I read this quote by Cail (who is in the blogroll) at Dalrock’s yesterday and it fits with the issues we face when confronting today’s passage. There was a subsequent comment which noted that Cail’s sarcasm passes as doctrine in many places that most churchian of heresies, the prosperity gospel
“Well, God doesn’t want me to be unhappy.”
Yes, the response to such a woman is obvious: “Yeah, you’re right. God wanted the early Christians to be torn apart by lions. He wanted Joan of Arc and numerous other martyrs over the centuries to be tortured, burned, crucified, and killed in all sorts of ways. He wants Christians in Muslim nations today to be killed for their faith. But you, yes, you are so special that he doesn’t want you to experience one more minute of pain than necessary. He wants you to have a complete exemption from anything, including His own rules, that might prevent your constant and overwhelming happiness. And if your pursuit of happiness causes pain and suffering to others, well, that’s just the price He’s willing to have them pay for the happiness of His Special Princess. You are so totally right.”
We are not that special. We have gifts, praise God, but we we are to use them to build up each other. The church is not a therapeutic commune where everyone has to be happy all the time. Most of the martyrs did not want to die, but God gave them grace and courage in their time of need.
The second error that Cail notes is that we thing we are special. Paul flatly contradicts this. He advises us to have a sober assessment of our strengths and weaknesses. We don’t all have to do the same thing.
And none of us should count ourselves as princesses or petunias. None of us should be overly sensitive. To sacrifice your life is to feel pain, and continue to live for Christ, and not for your own desires.
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Gifts of Grace
For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.
(Romans 12:1-8 ESV)
The consequences of this belief, within the church, that we are special, is plain. We see it in those who think that all roles are open to any person who desires them, not considering if they qualify for such a role — but that equality should rule.
This is a nonsense. There is not a single chance that I could participate in the Commonwealth Games or in the National Football team of any code: I’m somewhat fit but not fit enough, not coordinated enough, too old and when I was young and ultra-fit I could make, on a good day, the “B” relay team for my university because the “A” relay team had an Olympian and three sub four-minute milers in it. And I was never that fast. Sports is about inequality.
This error of equality is something that the Anglican Church has just fallen into (and they have not been the first). It destroys faith.
I’ve been identifying myself as Anglican while attending a very conservative episcopal parish. Our diocese has only been lenient on female priests, while consistently ordain in oddly conservative ones.
While I disagree with their stance, the bulk of their theology I find more consistent with scripture than any other denomination. And while I sit in church and hold to my views, gaining audience with those who disagree yet more and more willing to hear me speak and consider what I say, should I leave because the over church has abandoned this tenant yet my small parish refuses to bring in a female priest who doesn’t preach wifely submission?
When the bedrock of my doctrine and theology is in keeping with C.S. Lewis and Augustine, should I walk away from that and adopt Catholicism? I’d be a dishonest one and a heretic (by their standards).
I’d rather stay and preserve whatever is left of biblical theology within our tiny parish. Perhaps someday it will abandon their conservatism and I’ll be left seeking another church, but for now, I’ll stay.
The Presbyterian Church has allowed women to be elders since I was a kid. I have theological issues with this, but in addition I have observed some things over the years about this.
- Men leave. When a woman becomes the teaching elder (or minister) then she generally only will tolerate lickspittles and fellow feminists in the elder-ship. The others get frozen out. The service becomes too girly — the female delight in costumes and titles comes to the fore, and the service makes one gag. Most men have been trained not to fight with women, so they just go somewhere else. Like the golf course or the Sunday Morning Bike Ride.
- Heresy flourishes. The past is the best predictor of the future. We can learn from how feminism and social justice – the full leftist package — destroyed the female religious within the Catholic church in the 1960s and 70s. There is nothing special about the Tiber: what happened there could happen to us, and probably has.
Feminism, combined with witchcraft, lesbianism, goddess worship, and group therapy deconstruction and reprogramming, utterly destroyed the Catholic women’s religious orders in the US in the 1960s-1970s soon after Vatican II. Religious sisters were largely responsible for the strong Catholic parochial school system and hospitals that spread across the land in the previous century, and it was all gone (or corrupted) in a decade or two. As bad as that era was for priests and the laity, it was even worse for women religious thanks to the herd mentality. Traditional orders are rebuilding now, and are strong and growing, but they’re having to do it from scratch because the feminists/lesbians/witches who remain from that generation are still in control of the main orders and resisting any change.
By the way, when I say witchcraft, I mean witchcraft. Women dancing around trees, worshiping the four winds or elements, calling on pagan spirits to do their bidding, that kind of thing. And all this happening at Catholic nun retreats.
- Women follow the men. The fleshly nature of women has as part of it an attraction to power, just as the fleshly nature of men is attracted to the young and the beautiful. It becomes clear that the women-led church has the form of religion, but not the power thereof: in addition the more spiritually aware woman does read her bible, does have a brain, and is aware that the qualifications for eldership exclude her. She will move from the dead and dying church to the church with life within it. And that church will be a believing and obedient one.
I grieve for the Anglican Church. There is a long and deep stream of reformed theology, of great theological insight, and of charity within it. However, I can see that it will split. The reformed will join one of the orthodox Presbyterian Kirks. The more Anglocatholic will join the Ordinate, and reunite with Rome.
And the liberal rump will consider that they have triumphed, as they fall into the pit. Let that not be. Let us stay within the faith, and let the Anglicans again find their faith, and a spine.
