faith

It’s Time to Bless Women in Their God-given Leadership Roles

Gideon YutzyLeave a comment

As the great Iain McGilchrist documents in his ponderous yet brilliant book The Master and His Emissary, we use the right side of our brain to perceive and experience. Religion is concerned with the transrational, meaning it embraces logic but also goes beyond it. Religion thrives in intuition, emotion, and experience.

The left brain, in the parlance of McGilchrist’s title, is the Emissary. It belongs to the realm of concept—those things that can be rationalised and categorised. The right brain, by contrast, belongs to percept: that which we enter into as sacred mystery. Left‑brained activities require black‑and‑white, binary thinking. We engage the left brain in the realm of machines and in any activity where the laws of physics are in motion. We are thankful for the left brain’s role in determining the laws of physics, whether a jet’s engine is big enough, for instance.

The problem arises, says McGilchrist, when we switch the roles of the Master (the right brain) and the Emissary (the left brain). When we try to approach mystery with logic, it leads to all sorts of chaos in our society, especially in religion. Humans are not machines. Churches are not machines.

Here is where I wish to make a connection between the brain’s hemispheres and leadership roles in the church. Too often, we elevate the Emissary—left‑brained thinking—in our vision of the ideal church leader. We exalt leaders who can verbally defend the faith, those who can articulate doctrinal traditions with precision. Yet doctrinal purity is subservient to the weightier matters of the right brain, such as mercy and care.

This is where my contention may become contentious. Despite our different understandings of the strengths of women and men, most societies and cultures have agreed that women, more often than men, are well suited for mercy and care. Does it not follow that women would make excellent pastors? This is not to say that no men exhibit pastoral qualities, or that all women do. It is only to say that women, by their very nature, are equally suited for pastoral leadership.

But (our left brain screams) doesn’t Scripture forbid women in church leadership? I have already written some of my thoughts about that and I invite you to read them. Here, I will simply make the plea that we stop using 1 Corinthians 14–“Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak.”–as a proof text. Something else must be going on in that chapter, because earlier both men and women are exhorted to share “a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation.” It would be difficult to do that while remaining silent. This explanation might be helpful in understanding the context.

Sadly, in many circles Christians still hold a strong taboo around women in pastoral roles. Similar to heinous crimes like cannibalism or human sacrifice, the topic is avoided—or, if it is addressed at all, spoken of only in hushed whispers. And I get it: change cannot happen overnight. Sometimes centuries, not days, are needed for societal change to take place.

Yet hasn’t this discussion already dragged on for centuries? Someone may express resistance to same‑sex marriage on the grounds that the church has only been talking about it since “five minutes ago.” Whether or not that is true of same‑sex marriage, the discussion on women in leadership is as old as the hills. It has existed as long as Scripture itself. Consider just one chapter—Romans 16. Phoebe was a deacon. Priscilla was a co‑worker with St. Paul. Junia was an apostle among apostles.

The church has not reached a consensus prohibiting women in leadership roles. If anything, a pattern of suppression of female leaders has developed. Julian of Norwich, possibly the first woman to write in English, wrote authoritatively and prolifically about the Christian faith, yet the church hid her writings and even actively blocked their publication. Likewise, Junia’s name in Romans 16 has at times been deliberately mistranslated as a man’s name. More recently, a woman who founded an Anabaptist Bible college was asked by the all‑male board to step aside as president to make way for a new president—male, of course. I do not know all the details. Perhaps the decision was legitimate and appropriate. But given the church’s past treatment of women, the optics are egregious.

Furthermore, we deceive ourselves if we say that no female members—half of the church—should hold any leadership roles whatsoever. The undeniable reality is that women already lead. Leadership has many components, including organisation, mentoring, teaching, and articulating a vision for the future. Even in congregations most intent on reserving leadership for men, women lead. Why not formalise those roles, and even ordain the women who are already exercising them?

A critical reader may say that I, as someone who has traded a more cautious church for a less cautious one, am overly chipper with my newfound liberty. They may be right. I will even go one step further and say that I am probably coming off like the ex‑Mennonite who cannot stop gushing about the benefits of ayahuasca in curing her anxiety and judgmentalism. Let us grant that. Still, is it not better to envision a full‑orbed Christian faith—one that offers life‑giving opportunities for all Christians, men and women alike, to grow and be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ—than to cling to a stultifying belief that is becoming increasingly difficult to defend? That which is no longer prohibited can now be accepted, embraced, and even celebrated.

Let me end on a note of charity. I agree with my more cautious brothers and sisters that men and women are profoundly different. We are all better served by acknowledging and celebrating that reality. In homes and churches, at work and at school, men’s and women’s roles will—and should—look different.

But this should not keep us from experimenting with new roles for either sex. Let each congregation be guided by this question: how are both our men and our women being stretched so that more of God’s glory may flow through them? If a man has a calling and ability to deliver sermons, let him do so. If a woman has a calling and ability to bring in the flowers for the sanctuary, let her do so. But equally, if the Spirit wishes to reverse the roles, we should never allow our left brain to hinder God’s work.

Thus Saith the Lord, Slow Thyself Down

Gideon Yutzy3 Comments

I committed two highly avoidable (and highly costly, for a working family) blunders in the last six months.

However, my frustration did not reach its fever pitch until yesterday. I arrived late for my morning class because: a. I encountered snarls of traffic after dropping the girls off at school and b. I then still took the time to pick up some miscellaneous hardware at the local Screwfix. In my frenzy, I wretchedly parked on a double yellow line, a fact I was not fully cognizant of until I got out of class three hours later, whereupon I found a menacing yellow clamp on my front driver’s side tyre.

After paying the 60-euro fine, I had to wait nearly two hours for ‘yer man’ to come de-clamp me, by which time I was twenty minutes late for my afternoon class on another campus. My English language students were patiently waiting and greeted me with pleasant smiles. I gave them an impromptu lesson on the words clamp, de-clamp, and government overreach.

That was actually the final lapse of judgment in a series of three. I haven’t even told you about the first two:

  1. I hastily put some kind of inferior, off-road fuel into our brand-new lawnmower. Obviously, I was trying to save money, but I had to pay 60 euros to have the fuel lines drained. Just like the de-clamp: 60 euros. That must be my default stupid tax.
  2. Then, the other day in the final lap of the final mowing of the season, I was mowing too close to the conservatory window, which caused a stone to ricochet up and shatter a significant portion of the same.

Esther says it only goes to show I’m not really a fully-functional adult but only posing as one. Actually, what she said was, “This means you are spinning so many plates that a few of them have to shatter.” I said, “Thank you, dear wife, that’s a very charitable reading of the situation.”

But I also think I have absorbed the lie that I am infallible and infinite. The reality is that I am profoundly limited. My plan for the next few years is to earn and learn (finishing a degree in English and Religious Studies, yay!). Moreover, I am trying to pour my attention into my daughters before they cross the Rubicon into adolescence, not that I expect all communication to be cut off at that point, just that it might become more complicated. All these endeavors require serious energy and time and I don’t have much left over.

At any rate, last evening as I did the examen*, the Lord said, slow the ____ down! John Mark Comer, citing Dallas Willard, said that the only spiritual advice we really need to follow is, “Ruthlessly eliminate hurry.” I try to take that onboard, more because Willard said it than Comer. Somehow, he comes across as superficial, but I know that’s a harsh evaluation. At any rate, I did read Comer’s book on ruthlessly eliminating hurry–albeit on 1.45 speed!.

Several specific actions I could take to train me to slow down:

  1. Set the timer for one minute and do nothing.
  2. Ride out the impulse for checking my phone. Time how long the impulse lasts. Work on building the concentration muscle.
  3. Say out loud several things that could go wrong in any given situation. It sounds stressful, but I think it might help me close the loop between what my subconscious is trying to tell me and the realm of the fully conscious.

* No, I don’t have elite spiritual practices, the examen is just something I stumbled across through an odd sequence of events, i.e., reading the above-mentioned J.M. Comer, as well as his holiness, the Bishop of Waterford, recommending it. It really does work. Surprise, surprise, right? It’s not like it hasn’t been around for 5 centuries.

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The other morning I read a news headline out loud as we ate breakfast: “There were three executions in the US in the last week.”

My 10-year-old daughter’s instinctive response: “How are the bad guys ever going to learn if the government kills them?”

My 7-year-old daughter’s equally fast rejoinder: “Yeah, and don’t cops know the murders have a bad mental illness!”

I smiled paternally but could not help agreeing. The catalogue of explanations for their responses surely includes the following:

  1. They are speaking from the God-given sense of right and wrong.
  2. Their parents indoctrinated them;
  3. They have lived in western Europe for too long.

Sorry for all the lists in this post.

April Musings

Gideon Yutzy3 Comments

It’s never been surprising to me why Joe Rogan is one of the most popular podcasters in the world. He has obviously worked on the skill of conversation–not easy amid all the preachiness and outrage of today. His pacing is good, people don’t talk over or past each other, and you get a sense of who each guest is as a human being. Every week he keeps millions of listeners engaged with episodes that are nearly half as long as the average audiobook.

But over the last year or two I witnessed, in real time, a tragic change in the mood of Joe Rogan’s podcast. His signature ability to host people with a variety of views, the very thing that made him interesting, has practically vanished from his show.

Then, a few weeks ago, I was heartened to see someone who I knew held different political views than those Rogan has been championing so vociferously in almost all his recent episodes. Great, I thought, Joe is finally getting out of his slump. But alas, in that one episode he avoided the subject of politics–and any opportunity to be challenged.

My takeaway is not so much that Rogan is a coward, but that few media personalities can withstand the terrible self-reinforcing feedback loop that goes with the enterprise. It traps them into telling their audience what they want to hear and getting rewarded for it. Audience capture is the neologism that describes this phenomenon–a term that, tellingly, has entered the parlance since the advent of podcasting.

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The Christian faith teaches us to pray and then say, “Praise God,” even if the answer is different from what we wanted. In the words of Daniel’s three friends, “God is able to save us but even if he doesn’t we will stay true to him” (Daniel 8:17-18).

As a practicing Christian, something about that teaching has always sat heavy with me because it can feel as if it lets God off the hook. But recently I heard something that brought clarity to the conundrum. A group of us from church watched a short presentation by Pete Greig. He believes God does answer prayer but that we all exist in a labyrinthine ecosystem of 3 W’s: World, War and Will.

World–Our world has to work a certain way for life to continue. Except for occasional miracles, God must remain true to the laws of nature or we would experience utter chaos. This affects how our prayers are answered.

War–Satan (original meaning: the accuser) works against God in individual situations, although Christians believe Satan will ultimately be defeated. This also affects how our prayers are answered.

Will–Despite our best intentions, our perspective is finite, and sometimes we are praying outside the will of God. Again, this affects how our prayers are answered.

While the 3 W’s don’t eliminate all the tension–tension is an integral part of faith–it reminds us that we do not exist in a vacuum. Each prayer we breathe is interrelated to countless parts of our lives, not to mention the lives of people around us.

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One of my personal goals is to be less judgmental and that people could feel mercy and acceptance from me. It occurred to me the other day that I often feel judgmental toward people because I feel indignant toward them. How can they do or think or say that, and I don’t! Sometimes, if we’re honest, we are judgmental because we secretly wish we were experiencing something of what they’re experiencing. If you think about it, a close relative of judgment is envy.

Of course, if the other party’s actions are truly wrong, the end results can never be attractive. Once we see things as they are, we either accept the merit of those we have been judging and join them, or we see the pain they are headed for. Either way our heart softens toward them. We certainly don’t get bent out of shape with any form of judgment, or of envy, which is its evil twin. Compassion and goodwill are the beautiful antidotes to judgment.

Stand in Awe at the Constant Unfolding of Time

Gideon Yutzy3 Comments

Is it just me, or does time behave differently as you get older?

In my experience, the past and present blur together more as I approach 40.

When you climb a mountain, the ground you have already traversed can appear very different as you ascend. In the same way, incidents that happened years ago can now feel very immediate, sometimes more immediate than when they happened. And just as strangely, a moment in the present can feel as if I’m living it years ago. I had not observed that elongated dynamic of time earlier in my life.

Having kids has definitely impacted my perception of time’s passing. In a way, time slows down when your kids are young. You get this clear sense that your kids’ childhood is something sacred, perhaps as sacred as anything you will ever witness, and you feel the urgency to drink in their every word and action. But alas, despite your best efforts to live in the present, you realise this period of time will “slip through your fingers like sand,” to quote a slightly mawkish song we used to sing years ago.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, in reflecting on our tendency to lament life’s fleeting nature, used the word evanescent. Everything soon passes out of sight, out of memory, out of existence. Rabbi Heschel believes life’s evanescence is not something to bemoan, but rather an integral part of its beauty. The realization that life is slipping through our fingers like sand can actually motivate us, because we desperately want to appreciate something of its beauty and profundity. Now, all of time suddenly becomes holy. In the words of Heschel: “Who is worthy to be present at the constant unfolding of time?” Reading Heschel made me see that a central part of the human calling is to cultivate a worshipper’s stance as time unfolds.

Recently, on my way to work, I multitasked and listened to a voice note from a colleague as I drove. Maybe it was the stress of my frazzled schedule getting to me, but the predominant thought as I listened was, “What if I were listening to this the morning after he died?”

I am aware that my reverie was off-the-wall, possibly even certifiable behaviour, but don’t you agree it would be eerie to hear a recording of a dead person’s voice? Everything takes on a different sheen when it is seen in the light of our mortality, of time’s evanescence. No wonder so many mystics and monastics start their day with a meditation on death. Remembering life’s evanescent nature does not diminish our experience of the present, but rather expands it.

Imagine if we could go back in time and immerse ourselves in any point in our past, even if it were just for 5 minutes, and could experience it through the lens of what has subsequently unfolded (that routine introduction was actually you meeting your spouse, e.g.). We would be utterly transfixed. Every second would be pregnant with meaning! Sometimes I wonder if the afterlife won’t include reliving scenes of our lives, but with a panoramic view of the whole. (Obviously, I am not rooting that in orthodox Christian theology, though it is fascinating that numerous NDE’s report seeing their lives flash before their eyes.)

What does seem clear is that we must love the unfolding of time. We must love it all–the unpaid bills, our unfinished tasks and unrealised career goals, the quagmires of our human relationships, the turmoil of current politics. We must love it, knowing it is part of a mini-drama that is best understood as one united whole.

With this approach, anxiety about the current moment leads to hope and even worship because we remember our earthly sojourn is one interconnected story. Our mantra can now change from, “This season is really hard,” to, “The God who began a good work in you will also bring it to pass.” And we can stand in awe at the constant unfolding of time

Recognizing the Resurrected Jesus

Gideon Yutzy1 Comment

From out of nowhere, spring is emerging. This time around it comes lockstep with an unveiling that I feel taking place in the musty recesses of my own wintry heart. To mix two curious metaphors from the Gospel of Luke, although I often kick against the pricks, God is removing scales from my eyes. Some of the most mundane things are now appearing in a new light. I give thanks because I know vernal breakthroughs, both in the heart and in the soil, come through unalloyed grace.

In a few days our pastor boards an early morning flight from Dublin, bound for his native Sierra Leone. It is reported that he won’t return until August. In his absence I have been asked to preach several of the Sunday morning sermons. Checking the lectionary, I take down my first text: Luke 24: 36-48. This will be two weeks after Easter Sunday so Jesus has already well and truly risen. “Peace be with you,” says Jesus, it is the broiled fish passage. Feverishly, I take down several notes. I hope that’ll preach, I mutter and add several more.

In further reading, I learn that the resurrected Jesus is mistaken for three different people. Mary Magdalene, the first ever witness to the resurrection (but certainly not the last), thought him a gardener. Later, the disciples took Jesus for a fellow fisherman hollering advice at them for how to remedy a fruitless night of fishing. And finally, two unnamed disciples thought he was just another random bloke traveling to Emmaus.

This insight captures my imagination and I decide to craft my sermon around it. When the resurrected Jesus appears he is devastatingly intimate and as local as a lemonade stand; a gardener, a fisherman, a dusty traveler. Yet he is also mysterious, unrecognizable at first, even among his closest associates.

Imagine the most universal and all-encompassing being you can think of and Jesus is more universal. Now imagine a person who spends their entire life in the same tiny neighbourhood and Jesus is more local, more embodied, more rooted in the particular.

Stepping into the shower to kick off my weekend, I remember lines from a popular Mennonite hymn: I thank thee too that thou hast made our joys abound/that in the darkest spot of earth some love is found. It occurs to me that the resurrected Jesus, hard as it is to recognize him and pin him down, is that joy in the darkest spot of earth. He descended into hell, he ascended into heaven…

Today, post-resurrection, Jesus is manifested not only in the gardener, the fisherman and the traveler, but also in the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. If I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there. Nothing remains untouched by the cosmic Easter event. The divine has been irrevocably mixed with the human and now there is no turning back. The ship has sailed, the genie has been let out of the bottle, the cat let out of the bag, our messiah out of his tomb.

The Christ who transcends time and space comes to each of us differently, yet there is one commonality in each resurrection appearance: he knows us, changes us, heals us, and makes us whole people.

To me that is the meaning of Easter. I think it just might preach.