On sexists. Sorry, “complementarians.”

COMPLEMENTARIAN kɑmp.lə.mən'tɛ.rɪ.ən adjective. Sexist: Believes men and women are inherently unequal in authority (to lead, teach, or parent) and rights.

2. Believes men and women should adhere to [culturally defined] gender roles, and complement one another by fulfilling the unique duties of those roles.

EGALITARIAN ɪ.ɡæl.ə'tɛ.ri.ən adjective. Believes all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunity.

Honestly, I really dislike the term “complementarian.” It’s what logicians call a weasel word: It’s one of those words people use instead of the proper word, ’cause they don’t care to tell you what they really mean. Or they’re in serious self-denial about what they really mean.

Bluntly, “complementarian” is Christianese for “sexist.” Because that’s exactly what they mean: Women and men aren’t equal; there are things men can do which women mustn’t; if women dare do them, they’re violating the social order which has kept men in power all this time God’s will. Because God supposedly wants his daughters to perpetually have a second-class status. That’s why he didn’t give ’em penises.

The proof text of this misbegotten belief largely comes from the story where God curses Eve, and women in general, for her sin. Because Eve violated his command to not eat of the Tree of Knowing, childbirth is gonna hurt, and her man is gonna boss her around. Ge 3.16 Sexist Christians quote this passage all the time… and nary a word about how Jesus came to earth to undo these curses.

Jesus undoes sin and death; he undoes Adam’s curse of having to fight the ground to get food from it; and he undoes sexism. There is no male nor female in Christ Jesus. Ga 3.28 Women are co-heirs of his kingdom.

In my article on sexism I point out the bible goes even further. Women are depicted as equals in apostleship, prophecy, wisdom, mentorship, preaching, teaching, ministry, and leadership. When people aren’t sexist, nor suffer from toxic attitudes about masculinity, they easily see this in the scriptures and embrace it. They see it in the world around them as well: The Holy Spirit has clearly empowered many women with these abilities.

But sexism is everywhere in our culture, and therefore is everywhere in Christendom.

And to be fair, not all of it is because of sexists. Some of that sexism has been institutionalized. The Roman Catholics are kind of an obvious example of this. Most of ’em, including the pope, cardinals, and bishops, try to put women in leadership and ministry roles wherever they can. But they’re completely buggered by official church doctrine, which claims the Roman Catholic Church is infallible. Seriously. And if you’re never wrong, it becomes darned near impossible to backtrack when you are wrong—like when you limit the priesthood to men, because sexists in the Roman Empire limited the priesthood to men. And since all the leaders in the church have to be priests, that shuts women out of leadership, and there’s no way to word a workaround. So Catholics try to compensate by doing everything they possibly can to include women otherwise. But yeah, till they confess the church can be (and has been) wrong, they’re forever hobbled by this doctrine. Forever flawed.

In the case of the Southern Baptist Convention, some of that sexism has been recently institutionalized. Baptists previously didn’t have a problem with women pastors; plenty of Baptist denominations have ’em. But sexist pastors have gained control of that denomination, and even though the independence of individual churches is supposedly a hallmark of the SBC, their sexism takes precedence: No church can have women pastors. No women can preach. No loopholes.

Complementarians are willing to accept the idea women can be saved. (How kind of them.) But as far as ministry and responsibility and authority in the kingdom are concerned, they get all of that. They get the comfortable jobs, the titles, the respect, the power. They get to rule. They get to cover up sexual abuses—which are more apt to happen when there are no women in power, and is absolutely some of the reason they’re kept out of power.

Nope, complementarian men get all the plum roles in the kingdom, ’cause conveniently for them, their gender norms insist that’s their role. And women have to joyfully submit to this truth.

Yep, it’s a power thing. These men want to be in control, and wanna claim God made things this way even though many men lack good character, personal responsibility, and integrity. They want to deny women the ability to sharpen iron, to be an accountability partner, to be “an help meet for him” Ge 2.18 KJV —an equal who can do what he does. And if it were true women were inherently this way, it shouldn’t take rules and enforcement to keep ’em down. Shouldn’t continually result in the men who enforce this, to be fruitless and graceless, and behave evilly towards their women. And all women.

Ancient heretic theories about Jesus.

The New Testament never clearly, bluntly spells out, “Here’s precisely what Christ Jesus did and how he works.” Systematic theologians and legalists would love it if the apostles did precisely that, but they didn’t, and so if we want to know those details, we gotta dig around the bible and find them.

Here’s the thing: Most of those details are not all that hard to find! Anybody with a decent bible translation and basic reading comprehension skills can get at ’em. The problem is people don’t always like what they find.

Fr’instance the people who want to know what Jesus looked like. And a basic description is actually in the bible! Right here:

Revelation 1.14-15 KJV

14His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; 15and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.

White hair, bronze skin. Sound like any of the White Jesus paintings, statues, and crucifixes you’ve seen? Of course not; because plenty of people want Jesus to be white like them, and insist he is, and this passage of Revelation mustn’t be taken literally. Amusingly, these are often the same people who take every apocalypse in Revelation literally. That’s their trick: Cherry-pick when and where you want the bible to be literal, based on personal preference. Which is bad theology, but in these cases they’re happy with bad theology.

And we gotta watch out lest we do the very same thing. We all have our biases. We come to the scriptures with an idea already in mind, and wanna find proof texts to back us up. Sometimes the scriptures just won’t do that! And that’s okay; we’re wrong, and the scriptures are meant to correct us when we’re wrong. 2Ti 3.16 But too often we refuse to accept we’re wrong; too often we convince ourselves our clever ideas are really God-ideas, and the scriptures gotta prove us right! If being right is more important than being scrupulous (and for too many people, it absolutely is), we’ll subtly tweak the scriptures this way and that till they do “prove us right”—and that’s how we get heresies.

The ancient Christians ran up against a whole lot of heresies, ’cause for the longest time the Roman Empire practiced freedom of religion. No, seriously. As far as the Romans were concerned, so long that it didn’t interfere with keeping the peace, you could worship any god you pleased. Yes they persecuted Jews and Christians, and that’s because they were told these religions did interfere with keeping the peace. Peace was all they cared about, and like the comic book character Peacemaker, they’d kill as many people as it took to get peace.

Otherwise the Romans let you worship just about any god. You could even introduce new gods and build temples, and start synagogues and teach newbies about your god. A number of gnostics did precisely that, and taught all kinds of heretic weirdness. Some of these gnostics claimed to be Christian, taught their bizarre interpretations of Jesus, and some of those ideas leaked into Christian churches and led ’em astray.

In our day we also have freedom of religion. And, yep, gnostics who teach weird heretic things about Jesus, and start churches and sell books. They make good money at it. They get fans, which feed their pride and make ’em think they’re all the more clever and inspired. And their ideas also leak into Christian churches—and threaten to lead people away from God, his grace, and his kingdom. These aren’t little errors. They’ll trick people into rejecting God.

Of course these heretics already refer to us orthodox Christians as “heretics”—they’re entirely sure they’re right and we’re not. And to be fair, we’re all wrong in one way or another. But these folks are so wrong, they’re rightly called heretic: Their beliefs stand a really good chance of leading people away from God. They prefer their ideas over what God actually reveals about himself. They figure either God’s revelations are wrong, or misinterpreted—whereas they got it right, and how clever of them to see what others don’t. How wise of them; how inspired; what special favorites of God’s they must be. And all the other delusions pride can trick us into.

Heretic theories tend to fall into one of five categories:

1. JESUS IS ANOTHER GOD. Most heretics figure Jesus isn’t the God, but a god. Another god. The God created Jesus as another god under him, like his vice-God, or prince of all the angels, or demiurge who does all the work while he sits back and rules. Jesus is some powerful being who’s not the very same One True God.
2. JESUS ISN’T REALLY GOD. Jesus gets called “the son of God,” but that’s just a title the Hebrews gave their messiahs, their ancient kings, to indicate how these guys weren’t gods, but only worked for God. And same as all we other humans are daughters and sons of God. Like us, Jesus is another one of God’s creations. He’s still Messiah, a great teacher and prophet; he’s gonna rule the world; he’s the best human God ever made. But not God.
3. JESUS ISN’T REALLY HUMAN. Jesus is in fact God; he’s definitely God. But he couldn’t fully give up his divinity to become human (and why would he?) so his humanity was only pretense. He appeared to be human, lest he freak people out too much. But he’s fully divine, wearing what appeared to be a human form.
4. JESUS IS A DEMIGOD. In pagan religions, gods and humans bred and made demigods, half-and-half hybrids who were either supermen or lesser gods, like Herakles and Perseus and Aeneas. Demigod heresies describe Jesus these ways—part-God instead of entirely God, part-human instead of fully human.
5. JESUS IS GOD—AND YOU CAN BE GOD TOO! A number of pantheists have wormed this idea into Christianity: Every human being has a divine spark in us, and Jesus fanned his own spark into full-on divinity. Now he’s teaching us to do the same thing. Follow Jesus, and you can become God too.

Whereas, to answer these theories, orthodox Christians aver:

1. Jesus is the same God, Pp 2.6 and God is One. Dt 6.4 There isn’t another God.
2. Jesus is as God as God can be. Jn 1.1-2
3. He’s human; Jn 1.14 more human than humans are, ’cause we sin, which dings us quite a lot.
4. True, to become human, Jesus was depowered, Pp 2.7 and had to perform miracles through the Holy Spirit’s power. Ac 10.38 But godlike power doesn’t make you God; it’s like saying arms and legs make you human. Divine nature does, and Jesus absolutely has that. He 1.3
5. There’s only one God, and we’re not him… and Jesus is.

Trust in the Lᴏʀᴅ. [Pr 3.5-7]

Proverbs 3.5-7 KJV

5Trust in the LORD with all thine heart;

and lean not unto thine own understanding.

6In all thy ways acknowledge him,

and he shall direct thy paths.

7Be not wise in thine own eyes:

fear the LORD, and depart from evil.

 

Too often this passage is interpreted to mean, “Turn off your brain, and just trust God.”

Which is entirely wrong. These verses are found in Proverbs, in the Old Testament’s wisdom literature, and the whole point of wisdom literature is to remind us to turn on our brains. To make wise, thoughtful, informed decisions instead of instinctive, emotion-driven, gut-level, stupid ones. Stop following your impulses and start using your head.

Part of the problem is that word “heart” in verse 5, and what people think it means, versus what it actually means. The ancients believed humans think with our hearts. Not feel; that’s a medieval idea, and the ancients believed we felt with our guts. But because people nowadays assume “What does your heart tell you?” means what do your emotions tell you, we read that idea back into the bible—where it doesn’t belong!—and think “trusting in the LORD with all my heart” means all our feelings. Not our minds. Not our intellect. Just the feels.

And yep, this is how we fall right back into instinctive, emotion-driven, gut-level, stupid decisions. We go right back to not being wise. But God wants us to be wise. He didn’t make your brain solely so you could memorize pop lyrics, remember who was angry at whom in what reality show, and the multiplication tables you never use anymore because now you can ask Siri what 20 percent off $19.95 is. Use your head to follow him better.

Hearing God. But doubting you do.

When I became Pentecostal, I suddenly found myself among Christians who regularly said, “Oh, God told me [ENCOURAGING WORD],” or “God showed me [DIRECTION TO GO].”

It’s not that I hadn’t met such Christians before—even in a cessationist church, where they preached he didn’t do that sort of thing anymore! Most Christians are continuationist, same as Pentecostals: God never turned off the miracles, never went away nor hid himself. He can and does talk to his kids whenever he wants. Where we disagree is how often he talks. Pentecostals, myself included, find he talks to his kids all the time. Other Christians think it’s more rare; supposedly God saves his statements for special and important occasions, and doesn’t just chat with us like a loving Father would with his children. Kinda reveals more about how their prayer life isn’t conversational. But I digress.

But yeah, I was surrounded by plenty of Christians who claimed God told ’em this or that. And as I learned how to hear God, I gradually became one of them: “God told me [SUCH-AND-SO].” Not as prophecies for others. I wasn’t trying to pull any Moses-style “Thus saith the LORD” declarations or commands. I only talked about what he told me personally.

Here’s the funny thing. Every so often, somebody publishes a book about how to hear God. And these very same Christians who act as if they know God told ’em stuff… scramble to buy these books.

There’s a preacher of my acquaintance who once said, “Y’know, every time I tell people there really needs to be a book about how to hear God, they get all excited: ‘I would love such a book.’ But these are the same people who claim they already do hear God. So… do they? Do they really?”

Fair question. I would suspect they really do. But here’s why they’d would love to read a book about hearing God’s voice: They have doubts. And rather than deal with those doubts like the Holy Spirit wants ’em to, they don’t. It’s easier not to.

Y’see, when we hear from God, in order to make sure we heard from God, we gotta test those messages. We gotta confirm them! Just as the scriptures instruct. Whether it’s somebody else claiming they got a message from God, or we ourselves believing we just got a message from God, we’re always meant to double-check.

But here’s what humans typically do: Believe it if you like it, disbelieve it if you don’t.

Nope, no further checking. No confirmation. Nothing more with any of the things which get dropped into our spirit; we never bother to confirm it’s God. Or, just as bad, never double-check in case it’s us talking to ourselves, or an evil spirit trying to mess with us.

You really don’t have to buy a book about how to hear God better. You just have to start confirming what you think he’s told you. Find a fellow Christian who also hears God. (Ideally your spouse, or some other trustworthy family member.) Make yourselves accountability partners. Make this prayer request to God: “If you’re ever gonna tell me something, please tell my partner the very same thing.” Then watch him do it. There, was that so hard?

But for too many Christians, this is so hard. They’re terrified if they do this, they’ll find out absolutely nothing God ever “tells them,” is actually God. That it’s entirely in their own head; that they’ve been psyching themselves into thinking God speaks to them, or anyone.

Yep, they’re letting their doubts paralyze them. And stop ’em from legitimately hearing God.

Raising Lazarus.

John 11.38-44.

At the time Jesus raised Lazarus of Bethany from the dead, he had raised people from the dead before: His synagogue president’s daughter, and some unnamed widow’s son. Raising the girl had happened privately, but raising the boy was right out there in public. So this wasn’t a new miracle… except Lazarus had been in the ground four days. The others might’ve been just dead or recently dead, but Lazarus was dead-dead.

That, and the other raisings had happened in the Galilee. But now they were down south in Judea, a few kilometers from Jerusalem. A number of Jerusalemites were there to grieve with Lazarus’s sisters. From their point of view, the stories about Jesus raising the dead were just that—stories. Raising kids who probably weren’t quite dead, and after the story passed through a number of gossips it got exaggerated into him raising the dead. Myths.

Whether they believed those stories or not, here they saw Jesus do the impossible for themselves.

John 11.38-44 KWL

38So Jesus—again, outraged within himself—

goes to the sepulcher,

which is a cave,

and a rock is lying against it.

39Jesus says, “Take the rock away.”

Martha, the sister of the dead man, tells him, “Sir,

he stinks by now,

for it’s the fourth day.”

40Jesus tells Martha,ᴾ “Didn’t I tell you¹

that when you¹ trust me,

you’ll¹ see God’s glory?”

41So they take away the rock

{which is at the place the dead lay},

and Jesus lifts up his eyes to the sky and says,

“Father, I give you¹ thanks that you¹ hear me.

42I knew you¹ always hear me,

but I say this because of the crowd around,

so they might believe you¹ send me.”

43This said, Jesus shouts in a loud voice:

“Lazarus! Come out!”

44The dead man comes out—

his feet and hands bound in linen strips,

and his face wrapped in a sudra.

Jesus tells them, “Loose him

and let him go.”

I kinda got into why Jesus was outraged in the previous passage: His empathy meant he felt the crowd’s anger, and you see some of that anger come out in the previous verse, “Wasn’t this Jesus, who opened the eyes of the blind man, able to do something so that this Lazarus might not die?” Jn 11.37 KWL They were frustrated with him, and he felt some of that frustration.

But now was not the time to vent at their lack of faith; it was time to get Lazarus out of that sepulcher and return him to his family. So for their sake, he prayed the “Lazarus prayer,” in which he reminded them his Father hears him; then ordered Lazarus to come out. Because Lazarus was alive already.

Jesus prays for the Father’s protection.

John 17.11-12.

Part of the reason for Jesus’s John 17 prayer is the protection of his followers—who would now include us. The world, Jesus says in the next verses, hates ’em because they’re not of the world any more than he is. Jn 17.14 So they’re gonna need protection. Thus far Jesus had been personally protecting them, but he was returning to his Father; now it was on the Father to protect them. ’Cause thus far, Jesus hadn’t lost any of the people the Father gave him… well, except Judas Iscariot.

It’d be better to put all that in Jesus’s words:

John 17.11-19 KWL

11“I’m no longer in the world.

They’re in the world, and I come to you.¹

Holy Father, guard them in your¹ name which you¹ gave me

so they might be one like we are.

12When I’m with them,

I’m guarding them in your¹ name which you¹ gave me.

I’m guarding them

and none of them are being destroyed

—except the son of destruction,

so the scripture can be fulfilled.”

This prayer is not a rote prayer which we can just repeat, and pray as if it’s all our own words. But we can adapt parts of it and include ’em in our own prayers. We can repeat Jesus’s request that the Father guard us, and help us become one like he and the Son are. Jn 17.11

Jesus weeps for Lazarus.

John 11.28-37.

One of the answers to the popular trivia question, “What’s the shortest verse in the bible?” is found in today’s passage. The shortest verse in the King James Version is the 9-letter “Jesus wept,” Jn 11.35 which I translate “Jesus weeps”—one letter longer—because aorist verbs aren’t always past tense.

Thing is, in the original texts, the 16-letter sentence ἐδάκρυσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς/edákrusen o Yisús, is not the shortest verse. That’d be the 9-letter עֵ֥בֶר פֶּ֖לֶג רְעֽוּ/Evér, Pelég, Rev in 1 Chronicles 1.25; three of Abraham’s ancestors. And in the New Testament it’d be the 12-letter καὶ ὁ δεύτερος/ke o dévteros, “and the second.” Lk 20.30 Thing is, the Textus Receptus added seven words to this verse, so it’s not all that short in that particular NT. But there’s still a verse in the NT shorter than edákrusen o Yisús, and it’s the 14-letter πάντοτε χαίρετε/pántote hérete, “rejoice always.” 1Th 5.16

Enough bible trivia. Everybody remembers Jesus wept, but now let’s get to why. Because it tends to dumbfound people. Why’s he crying? Why’s he mourning the death of Lazarus? Didn’t he go to Bethany specifically to “awaken” Lazarus from the dead? Jn 11.11 Why’s he grieving a death that he’s about to undo within the next 15 minutes?

I’ve got a ridiculously simple answer to that question, and it’d occur to you immediately if you share that trait. Unfortunately too many Christians don’t, don’t care to cultivate it, and even consider it an undesirable weakness. And it’s not; it’s a fruit of the Spirit. It’s empathy, the knowledge of what others are feeling—and feeling it too. The people were mourning—and kinda angry because they felt Jesus could’ve prevented Lazarus’s death. So Jesus was mourning—and, believe it or not, also kinda angry.

It’s all right there in the text:

John 11.28-37 KWL

28Martha, after saying this,

goes and secretly calls her sister Mary,

saying, “The Teacher is here and calls for you.¹”

29When she hears this,

this Maryᴾ quickly rises up

and is going to Jesus.ᴾ

30Jesus hadn’t yet come into the village,

but is still in the place where Martha met him.

31So the Judeans who are with Maryᴾ in the house,

comforting her,

seeing how Mary quickly rises up and goes out,

follow her,

thinking she goes out to the sepulcher

so she might weep there.

32So when Mary comes to where Jesus is,

on seeing him, she falls to his feet,

telling him, “Master, if you¹ were here,

my brother would never have died.”

33So when Jesus sees Maryᴾ weeping,

and those Judeans who came with her weeping,

he’s outraged in spirit

and stirred up within himself.

34Jesus says, “Where did you² put Lazarus?ᴾ”

They tell him, “Master, come and see.”

35Jesus weeps,

36so the Judeans are saying,

“Look how he loves Lazarus.ᴾ”

37And some say back to them, “Wasn’t this Jesus,ᴾ

who opened the eyes of the blind man,

able to do something

so that this Lazarusᴾ might not die?”

As it says in verse 33, when Jesus sees Mary and the crowd, he ἐνεβριμήσατο/enevrimísato, “snorts with anger.” The KJV has “groaned”; the translators skipped why he groaned, but they knew from their Latin bibles it was because Jesus fremuit spiritu, “raged in spirit.”

Why was Jesus angry? Like I said, empathy: The crowd of Judeans wanted to know why Jesus could cure the blind, but couldn’t’ve cured Lazarus. Jn 11.37 So, some of them were frustrated with him. And Jesus felt that, in his spirit. Not in his guts, which is where the ancients believed emotion came from; he spiritually knew there was anger in the crowd. They wanted to know why he hadn’t done anything. They expected he’d better do something now.

As for why he wept: Mary was weeping. So he wept with her. Because Jesus isn’t a compassionless, unfeeling dick. He’s a human being with the very same emotions we have, but he’s in full control of them and doesn’t use them as an excuse to sin. He rejoices with us; he mourns with us. And because he’s our example, we should do likewise.