Our Journey...

Blaise Pascal once said that "the distinguishing charactoristic of humankind is distraction. We don't like what we see when we slow down long enough to look at our lives, so we keep ourselves distracted- we fill our lives with all sorts of trivial stuff and nonsense. That way we never have to confront our emptiness or longing; we simply don't have time for it." It's rather ironic- we're too busy with life to ponder life...
There is so much truth to Pascal's words; it seems that we take on more and more, trying to fill up every waking minute with noise, hurry, and crowds; these are the charactoristics of superficialness. If we truly want to learn to control our lives, rather than to be swept along with the "muchness" and mayhem of life, we must learn to recreate silence, stillness, in our lives. We must learn to center-down, to detach from life in order to regain control of our selves, to learn who we really are, what we really want, what makes us tick. We must learn introspection, meditation. Unfortunately, most of us are afraid to face who we really are, how we really are. Too often we find we don't like who we discover we are, and if we don't like ourselves, deep down, we really don't expect others to like us either. So we hide ourselves in busyness, in superficial living, to avoid having to face ourselves. We learn the art of transference when we have those "inadvertent insights" into ourselves- we cast our fault on another to see how they react, how they handle it, in the hopes of learning secondhand how to cope with our firsthand faults...
Meditation, centering down, learning silence can be a profoundly frightening experience. Being alone with ourself, with the only one privy to our silent time being the One who knows our every failing, who reveals ourself to us in our rawest, basest form can be overwhelming to say the least, if we're not ready to deal with the reality of our deepest self. And yet, when we learn to face our fears, our longings, our emptiness, when we trust in the One source to fill the voids in our life, we can begin to experience life at far deeper, far richer level than ever before... The hustle and bustle are no longer important, indeed, we discover that life is in the journey, not in the destination. We discover that all the busyness has kept us from enjoying the journey and when we finally reach our destination there is often a distinct lack of satisfaction with the result. Satisfaction comes when we learn to be content in our journey, when we learn to take time to enjoy the walk... Satisfaction is found in contentment, but contentment isn't dependent on satisfaction... I understand now Paul's words that he'd learned to be content in whatever his circumstance...

Egalitarianism...

I experienced a first the other day. During a rather lively discussion a good friend said that if he didn't know me better he'd think I was a feminist... We were discussing the trend of some churches toward egalitarianism, or the belief in human equity, especially between the sexes. He came from a rather tradionalist background (as he knew I did) and he was concerned that many churches nowadays seemed to "disregard the order" God instituted in the family and the church. He felt man was the authority and woman should not hold a position of authority over men... Instead of finding an ally I'm afraid he found a dissenting point of view...
I thought it particularly interesting his argument that God appointed men as priests to conduct sacrifices for the forgiveness of sins; as a matter of fact, there were over 700 references to men being assigned to the priesthood, but none concerning women. I told him that Jesus' sacrifice of himself on the cross freed us from the need for human priests, that Jesus Christ was now our high priest and allows us direct access to the Father, and that, in essence, the need for high priests was now effectively abolished. And, there are numerous references to women in positions of authourity in Scripture, both in and out of the church; Deborah was a judge, Anna a prophetess, Lydia led a church in her home, to name a few...
Yet his argument that I Timothy 2:12-14 expressly forbid women from positions of authority could give his argument merit if taken strictly at face value. But it is important to understand the social context in which this passage was written. Timothy was dealing with a cultural situation where women weren't considered equal in any sense, rather viewed as little more than property. To allow them to be in authority at that point would have created incredible havoc for Timothy, who faced problems enough overcoming his youth as a pastor... I was told I shouldn't twist scripture to support my argument, so I went back to his scripture reference and asked him if he believed it was wrong for women to braid their hair or wear jewelry. He said he didn't find anything wrong with that; when told it was cultural indicator in Timothy's day of a woman's status and Paul forbade it he said we needed to understand the "context" in which Paul wrote that. Yet, you can't have it both ways; intrepret what you want in light of the culture or social context of the day but not the other... Forbidding jewelry or dictating how a woman wears her hair is legalistic and wrong today. Paul wrote clearly to the church at Galatia that all are equal in the sight of God- no distinction between Jew or Gentile, slave or free, man or woman... It was written to a church not dealing with the same problems as Timothy was. It was not dealing with cultural mores that treated women as second class...
He tried another tact: God instituted a family structure- God, then man, then his wife, then children. We need a chain of command, an authority when there's a deadlock in making decisions. As the church is our spiritual family, God is the head, then men, then women... A nice try, but again, it isn't scripturally sound. Jesus Christ is the head of the Church, the bridegroom and the church is his bride. He is the authority and our example. Jesus led by serving; he washed his disciples' feet as an example for all who want "to lead". The true leader, the true authority is the one who has a sevant's heart, not the one who desires the "power" and "authority". Those are the signs of human desire not Spirit-leading... And, techincally speaking, as the bride of Christ, the Church is the feminine in the relationship... (It waqs about this point I was called a feminist!).
The truth is, if I have to choose between being "under the authority" of a Spirit-led woman, who loves and walks with God, or under the authority of a man simply because he's the correct gender, the choice is a no-brainer. I would gladly submit to a woman, for God created man, then woman as his "helpmate", and if a woman can help me learn to walk a more Godly walk, can help me learn to be more Christ-like in my life by assuming a position of leadership as she serves in the church then I can have no greater a "helpmate"... God did create men and women differently, unique to their gender, but he created them equal, in his image. Assuming superiority because of one's gender is wrong, whether found in or out of the church. And to quote Forrest Gump: "And that's all I have to say about that".