receive back a portion of or the whole dowry” (Winter 21-2).

Therefore, it was not only financial independence that these Roman women experienced; they also experienced a small degree of social freedom (Winter 22).

Though Women were allowed these certain privileges in society, these liberties do not indicate a redeemed relationship with man. In fact, Ball writes that there were similarities between the men of Rome and Greece and their view of women, “Greek men considered women by nature intellectually inferior to men; the primary level of interaction between them was sexual….Roman men shared the Greeks’ opinion to a degree, so women never enjoyed political rights in Rome …” (197). In fact, “Greco-Roman women lived under the protection of their fathers until they were handed over to their husbands….Throughout their lives, they had the legal status of children…In Cicero’s words, ‘Our ancestors established the rule that all women, because of their weakness of intellect, should be under the power of guardians’ (Pro Murena 12.27)” (Ball 198).

On average, it is understood that because of the liberties of the Roman women, they were described as acting more aggressive then any other woman of their time and in history (Ball 198). In order to maintain societal control, “…Roman men, once the emperors rendered [women] politically impotent, could only try to salvage a few scraps of power by urging women to be subject to their husbands; ‘in no other way do woman and man become equal’ (Martial 8.12)…” (Ball 198-9). This inequality between the sexes, in spite of social liberties experienced by Roman women, is best understood in terms of the social laws of adultery, “The Greek and Romans did teach that one should not commit adultery, but not because the act violates a divine prohibition. It was views as a violation of property rights. Greek and Roman men didn’t want another man sleeping with their wives—who were their property—anymore than they wanted someone stealing their farm animals” (Ball 220).

The Roman (and Greek) family mirrored the relationship of the state to the emperor,

Within each family the father, as priest and patriarch, had patria potestas, absolute control of the lives and affairs of his wife and children…The law allowed him to inflict capital punishment on them or sell them into slavery, though such things hardly ever happened. He arranged his children’s marriages and planned his sons’ careers….The woman was expected to practice domestic crafts, manage the slaves, and behave herself with the utmost propriety (Ball 225).

Wayne Meeks advocates the same idea of the patria potestas within the Roman Family, and explains that “The traditional patria potestas of Rome had become less absolute from the time of the late republic on; the Hellenistic queens of the East and of Egypt had set a pattern of ‘masculine’ ambition and ruthlessness that women of the Julio-Claudian houses soon imitated” (Meeks 23). Craig Keener writes, ‘… ancient writers [thought] of families in…[the] general terms of rank and duty; ‘family’ was defined more by relationships of subordination than by blood relationship. The man in charge of the household was often even compared to a king, since the family was viewed as a microcosm of society” (Women and Wives 146). The influence of foreign queens, who behaved as men on the women of the Roman empire, was a primary factor in the call for wives to be in submission to their husbands, as the family unit was in submission to their head, the emperor.   Winter provides an example of the Response of the empire of Rome to the New Roman woman,

…‘the married women of the imperial family would provide her with examples of appropriate ways for a wife to behave. Works of the visual arts would show her how they dressed and how they wore their hair’. They were ‘models she should emulate, or exempla, to use the term that would come naturally to the mind of the Latin-speaking person’….A good example of traditional values is found in the statue of Regilla, the wife of the famous sophist of Athens, Herodes Atticus, around whom Philostratus wrote his Lives of the Sophists. The council of Corinth had erected a statue in her honour, and the inscription which contained the resolution of the Council read—This is a statue of Regilla…. ‘pre-eminent above others, who has attained the peak of every kind of virtue, whom she took as her husband, Herodes famous among the Hellens and furthermore a son (of Greece) greater than them all, the flower of Achaia (34-5).

Through the statues of empirical women showing how to behave and dress as a “proper” Roman woman, women of the time were exhorted (visually and verbally) to be virtuous and exemplary above all women, especially in comparison to the New Roman Woman. The ultimate desire in this propaganda was to preserve the status-quo; if one preserved the status-quo of the family, one preserved the status-quo of the state. Keener writes,

Maintaining the systems as it was had long been emphasized by ideologists of the state: ‘Preserve the present order, and do not desire any change, knowing that revolutions inevitably destroy states and lay waste homes of the people.’ Thus it was commonly believed that earlier Roman society had had much ‘higher’ morals, including much more sever discipline of unsubmissive wives (Keener Woman and Wives 144).

The State was determined to keep everything the way it was and to maintain the status-quo. With the influx of the New Roman Woman caused the women of the Greco-Roman society to seek change, therefore the Empire had to do something. The emphasis on the wives’ submission to the husband became the venue for maintaining the desired status-quo

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Who is Woman?

Below is an entry I wrote for the Mockingbird Devotional (buy it here) on Gen 2:

Genesis 2:23                                                                                                                                        Lauren R. E. Larkin

This one at last is bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh…You surpass them all.

Who is woman? A question asked by men and women alike and that is applicable to all generations. A question I ask myself, as a woman. A question all too often defined by her form and function. But we cannot isolate her from man to answer the question, because the answer to who she is lies in her relation to him. And often the answer seems to be not really an answer at all. She is completely similar to him, yet utterly different; she is equal yet not interchangeable; she is of the same flesh and bone yet a different person completely; she is comfort and challenge.

There is no substitute suitable for woman to man.  Being “bone of [his] bones, flesh of [his] flesh” she is his perfect helper; and she is God’s first act of intervention on the behalf of man. The best answer I can give to “Who is Woman?” is: she is the first gift of Grace. She would not only alleviate man’s loneliness, drawing him up and out of himself toward another, but would also be the means by which God would consummate His relationship with him—with them as one. Without her, there is no relationship between God and man; without her, loneliness prevails and the Bridegroom is left standing at the altar.  Through her creation, God demonstrates to the whole of creation His love for this curved-in man who cannot help himself, who is stuck in his loneliness and isolation by bestowing to him this wonderful gift of Grace.

The word used in Gen 2:18, “Helper”, is the same word often used of God throughout the Old Testament. In her creation, in her name (“helper”), the themes of protecting, supporting, shielding, sustaining, delivering, comforting, giving hope, and blessing are ever present. As God gently nudges Adam awake, and brings her to the man, Adam is delivered out of loneliness into communion; he is given hope, comfort, and is blessed by her. She imputes to him that which is intrinsically hers and that which he lacks: glory; she is his glory (cf. 1 Cor. 11:2-16). Apart from her, the story ends too early.

Paul says in Ephesians 5:32 about the union of man and woman, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”  The very characteristic demonstrated here in the creation of woman as man’s helper, will reverberate through the books of the Old Testament and into the ears, hearts, and minds of the New Testament audience as well as into our’s. We were, like Adam, isolated, lonely, hopeless, and helpless. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” (Eph. 2:4-5).   In Jesus, through His life, death, resurrection, and ascension, God demonstrates Himself to be our true helper.  What is intrinsically His (righteousness), he imputes to us; we were estranged, yet He entered into the midst of it and called us and brought us into communion with Him at His expense.  We live because He, being merciful and taking pity on our estate, died.

As it was in the beginning, so it is now: like Adam, we’ve been saved by Grace

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Random Thoughts on Egalitarianism and Justification

A while back, I received an email from a Twend (Twitter+Friend=Twend) about egalitarianism within the marriage and male/female relationships. My husband and I are “egalitarian” in our approach to our marriage and relationship with each other, and I passionately welcomed this email. I don’t make a huge deal about our “egalitarianism” because I find it more divisive than helpful in social media contexts. I love talking about it; i don’t love tweeting about it because, in my opinion 140 characters in an environment that is consistently devoid of the I/Thou relationship is a recipe for disaster.
While this email exchange took place a few months ago, I’m posting it now because I find myself in the midst of a pretty radical and awesome and huge project on gender and the gospel. So, why not just put this email in to a post and put it on my blog. I’m passionate (VERY) about gender and gender relations; this isn’t some fleeting fancy. The bulk of my research is aimed in the direction of gender and gender relations. I think about this topic daily, examining all the different facets for all the different angles.
So here is my response (slightly cleaned up) to my twend about “egalitarianism” and all the “rights and privledges therein” 😉

I’ve done a lot of study on the creation of woman and through all of it I just don’t see any reason for an emphasis on one gender having authority over another–it’s pointless and causes more turmoil than it’s worth. My husband agrees and he finds it ludicrous. you should hear how he talks to our daughter about being equal with men: she’s not “eye-candy” or, his favorite phrase, she’s not to be “subjected to the male gaze and can wear whatever she wants!” (She often has pants tucked into socks and strips going all different directions from head to toe!) He’s even on me when I wear make up. I tell him: IT’S FUN! And he says: you wear it because you’ve been raised to do it by our culture. I typically just roll my eyes… my shoes and makeup are fun to wear/put-on…i love me some sexy boots and smokey eyes! #ohhedoestoo 😉

This is how we view our relationship: in light of the two great commandments. These commandments are: Love the Lord your God and Love your neighbor as yourself. In my opinion, my husband and my children are my CLOSEST neighbors. I don’t then need a another commandment or “law” to come in and tell me that my role as a woman is to be at home and in submission to my husband. If the gospel is the thing by which order or, what I prefer to say, orientation occurs between me and God and me and my neighbor, then the gospel rightly orients me toward my husband because it rightly orients me toward God through the Son by the power of the Spirit. My husband and I think “roles” are pointless, and that, truly, we in merely loving each other serve and mutually submit to each other. If i love you, then why wouldn’t I put you first? For all intents and purposes, if you were to look at my life and how we run our family, we look very traditional: I stay home, he goes to work (etc). But it’s less because I should or because he can’t and more because we wanted to run our family in this way (again, laying down our lives for our neighbors, our spouse, our children, putting our desires on hold until later)–it also helped that he made enough to see that it happened.

Some have argued (and have said this too me) that egalitarianism (again, a pointless word) leads directly to androgyny–as in you can’t avoid it. This is stupid. This is like me saying that “complimentarianism” (another pointless word) always leads to domestic violence. It doesn’t. Do i find it a dangerous concept? YES; in the hands of the wrong man, yes, it will lead to violence and oppression.  I’ll always err on the side of more liberty than less because I know the law is impotent to do what it desires (orient rightly). Androgyny only occurs if we begin to think that men and women are equal AND interchangeable (rather than: equal BUT NOT interchangeable). But if we adhere to equality and difference then it opens up a beautiful relationshiop between the two. Now, the accusation that egalitarianism leads to androgyny came to me from a student in a class who is a  confirmed “complimentarian”: the husband has authority over the wife. Now his accusation came after a discussion that one gender doesn’t have authority over another. So his point: without some authority over the woman the man’s role is now no longer defined and out of the window goes masculinity. Thus, masculinity and “decision making” and “authority” are inherently linked and femininity linked with it’s compliimentary features: “non-decision making” and “subjection.” Here’s the problem I see in that line of logic: 1) he is linking masculinity to a “work” which is a huge problem considering that in heaven while there will be no marriage or giving of marriage there will still be “gender” and “masculinity” (keeping in mind that the image of God isn’t erased in heaven but made glorified by his creation man and woman) and 2) what happens to said man when he loses his mind? Does he ALSO lose his masculinity? No, that’s stupid. He’s STILL masculine, he’s still a man even when she has to decide on his behalf.

The problem lies in the inability to go into the abstract and the deep desire of limited humanity to always want to figure out everything down to the tiniest molecule and have an answer: if a then b! But I love the abstract. What if, Twend, what if masculinity and femininity are defined by each other…what if just my presence as a woman (i.e. not man) is enough to emphasize, draw out, point to my husband’s masculinity. Boobs and hips aside: I’m NOT him; if we allow this to be true, and if we allow our nakedness with each other to be the deciding factor about who is feminine and who is masculine, then a whole new world opens up to us. Things that are classically “masculine” and “feminine” are now more appropriately considered human. My husband can cry and I can be a hard-ass, neither one acting like the other gender. In this light, we see how the doctrine of justification penetrates even the most intimate human relationships: no longer defined by works but by God’s declaration to us: forgiven sinners, forgiven men AND women. In how I understand the totality of the event of justification, i believe that works can no longer define me WHATSOEVER. And thus I’m free to be fully woman in right relationship to my husband, a man.

So, while there are things on this earth that still define me as a woman–things that I feel obligated to do or chose to do because I’m a woman–these works do not define me as a woman in Christ (not even birth or the act of sex, because women who don’t have either are still fully women).

Let’s also consider Ephesians 5. In v. 21 we have the verb translated as “submitting” and I know that this is the verb that is pulled into the subsequent verse (v.22) when Paul turns his attention to wives: submit to your husbands. Then, after only three short thoughts, he turns to the husbands and addresses them in a rather lengthy discourse starting with an exhortation to lay down their lives for their wives. Now, what I’ve heard from a number of people (both professors and lay people alike) is this: women only have to submit, but men have to lay down their lives! I find this statement ridiculous and irritating. I find submission to be a form of laying down yourself for another (it’s not subjection considering that the verb is a deponent with an active meaning: submit yourselves); in order for me to submit, let’s say, to the will of my husband, I have to put myself aside, sort of like an act of oblation; this, to me, thematically jives with 5.21: “Submitting therefore one to the other.” Submission is loving your neighbor as yourself and incorporates laying yourself (‘your life’) down (‘dying’). In this light, submission/submitting yourself = laying down your life.  Thus, Paul isn’t totally saying something new as in “subject” to the husbands, but rather explaining in clearer language what it means to live out “submitting therefore one to the other” (toward their wives). And if he is using different language to say something similar to the husbands as he did to the wives, then my next question is why? Why change the language?

The thought I’ve been having lately about the “why” is this: Paul speaks to the women in terminology they would’ve existentially understood–the language they would’ve been familiar with but also because of the woman’s ability (and in the case of Paul’s age) one of her primary functions in bringing forth life into the world: a woman, having gone through the experience of pregnancy, labor, delivery, and caring for a helpless child, would have been well acquainted with the event of submission as a laying down of their life, of loving something/someone form the inside out that can give nothing back in return (agape). I’m not saying that Paul had this later aspect on the forefront of his mind, but it’s intriguing to me that he speaks nearly in shorthand to the wives. Thus, what he says to the women, is not radical: it’s nearly status quo; they would’ve nodded ” oh yes, we understand.” But what’s radical is what follows with his discussion to the men. The feeling in the transition from talking to the wives to the husbands is as if he paused and said to the husbands: all y’all best sit down for this; i’m about to blow your minds. And thus enters into a longer explanation of how the husbands are to love (agape) their wives and live out the “submitting one to another” aspect of 5.21. Both the act and the concept would have been so radical to the husbands, that Paul essentially has to spell it out for them and even then Paul loses his own mind and gets caught up–nearly raptured–in the mysteries he can’t even explain well enough. So, in short, my thoughts have been that Paul had to explain in detail (agape worked out in submission to another (the wife)) to the husbands because it was radical and foreign, and he could speak plainly and briefly to the women, because they would’ve understood (per the reasons mentioned above).

another thing to think about (and I’ll end with this) is: whenever Paul seems to be correcting the women in his churches it’s nearly always because their pendulum has swung too far. Thus, while they are trying to flaunt their freedom, they are really just a law to themselves and others. Don’t dominate men, women, because that’s not freedom nor is it the proper correction to Gen 3. No gender is to dominate the other gender; don’t abandon your children and husband because now you’re “free”; that’s not freedom. Freedom is being able to say: this might suck and i might want to be devoting my life to the Lord (PhD, Career, etc), but I can’t because I have these lives, these others that need me. That’s freedom. That’s Gal 3. The law has been abrogated, the prison warden has been silenced and unemployed, and I am no longer defined by my deeds (“there is therefore no…”) but I am still here and there are things I must still do. Paul is always hyper concerned to protect the gospel from slander: if having a woman publicly teaching men was considered offensive to OUTSIDERS in his day and age, then he would encourage abstaining from the practice. From the commentaries I’ve read, it seems that Paul is not universally making a claim about women but, rather, talking about how things should proceed in order to move the gospel forward. (Cf. 1 and 2 Tim, Titus, Ephesians, Corinthians…etc).

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Santa Wars

Nothing makes me prouder to be a Christian during the Christmas season than the Santa Wars. One group decrying Santa and all that is associated with him; the other group eagerly pointing out the benefits of Santa for the religious cause. Each group burdening each other with blog posts, newspaper/magazine articles, scientific data, personal experiences/confessions and the like that either attest to or detract from embracing the myth of Santa. It’s beautiful, really; judgment and defensiveness whirling about like the snow in December. Ahhh…The weather outside is frightful…

I typically just stand back and watch the battle play out. It’s got an expiration date: 12/26. So, the Santa Wars are limited and last, typically, no longer than thanksgiving to Christmas.

So why get involved? I’m 8 years into this parenting/Christmas/Santa thing and I’m just getting around to saying something now? Why?

Because, I’m a slow thinker and I’ve finally gathered my thoughts about it. Also, because I’m tired of seeing Christian v. Christian over a mythical figure. Arguing never really gets us anywhere, but I do think there are other things that have more substance that might be a bit more worth our time to argue over (if you have to argue that is…)

So here are my thoughts…the things I’d like to say:

1. We don’t do the “Santa Thing”

I think it’s important to first reveal what “side” I’m on: we don’t do the Santa thing. Why? For one main reason:

I am the worst at lying.

Like: BAD. B.A.D. BADBADBAD I have this strict moral code (one I can’t seem to do away with) that drives me to tell the truth. Trust me, it’s not a “i’m-so-righteous” thing, I actually hate it. This is the “thing” that gets me into horrible conversations with people, because I just want them to have the full truth, and I spend time either spinning my wheels in the conversation or desperately trying to pull out of death spin. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten a little bit better about this conviction, but it requires me to say nothing at all and just nod. Case in point: I met someone recently who was explaining to me that since they were Messianic Jewish they were obviously Kosher. And my inner theologian was screaming at the top of her lungs: WHAT ABOUT JESUS APPEARING TO PETER?!?! But I just stood there: “Hm, mm…I see…”

So, you can see how the Santa tradition would be a hard one for me.

I’m also lazy. I don’t have the energy to even begin to perpetuate the myth and stand in lines to see him, and talk about him, and build the suspense.

The other influential decision is this: my husband and I decided that we just didn’t want to offer anything false around something that is true and is by far the hardest thing to wrap your mind around. An Arch Angel with a prophesy to a young, single woman? God being born? Almighty God now a vulnerable infant? There’s nothing “unmagical” about that story that we felt we needed to add other aspects. The story of the incarnation of Christ demands A LOT of trust; we just didn’t want to have to deal with: oh yeah, we lied about Santa, but NOT JESUS WE ARE TOTALLY SERIOUS ABOUT JESUS! So, early on we just decided we wouldn’t do Santa.

2. Both of our boys believed in Santa at one point or another

At some point, both boys, typically when they were in Kindergarten, came home and professed their belief in Santa. I loved it. They were pint-sized Santavangelists. Part of me–when I wasn’t panicking about how I was going to deal with their new found “faith” considering I’m a rotten liar–was impressed with them. They would come to the dinner table and explain why and how Santa was real. Oh really? We would say. Yes! They would reply, and they would go on and on. When I stepped back from the event and looked at what they were doing I some some really cool things: 1. they felt free to come to us and talk to us about their belief in Santa even though they knew we didn’t believe in like they did. 2. they were firm and held-fast to their beliefs. Zooming ahead 18 years, I saw two young men standing for their faith; I saw two young men feeling the freedom to talk about different ideas that they have from their parents; I saw a family discussing ideas and concepts, all of us having different twists and takes on those ideas and concepts; I saw a family interacting in the framework that is created by the freedom of the Gospel.

It was really cool.

3. I don’t think Santa is Evil

I think at this point you  might be thinking that I look down on those (Christian) parents who do do Santa…Well I don’t. I don’t think Santa is evil nor are you “bad” for doing the Santa thing. I don’t think your child will be scarred when they find out that Santa isn’t real and that you’ve been playing along and so they wind up rejecting the Christian story; but I also don’t think that your child will have an easier go at believing the Christian story than mine. Case in point: both my brother and I were raised with Santa; I’m a Christian and he’s an Atheist–possibly the most “unspiritual” person I know. Faith has no correlation to potential receptivity of abstract myths; faith is a gift (period) From God (period) Received through the hearing of the proclamation of the gospel and not because one believed the Santa myth or because one’s parent’s never lied to them about Santa. The only thing we can do to help our children *toward* faith is to both (fervently) pray for them and keep telling them the old, old, good, good story.

4. So, HAVE FUN!

I think Christians forget that one of the hallmarks of the Christian life is joy. I don’t mean some sort of church mouse joy where we confuse contentment for joy. I mean JOY! FUN! LAUGHTER! The doctrine of the justification of sinners by faith alone ceases the every present desire to self-actualize (read: defend why I do or don’t do the Santa thing). We don’t have to spend (read: waste) time defending ourselves and our actions because our self is no longer tied up with our actions and is determined (actualized) in the declaration from Christ: forgiven, brother/sister. When we embrace the need to defend why we do or do not do Santa, we are looking for how our choices, our works justify us. (I’m doing the right thing, I’m making the right choice, so I’m good, right?) So, joy in life is a tangible manifestation of the working out (or the working in) of your justification by faith, of your *real* freedom.

So, if you do the Santa tradition, DO IT! You are free to have fun and enjoy the whole aspect that is the Santa Tradition. You are free to talk of the hooves on the roof that woke you from your slumber with your son the next morning. You are free to remember fondly waiting to sit with Santa at the mall, and enjoy when you see your daughter’s face light up as she, with the same awe and admiration you had at her age, slowly walks up to the jolly man, dressed all in red, who is waiting to hear her heart’s desires. When she looks back at you, enter in with her. And I dare someone (anyone?!!?) to give their kids coal addressed from Santa and then become the heroes of your own story as you unload present upon present on your children: good thing we love you unconditionally, just as Jesus loved us! I mean, seriously, this would be an amazing L/G moment for the whole family. Have memory building fun!

For those of us who don’t do the Santa Tradition, let us have fun, too! Have unrestrained, unlimited fun! It is the season for Joy. True and abounding joy: for Emmanuel has come and has ransomed captive Israel!

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Death to Life in Fertility to Birth: Infertility and Loss

And Elkanah, her husband, said to her, “Hannah, why do you weep? And why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?” … [Hannah] was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly. And she vowed a vow and said, “O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.” (1 Sam 1:8-11)

Affliction; this is the word Hannah uses to describe her childless state, her barren state, as she prays to God (actually, it’s more like pleading and begging). Hannah is afflicted with grief and sorrow. She is distressed and she weeps bitterly. She can’t eat, she laments (the deeper connotation of the word translated as “weep”), and she is not merely “sad” as a “feeling of blueness” as we would casually say, “I’m sad today.” It would be better to render the question from her husband, “why is your heart sad?,” as “why is your heart broken?”  Anyone reading who has suffered a broken heart knows that this feeling breaks through the floor of sadness into a realm that effects both the mind and the body in painful ways. A broken heart is described as such because the heart actually feels broken; there’s an ache or a piercing pain that seems to ricochet through the fleshiness of the heart muscle–it’s not merely metaphorical.  Hanna experiences this depth of broken-heartedness.

Over what?

A longing and a desire gone unmet.

Hannah is barren; she is without a child.  Hannah isn’t over-reacting about her childless state. The way the story is told seems more like a snapshot of her life at this one moment of her distress over being barren rather than a wholistic picture of what Hannah has been suffering–Hannah’s story practically opens the book of 1 Samuel. In v. 5 there is the mention that the Lord had closed her womb. And then from there, we jump right into her peaking distress and broken heart. In this way–the way the story is told–we miss out on the beauty that is the climactic point of Hannah’s distress and weeping. She is wholly consumed by hope deferred; hope deferred doesn’t merely occur because hope has been deferred once…but over and over and over again. Hannah has been pushed to the brink of the cliff that leads to despair, to death.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. (Prov. 13:12)

Hope deferred makes the heart sick and this sickness steals life from the victim. Hannah has spent who knows how long longing and yearning for a child. Think of the numerous months coming and going, each one delivering it’s “no” and “not this time” to Hannah’s heart–hope sprung, hope dashed.  And the deferral of her hope has made her sick: she can’t eat, she can’t stop weeping bitterly, she is inconsolable.  This is a picture of a woman who is not well, who is suffering intimately with the brokenness of a very fallen world. When hope has been deferred for so long and dashed against the rocks so many times, one begins to long for not-hope. The deferral of hope can make one so sick that they wish for hope to take flight and to vanish, never again to alight on the heart–for, to the suffering soul, to live a life vanquished of hope seems better than to have hope yet once again only to have it dashed…yet once again.

And so it is with those of us who have suffered with infertility or loss or both. In both infertility and loss there is a hope, a real, tangible, hope that blossoms and the real hope that is shattered into what seems like shards upon shards. And each time this hope is dashed, there is a death. And it is this death that leaves the woman a different creation the next day. Out of all the experiences surrounding fertility and birth, it is those who suffer from infertility and loss who get the one two punch of Gen 3–the curse rears it’s head both in the inability to get or to stay pregnant (pain increased) and the all to alert awareness that death still marches about the earth creating casualties, leaving scars. These are the women who will enter into the battle that wages to bring forth life (my life for this one), who will face death, and who will exit the battlefield marred.

And yet, out of this real encounter with death, with “no,” with “not this time,” there is life: for she is a new creation out of this death–never to be the same again. For it is she who has suffered death that knows what life is; it is she who has not born new life who understands–on a deep and visceral level–just how miraculous new life is; it is she who has wept bitterly and cried out for relief who knows from Whom joy and comfort come; it is she who knows the failure of the very thing she was uniquely gifted to do who finds her very person not in the sum of her working or not-working parts, but in the totality of The One who has born the brokenness of the world (and of her body) in His body and who has dealt death a death-dealing blow. And while she has not brought forth new life quantified in onsies and diapers, she is the epitome of new life, for it is she who declares even in this darkness: life.

 

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The Death and Life in Fertility to Birth: Labor and Delivery

O Lord, in distress they sought you;
they poured out a whispered prayer
when your discipline was upon them.
 Like a pregnant woman
who writhes and cries out in her pangs
when she is near to giving birth,
so were we because of you, O Lord;
     we were pregnant, we writhed,
but we have given birth to wind.
We have accomplished no deliverance in the earth,
and the inhabitants of the world have not fallen.
 Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise.
You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!
For your dew is a dew of light,
and the earth will give birth to the dead. (Isaiah 26:17-19)

Femininity is often defined in terms more associated with a church mouse than that of a living, breathing, human being. Meek and mild are the boundary markers for interpretations on what is feminine: soft, smooth, gentile, maternal, quiet, proper, etc. It will be no surprise to you then that I would disagree with any definition of femininity that is based on such words/terms. In defining femininity, we must consider the very thing that biologically defines a woman: birthing. Thus, redefine femininity. Rather than meek and mild, it is strength, fortitude, and even fierceness that defines femininity. A woman in labor is completely feminine. A woman in labor is confronting death to bring forth life; no small task. And she confronts death alone. No person (apart from the Holy Spirit) takes her hand and guides her through it. It is here where the ferocity that is woman comes to the fore; she will (speaking in terms of an un-medicated labor and delivery) moan, grunt, even growl at death, bring it, Death! She’ll stare it down. My life for this one! A proper definition of femininity must incorporate this imagery.

Labor and delivery is earthy and visceral. I’ve yet to meet a husband, having witnessed his wife giving birth, who has not walked away completely changed in his opinion of what this woman can do and even is. Many male comedians have joked–in truth to a great degree–that if God came down and changed the roles (men now being child-bearers) that the human race would cease to exist. Men who have stood by, next to, or even those who have have held their wife during labor (my husband), and witnessed this process are forever changed in their own way–at the least his view of her is radically altered. Thus, in the process of creating a definition of femininity that incorporates the imagery of the woman in labor, the definition of masculinity is redefined. Chivalry become less about protecting her from danger and more about protecting her space to enter into this danger. His inherent ability and desire to protect (a generalization I’m willing to make having seen this “protector” spirit in my young sons) will be turned outward, toward the world, keeping the world at bay; in his presence she is safe, he becomes the source of comfort and soothing–he becomes the homestead–while she enters into this event and while she works and battles. He is not holding her, but holding everyone back. In light of modern birthing techniques, the husband often loses his role in this process, being relegated to the side and designated unhelpful or useless–a problem that needs a correction. Husbands are crucial to the process and the event this woman, his wife, will go through, for he is her first source of comfort, the one who knows her intimately, and his presence can represent to her that she is free to enter into this battle, to face death.

So, let us speak in terms of the theme of these posts, and let us look on the death and life in labor and delivery.

From the onset of labor to the completion of pushing, the woman submits to the event happening to them. The woman gives herself up (has to) to bring this other life into the world.  A woman who is laboring (naturally) will often look almost lifeless during the highpoint of contractions–slumped and limp held up only by the strength of her husband’s arms or still, inexpressive,  curled up on her side. Even delivery (pushing), the most primal of the process and invoking the totality of the activity of the woman–activity surfacing beyond all reason, in spite of all exhaustion–in itself, represents her total submission to the event–she has to push. She is face to face with death (her death), she will give the whole of herself to the process and afterwards is forever different.  She does not choose when labor begins, but it seizes her, and she can do nothing but die to herself to bring this child into the world. When you see her child, you see the death she went through in labor and delivery to move this child from her body in to the world. It is impossible to go through this process, this event and remain the same.  There is a new woman at the end of the event and not merely a new title to add to the others.

But let me not forget those of us who endure a different labor and delivery process; for those of us who endure Cesarian sections (a major surgery to extract the baby from the very lowest part of the abdomen) also go through the death into new life process. Having had three C-Sections, the imagery of being laid out on an operating table in a cruciform position does not escape my attention. My arms are stretched out to the side, and strapped (albeit loosely) down. My legs pulled straight on a narrow (and I mean NARROW) table. It is in this position, cruciform, that I will give birth. I don’t want to make a too-big of a deal about this nor draw a one-to-one comparison between her and Jesus’ death. But the imagery is there. During our last (and final) delivery, I walked (without Daniel) to the OR; everything about this small trek to have our daughter felt like dead woman walking. Each step down the cold hallway, barely covered by my gown, led me toward my confrontation with death. Without the lead-up that is the transition between early stage labor to a stage referred to as “transition”, you feel catapulted to deaths door in the event of a c-section.  As she is laid out, strapped, prepped, and as the curtain is raised–separating her from the gruesome scene below–she will close her eyes, breathe out, and say, “My life, for this one.” She will never be the same when the last suture is in place, and she will bare the scar of this confrontation, it will be the symbol of her new, of her different self, forever marked.

Labor Pains

I am sick today,
sick in my body,
eyes wide open, silent,
I lie on the bed of childbirth.

Why do I, so used to the nearness of death,
to pain and blood and screaming,
now uncontrollably tremble with dread?

A nice young doctor tried to comfort me,
and talked about the joy of giving birth.
Since I know better than he about this matter,
what good purpose can his prattle serve?

Knowledge is not reality.
Experience belongs to the past.
Let those who lack immediacy be silent.
Let observers be content to observe.

I am all alone,
totally, utterly, entirely on my own,
gnawing my lips, holding my body rigid,
waiting on inexorable fate.

There is only one truth.
I shall give birth to a child,
truth driving outward from my inwardness.
Neither good nor bad; real, no sham about it.

With the first labor pains,
suddenly the sun goes pale.
The indifferent world goes strangely calm.
I am alone.
It is alone I am.

Akiko Yosano
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