The CBE Scroll

A missionary friend spoke with me this last week about beauty and the cosmetic industry. While on sabbatical at the University in Winnipeg, he wrote about this topic for one of his courses. I was intrigued and quite provoked to think about this a lot more. He spoke with me about various psychological and emotional phenomena that often accompany various aspects of cosmetic surgery [specifically breast enhancement, tummy tucks, facial uplifts, botox injections etc.] I moved from thinking about psychology and emotions to thinking about the Scriptures.

Another missionary friend from Asia was in on the discussion. He mentioned that people in Asia are now doing many breast enhancements and they are having surgery on their eyelids so their eyes look bigger.

I came away thinking that we have discussed this cosmetic phenomenon very little in either scholarly Christian or popular Christian literature in the last ten or fifteen years. My missionary friend confirmed this by stating that secular literature addresses this much more than we do. Ask yourself a few questions: 1. When was the last time I heard a popular radio preacher focus on this topic-really focus on it? My answer was “never” [and I listen to a few good radio preachers]. 2. When was the last time you saw something about this in a good Christian magazine? 3. When was the last time you heard your own pastor preach about this? The answer for me for all three of these questions is “Never”. I think we, Christians, need to have a voice here.

Our conversation stimulated a lot of discussion and thoughts. I’m not really sure what to think.

When the messiah comes, says the Old Testament, he will “proclaim freedom for the captives.” (Is. 61:1 TNIV) Jesus the Messiah came, but he brought something better than the expected freedom from foreign domination: instead, he was interested in making people’s spirits free. Jesus himself said, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (Jn. 8:34-36 TNIV)

Of all the authors of the Old and New Testaments, Paul speaks most often about freedom. Christ, he says, brings freedom from sin (Rom. 6:18-22; 7:14), freedom from death (Rom. 7:24-25; 8:2, 10-11) and especially freedom from the bondage of the [Jewish] Law (Rom. 7; Gal. 3), all things which enslave us and quench our spirits.

Thanks be to God that He saves our spirits, our souls, that which is the real, essential us. In I Cor. 7:22 he addresses slaves and makes a wonderful play on words when he says that in becoming Christians they have become free persons in Christ, while those who are externally free have become slaves for Christ. In other words, external social status is not as decisive as true (internal) freedom and certainly not decisive for salvation. Christ is the liberator of Christians from the slavery of social status and public opinion, as in this verse, and also in I Cor. 9:19, 10:29; Gal. 3:28, Col. 3:11, and Eph. 6:8. In Gal. 2:4-5 Paul relates how false believers tried to infiltrate “our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves.” (TNIV) Come back, they said, to the old ways of the Law and legalism. Come and get bound up again.

But II Cor. 3:17 says: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” So anything that kills our spirits, is not freedom, and can’t be of the Spirit of the Lord.

Sexism, enforced subservient roles based on gender, whether sociologically modeled or religiously imposed, kills women’s spirits. How can it be, then, of the Holy Spirit? Be of God?

How should we then interpret Paul when he seems to be restricting the freedom of women during his time in some of his churches? Paul, the champion of freedom in Christ, lessening basic freedoms that came with salvation!

I believe that it is the height of intellectual arrogance, and perhaps spiritual as well, to assume that one can figure out exactly what specific problems Paul was faced with in his cultures, in his churches and exactly what shading of meaning he meant by this word or that, particularly Greek words that are only used once or twice in the New Testament. Instead, two thousand years later, we should be asking, How is the Spirit freeing us here and now to do His work?

A well-known and respected evangelical theologian I admire, F.F. Bruce, says our hermeneutic principle should be as follows.

“Whatever in Paul’s teaching promotes true freedom is of universal and permanent validity; whatever seems to impose restrictions on true freedom has regard to local and temporary conditions.”

“Our application of the [Biblical] text,” Bruce says, “should avoid treating the New Testament as a book of rules…. We should not turn what were meant as guiding lines for worshippers in one situation into laws binding for all time…. It is an ironical paradox when Paul, who was so concerned to free his converts from bondage of law, is treated as a law-giver for later generations. The freedom of the Spirit, which can be safeguarded by one set of guiding lines in a particular situation, may call for a different procedure in a new situation.” ["Women in the Church: A Biblical Survey" Christian Brethren Review, 33 (Dec. 1982): 7-14.]

Amen to that.

Let’s look at our generation from the view of church historians. I think they will simultaneously wince and praise us. I think they will wince as they consider evangelical theologians holding to a subordinationist view of the Trinity and receiving a broad complementarian audience. I think they will further wince as they think of process theologians, in the name of evangelicalism, telling us that God does not absolutely know the future. I think they will wince as they consider our waffling on life issues such as abortion, on sexual moral/ethical issues such as homosexual ordination. I actually believe there will be more wincing than this.

With all of the wincing, I also think there will be at least two places where they will praise our generation. I think that church historians will rejoice over the emphasis on missions in our era. There are more people becoming Christians in Africa and in mainland China than there are people physically being born in those areas. I think the historians will look back and rejoice over this wonderful circumstance. I also believe that they will look back and rejoice over the progress that the evangelical church made relative to the rights of women in the church - the right to preach, the right to pastor and the right to lead in even broader capacities. I think historians will write that the majority of evangelicalism began to take Galatians 3:28 seriously, “In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female”. The church historians will probably contrast the positive strides made on male/female issues in the evangelical church at large with what the evangelical radio and television media usually espouses - namely Victorian leadership ethics. Historians will simultaneously wince and praise.

Gnosticism…an ancient belief that men and women are really different species who bring harmony to the cosmos at their union…a woman who has stirred the contempt and jealousy of an evil force that will stop at nothing to destroy her…knights on life-long quests to defend and protect this mysterious maiden. The Da Vinci Code in a nutshell, right? A closer look may reveal that Christian bookstores disapproving of Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code are promoting the same concepts in many mainstream Christian dating and sexuality books.

In reviewing many popular Christian books on dating, singleness, and sexuality, I was shocked to discover that many of these books not only fail to address the realities of single life, they promote ideas that are downright unbiblical. When asked to write a film review of The Da Vinci Code, I was stunned by the similarities I found between Dan Brown’s novel and the popular Christian books I’ve been reading.

Although none of these Christian books question Christ’s divinity, other Gnostic teachings are running rampant through much of dating literature. I have come across the old lie that our bodies (and sexual desires) are bad. It’s true that the human race is fallen, but we were created with bodies and sex drives, both of which God called good.

Another image that seems to be prevalent in dating books is one of the knight rescuing the damsel in distress. This idea may be romantic (and patriarchal), but it is also dangerous. We should whole-heartedly admit that all people are broken and in need of “rescuing”. We can even go so far as to say that God sometimes uses other people to help heal our brokenness, but it is ultimately God that does the saving. Both women and men need to depend on God for salvation and healing, not solely on a romantic relationship.

The concept of men and women having different essences or gendered souls is strikingly similar to the concept of the “Sacred Feminine”, an ancient Greek idea that has snuck back onto our culture’s radar due to The Da Vinci Code. Both concepts claim that men and women are intrinsically different on a spiritual level. Both claim that men and women cannot be truly fulfilled without the other. Both put women on pedestals that turn them into ideals (or even idols) instead of individuals. Whether it’s the “Christian” version of the knight in shining armor or the Templar knight, both concepts claim that women need men to give them special protection against the enemy. Gender essentialism may sound right because it’s an ancient ideal but it is a concept that is far from biblical.

The supposed scandal that drives The DaVinci Code is that the church has been hiding and suppressing the ancient belief of the “Sacred Feminine”. A stroll down the dating aisle of your local Christian bookstore may reveal that she is indeed hidden but uncomfortably present.

Sean du Toit is asking the right questions in this brief post about the hermeneutical issues surrounding the New Testament household codes. He raises the point that these same codes that seem to speak so clearly about male hierarchy also assume the existence of slavery among Christians. The Colossians household code in fact devotes more ink to master-slave relations than it does husbands and wives.

Sean has asked a good question: “Is it valid to appropriate these codes into contemporary practice, and then blatantly ignore what they clearly say about slavery?”

Well, is it?