Culture Wars

As I was writing one of last week's blogs, the one about the messengers in the army of the Lord being ready to run with good news, there's a little detail that I left out: 

The Scriptures actually identify that it was women in the army of the Lord who were ready to run. 

When I was going back through my notes for that particular reflection, that little word - "women" - struck me, but I didn't want to jump on it right away. It was one of those things that I needed to sit with for awhile longer, to let roll around in my heart, to prayerfully consider what it is that I wanted to say about this. 

There has been, as most of us are well aware, an outpouring of...let's call it "anti-patriarchy" in Christian circles in recent years. "Patriarchy" has become a buzz word in all the worst ways. Sects of Christians are coming out against what they perceive as an overemphasis on maleness in the Scriptures and in historical Christianity, and they are ready to jump on any mention of a female in the Bible as evidence that we are completely backward and getting God's social economy all wrong. They are ready to use a verse like this to condemn everything, to throw it all out and to claim that we need to start over and build a more...equal? equitable? Christianity, one that isn't male-dominated and in fact, is actually gender-blind. 

I confess that as I read my notes, a similar sort of spark went off in my head, put there by the very kind of culture wars that I'm talking about. I read that word - women - and something inside of me leaped to "Aha! Women fighting in the army of the Lord. Now that will preach." 

But...should it?

In an age of advanced feminism and moving into and through gender fluidity, self-identified sexuality, and blurring lines, a message like that will preach to those inclined to hear such a thing, but would it capture the heart of God in a meaningful way? 

I'm not so sure. 

This draws us back into a discussion about contextual reading, about how we approach the Bible, about what we bring to it and what it offers us and the barriers that exist and the ones that are being torn down, what we can take and what we must ignore, what it says and what we hear. 

Sects of Christianity have come out against the Bible as too "patriarchal," but is it really, or is that just the way that we are reading it through our own cultural lens? 

This is important. So let's talk about it for a few days.