Tag: patriarchy

Patriarchy – challenging to write as male

Posted on
by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I appreciated the feedback on Romans 13 and the requirement to ‘submit’ to the powers. One of the comments that came in was focused on another biblical requirement of submission – namely that of women to men, with a note on the current context where in different ways a renewed emphasis is being placed on patriarchy mascarading as masculinity. Defining ‘femininity’ or ‘masculinity’ can be problematic and I think so it should be.

Let’s hit a major issue head on. Jesus was male. Jesus was Jewish. We could interpret that to mean to be male and to be Jewish is to be more in the image of God than to be female and non-Jewish. To assume that leads to a challenging conclusion, particularly when there is ‘neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male and female’, so even if the above assumption is made (male and Jewish is closer to God-likeness) there is an awesome change through the resurrected Jesus. I also come at the male / Jewish aspect with an assumption. Jesus, sinless, comes in sinful flesh and ‘all have sinned’ but the sin of male and Jew is where it is focused. That is not to make either males nor Jews greater sinners, but what has been acted out since creation has been the sin of dominance by males (patriarchy), and that Jesus first dies for the nation (John 10:51) to break the ‘curse of the law’ from Israel so that the blessing of Abraham might not be blocked but might come to Gentiles (Gal.3:13). In other words, Jesus as male and as Jewish is not a sign pointing to God but a sign pointing to the plight of humanity.

In this age belong, biological sex, covenantal marriage and singleness. In the age to come there will be no more marriage (and therefore no more sex) for covenant will be a living experience between all who are redeemed. I cannot pull forward a Bible verse – and that often leads us to suggest something that agrees with our view but abrogates the biblical narrative in the process – but I strongly suggest that Jesus is no longer male (or maybe no longer exclusively male). He continues as human for the firstborn of all (new) creation is the one to pull all redeemed humanity to its destiny.

I am reading back in Leviticus (finished this morning – always a sigh of relief when that happens!) and again today noted the difference in value for redemption of the male and the female. It is (for me) not possible to get away from the patriarchial bias of many of the OT laws – reflecting the culture, and yet (thankfully) an improvement to the culture of the day. That ‘improvement’ runs through Jesus, the Easter Event and on into new creation, and that ‘improvement’ takes creation to its fulfilment, that being the reason why Paul makes the grammatical change in the Galatian 3 text of Jew / Greek, slave/free. Grammatically he could have gone on to write ‘and neither male or female’ but he breaks the expected language with ‘no longer male and female’, a quotation from the Genesis record of creation regarding humanity in the image and likeness of God. There is a fall in Genesis, but perhaps not the ‘hard’ fall of sin (guilt) but of taking a path that would never be the path to maturity… one repeated by Israel.

Submission… wives to husbands – so clear but what is the significance of the language when there is not a ‘submit’ word in that verse (Ephesians 5:22) but that in verse 21 there is the ‘submit’ word with the instruction to ‘submit to one another’ with the added phrase ‘in the fear of Christ’. No submission because of a creational aspect – biological, nor related to birth – nationality, nor cultural – social. New humanity in Christ and the inter-relatedness of one another – WOW!

Yes there are texts that call for submission in Paul… Those instructions are contingent based on the situation and into the Graeco-Roman world which was very fearful about women not being faithful to the gods of the Empire. Plutarch (b. 46AD/CE) said:

A wife ought not to make friends on her own, but to enjoy her husband’s friends in common with him. The gods are the first and most important friends. Wherefore it is becoming for a wife to worship and to know only the gods that her husband believes in, and to shut the door tight upon all queer rituals and outlandish superstitions. For with no god do stealthy and secret rites performed by a woman find any favour.

All directive texts calling for submission within the household can (and I consider should) be read as moving the culture forward without making an absolute break that would leave no bridge in place… in other words not the final word but the missiological word.

So here I go, writing as a male, with huge blind spots and shaped by my culture, but I consider that the renewed emphasis on ‘the restoration of masculinity’ will not bring us closer to new creation. This is why we have to go beyond signing up to all ‘again’ messages. The path ahead is challenging, but we have the trajectory that we can follow through the Jesus’ lens. And I suggest that there is a focused battle now (as has always been) on ending the culture of patriarchy. Should that go we will find a leverage point has been found that will accelerate the momentum of the new creation manifesting in our midst.

SHARE ON:
Post PermaLink

Condemning?

Posted on
by Martin Scott
Posted in Biblical Observations

While Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and, making her stand before all of them, they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.” (John 8:1-11).

The mount of Olives… the place that was split in two. In the final week during the Passover it was where many Jews camped out as the city was full, and in this story one can see how it became a place where Jesus lays out a path that inevitably would call people to decide. Decisions on how we see people and therefore of course how we make judgements.

Jesus is challenged along the lines of faithfulness to the law with a woman caught in adultery being brought to him. The question that many have raised is of course blindingly obvious – and the man? Patriarchy… the woman is to blame and needs to be judged – interesting that Jesus reversed patriarchy in the Sermon on the Mount with responsibility laid firmly at the foot of the man – ‘if a man looks at a woman lustfully’. So right at the start of this story is a clash with patriarchy – and therefore misogyny.

In responding Jesus bought time. He bent down and put his finger in the dust, writing something there. I do honestly think he bought time, Jesus being the great teacher because he was the great learner. I suggest though something more than buying time is going on, his finger in the dust calls to remembrance that humanity is alive because of God’s great finger in the dust. Jesus gets in contact with the very essence of our being. If we do not get in touch with God and also with humanity it is unlikely we will be good learners no make good responses.

Humility – we are all of the same stuff, and not here lording it over one another.

Then we come to the final Jesus’ comment…. ‘Neither do I condemn you’. Not ‘I don’t condemn you provided you get your act together’. Would he have condemned the man?

I think he saw the woman, the real woman, her core and as he came not to condemn humanity, neither does he condemn her. And at the same time releases an impartation, an energy for the future.

Wow… what a radical approach, and we wonder why there is no impartation with our (oft) default approach.

SHARE ON:
Post PermaLink

Universal or particular

Posted on
by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Jesus died for all (Universal). Thank God. I also think Jesus died for males and for Jews (particular). We all betrayed Jesus, but the Scriptures and the creeds (not many names in there) tell us that Judas betrayed Jesus. Both are true, and in that sense Judas ‘acted for us’. Judas is the particular betrayer; we all universally betrayed Jesus.

Jesus was male, born of a woman, born under the law… so that he might redeem those who were born under the law… This makes his death have a very specific application for Jews. Now let me add what certainly is not explicitly written in Scripture, so I am going beyond Scripture (more of that below), to redeem males, masculinity, or maybe the perverted form of masculinity exhibited in patriarchy and dominance.

Why born a Jew? Because Jews were the problem… hang on, nothing anti-Semitic there, just hang on. They were the problem simply because they failed to be the solution. If we had a camp of people who were sick but there were no doctors able to come, we might well say the problem is ‘we have no doctors’… but the real problem is that sickness has gripped the camp. Sickness has gripped the world, a contagious disease, a pandemic is present throughout creation, and we can call it sin. The doctors though are not available… don’t blame them, they too are sick. Their (Israel’s) sickness was to make chosen to mean ‘them’ and ‘us’, to transform ‘life’ into ‘separation’, to failing to see that ‘we want to be like them (give us a king)’ means we are also ‘them’, that there is no effective ‘us’ but we are all in a mess together, hence Paul’s words ‘all (Jew and Gentile) have sinned and fallen short…’ of being truly human.

That is the strong ‘when’ to the cross. The Jews have to be set free, and the grace of God was to give them a clear generation gap to get on board with such statements as (to Jews) ‘there being no other name under heaven by which you may be saved’ – not Abraham, nor David, nor ‘I am of Israel’. Only in Jesus, the one who died for Jews. ‘Save yourself from this crooked and perverse generation’. There is salvation – in Jesus; salvation from the Romans and salvation for the sake of the world. A restored Israel and we have hope for the nations (Gentiles).

And I also think Jesus is male. Certainly not because of some superiority or creation order. And although I do not read the early chapters as history, history bears witness that the patriarchal nature of the fallen world is a source of deep distress. Maleness, as patriarchy, goes to the cross – maybe the last to be seen at the cross, the first to see the resurrection pushes us to consider that perspective? Jewishness goes to the cross for all divides are nailed there, with the biggest of all divides being revealed as an ultimate wrong (or at least inadequate) perception when the Temple curtain ripped in two. God is not behind the screen. God is with us. Emmanuel. The divide does not exist, and how could it for the two were united in Jesus, fully God, fully human?

Jesus came to his own, but his own did not receive him… yet a few chapters later we read that Jesus sat down with his own and ate with them; he put a towel round his waist and got down… washing the feet of his own. God with us, with those who can receive this God.

Yes, I do believe Jesus died for all. Yet there he is – male, Jewish flesh on the cross. He died that there might no longer be the divide that we who had the power to draw the lines that divide can continue to make. The sharp end of the cross should not be ignored, for in it is salvation for all.

Beyond Scripture? Not in the sense of seeking to understand a story that is unfolding, a story that takes us from Creation to New Creation. A story that presents the cross as the roadblock to total destruction; a halt in that path, and the opening of a new path, a new creation that we are not simply walking toward but one that is coming this way. Beyond the pages but within the story of Scripture.

A new creation is here. God is with us. Always was, was present in the cross, identified and embodied sin, embodied it in a concrete way, embodied flesh that used (fallenly created) privilege to exclude and divide, embodied that flesh in order to include and unite.

He died for Jews and males; he died for all.

SHARE ON:
Post PermaLink

Dreams can help

Posted on
by Martin Scott
Posted in Reports

The above image is of the ‘Toros de Guisando’. They are ancient statues of bulls or possibly wild boars. There are a number of these in north west Spain – these ones are 70kms from Madrid and we recently paid them a visit. They are also located at a very historic site in Spain where a treaty shaped the future of the peninsula.

Gayle had two dreams about wild boars and in the first one she was being pushed around by one of them. In previous dreams concerning animals she has known that they represented something coming against her and also she has known what the strategy was to deal with those animals but this was the first with boars and in the dream she did not know how to respond. (Animals in dreams can be a challenge, for they are even that within Scripture. The serpent is on a spectrum from the devil, to a symbol of healing, wisdom right through to symbolically containing eschatological hope!) She then had a second dream concerning wild boars. The dreams were either side of a very significant women’s march in Spain, and we knew that whatever the boars represented they were at least connected with patriarchy, misogyny and the domesticating of the feminine. I was reading a book on Madrid in between the dreams and came across the many statues of bulls and/or boars that are mainly in the north of Spain. The book focused on the well known ‘Toros de Guisando’, some 70 kms to the West of Madrid. Connecting the dots we knew this was a place we had to go to and pray. They are located in the place where a Treaty was signed in 1468 that is arguably the treaty that opened the way for the unification of Spain under the ‘Catholic monarchs’, resulting in the driving out of the Muslims (1492 the last kingdom in Granada to surrender that year), the expulsion of the Jews and the sending out of Columbus (1492) to discover the new world / destroy an existing civilisation.

In these last years there has been a real battle on for the soul of Spain. At a time when there is potential for change there are two possibilities. If history is not dealt with there is a pull back and old entrenchments in the land are re-established. We have listened to language in these past months that is shocking, language literally pulling on ‘the spirit of Columbus’. A party leader recently went to these bulls of Guisando. He has taken his party much further to the right. These public figures might not know what they are pulling on but pull on it they do. Our responsibility is to be awake enough to ensure that old dangerous ‘spirits’ are not reactivated. I suspect many places are like this at this time. It indicates a time of change is here, and warns us that we could equally lose ground that has been gained thus far.

Many aspects came together in and through these recent days – we have prayed into Columbus Day and have almost certainly been on camera when we planted on the eve of that celebration some subversive art. Interestingly since the year we did that the day itself has been challenged and for the first time boycotted by certain officials. We prayed of course into the ReConquista and the subsequent events for almost a whole year.

We have had a Spanish flag for 10 years and we have known for some time that we needed to bury the flag somewhere at the right time. We have had no further discussion on this, but we both came to the conclusion that it needed to be at ‘Toros de Guisando’. Whoever said it first, the other said – that’s what I have had in my thinking for a few days… Anyway this is what we did at that place.

We first cut the flag up into 17 pieces, one for each of the governmental communidades of Spain. We did not burn the flag but symbolically cut it up, buried it soaked in oil in the ground where the treaty was made, calling for a Spain to rise up that will be a true reflection of convivencia (co-habiting of space that allows for diversity, difference, dialogue in the spirit of fraternity – which we see as the heart of Paul’s Gospel).

Part of the key response Gayle had to make in respect of the wild boars has been to hold her position and not give way to patriarchal closing down of space. This seems key at this time. There is a spirit of intimidation loosed… time to hold our ground.

SHARE ON:
Post PermaLink
Perspectives