Many of the biggest controversies in churches today are related to gender & sexuality. Can women take positions of church government? Is homosexual marriage acceptable for Christians? Should church leaders be celibate or married? These questions are enormously important, and any position which thinks that the answer to any of them is ‘obvious’ is blind to the complexities involved. But amidst the debates and arguments, shibboleths and boundary-drawing, it is easy to miss something. Any answer to these questions implies a view of human personhood and what it means to be created in God’s image, and the implications have a massive impact, far beyond the issues themselves, on our sense of identity and dignity as human beings.
Instead of starting our exploration of gender by deciding what we think about the controversial questions, I want to suggest that we should start at the other end. Let’s explore what it means to be fallen human beings who are slowly being restored into the image of the One who created us. Maybe when we have a fuller grasp of the Christian view of personhood, the answers to controversial questions will naturally fall into place as part of a bigger perspective.
If we rush to answer the boundary-questions (“Is X permitted or not?”) without first thinking carefully about sexuality and identity more broadly, our deeper conceptions of these things will be unconsciously adopted from the culture around us. We won’t have no conceptions, we will just have those given to us by adverts, Hollywood, and pop music. Those things will shape how we see human nature at the level of our imagination. Then, the Christian view (what the Bible/Church/local pastor says, or doesn’t say) may feel irrational, contrary to human nature, rather than being a loving invitation to rediscover our humanity. What’s really at stake is how we picture the contrast between who we are now, with all our desires, brokenness and prejudices, and who we were created to be.
I think we should ask questions like the following.
What does it mean to have desires (e.g. for status, acceptance, satisfaction, food, sex)? Are desires inherently bad? Should we squash any desires we find inside ourselves, seeing them as distractions from our duty to serve God? Or instead, does repressing desire lead to psychological damage? I believe that embedded in the Christian tradition we can find a complex, nuanced view of desire as a diamond-in-the-rough, a resource that can bring great joy and power but only once disciplined and channelled to the right ends.
What does it mean specifically to long for intimacy? Is romantic love the best solution to this longing? What does it mean if a married person does not find the intimacy they were looking for in marriage? What does it mean for someone with this longing to remain single their whole life? More broadly, how should both single and married people understand their status as human beings in relation to each other?
What does it mean to take spiritual leadership? Does it mean having power over others, or serving them, or both? Does a spiritual leader in some way represent God to the people they are leading? If so, does God need representation by both genders or just one? Is leadership an inherently masculine thing even if a woman does it?
These questions may themselves be biased towards certain answers. But the point isn’t that these are the only right questions. The point is that pursuing questions like these is the answer to our current disagreements. We desperately need careful thinking, honest truth-seeking, and gracious listening in regard to these questions before we will make progress answering the “hot topic” boundary questions. We need to build a robust theological anthropology that is neither subject to the whims of the age nor uncritically accepting of past assumptions.
For further reading I’d recommend following the ongoing investigation by Matthew Lee Anderson, whose line of research has begun the way I am outlining.((His former article here is also excellent)) I’m also grateful to Eva for raising the essential philosophical questions in a previous post. Finally, having recently heard Sarah Coakley lecture on the subject, I expect great insights from her new book, The New Asceticism: Sexuality, Gender and the Quest for God.
What these resources have in common is that instead of answering controversial questions directly, they look at the fears, longings, hopes and common-sense assumptions behind the questions. Instead of pronouncing an authoritative judgement on the way things should be, they start by a vision of humans as created in God’s image and worthy of dignity. As we grow in wisdom and understanding, and as the debate grows more heated and divisive, we must pray we will never lose sight of that vision.
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Barney, I appreciate your desire to circumvent the culture wars via careful thought. That being said, I must express my hesitation with the project that you are proposing. Are you saying that in order to not sound shrilly definitive in the context of culture wars, we must approach questions indirectly rather than head-on? If that were the case, I couldn’t disagree more. Sometimes there are basic answers (and by this I mean fundamental assertions, not universally recognized conclusions), and they should be put forth frankly and candidly.
I can’t help but wonder who is being served by this cautiously indirect approach. Concerning issues of justice, especially justice within the bounds of Christian communities, I think there is little place for diffidence and equivocation. It is the academic who has time for nuance but not the prophet. It wasn’t acceptable to proffer mealy-mouthed answers on the slave trade or civil rights, and I don’t think it obtains in current discussions over sexual equality.
The questions (even as you phrased them at the beginning of your post) are simple (e.g., in light of the imago dei, are women on a par with men, are they not?). It’s certainly the case that axiomatic pronouncements jar, but by contrast, I think that indirect answers often lead to misdirection, which is a far worse fate.
*He steps off his soapbox.*
Ryan, always a pleasure to receive critical pushback from such as yourself.
I agree that what I have outlined may not at first sight look prophetic, and instead seem rather vague and deliberative. I also appreciate the need for powerful prophetic voices which call church & world to account for their actions. There is a time for thinking and there is a time for decisive action.
The trouble is that on these issues I hear strong prophetic voices on both sides. One rebukes the church for capitulating to the values of the present culture, and the other rebukes the church for its stiff-necked resistance to moral progress. One denounces the depravity and confusion the world has landed in, and the other denounces the underlying worldly power structures and hegemony which have found their way into the church.
A prophetic point of view seems to come at the cost of respect for one or other side of the debate. But if one does have respect for both opinions, then what is needed is not denunciation but dialogue. My own “prophetic” stance comes through as the viewpoint that unity/communication take priority – for *these* issues – over against what’s at stake in regard to justice/holiness if either view is correct. I stand against people who think that the issue is simple. I do not take the same position when it comes to slavery.
Great post, Barney. Thanks for the list of resources as well. These topics are ones I have thought and prayed over for a long time. Any conclusions that I have made I hold loosely as God continues to reveal God’s-self to me as I muse over this quagmire.
Hey Barney sorry I missed you Sunday but I was in North not TC and today Africa calls as we fly to Zimbabwe and Kenya tonight. I like your questions and I too would never start in the Culture ( which one would I start in as I am in so many! )
I would always start with the image of God in the heart, mind and soul of man and woman. I see it no different to the church. Broken, sub normal and in process of Restoration to all God intended her to be.
Rather than screaming about what is right or wrong, my life work has been to help the Church to see what God’s Ultimate intention was to be, and the plan and mystery that God revealed, especially through Paul’s writings in Ephesians.
I once had an encounter with a wife beater, who was in one of our Congregations and who claimed to be a christian!
He asked me why we were not yet a New Testament Church, so I gently explained because he was not yet a New Testament Christian!
His image of God was still broken and sinful inside of him and be needed to become a new Creature in Christ.
Herein lies the crux of this issue, when we become dead to sin, we become alive in God, Romans 6 handles this well.
Brokenness is a sad sickness in all cultures but thankfully The Lord JESUS still heals, delivers and makes all things new.
Less talk and more power out from the Church with the Good News of the Kingdom of God
Interesting post, Barney, thanks for sharing it. I keep an eye on the various gender based debates that occur in the online world and find it very hard that both sides cause so much pain to the other. It’s easy to get caught up in specific issues without really taking the time to look back at the foundational concepts like you suggest.
I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to fully step back and think through all the background concepts of being redeemed people, who are in the process of being made perfect while living in a fallen world, but I do like the idea of trying and will watch out for more of your thoughts!
Thanks, Hannah! Nice to hear from you! You’re right, there are a LOT of online debates on the issue. But the internet is not necessarily the best place for generating humble, earnest truth-seeking discussions for various reasons. I find face-to-face conversations more fruitful in that area. For that reason I probably won’t share many more of my thoughts online, but would always be up for a chat some time 🙂
There are two ways to get clear water from a muddy river. One is to make great efforts to clear up the mess where you are. The other is to go upstream to where the water is clear. Both approaches are valid, but going upstream is clearly going to give you more benefit, and you might well clear up the water downstream into the bargain. If only other controversies were approached not from the viewpoint of our culture (or any other) but from the clear, pure source. Good work, Barney.