August 17, 2007

• I thought I was alone

  If God has called and gifted you and affirmed you in that calling/gifting, then you need to answer that call.  And God calls and gifts people, without partiality or prejudice – whether you’re a man or a woman, single or married, rich or poor, whatever your background, whatever your ethnicity – to serve Him in every capacity that is needed in order to bring glory to His Name – whether to be pastors, teachers, helpers, singers, writers, artists, or admin…. 

  I had always thought this was true and operated on this truth… until I was silenced by older men in my life, whom I respected.  Up until that point, I thought God wanted to use me to teach others what He had taught me (“Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.” 1 Cor 12:7).  But I felt balked by warnings and admonishments that perhaps my teaching was a sin, and it caused me a lot of anguish.  “Really, Lord?  Am I sinning?”  I wanted to do what was right, not simply what I felt was right.  And what can you do when it seems that everyone around you believes that only men should have authority – in the church and in the home?  “Men need to lead”, “men need to initiate”, “men need to be submitted to” — “don’t you see, it’s right there in the Bible?”  I looked, and sure enough, it was right there with the plain reading of the text.   But why was it that what I was reading and what I felt and experienced with God were different?  I felt so much dissonance, but I didn’t know why.  I thought that perhaps I was just a second rate rebel.

  Over time, I began to acquire the ideology that was handed down to me.  For the longest time, whenever I heard that a church had a woman pastor, I thought self-rigtheously, “Liberals!”  Even though, hypocritically, I wondered why limitations were put on who I could teach.  And for a long time, I kept thinking, “Well, it’s not like I want to teach men anyway; I only want to teach women.”  On the ‘home front’, Ellisabeth Elliot and Joshua Harris had taken over my youth group by storm during my high school days.  And so, during college and beyond, they became like a standard before me in a battle against what I thought was a worldly way of ‘dating.’  Yes, “women should be silent and wait; men should initiate and pursue.”  I agreed with these tenets so much that I preached it like it was gospel.  Up until about two years ago, I was quite devoted to all of these ideals (see my previous xanga entries).  I perpetuated these myths — and now feel much deep contrition.  But that’s just the way it was.  I was a full-fledged, practicing complementarian.

  I was a practicing complementarian, even though deep in my heart, I felt like I was walking through a dark mire of angst.  Good thing though that God gives lightning bolts in the midst of the darkness, so that you can see – even if just for a split second.  That’s what I felt a few years ago when I visited Epicentre.  Pastors John and Evelyn Lo prayed prophetic words over me – without even knowing me or anything that I had ever been through – just as I was again wrestling with the ‘can women teach’ question.  John affirmed that I was a fire starter and that God wants to use me to move others.  He has placed things on my heart that are bubbling and bursting to get out.  And he said that there are elders who say to me ‘no’, but the answer is not to sit back, no, the answer is intimacy with Jesus.  How did John know that there were elders telling me ‘no’?  There was no way except by the Spirit.  And through them, the Spirit was affirming me, telling me not to sit back.  I needed to seek and follow Jesus.

  The next flash of lightning came last fall as a small group of friends sat around a dining table at Pastor Dora Wang’s house.  That night she illumined the Word of God to all of us, and we walked away changed.  At least, I did.  You mean God didn’t want women to be silent after all?  My suspicions all along have been correct?  I felt my heart in my lungs as I saw that I was at the beginning of something big. 

  That was when the real journey began.  I started reading and studying and researching and talking to others and tried my best to piece together these snatches of truth that I was seeing.  And then I stumbled onto the CBE website and found the scholarly articles available there.  As I read, I found that the interpretations I had been making and the conclusions I had been drawing had been made and found before.  With a thrill, I realized that if I had come to the same conclusions as these wise, learned, spiritual academicians, then perhaps it was because the Spirit was revealing Truth to me.  I thought I was alone in all this, but it turned out that I was not.  There, I found resources for all the questions I had regarding Bible passages written by female and male theologians, pastors and professors, which helped to affirm again and again that God values His children equally.  Male and female, He created them both in His image, and He calls and gifts both male and female to be a witness of His glory.

  The last bits of dark clouds of dissonance and angst dispersed completely at the CBE conference.  I am now left without any doubts.  Sam and I have walked away from the conference knowing that we stand before God, equal as we are, as partners with a desire to bring this truth to others.  I know that some people argue that this is a ‘side issue’ and that we need to focus on more important things –like the gospel.  But that’s the thing.  This is the gospel.  It’s the whole gospel message.  We’re missing the whole gospel message if we’re not preaching about how Christ’s resurrection means a new life for all – freedom from human discriminations of race, class and gender, equality before God, having an inheritance that surpasses all things, an inheritance that is for all people, because God has no favoritism.  The power of the gospel is that it breaks down all walls and all barriers.  If we miss this message of freedom, redemption and equality, then we have missed the power of the gospel.  Seriously, what is the gospel if it does not have the power to break down human-made barriers? 

  So here I am, Mary Ann.  I believe in the power of the gospel, and I believe in Biblical equality.

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