The CBE Scroll

So Peter Parker has his spidey-sense. Trust me—even the Webslinger is envious of my superpower. I have a finely-calibrated justice meter.

My mom will confirm that I was born with this ability. As a kid, I wanted to be a judge so I could right all the wrongs of the world, from teenage drug abuse to nepotism in the workplace to sandwiches cut into unequal “halves.” Once I realized that going to law school wouldn’t necessarily keep my brother from getting a bigger helping of lasagna, I decided to open up my career options. Got a theology degree instead. (Which didn’t solve the portion problem either, but after gaining the freshman fifteen, I didn’t care so much about that anymore. And theology turned out to be pretty useful in learning how to use my superpower for good.)

So the only gavel I’ve ever had is the one that reverberates in my brain every time I come across an injustice in my daily experience. It happens so often that if I was the star of a Marvel comic, there would always be a ((BONG!!)) scrawled above my head.

But lack of legal clout doesn’t mean I am powerless to work for justice and equality and influence those around me to do the same. When I think about it, I get to engage my superpower quite often, in fact.

When someone close to me was struggling with infertility and how that impacted her self-identity, I was able to remind her that God calls women to multiple forms of kingdom service and to encourage her to seek direction from him instead of those who— without warrant—view her situation as an act of divine judgment.

When the organizer of a conservative conference told me he didn’t invite any women speakers because he doesn’t know of any qualified ones, I swallowed my outrage and recommended several articulate women who were experts on the conference theme.

When I became the editor of a seminary alumni publication that had previously featured mostly male graduates, I sought out several outstanding women to write articles about their current ministries.

When the male elders at my church invited about 20 women to discuss how our women’s ministry might be improved, I listened respectfully to their comments and responded honestly about how they might better avoid stereotyping the needs and gifts of women in our congregation.

When a co-worker made a comment about men being from Mars and women being from Venus, I laughed good-naturedly at his joke and then told him I didn’t believe that nonsense, and when he saw that I was serious I took the brief opportunity to explain my convictions about personhood.

The gavel in my head goes off so often I’m surprised I’m not bedridden with severe migraines. We all know that there are a lot of injustices out there. And the truth is that my alter ego is not quite so mild-mannered as those of my famous colleagues. Superpowers are not necessarily infallible; I admit that sometimes mine goes off without serious provocation. I’m still learning to control it, like the young mutants training with Professor X.

But Peter Parker responds quickly and accurately to each spine tingle, and I, too, am trying to use my justice meter for good. Every time it goes off (and after I’ve checked to make sure that it wasn’t an overreaction), I have the opportunity to respond in some way other than just outrage—with a word of gentle rebuke, a hand to uplift the oppressed, a check to support a group action. Sometimes the only appropriate response is a silent prayer that God will change the perpetrator’s heart to truly love and respect his or her fellow human beings as Christ calls us to do.

And it’s not just negative situations that spur me to action. When I became aware of the excellent work of CBE and other international justice organizations, for example, I pledged to support them financially and prayerfully and spread the word of their efforts to my friends. When someone asks me to recommend a book (OK, even sometimes when they don’t!), I give him or her a list of writers with worldviews of biblical equality.

So I do what I can, but I know I’m just one crime-fighter responsible for protecting a relatively small district. There are lots of heroes in the League of Justice fighting evils of varying degrees. At the end of the day, I have to trust that the God who installed and calibrates my justice meter will see his will accomplished in the hearts of his people—starting with me.

As a child I was nurtured on regular doses of science fiction, particularly Star Trek. The original series always found its way onto our television sets. Captain Kirk and his crew regularly averted complete destruction by some clever (or sometimes corny) means. Kirk’s strength was superhuman—a model for men (I thought); he was “a red-blooded American boy,” as one man called him. He was the protector of his ship.

When The Wrath of Khan came to the big screen, I remember the surprise of many Trekkers in our congregation to the idea of a woman as captain. There on the big screen stood Kirstie Ally, giving orders to all of her male subordinates. What had become of Starfleet anyway? Don’t they know that women are irrational?

“It’s all right,” one person told me. “She’s a Vulcan woman. She is in control of her emotions.”

You have to remember, this was the 1980s. The big objection to having a woman as president of the United States was that once a month she might press the red button, killing us all. Sure, other countries had women in charge of weapons of mass destruction, but America wasn’t ready for that step. Geraldine Ferraro was a liability in that decade, not a help.

Despite the fact that I had a fairly independent and strong female role model in my mother, I also found myself accepting this worldview. As a matter of fact, I knew of plenty of women within my own small circle that would have verbally affirmed the view that women are irrational.

“Men are rational beings,” I sometimes heard. “They don’t cry at a moment’s notice.”

On the other hand, men were often seen as quick to anger, less likely to love. And because of this, preachers regularly taught that the command for husbands to love their wives in Ephesians 5 was, after all, because men are by nature beasts. They are prone to bursts of testosterone fits. This stereotype begged the question: when a man was angry, wouldn’t he also be prone to pushing the big red button?

Due to my particular subculture, I also understood (most often by example) that while women are eager to learn about theology, they tend to defer the technical stuff to the men. A man’s “rationality” allowed him to assess doctrine. As Thomas Schreiner wrote in Women in the Church: A Fresh Analysis of 1 Timothy 2:9-15 (Baker, 1995): “Generally speaking, women are more relational and nurturing and men are more given to rational analysis and objectivity” (145). Women are “less prone” to “identifying heresy,” says Schreiner (145). This I understood.

So it was a surprise to me when I met my wife Mindy. She knew as much as I did. She could wield an argument with rationality and depth. How is this possible, I wondered? Sure, I saw plenty of strength in my mother, but I chalked that up to being “the exception.” Had I met another exception? Whatever the situation, I found myself enamored with this exception. She was, in the end, my soul mate. Building on the foundation laid by my mother, she helped me see beyond my cultural lens. Like a colorblind man who swears that red and green are the same color, my cultural eyes kept me from seeing how little I knew about women.

When we both entered college, we found ourselves faced with gender challenges. I don’t know if things have changed there, but in the 1990s, male theology majors took Homiletics and women theology majors took Message Preparation for Women. What’s the difference in content between the two courses? Nothing, except nobody wanted to give women the impression they could preach in church or to men.

What we were told about the nature of women was eroding away. Everyday we met female students, trained in theology, intellectually sharp, and capable of delivering a killer sermon. Soon, I noticed that “the exception” was not really an exception. (Don’t get me wrong, my wife is exceptional, but she is an exception among human beings, not simply her gender.) The problem was not that I was, as some may put it, compromising to liberalism. This college could never be called liberal. The problem was that here in the heart of Chicago, my prior conclusions were shattered by new data. I discovered that my small circle in my hometown was only a tiny picture of humanity.

My changing opinion was put to the test near my second year in college. Anne Graham Lotz was invited to speak at one of our popular conferences. She would address a mixed audience and word had it that some of the male students weren’t happy about it. In one tasteless effort to protest, a line of male students at the front of the auditorium stood to their feet and marched out the door as she began to speak. The scene was offensive. And in response, the following year the administration chose an all-male lineup.

My wife, who met with several women students on campus, was flabbergasted. How was this the right response to such hate, we wondered. She wrote a letter to the president of the school, letting him know about her disappointment. But after weeks of having no response, she decided to take the next step and publish it as an open letter in the student newspaper. This time we both signed it.

I’m not sure we entirely understood how radical that was within that community. Within little time we received a letter from the president, including a kind apology for the delay, and an assurance that the protest had nothing to do with the choice of all male speakers. But the letter was not the highlight. The day that issue of the paper came out, a student I’d never met approached me in the hallway. The only thing she said before moving on was, “Thank you.”

At that point I realized that I had turned a corner. I began to understand just how much our assumptions could hurt others. It was only one step in many I would take over the next few years, but at least I had boldly gone where I had never gone before.