Abi is a non-patriarchal conservative progressive egalitarian

Things have been very quiet at this blog -- for lots of reasons.  But I finally have the strength to speak to an issue that has been slowly bubbling on the back burner of my over-stimulated brain-on-fire:  I have to really disagree with the use of the word "egalitarian" to describe the opposite of "patriarchal" or "complementarian".

There, I said it.  I am starting to feel better already, but I will continue and explain myself some.

My dear mentor, S. Scott Bartchy, PhD., is still in the process of the final edit of his long-awaited book:  Call No Man Father.  I long for it to be finished, but in the meantime there are a few links to articles he has published which can give you some of the general background.

Who Should Be Called Father?
Undermining Ancient Patriarchy
Secret Siblings

On page 145 of his article "Who Should Be Called Father?", Dr. Bartchy addresses the third of three barriers to understanding how Paul has been misunderstood as supporting patriarchy (and with it, hierarchy) in the section entitled Egalitarianism Is Not the Opposite of Patriarchy.

The problem is that is has become common to blur the distinctions between two ancient Greco-Roman social institutions:  politics and kinship.  They are not opposite ends of the same social-political spectrum.  They are on completely different spectrum.

Patriarchy belongs to the semantic field of kinship -- the realm of the family.  Egalitarian belongs to the semantic field of politics, referring to things like equal access to the vote, to positions of public leadership, and to ownership of property. The opposite of patriarchal dominance is not egalitarian anarchy/cooperation.

Because of this ongoing confusion, we have not assigned a proper term.  We must slog along with, um, non-patriarchy.  This is the term used where the power of the fathers and males has been undermined in favor of the Heavenly Father's leadership of his Kingdom Family of siblings who follow Jesus as First Born, Lord and Master.

In the same way, the opposite of egalitarianism is not patriarchy but monarchy, oligarchy or despotism.  And part of the confusion came from Roman Emperors who disguised their monarchy behind a kind of public patriarchy -- the pater patriae, the father of the fatherland.

Understandable yet regrettable...and, ultimately, something that must be made right by those who call Jesus Lord and no man Father but God.  Jesus, and Paul, turned the power of the patriarchs on their heads.  There was no longer an entitlement to power over ... but a command to love and serve as Jesus loves and serves.

Jesus, and Paul, called on the men to give God's place back...to let God be Father of those who accept his amazing offer of adoption as siblings of, and joint heirs with, Jesus Christ.

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In a really funky way, the polarized politics in America is caught in this same kind of semantic problem.  Stay with me all the way through, please...so you understand where I am coming from:

• Conservative means faithfulness to the "status quo" -- and is meant to apply to the Constitution as intended by the original authors.  The Framers have the same problem as the Apostle Paul as folks try to twist and expand and change the original meaning of their writings.  Conservatives believe that the Constitution cannot mean today what it did not mean when the Framers wrote it.  This requires diligence with regard to historical and linguistic and social and political distance ... because history and language and society and politics have changed over the past two centuries.  
• Progressive means adapting to the changing meanings of history and language and society and politics -- and is meant to apply to learning from history, updating colloquialisms, removing barriers to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in society and seeking peaceful unity in politics.  If this requires amending the Constitution, there is a policy in place that is to be followed.

I find it interesting that American politics has continued the Roman error, where many on both sides of these terms see them as opposites.  Some Conservatives yearn for a kind of Political Patriarchy that gives lip service to a kind of Christian Monarchy.  Some Progressives yearn for a kind of Political Oligarchy that gives lip service to a kind of Social Patriarchy.  

But the American experiment is one where neither of these scenarios fit.  We are honored to have a Constitution to which we are pledged to be faithful.  It is, indeed, our "status quo" and it must be conserved.  And as a free people, we are honored to be self-governing and choose our representatives.  We need to continue to progress as we learn better what justice and mercy and rule of law look like, so that we can build on the Framer's Foundation.

We conserve the contents of the Constitution for everyone's benefit.  We make progress as a society and a republic by following the rule of law and practicing responsible freedom at home and abroad.  Neither of these endeavors are aided by methods of coercion that leads toward patriarchy or oligarchy.

It's still true that power does tend to corrupt -- and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  This is why God's power is made perfect in our weakness.  When we submit to one another in cHesed -- looking out for the best interest of the other, according to the covenant -- the world sees that we live in a different Kingdom.  A Kingdom where Jesus is King and God is Father.  Lording it over others has no place in the lives of those who follow Jesus Christ -- not in their home life, not in their business life and not in their political life.  Life is messy and it takes time and humility and good humor to "...listen one another into free speech."

Those who try to make politics a subset of religion err.  America is not an experiment in Christian Theocracy as an upgrade of Hebrew Theocracy.  America is not an experiment in Christian or Marxist Collectivism, either.  America is an experiment in being a Representative Republic made up of many Sovereign States -- of the people, by the people and for the people -- where there is tremendous freedom for progress toward a more perfect union and freedom from oppression in all its forms -- especially those known as patriarchy and oligarchy.  Out of many States we forge the United States of America -- and we need to respect and value each person and each state to the best of our ability.  And when we are wrong, we need to repent and progress toward that more perfect union -- the one the Framers envisioned.

Those Americans who are also followers of Jesus have an opportunity to join this wee purple abbess as she endeavors to live as a non-patriarchal conservative progressive egalitarian.  

O, that would be glory, indeed!

Be blessed....

Abi's story at Ed's blog

...well, my week story is up at the Women In Ministry series. 

Http://inamirrordimly.com/

Still off line...I will try to check in from time to time.

If you haven't been following the WIM series, spend some time catching up.

Be blessed...

Abi

Abisomeone is off line...

...no internet access, so my Tweetinar will have to wait until July 29 or so.

Be blessed,

Abi

Abi's cHesed Tweetinar Update....

It has been a particularly worthwhile endeavor to break down the beauty and complexity of the Hebrew concept of faithful covenant keeping into 140 character thoughts.  If you want to follow, you can find me at @abisomeone and follow the conversation at #cHesed.  I have another few weeks of material, I think.

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...and in other news:  this wee purple abbess will be next week's blogger at Ed's Women In Ministry series.  If you haven't been following, start with today's post....

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Be blessed, friends ... and enjoy browsing older posts while I get my first bunch of  Tweets ready to share in a future post.

Abi and the Jesus Candle....

Well, like I sais ... blogging has been slow -- I found this draft post...and just finished it up.

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This past year I could not easily find purple candles for our Advent candleholders ... but I didn't stress about that, because it wasn't important.  Instead, we had two tall white pillar candles on the ends, two shorter red pillar candles that smelled of apples and cinnamon next, and one tall white pillar candle with lovely poinsettias -- the red and green outlined in gold glitter -- in the middle.

We lit these candles one by one during Advent, the children taking turns.  It was a lovely and peaceful part of an otherwise difficult time of illness, as two different strains of flu swept through the neighborhood.  Some in the family got both kinds....

But this year we kept lighting the candles at each meal ... until all but the Jesus candle were consumed.  I let it burn down a little and then installed a small tealight candleholder in the middle ... and we continue to light the Jesus candle at meals.

It is nice to acknowledge his presence at the table ... where two or three are gathered in his name ... may his presence be more and more real...

The Abbess is Tweeting About cHesed

Having found writing on my tablet difficult, I don't seem to be posting much to my blog.  So I decided that I would Tweet my way through cHesed ... because it turned my understanding of relationships upsidedown.

I have never known anyone to "get" cHesed just from reading ... but I am going to see if I can work through it in bites.  Perhaps the Holy Spirit can work better a little at a time.

I also noticed, as I drafted out the first 50 Tweets, that cHesed is part of the long-overdue series on perichoresis ... they are related!   Nice....

So, if you want to follow my cHesed Tweetinar, you will find me at @abisomeone.  And I may come back here and flesh things out more.  We'll see -- it's summer!

Be blessed....

Abi and Original Sin....

Back in October I shared some of the reading and pondering I was doing -- especially from Peck and Jacobsen.  I have been reading through thoroughly cleaned cHesed Glasses....

Peck, you may remember, postulated that he believed "original sin" was the human tendency toward taking the easy way rather that the right way.  He called that laziness.  I think there is a great deal of merit in serious pondering of the meaning and implications along those lines.  I have benefited from such pondering....

Jacobsen talks about the Fall being a result of the human tendency toward independence -- rejecting God's place as Creator and guide -- in order to be able to judge what is good or evil for themselves.  Wayne's walk through the Bible in his project called The Jesus Lens expands on this idea.  I recently finished listening to all three parts (over eight hours worth) at his website.  It is a worthwhile endeavor -- each segment is around 20 minutes long.  [You can listen, watch video, follow along with PowerPoint here for free, or you can order the entire series on DVD.]

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Now, I have known for a very long time that I am something of a synthesizer.  I take in lots of information from what seems to be very different spheres and find connections and patterns in them.  I think my recent pondering has resulted in another synthesis ... of Peck and Jacobsen and Abi (and all that means).

Original Sin as laziness/independence are two sides of the same, er, coin.  They both are ways to circumvent the work of relationship -- the extending of oneself for the best interest of the other.  Let's take a closer look:

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden were given freedom to eat anything -- except the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  In their Innocence they walked with God and trusted in his provision for them.  All was well ... for a while. 

We don't know what interpersonal challenges may have been developing between Adam and Eve ... but we know that they were together when the Serpent challenged Eve's understanding of the edict.  We know that Adam didn't move to support Eve or defend her from this attack.  Maybe he was waiting to see if she dropped dead when she bit into the fruit ... we do not know.  We can infer that there was some kind of struggle between them in the relationship ... and perhaps it revolved around a desire to be independent from each other a little?  We don't know that, either.

Notice how little we know.  This should be a clue for us:  there is so much more to God's story than we can know or understand -- we just are not ABLE to understand it all.  But that's okay ... if we are willing to trust that God knows it all and will make sure that everything turns out okay in the end.  That does not mean that we will get what we want or that we will be healthy, wealthy or wise ... it just means that God's purposes in Creation will be realized.  Trusting God is always the right thing to do.  But, um, it is not especially easy because we do not want to depend on God.  We want to be independent -- to do our own thing.

This is where the laziness comes in.

It seems that it is easier to do our own thing that to wait for God.  He is SOOOO SLOW!  Have you noticed?  Impatience is a form of laziness ... and this is why children are so good at being impatient:  they have no sense of past or future -- only NOW!  Waiting is the most horrible awful thing to ask my kids to do.

But it gets worse!  Not only do we have to wait for God ... we have to cooperate with other people! 

Adam was there first -- he got to pick out all the animal names by himself.  Easy peasey!  But once Eve arrived on the scene, there was another opinion -- which required a "discussion."  UGH!  Then there is the listening and thinking and honoring and considering ... it is so much easier just to do what I want to do, isn't it?  Really?

So, we get power struggles and other "irritations" that erode relationships.  And all of a sudden we are not particularly looking out for the other's best interest.  We're looking out for our self -- independently.

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Yeah ... I think lazy independence looks like a pretty good take on the core human issue.  We want what we want -- as easy as possible.  The sad irony is that it is always more work to do it our way, in the end.  It is always easier to do it right the first time than to fix it....

Which leads me to the other "shock" statement Wayne Jacobsen makes:  humans are just not smart enough to know what is best.  Pondering that has totally transformed the way I approach prayer.  But that is another topic for another post at another time.  Be patient!  ;^)

There is a reason that one of the big recurring themes in the Scriptures is the concept of already/not yet.  There are things that God is doing ... some that we can already see and know and experience.  But there are many more that are not yet fully revealed.  The fullness of time, as it were, has not yet come.

Relax.  Take a deep breath.  God does, in fact, know what They are doing.  Watch and wait ... you never know when they're going to be ready to do something amazing ... and if you're waiting and watching patiently, you will get to be in on the deal.  How sweet is that?

Ponder that yourself ... how does independence trip you up?  How does relational laziness, particularly, interfere with your ability to trust God with your life ... or that of your spouse ... or your kids ... or your parents ... or your extended family ... or the Kingdom where Jesus Christ is Lord and King? 

What do you think?

Be blessed....