As I watched footage of the aftermath of the synod vote I was moved by the tears. Debates within church life should not be about victory or defeat for one side or another. They should be about brothers and sisters, humbly and patiently seeking together to submit their hearts and minds to the word of the living God. But, to our shame, that is rarely how it goes.Here are some very brief initial thoughts...
1. We need to go on celebrating, as
loudly and as clearly as we can, that the God of the Bible says that
men and women are equal in His sight. People assume that the Bible
merely reflects the patriarchal culture of its day. No. What the
Lord says about the equality of men and women radically overturns all
structures that perpetuate misogyny. When men in the church have
started to treat women better it is not because they have moved on
from the Bible, it is because they have gone back to hearing what the
Bible actually says.
2. The Bible’s teaching that men and
women are equal and yet different is really hard for people to get
their heads around in the heat of debate. Slogans won’t swing it.
If I was talking to someone I would try to cool things down by
acknowledging how strange the Bible’s views must seem to them and
ask if they were prepared to give me a chance to explain. If they
were, I would go straight to the Trinity. In our culture we assume
that being equal means being the same. But Father, Son and Spirit
are equal and yet different. The Son did not send the Father. The
Spirit did not die on the Cross. The Father was not raised from the
dead. Their different roles do not undermine their equality. In
fact, the wonder is that in the Trinity we see not just sameness, but
difference united in love. As human beings we are made in the image
of this God. That means men and women are not called to flatten out
differences and to be merely the same, but to celebrate difference
and to unite in love.
3. We live in a
culture that ties our value to how high we are up the ladder. It is
therefore a culture that perpetuates inequality: the person at the
bottom of the ladder is made to feel a whole lot less valuable then
the person at the top. The God of the Bible overturns that sort of
hierarchical approach to value. The Son stooped low to serve
humankind by dying on the cross. And that humble service is his
glory – it is precisely because he stooped low that the Father and
the Spirit want the whole world to join them in honouring the Son.
So in the Son’s humility we are given a foundation for living that
critiques not just the sorts of values that drive our culture, but
the sorts of values we have ended up attaching to being a bishop.
The trappings that go with being a bishop tend to reinforce the idea
that a bishop is the person who has got to the top of the ladder and so
is therefore more important than anyone else. If we took our cue
from the Lord of Lords, we might re-think our view of bishops.
4. My friends who are not Christians
are saying, “This just goes to show how out of step the Church is
with the culture.” To which my question back to them is, “How
can you be so sure that the culture is right?” Why do we think
that Western culture is superior to, say, Middle Eastern culture?
How do we avoid the charge that we are being rather imperialistic?
There were aspects of our culture 100 years ago that we rightly
recoil from now. Does the fact that people back then were reflecting
the culture make their views right? What if the cultural consensus
was that we should bring back the death penalty? Should we go along
with that in order to keep in step with the culture? I don’t think
so. The point is that this raises a bigger question: “On what basis
do we determine what is right and what is wrong?” That’s the
question I’d ask back. Because, if the answer is “culture, ”
then the very fact that we don’t agree with all cultures, or even
go along with everything our own culture calls for, shows us that
something else is in play. But what? Is it our sense of human
rights – which transcend culture? If it is, then let’s have a
robust talk about what it means to be human. I would want to suggest
that the only view of the world that makes sense of all that we value
about being human, and the only view that gives a rational foundation
to our sense of human rights, is a view that is founded on there
being a personal God who made us in His image. In which case, when
it comes to right and wrong, could it be that we need to listen to
Him?
5. My friends who are Christians are
saying just the same. “This just goes to show how out of step the
Church is with the culture.” In other words, there is a fear that
we will lose all credibility in the eyes of the world. The apostle
Paul says “Jews demand miraculous signs, and Greeks look for
wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and
foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:22-23.) In others words,
if the cause of the gospel hinged on its credibility in the eyes of
the world, Paul would not have preached a gospel that centred upon
the cross. In our day, if credibility was the key to reaching the
world, let’s face it, we should drop the bit about the Trinity,
about Jesus being the Son of God, His performing miracles, His dying
for sin, His rising from the dead and His coming again to judge the
world. In fact we should probably drop the whole bit about there
being a God and be done with it. The Christian message is not one
that slots into a secular view of the world. It repaints our whole
view of the world. In a nominally Christian country it may look as
though the Christian message just slots in neatly, but as we move
into an increasingly post-Christian culture, we will see again the
ways in which Jesus changes everything.
6. This is not the end of the story.
We will get women bishops in Church of England. For me that is not a
reason to leave. What the synod vote was really about, and what the
media seem to have missed, was the question as to whether those whose
consciences bind them to the historic understanding of what the Bible
says in this matter are allowed to stay. 