Spend it all, right away, every time

From Annie Dillard, The Writing Life: "One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place ist he signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better...Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes."

Is that true? I listened as a group of writers talked about what they do with sentences, paragraphs, and chapters that don't make the final cut. Each of us label our files of un-useable prose: "extra", "scraps", or "for later." None of us ever uses those files. They're not ashes, though, ideas hoarded for a better time or a better audience. They're lovely detrius, tasty left-overs, boxed-up clothes from an off-season. Even though we never use them, we like to know they're there. They remind us that there's more where that came from. We are verdant, abundant, productive.

But even beyond writing, might Dillard be speaking the truth about love, affection, curiosity, beauty, and all other good things? The impulse to save it is really a signal to spend it. Blow it all right now, this moment, trusting that more will always be there.

Misunderstanding evangelicals

In Christianity Today's editorial view (reposted at Anderson Cooper's blog), journalists reveal their misunderstanding of evangelicalism when they pose two particular questions. I'm a life-long evangelical who doesn't enjoy being misunderstood, but these days I'm concerned even more with how we're portraying ourselves than how we're portrayed by others.

First question: won't Palin's pregnant teen undermine evangelical support for her ticket? CT says "any" evangelical would see this as a "non-issue" because evangelicals specialize in sin and redemption and recognize that family life is often messy. True, sort of. Evangelicals also specialize in judgment and gracelessness, blaming working women for decisions made by their teens. The theological ideal doesn't explain, excuse, or even fully describe the lived experience of many.

Second question: how can conservatives who believe that only men should lead churches and marriages support a woman as VP? CT quotes Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission as saying that only church and home are "male territory" - God has gifted women to govern and lead elsewhere, and so they should. CT agrees - "Maleness and femaleness, though potent archetypes in church and home, are neither qualification nor impediment in any other endeavor."

Again, true, but only partly. A better answer would be to say that three positions on this question would capture most evangelicals: 1) some -- egalitarians -- say men and women are gifted to serve together in home, church, and society. 2) Others take the compartmentalized approach articulated above, that male leadership is limited to church and home. 3) And others still - the larger portion of evangelicals, in my humble opinion - follow the logic of male leadership in church and home to its natural conclusion. By their created nature, women are designed to serve, nurture, and support. The truth of our created nature is expressed in all spheres, not just church and home. A woman in the White House would push the button and start a nuclear war during her period, or cry during meetings, and the like. Nevertheless, secular women may pursue leadership in society, business and government, but that's because they aren't living according to God's rule book (and look at what happens - they become mannish, angry, or lesbian). If gifted to lead, Christian women should lead other women and children in their own society, or racial minorities of any age or gender in developing countries through missions.

But the best answer of all, in response to those two questions asked by secular journalists, would be for evangelicals to say this: We're in a tough spot here, torn between desiring political power and upholding biblical beliefs. We really, really don't want a Democrat in the White House, maybe even more than we really, really prefer men to be in charge of things. We're willing to re-examine even the beliefs that organize our families, marriages, and churches in order to pursue secular power.

I appreciate evangelical support for women in leadership, but not if that end is reached by spurious means. I believe Sarah Palin is a pawn of the Republican party, being used by powerful men to advance their own agenda, and that she is only valued insofar as she accomplishes that purpose. Maybe evangelicals are wise to support Sarah Palin, because I'm afraid we're in the same boat.

Making tracks

To understand... To receive information regarding... To apply ... To appreciate. So reads the beginnings of my four course objectives for next Tuesday's Introduction to Anthropology. The higher-up who will be evaluating my teaching asked for objectives, and I delivered. But -- quiet now, you never know who reads this blog -- they're all lies. The truth is that no one knows what will happen on Tuesday between 1:20 and 2:35, least of all me -- I'm just the professor. I do have hopes, however. I hope we'll have fun. If all goes well, we'll barrel right past "understanding" on our way to "elation" or maybe "awe." And if we just can't help ourselves, we'll even fall in love -- with our subject and maybe a little bit with each other, too. To borrow a phrase from Parker Palmer, we won't cover the material. We'll uncover it.

Yesterday in a professional development thing we discussed growth by strategy as opposed to scattershot growth. Why just throw your name and your accomplishments around like sand flung from a plastic shovel, hoping a castle will eventually result? Better to plan growth, strategize for accomplishment, build something coherent and purposeful.

But I don't even know what planned growth is. I grow by chance, by crisis, and by grace. My plans mostly come to ruin. When asked to describe my work I said, "Uh, race and poverty, homosexuality, writing essays, gender inequality, and hunter-gatherer cultures. And higher-order multiple births. And evangelicalism." That's scattershot -- a life blown at the world in an indiscriminate pattern.

Just consider some of my academic heroes. Wendell Berry left the university to farm, but kept doing all the best things he did at university. So did Henri Nouwen, who moved from academic fame to care-giving. Mary Rose O'Reilley takes her sheep-herding and wildlife rescue just as seriously as her work as an English professor. And Margie Koch, history professor, became mom, corporate consultant, and urban gardener.

They're all taking Wendell Berry's advice (from Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front): "As soon as the generals and politicos can predict the motions of your mind,lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn't go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction."

Wendell Berry's fox is like Annie Dillard's weasel. Dillard says live like a weasel -- when you see your absolute necessity in the distance, go after it hard, sink your teeth into its neck, and hang on for dear life.

Waste of a Stamp

Dr. Dobson sent me his 8-page newsletter imploring me to vote for McCain/Palin. I've been wondering all along how Dobson would spin Palin.

In my upbringing, the kingdom of sex and gender was ruled by King James Dobson and Queen Elisabeth Eliot. In that worldview, a woman like Palin is a "Bad Mother." Mothers are responsible for their children's choices, so a teen-age pregnancy is only partly the teenager's fault -- it is mostly her mother's fault. After all, Palin was working, not devoting her days to monitoring her teenager's behavior, so there you go -- teen-age pregnancy is the result of women in the workplace. And mothers of preschool children, disabled or not, should not work. Mothers can work part-time during school hours after their kids are in school. Their work can supplement the man's income, but should not disrupt their children's lives, their domestic work, or their husband's breadwinning supremacy. In this view, Palin has emasculated her husband, failed her children, distorted her femininity, and disobeyed her God.

So when Dobson writes, Sarah Palin is "a portrait of Christian motherhood and womanhood," my head is sent spinning. Did I misunderstand the last 30 years of family-focused propaganda that sailed into my home via direct mailings, magazines, and Christian bookstore books? I know I didn't.

Dobson assuages readers who are concerned about a mother of a special needs preschooler running for VP. He says, "I have never suggested that it is wrong for mothers to work outside the home...I have said, however, that if a mother is going to enter the workplace, she and her husband must first find a way to meet the needs of their children." The Palins are doing this, of course, so "the Palins need our prayers, not our disdain, at this critical moment in our nation's history."

Again, my head spins. First of all, it's pathetic how Christians including Dobson will twist even their Christian message for the sake of accumulating political power. But second of all, take a second look at what he says about Palin's mothering. I like it. If Christians in general, and Dobson specifically, had treated my grandmother, my mother, or me with the grace here extended to Palin, my own sense of femininity could have been blessed with grace instead of judgment I've learned to internalize and wield against myself. It's hurtful that Dobson would generate this much grace for her, for the sake of politics, when grace couldn't be found for so many other working moms, moms of pregnant teens, and men and women in egalitarian marriages, for the sake of religious purity.

But what the hell, let's take Dobson's advice to heart. Let's encourage conservative evangelical husbands and wives to work together to provide for their families. Let's encourage women to work and serve in society at the same time as they meets their children's needs. Let's pray for families instead of judging them.

But I'll focus on the family in my own way at the polls.

Decadence

I had the whole evening to go shopping, but could only think of two things I wanted: bath toys and bananas. New bath toys are always a luxury -- who really needs water flutes? ("We do! We do!", I can hear them in my mind). But why not make bananas a luxury, too, I said to myself? Go ahead, you deserve it. You worked hard this week. Why not go to the upscale grocery store, the one that sells clotted cream and imported butter and ordinary bananas that seem special because of their proximity to the clotted cream? I enjoyed every moment at Wegman's: the toy train that runs overhead, multiple aisles of organic healh food, and arranged flowers. An impulse purchase barely averted: magnetic clothespins in every color of the rainbow. Actual impulse purchase: a roast for dinner tomorrow.

What do you deserve today? Go ahead, pick anything from the produce section. The sky's the limit -- organic swiss chard? specialty tomato? fingerling potato?

She died as an anthropologist

Harper's (Nov 08) runs a strange essay, "The American Void", by Simon Critchley of the New School. It is about Barack Obama's "desperate loneliness", how despite how self-revealing he is in autobiographies and speeches, we still feel disconnected, like we don't -- or can't -- really know him. Critchley connects this to Obama's anthropologist mother (S. Ann Soetoro worked with ethnography and microenterprise in Indonesia).

"His mother was an anthropologist. She died as an anthropologist, with a feeling of distance from others and an inability to commune with them and to communicate her pain. Perhaps this is the root of Obama's horror vacui (defined earlier as his "terror of loneliness and nothingness").

Really, now. First, anthropology isn't contagious! Obama didn't contract it from his mother. And second, anthropology does attract people who are at odds with their own culture, searching for community, a common good, or a way of life that really resonates. (Nancy Scheper-Hughes talks about this powerfully in her UC Berkeley Conversations with History lecture). But it also attracts people who are gregarious, connectors, who love all people similar and different.

Obama, in Critchley's view, resolves the anthropological legacy of his mother by choosing a deep affiliation with African-American Christianity. Religion provides a grounding for values, to connect deeply with others, and to pursue the common good. In this view, Obama's pursuit of the common good is his attempt to stave off the nihilism that chases him. The article ends, "We must believe, but we can't believe. Perhaps this is the tragedy that some of us see in Obama: a change we can believe in and the crushing realization that nothing will change."

Geez Louise, Critchly! Lighten up! Obama's mother may have been cursed with an affection for anthropology, but she was also vivacious, loved, and contributed meaningful service to the world on behalf of the Indonesian poor. Obama has gathered up the scattered elements of his upbringing into a coherence, and has built community and made gains toward the common good on all scales: family, city, nation, and world.

Maybe his Christianity and his mother's anthropology, taken together, provide a wonderful model for us Christian anthropologists (and anthropology students): there's room for both participating and observing, believing and doubting, being gregarious and being shy, changing the world ourselves and praying to God for change.

Competency, Schmometency

After being away for nearly three days, I walked into my house to meet a grinning, sticky, snotty child racing into my arms. I thought, "That child isn't even cute," and nearly burst into tears. Coming home felt like stepping into a block of wet concrete.

My three-day adventure was monumental: the first time in 5.5 years I've traveled without an infertility regimen, a breast pump, a baby, or a fetus. It was exhilarating to walk without a stroller, to feed my body for just its own sake (not for breastmilk or pregnancy), to talk about abstract ideas unrelated to food, children, or domestic labor, and to be around lots of professional men. And from conference participants, book publishers, and co-presenters, gifts kept coming my way -- words, even the critical ones, that reminded me I have a place in the world beyond my household.

Maybe professional competency, something I sank fourteen years of adulthood into before I started parenting, is poor preparation for motherhood. It's the breadwinner's excuse for working late -- it's hard to be the hero at work and the asshole at home. In my professional life I'm happy, smart, energetic, gregarious, and excited. At home I'm those things too, but each holds hands with a nemesis: I'm both happy and pissed off, smart but inept, energetic (sometimes) but exhausted (mostly), gregarious but also sick of being touched all the time, excited about the future but also worried and fighting off mental scenes of total disaster. That's the wet cement I've sunk my feet into: motherhood and wifedom never end. I don't think I can make it through fifteen more years of this.

But wait, I already learned this lesson. The rest of my life without my deceased sons may seem unbearable, and so may be the next fifteen years with the living ones, but I don't have to live those years now. I don't even have to take on the whole day with all the tantrums and laundry of the living and the gaping goneness of the dead. Just this moment. That's how I learned to live with an empty home, and it's the right way to live with an overflowing one: the present moment is always bearable.

They say your children will teach you how to parent, and it's even more true than that. The children you lost -- even the hoped-for babies you never conceived -- will help show you the way.

Gratitude

Thanks, Governor Palin, for the inspiration. I forgot to wink, and I didn't even get so desperate as to use the word "maverick" (but it was good to know it was there for me in case I needed it). But I did manage to keep talking (about Lord only knows what subject) until my time was up. And I was very, very pretty.

You can see me giving my talk here, (just scroll down a ways) or any of the others from the conference. Mine is 40 min long, so be forewarned. Unless you're one of my students who says, as so many do, "Dr. Paris' lectures are great, except I wish they were longer." If that's you, you're in for a treat.

David Neff blogs the conference here, so I don't need to repeat it all here.

It was very fun, and my honorarium was enough to afford these. If you need me to write something for you, or speak to your group, feel free to pay me in Naots or Birkenstocks.

And I came away with an IVP book catalog that has inspired me to read Janelle Hallman's The Heart of Female Same-Sex Attraction (will see whether the ex-gay movement is updating these philosophies or not), and Quentin Schultze and Robert Woods' Understanding Evangelical Media.

Thanks for your well wishes. It is scary to be outside one's area of expertise and in an unfamiliar network (I was one of very few woman, and the sole anthropologist, in a sea of pastors, theologians, and seminarians). It worked out fine, but was a great experiential reminder of what those who are different (or even more extreme than my weekend, exoticized, despised, or discriminated against) experience in majority-group settings. And it was great practice in 'translating' anthropological insights for a new audience.

Palin Helps Paris

I'm off to speak at this conference in Chicago. I'm pretty nervous -- it's a plenary talk -- but I picked up some pointers from watching the VP debates.

1. It's OK to speak about _any_ topic -- just fill up the time.

2. Wear glasses.

3. When you're out of ideas, say, "You betcha," a colloquialism using the word "Joe", or refer to an admirable man as "maverick." My conference is on the church, so if you hear me say "Jesus was a maverick", that means I'm all out of ideas.

4. Whatever else happens, be pretty.

Last one on this subject (probably)

I second-guessed myself all weekend: I'm an angry person, a crazy bitch, a bad mother, a femi-nazi, hormonally challenged. Maybe women's anger is never valid: it's always a projection of something else. Maybe I start to believe that sometimes. And I don't want my vocation to be fueled by anger, legitimated with claims of righteousness. I believe that love motivates world-changing energy and focus that is more powerful than anger or force. Anger is necessary and worth our respect and attention, but it is not a place to make a home or a life.

Anyway, I third-guessed myself this morning when I received two books in the mail from a university press: both authored by white Christian men, both on the subject of religion.

Book number one. Acknowledgments thank only men for substantive influence on the book, and women for administrative work and personal inspiration. The author thanks his children who "have admirably stayed out of daddy's way when he was upstairs working." This can't mean nothing; it speaks volumes about the author's epistemology. If women didn't inform the substantive work of the book, then what's the likelihood that women, or a consideration of gender, will be in the text. Indeed, the table of contents includes several chapters that highlight the work of different great Christian men, all of European descent. This is an amazing author whose work is worth reading, but I'll likely provide my own gendered analysis and inclusion of female authors and experts, b/c I don't expect to find it in the text.

Book number two. Acknowledgments thank male and female research assistants, male and female funders, male and female readers, female editor. One woman earned a "with" author attribution on the cover. These white male evangelical authors are known for their expertise in diversity issues (both in scholarship and activism), and that shows not only in their analysis and conclusions, but in the process of producing knowledge.

These books remind me that the issues I raise (over and over) are real. I may be more concerned with bibliographies and in-text citations than many, but any part of creation can be read like a text. And when people do take gender seriously, it really matters.

Grab yourself a spoon

Ben questions whether I've stirred the pot well. (And I appreciate Ben very much, and he's right -- there is a foundational issue in how we relate to God, and how we relate to each other). But if I take that metaphor and run with it, far beyond the issues Ben directly raised...

I'm not entirely sure what "stirring the pot" means, but if it's a synonymn for "shit-stirring", then it means causing controversy for dubious reasons -- say to express one's own anger or personal problems, or to draw attention to oneself. Am I stirring the pot when I raise gender issues (over and over and over)?

First, consider the double standard. When Piper, Driscoll, Eldredge, Grudem and others promote patriarchy (over and over and over), they're valorized for upholding biblical truth. Rarely are they accused of being angry, having an agenda, or hating women (except by their opponents). When women participate in the same discourse but with a dissenting view, they are called angry or self-interested or man-haters. This is such a tired argument I can't even discuss it without falling asleep.

Second, consider Genesis 2. Honestly, man is portrayed as weak and incomplete, and God comes in to rescue him, with woman as the solution. Consider if Eve were created first, described as lonely and incomplete, and God put her to sleep and created Adam to help her. That would be the rally cry for women's subordination. We don't see Adam as weak, despite the storyline, because we aren't preconditioned to produce that interpretation. Our "damsel in distress" theology of women comes from movies and the European Renaissance, not Scripture.

Third, consider gender and subsistence systems. The curse in Genesis 3 could be read as announcing the gendered oppression that will come with agriculture (Hebrews are shifting from nomadic pastoralism to sedentary agriculture, and most of our human ancestors lived on the earth as foragers). Beginning with agricultural subsistence systems and carrying on through industrialism, men and women are cursed in their gender -- women in their sexuality and men in their subsistence activity. Cash economies render women's reproductive capacities a liability b/c they separate public from private spheres, leaving women to work low-status non-paying labor in the home, dependent on a man to earn cash in the public sphere. The man struggles to earn a living, and the woman suffers the sexual vulnerability that comes with economic dependence on men. (This is a huge generalization that could use a few pages of nuance...)

Foraging cultures -- even those remaining today -- tend to have gender egalitarianism in ideal and in practice. They don't divide masculine and feminine traits in ways that serve the public and private spheres, because they don't have public and private spheres. Both men and women are expected to be self-reliant, decisive, interdependent, and relationally savvy. (This is a huge generalization across many cultures and continents and time, but it's one made by ethnologists.)

Taking the description of Eve's creation and arguing for women's superiority might be inaccurate, but it foregrounds the personal self-interest and ethnocentrism that people often bring to the text. It would be a double standard to critique my interpretation without also critiquing readings that result in male superiority.

If a person discusses gender over and over and over, it is probably for a reason. It would be a double standard to assume that promoters of patriarchy are rational, biblical, cool-headed, holders of timeless truth and that promoters of egalitarianism are irresponsible, sexually confused, unfulfilled haters.

But even more pressing than this pot is the bowl of carrot muffin batter that I recently stirred (which I made for all the dear men of my household).

Progress or Statis?

The article preceding the Minnesota one is "Reverent Maverick: Anne Graham Lotz." In it, Keri Wyatt Kent describes Lotz's ministry. The photographs are awesome - "power preaching" shots of her speaking, alone in the photo, one behind the 'old rugged cross' pulpit she designed. It's great stuff (and if CT's editors were intentional in putting this right next to Hansen's article -- super-great stuff!), except for this.

Twenty two of the article's 27 paragraphs discuss her gender. Is she suited for a teaching ministry? What does her father think? How does she justify her work? And then, one more time, can a woman be suited for a teaching ministry? Do evangelicals' eyes really go "ba-zoink-a-zoink" like cartoons when they hear of a woman teaching? It would seem so. It's a point that cannot be part of the context -- instead it sets the context for all else. Lotz herself points out that she doesn't even have formal theological education, which is rarely mentioned as a criticism of her ministry. Only her gender, and that over and over.

Ultimately, says Lotz, "My daddy says that the only explanation for my ministry is the Holy Spirit. I agree." That reminds me of a history paper I wrote 15 years ago (so this might not be very accurate). Didn't John Wesley say of Phoebe Palmer, "The Holy Spirit owns her for the saving of souls, and who am I to forbid the Holy Spirit?" Something like that. Women are always forbidden from teaching men, but sometimes the Holy Spirit issues an exemption that we ought to allow, recognized by the exceptional abilities and results of a woman's teaching.

It just seems to me that pretty much the same article could have been written about Phoebe Palmer in the early 19th century. Two hundred years later we're still respecting women's giftedness only as an exception that falls straight from heaven. I'm not so sure that evangelicals' (uneven) acceptance of Lotz's ministry represents progress. It might just be statis.

My anonymous soulmate

Dear anonymous,

You wrote, "I've read enough of your work that I laughed out loud (not to say the subject matter is actually funny at all--rather the opposite.) and wondered who had ticked you off. : Very nicely done on both accounts. Peace."

You get me. You alone understood that I knew my biblical interpretation was preposterous. You alone understood that the "man" in the "repent" story was a literary device that, on the surface, exposed my shortcomings, but on second look, exposes the preposterousness of patriarchal theology. You alone understood that my repentance was actually a call to gender traditionalists to repent. I like for my humor to be understood by about 20% of the people (the clever ones), but on this one my joke slipped below 10%, below 5%... to just you.

And then you asked me a follow-up question about myself, which is something I love in a soulmate. What has ticked me off?

Collin Hansen writes "Fire & Nice in Minnesota" in Christianity Today about churches in the Twin Cities (not yet on-line) -- how Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, Leith Anderson, John Piper, and Greg Boyd all minister in close proximity. His refusal to acknowledge any women in leadership anywhere in the Twin Cities is just as dumb as his constant references to Minnesota weather -- yes, it gets cold there. But the real problem is the article is just one more polemic for John Piper (see also Hansen's article on Mark Driscoll, or "Young, Restless, Reformed". Or don't - they're all the same.) It's insulting to see my hometown used as a cover for promoting patriarchy and incivility, and to read about my former church (Solomon's Porch), former professor and colleague (Greg Boyd), and alma mater (Bethel) in ways that ultimately promote Piper's ministry.

He mentions Piper 26 times in a 6-page article -- only one section of the piece doesn't mention him. Try this quote from Piper, "The people who are attracted to Bethlehem are people who love their Bibles and want their Bibles to be taught with uncompromising forcefulness...the others go elsewhere, and they have lots to choose from in the Twin Cities." Nice background for Hansen to proceed to describe the churches of Boyd, Anderson, Pagitt and Jones. (My only compliment is that Hansen describes and quotes Doug Pagitt such that Pagitt comes across as thoughtful and decent, something that evangelical journalists don't always try to do.)

The article ends sadly and unnecessarily, "Without greater doctrinal unity, meaningful cooperation among Twin Cities Christians is about as likely as a January thaw." Hansen tends to end his articles with polemic, even violent, metaphors about American Christianity that reveal more about his point of view than about the topic at hand. The Christians he mentions in the article do cooperate meaningfully -- Piper is the only one demanding greater doctrinal unity. An insistence on doctrinal unity is contrary to the Baptist General Conference (why in the world did they rename themselves 'Converge Worldwide'? Are they going on tour?). Though I surely failed to absorb it thoroughly in my years at Bethel, they promote an irenic spirit. I've heard BGCers quote, "In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, in all things charity." It's their charity -- not his iron grip on Truth -- that keeps Piper in the denomination.

But this is only the beginning. This article is preceded by another that has sent me into despair. The compassion of my anonymous soulmate is the only thing giving me strength to carry on. More on that to come.

Repent: to feel such sorrow for sin or fault as to be disposed to change one's life for the better.

A man approached me about my last blog post, "It isn't proof-texting if I'm right." It wasn't an easy conversation, but it was a life-changing one.

He said it is insulting to publish such an opinion without even consulting a man or allowing men to speak for themselves. (I have a father, husband, and sons, so I guess I assumed I knew the male point of view well enough.)

He said that though I claimed to be reading the plain, literal meaning of the Bible, I was actually projecting my pre-conceived biases onto the text. (I don't entirely see what he's saying, because isn't it the nature of prejudices to be invisible to the person holding them?)

He said there's more than one way to interpret Genesis 2. He thinks the purpose of the Genesis 2 account isn't to establish gender hierarchy at all, nor to describe the nature of all males. (If Genesis doesn't establish gender hierarchy, then what's next? Paul is pro-MANBLA? It's a slippery slope.)

He said it isn't fair to assume all men are the same. Even if it's true that some are uncommunicative, ineffectual, lonely, and sleepy, that doesn't mean they all are. (I hadn't really ever said that, or if I did, I was unclear. What I meant is that _most_ men have these tendencies. The ones who don't aren't really masculine.)

He said it isn't right to exclude men from leadership due to their nature. Men may not give birth, but they do amazingly strenuous work to support pregnancies, infants, and families. And while it's true that men need to rely on women's help, when they work in cooperative relationships with women, men can thrive. Men shouldn't be limited to public roles like pastor or CEO -- they should be free to serve according to their giftedness in any sphere. (This may be true, but it's threatening for women who are used to dominating certain occupations. It's not easy to share.)

He said the traits I ascribed to men are actually traits common to all humans, and that it was biased to focus only on the traits that make men as a class appear weak. (Ouch. He's right.)

He said I didn't show any critical thinking toward women, the group in which I have a vested interest. (Ouch again.)

I repent of my self-interested biblical interpretation and my attempts to use gender differences as tool of repression for some and aggrandizement for others. I encourage others to do the same.

It’s not proof-texting when you’re right

The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman, ' for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

I’m concerned about society today: fatherless children, domestic abuse, war, divorce, financial scandal, on-line pornography, and addictions. These social problems are the result of men overstepping their God-ordained place. Genesis 2:18-24 describes gender relations and the nature of Man before the Fall, and therefore gives us an image of God’s creational intent.

Man is created good, but is essentially ineffectual. He struggles when left alone, and unable to even identify his own problem or speak for himself. As is the nature of Man, he passively and unhappily waited for rescue until God finally said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” Man’s basic condition is to be uncommunicative and in need of help. Other men, nor any other creation, do not make suitable helpers; by God’s design, only Woman can rescue Man.

In terms of their social roles, men are created to name things, sleep, and by their very nature provide opportunities for women to rescue and save. The most amazing work in this narrative – the creation of the female sex -- occurs between God and Woman while Man is asleep.

Women have taken up their charge, helping men, receiving them in marriage, relieving their loneliness, and assisting their difficult transition from family of birth to family of marriage. Women’s capacity for leadership is evident in the greater responsibility given to women in the procreative endeavor. Men, with their tendency to fall asleep, be unhappy, and not communicate, are simply not suited for childbearing. Men should not be angry or grasping about roles that are denied them; they can serve in many other leadership roles such as pastor, businessman, or construction worker. It is not Woman who denies Men the authority to grow children, the ability to help weaker others, or the fortitude to stay awake for long periods of time. Women and Men must respect each others’ nature as God’s good gift. We’re equal in value, but not in role.

Men, however, continually resist their created nature by asserting leadership, acting as individuals, and working without the covering authority of women. No wonder we have such social problems. We must go back to the Bible, read what it says, and really live it.