They each have their own merits and research. And it would be a shame to overlook the pre-first wave feminism brewed among the Quakers that secularist history fails to recognize. God forbid, followers of Jesus may again get something right.

What is most unfortunate is how this word “feminism” has been dragged, drugged, shunned, celebrated with rage, and used to an excuse to push a woman’s weight around. In working to humanize women, many have used it to dehumanize everyone else.

Sexism is degrading genders other than your own. Racism is degrading ethnicities other than your own. If I said I was a ‘masculinist,’ I would likely be labeled a ‘chauvinist.’

If we follow those same lines, a ‘feminist’ means someone who degrades genders other than the feminine. The victim becomes obvious. And this is why I believe many who believe women are fully human shy away from using the word “feminist.” We automatically connote, just by how words are used, that a feminist is an elitist even if others have stretched the word and it’s various studies in different ways.

Some feminists are elitists. I hate entitlement rhetoric, the clanging voices that claim discriminiation because they are female (when those listening may be saying, no, it’s because they are clanging).

For me, a feminist is one who thinks women are fully human and should be promoted as such. They have a mind, will, and emotions, just as the classicists described the faculties of the human soul. Because of this, they are capable, according to their qualities and character, of doing anything a mind, will, and emotion can do. If that means, scrubbing floors or running White Houses, then there’s nothing philosophically (logically) out of bounds.

I think men are fully human too. And I dislike the idea that men should step aside and allow women to run the show. That’s out of balance, dehumanizing. And that’s how women have felt for a long time.

Where I see women abused, trampled, demeaned, mocked, I want to stand in the gap. This is feminist behavior.

Where theology makes dogmatic statements against women being fully human (often couched in terms of what women should and shouldn’t do) from spurious interpretations of the Scripture, I want to stand in the gap. This is feminist behavior.

When women are boxed into categories that do not fit all women, I want to stand in the gap. Plenty of women feel like outsiders because they don’t wear pink, refuse to demean themselves with ostentatious flirting, and hate heels. It is feminist to ask for sanity in the discussion and allow each woman to flourish as she was made.

Many men think they stand in the gap for women, yet fail to take that stand when they deprive women of human functions by calling them “male functions” without qualification. We would do well to rethink Paul and his view of a healthy marriage and leadership in the church. Can we bear the logical contradiction? Should we claim either the Scripture is illogical or that we are unallowed to renew our minds? This is the tension that stretches me in engaging my community and the Scripture with honesty and compassion and every human faculty God endowed me to use in this pursuit.

Instead of worrying about labels, I think we need to refresh this one. Both in the church and out of it, women need to be lifted up, not torn down, by men. This includes the way we joke, the expectations we have of each other, the roles we assign as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine,’ and the way we cut down other men with feminine language. Most recognize the moral taboo of using the “N” word. Maybe we need to recheck our desensitivity when using “girly” or “sissy” or “womanly” when referring to men who may not like Ultimate Fighting and may prefer, like older forms of masculinity, poetry to blood.

Yet, I’m also a masculinist. I don’t like to see men put into boxes that don’t fit them. Just as much damage is done to men in this area as is being done to women. We need to stand in the gap and let the Messiah be the model that defines us all. We need to promote a healthy masculinity without slapping on end-of-argument adjectives, like “Biblical.” That’s like just another way of saying, “I’m right and you can’t read.” When our arguing gets to that point, we should pause and wonder if we’ve been engaging in an ungodly monologue.

I find it typical, yet odd, how many people, when they hear that women should be given full equal status to men, not just in the workplace, but everywhere else (including our own consciousness), assume this is degrading to men. Or, on the other hand, they think it’s degrading to those women who have suffered under the hand of masculinity and have lived to tell about it? Were their scars in vain? Let’s not hold onto a false martydom (sometimes called ‘tradition’) in the name of enslaving future people.

I believe neither women should be above men nor men above women. We must stop the reactionary tendency to make one gender better than another. And in that, maybe we need a new word, an idea that even those ‘in the know’ have failed to promote as a natural way forward. Perhaps we need a concept that allows for men and women to stand shoulder to shoulder, each bringing their various gifts.

Eden painted a picture of it, a picture the Messiah redeemed. And once again, the Scripture could be the cultural torch-bearer in the unfolding of this century. The 21st century may be touted the “century for women.” But we can do better than to wait for the 22nd century to figure out that was a bad idea. We’d be better off jumping beyond the cutting edge and claim the 21st century for both genders working together. That’s our future hope; a creedo to start in our homes and communities and let it trickle into the world.

But we need a word for it….

Apparently, student cell phones and laptop computers aren’t enough of a distraction. They need iPods, too, to satiate the endless consumer appetite to be entertained. I still believe music is the drug of choice in the West. And in a place, like University, which traditionally is for soul-building and a retreat from life’s distractions to gain knowledge and wisdom, this article is saddening. More souls in need of Soulation….

The article is worth your reflection. For instance, see this paragraph:

“When it gets a little boring, I might pull it out,” acknowledged Naomi J. Pugh, a first-year student at Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tenn., referring to her new iPod Touch, which can connect to the Internet over a campus wireless network. She speculated that professors might try harder to make classes interesting if they were competing with the devices.

I’ve been informed that Naomi’s comment was made in jest and removed from it’s original context for the sake of the author’s rhetorically driving the point (a common problem of dishonest journalism akin to the vice he denounces). That Naimi sounds like many typical freshman is unfortunate. Many students have developed the habit of believing that information must be entertainment. Yet so often knowledge will not come in entertaining ways. Making a class more ‘interesting’ should not be a requirement for students to learn what it means to lead (not consume) in the 21st century. It would serve us to cultivate learning, even from boring professors, because this is what a virtuous, flourishing, appropriately human person does. These are the the kinds of students who grow up to make a difference.

The relationships between men and women, husbands and wives, is a deeply needed cultural conversation with great import into apologetics. Not only does the Scripture tell us to give an answer for our faith, but even more often it tells us to live out that answer, even in marriage. How we relate to one another in love is a tall signpost. Today, more than ever, the doors are swung wide to explore this mystery of marriage; it is prudent for anyone who claims to follow Jesus as the Messiah to do so.

Ephesians 5 holds the most detailed passage on the relationship between husband and wife in the New Testament. In other passages of Peter and Paul, we find short reminders of marriage using the same language as Ephesians. So we turn to here for the clearest idea of what Paul means. This is not to preclude the many passages that speak to all humans to love, be neighborly, admonish, exhort, and stand firm in the Messiah.

The “roles” of marriage evoke a roller-coaster of images and emotion. Everyone has an opinion. Some welcome new insights and ideas from others. And more often, many avoid honestly entertaining other models outside the flavor of the day. Some want to be progressive and grab some egalitarian model. Others want to be traditional and choose a tradition of the past even though traditions change depending on the era. Yet among those who take the Bible literally and without error there lies a broad spectrum of views, each claiming to be the “Biblical” way.

With a renewal of scholars talking about “equality” in marriage countered by others who hold to a “subordination” view of marriage (commonly termed “complementarian,” husband is leader of wife),[1] let’s look at this passage with fresh eyes. Let’s get some perspective on Paul’s words. Perhaps Paul is saying things we often overlook. Or he is not saying things we often assume out of habit. Or perhaps we need our ideas reinforced. When we consider the text for ourselves and all its beautiful nuances, it prevents us from merely mimicking one or the other side of the party-line.

I hope you have read the Ephesians passage. It is important that you do. Take it in. Let it inform your view. Any person thoughtful about this passage will be an influential leader in his or her sphere to the freedom that truth brings.

These posts will reflect my own honest inquiry and understanding of this passage today. I am open to changing my mind as evidence presents itself. I grew up under Christian teaching adamant about a certain view of marriage, a view that many subordinationists and egalitarians would consider more cultural than Biblical. Yet as I’ve studied this text over the last few years, I’ve noticed things I’d never seen before and have read various scholars with views that agreed with my heritage and views that did not. My motivation as a married man is to see what God thinks about roles and submission in marriage. And you’ll see that, apart from some cultural notes, my explanations are found in the text when we let the text speak. Biblical scholars, who love God and scripture, land in different areas of the debate, so this essay will not appeal to “scholarly authority” in a quotation-fest. For issues that stir up as much heat as this one, anyone can find a scholar that agrees with his own point of view.

Some have made teachings on marriage as essential as our hope in the resurrection. It is not. While I believe our view of marriage will have deep implications traced all the way to our view of the Trinity, I believe there is room to disagree on this issue in love without demonizing anyone. We would do well to pray for ourselves and others to be nudged by God’s gentle Spirit into the light.

I approach the text as a student of Jesus and Paul. I have Jesus’ view that the Bible is inspired and telling the truth without compromise. I also realize that all language, even my own, is found in context—a literary and a cultural one. And that makes a study like this one all the more adventurous.

Stay tuned.

[1] Both subordinationists and egalitarians believe the sexes “complement” one another. So I’m choosing words that best describe the view they hold rather than allowing either camp play rhetorical games to sound more appealing.

Solzhenitsyn was also a hero in understanding what it means to be human, both with a backdrop of prosperity as well as revolutionary suffering. He became famous for his Gulag Archipelago. Malcolm Muggeridge reported home in the early 1930s about the Russian atrocities under Stalin and predicted someone would rise up one day and write about it. Solzhenitsyn was only 14 at the time…

Short BBC Announcement

Some great comments came from Part 1 of this question. See earlier entry here.

As you know, when a question is posted to you, there are a myriad of ways to take it. What assumptions are behind the question? What is the questioner really getting at? What does he or she want to know? This is one of the challenges of an apologist these days: questions are not always as they appear. We can often lose the questioner by taking their question so literally that we miss it’s meaning or elaborating too long and lose the audience. Sometimes we can only guess and ask for follow-up…

Below is the response I gave to the original email to the question… feel free to comment…

On your question, it all depends on what he was sacrificing… it may not have been a big sacrifice if it was merely death, for he rose again from the dead. But one could argue that for the first and only time in reality, the Father had to turn his back on the Son while the Son took the sin of the world on his shoulders. If we understood the purity of Jesus and awefulness of sin, if we understood the deep love within the Trinity, it would be boggling to think that God would even consider such an act for puny human creatures.

And it seems from Scripture, the scars are permanent.

The second person of the Trinity who has always existed from before time now has scars? What are humans that God is willing to do such a thing? There is more to him than we realize. There is more to us than we realize.

Four monologues fill this 23 minute recording. The second monologue is hard to swallow but the best of the four. Sit in it. Notice the thought process of Paulette Jenkins, the convict, and how quickly things go dark–a victim who becomes a perpetrator.

I like the use of ‘human touch’ in the first monologue and turning perceptions of racism around in the third monologue. An honest cowboy in the last….

I agree with the whimsical assessment of this article. And it is written in a way that average people can understand. Here’s a taste:

[After citing a string of negative adjectives Dawkin's writes about God, Snow says...] Such invective clings like chewing gum to atheist polemics and raises the question of why these people are so worked up about a creator they don’t believe exists.

Darwinists may be able to describe how older bees, wasps, ants, and termites help their younger siblings, but they can’t explain why Raoul Wallenberg became a martyr for captive Jews.

Atheism fails as a creed because it lacks humanity. It destroys the wall of sanctity that defends the weak from the strong. It spawned history’s most savage movements—from the French Terror to the Stalinist purges. None of the atheistic alternatives has survived because reason just doesn’t make a satisfying god.

Those are just a few lines you’ll enjoy in this article, “New Atheists Are Not Great.”