Since I don’t go to a particular church right now, I sometimes visit different churches or listen to messages from different folks online. Today I came across a guy online giving a message out of 1 Corinthians. Sadly he was using it to “put women in their place” and talk about “weak men” who support women preaching. Needless to say, I didn’t listen to his whole message. But I heard enough to know that he is another person who reads for bias confirmation and employs minimal critical methodology outside of what aligns with his prescribed dogma.
I’ve long ago come to a point in my personal faith journey where I don’t see another person’s beliefs as a threat to my own and accept that total agreement, even among folks of the same tradition, is highly unlikely. So most often, I tend not to go back and forth with folks on interpretations unless they are responding to something that I wrote or they are coming after someone I care about. And even then, I’ve tried to minimize those types of interactions if I get the sense that my response isn’t, at least in some way, trying to edify even the person who I’m in disagreement with because I’ve tried to give them the benefit of the doubt that they’re simply teaching what they were taught or they were at least being sincere with their personal convictions.
But recent events have led me to reevaluate that position. Because when I contended with folks on my faith in the past, I was doing so from a place of genuine desire to share something that I valued and served me, I assumed that others were doing the same. I have decided to no longer make that assumption. While I’m certain that there are many folks who truly come from that space, when I am honest about the behavior that I’ve seen and experienced among many of these folks, I can now only ascribe to them the designation of being religious bullies. And now that I am acknowledging to myself what I heretofore chose to ignore way too often, because of some misguided loyalty to the dogma of my youth, I will be showing up differently to some folks.
If you’re a reasonable human being with the capacity to acknowledge the limits of your understanding on certain issues and have done an exhaustive inventory of why you believe what you believe and can respect that different people who didn’t live your life or have your experiences have the right to authentically and wholeheartedly discover themselves in the context of their own lives, then you will not notice much, if any, difference in how I show up. But, if you are someone who feels justified in limiting others to your own cultural and religious nearsightedness without having had direct experience or exposure to the particularities of that person’s or peoples’ lives or at least had the courtesy to do some semblance of exploration or study into the conditions of other people’s backgrounds, cultures convictions, etc, I may seem less accessible than I did in the past. I’m just as accessible. But, my ability to listen through what folks like that say rather than to what they say is now reserved solely for people interested in treating people right more than they are interested in being right for right’s sake.
Now back to this bully who was using a letter to the Corinthians to diminish women and call supportive men weak.
I know that this is a popular interpretation. And it was one that folks used to keep my mom out of the pulpit and probably what led to her doing what was best for her journey and leaving the tradition of her youth and converting to Judaism and her sister converting to Islam.
Sadly, many of us have been oppressed by these types of interpretations for way too long. And some of us who fight for these interpretations so fervently are the same folks who had these lines of theology used to justify our enslavement, have our lands taken, or be treated as second hand citizens etc. For a long time, I assume that folks felt ill equipped to challenge what had been handed down to them. Especially in the days when we were less literate and didn’t have the internet or access to more worldviews. But, now there is no excuse to not think critically on something that you feel you have the right to share your opinion on. Nor do you have to just let someone bully you into going along with something that does not resonate with your experience or soul’s knowing. It’s now time for us to strive toward individual and collective Liberation.
Toward that end, I’m offering this insight into a more liberating way of reading Paul if you’re into Christian scriptures. This is what I wrote in response to the guy who was stuck on the idea that women can’t preach and that men who support them are weak. You don’t have to take my word for it. You can feel free to explore it yourself or read Paul’s letters and you’ll discover that there is a pattern of how he communicates. At a minimum, challenge religious bullies even if you don’t have interest in getting into the historical and cultural contexts of the times the Bible was written in.
Dear Religious Bully Who is Against Women Preachers and Thinks Men Who Support Then Are Weak and Tried to Use 1 Corinthians to Prove Your Point,
I’m assuming that you know that Paul was a rhetorician who often employed a style similar to the Greek style of Dissoi Logoi, where the person expresses both sides of an argument often to express a third thing beyond the duality that folks are trapped in. That’s why he sometimes seems to contradict himself. Most folks read Paul and miss the entire third thing and only see their position. Or they see one side of what he says as the direct path to the third thing. Paul was trying to convince Jews and Greeks of a third thing using an amalgam of the styles that each knew because he was skilled in both styles. He was using reason with the Gentiles and persuasion with the Jews. But, if you move through the journey of what he’s saying, he usually ends with something that almost negates everything it seems like he just said only to invite folks into the realm of lawless Grace. Sadly us modern folks think that we get what he meant when we talk about an ancient religion covered with an American colonizing veneer. That’s why we try to dominate people into seeing our undeniable righteousness. But, we’re so much less than righteous. Paul tried to use the limitations of duality to teach Oneness. Ultimately his focus is to get us to see the truth of One Body, Many Members, all of which are of value. He tries to get us to see in God there is no male or female, slave or free, etc. That’s the third thing. That’s why he will end long discourses seemingly trying to make one argument with statements like this one in 1 Corinthians 16 “But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God.” He speaks into different cultures gaining their confidence like a skilled hostage negotiator so that he can set some captives free from the religious trappings and into the liberation in Christ. He even tells y’all what he’s doing and you still miss it.
1 Corinthians 9:19-23
For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law.
To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. And this I do for the gospel’s sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you.
So many pastors, theologians, and exegetes, think they’re getting people free but, they’re teaching people how to navigate a prison that their souls were never meant for.
Praying for y’all to get free.
Shout Out to Seminary Education
For folks who went to seminary with me, I have to say what I said in another group. “Having Professor Simon Lee from ANTS as my advisor was an enormous gift in my understanding of Paul. A lot of people didn’t like him for some reason. But, he was a freaking genius on Paul and the Holy Spirit. I was able to ask him so many things and take some Paul classes with him. A lot of people missed out on what he had to offer partially because they already had Paul biases and couldn’t get Prof. Lee’s enthusiasm. I was in classes with folks and I could’ve sworn they were in an alternate Universe because they weren’t getting what he was saying when he talked about the “New Perspective on Paul” movement. I think part of it was cultural differences. But before I came to seminary, I worked in a government office of China and Korea for 2 plus years. So, I didn’t have any of that challenge, by God‘s Grace. I was just excited that someone could explain to me why I saw Paul differently than his conventional supporters and his critics.
Simon pointed out that Paul has to be read through a multicultural lens because he had the identities of a Roman citizen skilled in rhetoric as well as a religiously conservative Pharisee. And from his point of conversion he went to Arabia for three years reconciling his identities and previous zealotry before coming back to Jerusalem. All of that impacted how he wrote and we don’t get that from just picking scriptures that we align and agree with or critique and reject. I think being multi-culti myself with divorced parents and being raised Conservative helped shape how I read Paul because I was always trying to bridge between parties that seemed to be in opposition to one another while I loved them both totally. And this very much opened me up to Simon’s teaching. Also, I respected that Simon gave up a high paying job at Samsung in Korea once his readings of Paul ignited his spirit.”
I read the Bible a lot as a child and was able to notice the pattern of how Paul was communicating. But, I didn’t know there was a name for it until seminary. Also once when I was in China, I met someone who, when he was younger during the Cultural Revolution, had found a few of Paul’s letters in a fire pit where English books were burned. He sneaked them away and kept reading them repeatedly because it was the only thing in English he had to read. He too started picking up on the pattern and the fact that Paul was speaking to different cultures in a way that they could understand so that he could reveal something they didn’t yet understand. This man was super liberated by these writings during such an intense time in his own culture. And the craziest thing was, IT WASN’T UNTIL YEARS LATER THAT HE FOUND OUT THE LETTERS WERE FROM THE BIBLE!!! When he did, he instantly became a secret Christian. One thing that’s really cool is talking to people who encountered these writings absent of the American White Rambo Santa Claus Conqueror Jesus. At times it’s like learning about a whole new religion if they are examining it through their cultural lens. Sometimes I go to a Chinese church and struggle through the sermon with what I remember from learning Mandarin and using Google translate. I sometimes have a headache after. But the sermons are way deeper and thought out and researched than pretty much any American sermons you can hear. Also, there’s something to hearing about faith from folks who actually risked something for their beliefs. When you know your beliefs can get you killed or ostracized, it’s totally different than “crowd faithing” where you just shake your head in agreement and use God as a genie who is supposed to grant wishes or risk losing your adoration like the common American style to faith.
Sorry, Not Sorry
I don’t know what to say about American Christianity at this point. I have been in it so long and seen so much and been so hurt by it, it’s ridiculous. If it wasn’t for my personal encounters with Christ’s love, I would be tempted to say that it is done for. It seems that we have conflated the religion of a poor Palestinian Jew with our consumerist mentality so much that Jesus, which isn’t even his name, has become almost unrecognizable. Fortunately, my faith has never been in a system or institution, but rather the very real love that makes all things new. So, even in my frustration, I am hoping that something loving emerges and that what I communicate serves someone.
To my folks who think, I’ve gone off the deep end and am now headed to a double hot hell for calling out the inconsistencies and lack of cultural awareness of these old school interpretations, oh well. I love you and you are doing harm and perpetuating harm. It isn’t Christ like in my opinion and I basically don’t feel like going back and forth with y’all anymore. God can sort us out.
The Roofless Church 
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