Cosby, Gender Equality, and the Kingdom of God

This Los Angeles Times timeline shows that for fifty years Bill Cosby lived a lifestyle of repeated and continuous sexual assault of women he drugged. He got away with it because he was successful and made lots of money for other people. (Money often buys silence over moral wrongs in this imperfect world!)

But, as theologian Ed Stetzer points out, it wasn’t until a man, Hannibal Buress, in a video that went viral, said that Cosby was guilty of rape, that criminal investigations moved forward. 

It’s a commentary on how a male-dominated society has for too long taken the testimony of women less seriously than that of men. 

By the way, this also shows how different Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God are from the norms of most earthly societies and institutions: In the first-century Judean world in which Jesus was born, crucified, and raised from the dead, the testimony of women was deemed unreliable and so, inadmissible in disputes. But Jesus chose women to be the first witnesses and preachers of His Easter victory over sin and death! Jesus believed that the testimony of women was at least as credible as that of men; our society has rarely taken this attitude.

The New Testament teaches that in Christ, there isn’t male or female, slave or free, Jew or Gentile. 

I wish that society held men and women in the same equal regard as Jesus, God the Son, does. 

Maybe today’s Cosby verdict says that some in our society are ready to change. If we will trust in the God we meet in Christ, in His will, and in His sovereignty, maybe, finally, things will change for the better. 

Maybe, we’ll collectively turn from the world’s sin and turn instead to the life God only gives through Christ (John 14:6; John 3:16-18; John 10:30) and we will start to see one another as Christ sees all of us, as cherished children of God, each one to be loved and respected equally.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

No Matter What 'The Truth About the Pay Gap,' It's Still Disturbing

This article from the libertarian ReasonOnline suggests that the pay gap between men and women in the workplace--women make only 77 cents for every dollar made by men--has less to do with gender than two other factors:

• ...women with college degrees tend to go into fields like education, psychology and the humanities, which typically pay less than the sectors preferred by men, such as engineering, math and business. They are also more likely than men to work for nonprofit groups and local governments, which do not offer salaries that Alex Rodriguez would envy.
• As they get older, many women elect to work less so they can spend time with their children. A decade after graduation, 39 percent of women are out of the work force or working part time -- compared with only 3 percent of men. When these mothers return to full-time jobs, they naturally earn less than they would have if they had never left.

Valid points, maybe. But even these two facts present us with some disturbing issues:

1. Why are "fields like education, psychology and the humanities" or employment with "nonprofit groups and local governments" so little valued? As I mentioned to my son, who forwarded the ReasonOnline article to me and had the same reaction to it as I have, it says something bad about our society when a talented baseball player like Rodriguez is paid hundreds of times more per year than the person who teaches a first grader how to read, or the therapist who helps a troubled teen, or the History professor who reminds us of useful lessons from the past, or the director of afterschool programs, like the Boys and Girls Club, that keeps young people out of trouble, boosts their performance in school, and teaches them to dream of a better life. (By the way, I've got nothing against Rodriguez, who may turn out to be the greatest player in the history of my favorite sport, baseball, and who is a product of and a spokesperson for the Boys and Girls Club movement. As someone who serves on the corporate board of our local B&G Club, I appreciate Rodriguez's involvement.)
2. Do we value those in helping or nurturing professions less because they're mostly filled by women? If that's the case, we're once more dealing with the ugliness of sexism and a gender-based pay gap.
3. And how much lost income should a woman--or a man--endure for taking time off to be there for their kids? Granted, during the time of their absence from the fulltime workforce, stay-at-home parents are losing out on experience and exposure to new ways of doing things in their fields. But, they also are gaining experience in interpersonal skills and the management of time and other resources. Many employers find that women who have taken time away to be with their kids become great managers, better managers maybe than they would have been had they not taken time away from full-time employment. How much of the twenty-three cent pay gap between genders would be erased if employers recognized the value of the stay-at-home experience in the paying work environment?

ReasonOnline says:

June O'Neill, an economist at Baruch College and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, has uncovered something that debunks the discrimination thesis. Take out the effects of marriage and child-rearing, and the difference between the genders suddenly vanishes. "For men and women who never marry and never have children, there is no earnings gap," she said in an interview.

I'm not sure the discrimination thesis really has been "debunked." Instead, I think that the discrimination behind the pay gap is more multilayered and more complex than it's usually portrayed as being. What do you think?

[For another slant on the gender pay gap, see here.]

God Calls Women (and Men) to Public Ministry

[This is the newspaper column version of this post.]

My weekly sermons appear on two different web sites and sometimes, readers send me their comments. One commenter liked a recent sermon in which I said that the Bible’s definition of a saint is anyone who turns from sin and believes in Jesus Christ.

One thing this commenter wrote disturbed me. She wrote: "I'm also a priest - Though I believe women should keep silent in the 'church.'" She cited 1 Corinthians 14:35, where the first century preacher Paul writes, "it is shameful for a woman to speak in church," as the reason for her position. I don't agree with this interpretation of the passage. To me, it ignores the context in which Paul was writing.

Chapters 13 to 15 of Paul's first letter to the church in the Greek city of Corinth deal with what's called, "the gift of tongues." This is a rare gift God gives to some Christians, mostly to help them praise God in a way that brings them personal comfort.

At Corinth, there were Christians insisting that their possession of this gift made them spiritually superior. They often disrupted worship, many different people speaking in tongues at once. Without someone to interpret the meaning of these strange utterances, these people were making other members of the Corinthian church feel excluded and causing visitors to worship to think that Christians were kooks.

Paul told the Corinthian Christians that, at most, only three people should speak in a tongue and that even they shouldn't do it unless there was someone else able to interpret them so that everybody could benefit. Otherwise, Paul said, people should keep their mouths shut. "For God is a God not of disorder but of peace," he says.

Within the context of discussing disorder in worship, Paul then says that women shouldn't speak in worship. What's up with that?

The Corinthians and other first-century Christians apparently configured their worship in the way Jews historically had in their synagogues, men forming an inner circle or semi-circle in an area closer to the rabbi and readers and explicators, women and children consigned to somewhere behind a grated or meshed divider. Some women at the Corinthian church, unable to hear all that was being said, were calling out to their husbands, asking them to repeat things. To Paul, this was another disruption of worship.

But does any of this mean that women shouldn’t be preachers, worship leaders, readers, minstry leaders, musicians, or worship participants? I don’t think so at all!

Jesus, of course, bowed to the conventions of first century Judea when He only called men to function as apostles, leaders of the early Church. He did this, I believe, knowing that in that time and place, only men would be accepted in the role of leaders. But unlike other first-century Judeans, Jesus spoke to women with the same consideration and respect He afforded men. Even a casual reading of the Gospels in the New Testament will bear this out. And it always tickles me that Jesus chose women to be the first to proclaim the Good News of His resurrection (Matthew 28:1-10).

No wonder then, that the same Paul who wrote 1 Corinthians 14:35 also wrote: "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).

In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul makes clear that speaking up in worship is no right. It's a call. But I believe that the God Who calls people to play their parts in the ministries of the Church calls women just as He calls men.

[Mark Daniels is pastor of Friendship Lutheran Church, 1300 White Oak Road, Amelia.]

God Calls Women...and Men

I post my weekend messages both here and over on ShoutLife, a sort of Christian MySpace. One of my regular readers liked my message, Saints Alive. One of the things I affirm there is the Biblical view that saints are repentant sinners who believe in Jesus Christ. Every believer in Christ is a saint.

The commenter, a newspaper columnist whose writing I really enjoy, liked what I'd said. But in her comments, she wrote something that disturbed me: "I'm also a priest - Though I believe women should keep silent in the 'church.'" She goes on to cite 1 Corinthians 14:35, where Paul writes, "it is shameful for a woman to speak in church," as the reason for her position. I don't agree with her interpretation of that passage. I feel that it ignores the context in which Paul was writing.

Chapters 13 to 15 of Paul's first letter to the church in the Greek city of Corinth deal with what's called, "the gift of tongues." For the uninitiated, this is a rare gift God gives to some Christians, mostly to help them worship and praise God in a way that brings them personal comfort.

At Corinth, there were Christians insisting that their possession of this gift made them spiritually superior. They also were disrupting worship, many different people speaking in tongues at once. Without someone to interpret the meaning of these strange utterances, these verbal eruptions were making some members of the Corinthian church feel excluded and visitors thinking that Christianity was nutty.

Paul told the Corinthians that while he himself had this gift, they should have at most only three people speak in a tongue and that even they shouldn't do it unless there was someone else able to interpret it so that everybody could benefit. Otherwise, Paul said, people should keep their mouths shut. "For God is a God not of disorder but of peace," he writes.

Within the context of discussing disorder in worship, Paul then says that women shouldn't speak in worship. What's up with that?

The Corinthians and other first-century Christians apparently configured their worship in the way Jews historically had in their synagogues, men formed an inner circle or semi-circle in an area closer to the rabbi and readers and explicators, while women and children were consigned to a grated or meshed divider. Some women at the Corinthian church, unable to hear all that was being said, were calling out to their husbands, asking them to repeat things. To Paul, this would have been another disruption of worship, which should always be orderly and, for the sake of those who don't yet follow Christ, understandable, accessible.

Paul never engaged in frontal assaults on societal conventions. He had bigger fish to fry. He seemed to believe that if people came to know and follow Jesus Christ, it would change how they lived in society.

The whole point of the "household codes" with which he and Peter end some of their New Testament writings wasn't to endorse things like slavery or patriarchy, but to encourage those living under such systems--masters, slaves, husbands, wives, parents, children--to live in such a Christian fashion that those with whom they rubbed shoulders on a daily basis would be attracted to Christ.

Whether as preachers, worship leaders, readers, minstry leaders, musicians, or worship participants, I believe that women who have been called to do so should speak up in worship.

Jesus too, bowed to the conventions of first century Judea when He only called men to function as apostles, as leaders of the Church, knowing that in that time and place, only men would be accepted in the role of leaders. But unlike other first-century Judeans, Jesus spoke to women with the same consideration and respect He afforded men.

• He refused to sanction the stoning of a woman caught in adultery.
• He upbraided His apostles when they condemned a woman extravgantly anointing His feet with expensive perfume.
• He playfully dialogued with the foreign woman who asked for His help, extolling her faith to others.
• He chose a sinful woman from Samaria to proclaim Him as the Messiah to the villagers at Sychar.
• He chose women to be the first to proclaim the Good News of His resurrection.
  

Early in church history, the Spirit designated a husband and a wife team to tutor the prominent evangelist Apollos. And who can forget Lydia, the dealer in purple, the wealthy businesswoman, who had so much to do with the spread of Christianity? Or Dorcas, whose life of servanthood inspired and moved others in their discipleship?

No wonder then, that Paul wrote: "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).

In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul makes clear that speaking up in worship is no right. It's a call. But I believe that the God Who calls people to play their parts in the ministries of the Church calls women just as He calls men.