Sunday, February 10th, 2008
Lent is typically characterized (in Western tradition, at least) by giving something up for the season. Many give up chocolate or desserts, or TV. But I know that giving up desserts just puts me in the frame of a diet, and “dieting for Jesus” is not exactly what Lent is about. The idea is to do something that makes us focus more on God, on Jesus, on God’s amazing love for us – culminating in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross (celebrated at Easter). Giving up desserts makes me focus on the scale, on other self-centered things. I need something that would have me focus on God instead.
As God is the creator of Time, it makes sense that the timing of Lent coincides with a time of great spiritual searching on my part. I have been praying about what to do in quite a few areas of my life, and I feel God calling me to do a Lenten Journey – in this case: a quest for a theology.
I’ve been struggling with some spiritual issues lately, and with the ideas of church and faith and religion and Jesus and compassion and responsibility and love and sin. The linchpin issue lately seems to be the one of women’s place in the Church (big C, and small c).
There are a few large, popular churches in the area that are doing many things I admire: like reaching out to people in the culture where they live and move and have their being (as opposed to making them fit into a Boomer- or Greatest Generation- framed church culture). Unfortunately, the two I have experience with have very clear theological positions preventing women from being in church leadership. This has led to me making a few unkind and snotty comments about one church in particular, greatly offending a friend of mine. I apologized to my friend and spent some time thinking about my sharp tongue that got me into trouble (again). This led me to thinking about what my actual issue is: is it really with that church, or that very out-spoken pastor? Somewhat – but my real, deeper issue is with Reformed Theology. (Defining what Reformed Theology is, is part of my journey, and will be the subject of another post – or more).
I have some significant personal experience with church and church culture coming from a Reformed Theology viewpoint and, specifically, with the view of not having women in any position of “authority
February 19th, 2008 at 2:23 PM
Well everyone seems to believe that God is male, therefore men are closer to God’s image. Although the absence of other dieties would leave God’s maleness not particularly useful for him. Why we need to assign a gender to God at all is a bit silly but is it least partly enforced by our language. It’s comically hard to refer to God in gender-neutral language. Anyway, good for you for taking a stand and refusing to allow them to tell you that female is somehow lesser in the eyes of God.