This past weekend, our local paper's religion editor featured a column that reflected on the now-concluded CRC Synod. He noted the use of humor, at times, to lighten things up when discussions over paedocommunion grew intense. He also noted the historic decision to remove the word "male" from the qualifications for minister. Next year, for the first time in 150 years, "women will be voting on the floor alongside their brothers in faith."
So now the women of the CRC should be feeling affirmed, validated, contemporary, and relevant--all of the things those of us living in the twenty-first century want to feel--because a group of men have decided to include them in their all-boys' club. I find the wording interesting: the delegates have removed the word "male" from the qualifications for minister. Which leads me to the question of who determined the qualifications in the first place? Shouldn't He be the one to make revisions, if they are necessary?
There are so many things wrong with the CRC decision that I'm not sure where to begin. I guess I would start with the delegates who believe that it is their prerogative to remove words from the qualifications for office bearers. The same God who has ordained the sun to rule the day and the moon by night, the same God who has defined morality succinctly in His Ten Commandments, and the same God who created all things has quite cogently laid down the qualifications for office bearers in two passages of Scripture: 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.
To argue that these passages are culturally irrelevant is to suggest that Scripture is subjective and potentially in error. And to argue that women should serve in these offices because they have great "preaching" skills or because there just aren't enough men willing to serve or simply because they just want to is to again make something other than God's Word (sola scriptura, right?)the basis for all that we think and do.
And so women who are now congratulating themselves for this great progress made for all womenkind at Synod 2007 have simply made the same mistake as their sister Eve so many years ago: they have believed the lie. "Has God indeed said . . . if a man desires the position of bishop, he desires a good work"? And in fact, He has.
There are many opinions about what makes a woman a godly woman, and there are many opinions about the roles women should and should not fill in the Church. And for those desiring a refreshing, intelligent, biblical treatment of this subject, I would recommend When Life and Beliefs Collide by Carolyn Custis James. But we ought not be congratulating ourselves on our progress when our definitions, our understandings, are different from God's. We are to "lean not on our own understanding" (Proverbs 3:5), and when we do, how meaningful and significant can our conclusions be?
And so the CRC's removing the word "male" from the qualifications for the offices is not progress. In fact, it's an age-old strategy that began in the Garden with Eve and the Serpent, and it is to replace God as the source of all truth with humans as the source of truth. As a woman, I find meaning and significance in being what God has called me to be, filling the roles that He has called me to fill. To cross those lines is to seek another source of meaning and significance, and the results of that, as we see from Eve's experience, are disastrous. Culture, pragmatics, and human desire become our gods when we allow them to determine what we believe is true and when they become the basis for our actions.
When we acknowledge Him in all our ways, then He will make our paths straight.
9 comments:
Will you still be my friend, Annette?
Of course, Julia. Will you be mine?
By the way, Julia, some of my favorite people in the whole world (you included) are (or once were) CRCers.
Annette,
The whole sorry stuff regarding women's ordiantion to all the offices started way back in 1990. that Synod voted to remove the word "male" from Article 3 of the Church Order, but also added a supplement regarding it to be a local option. this paved the way for the exodus out of the CRC and for many churches to be independent for a time until the URC was born in 1996. But, little by little, the women got theitr un-Biblical way. When ratification came last week, things in the CRC have come full circle. I may not be part of the CRC any longer, yet I am not surprised at what had happened. It still saddens me, however. And, beginning next year, women are allowed to be delegates to Synod. and I suppose they can be delegates to Classis effective immediately.
What a sad, sad day for the denomination in which I used to belong. :(
BTW, you can ask Rev Freswick the hisory of the women's ordination debate.
Interestingly, Dave, I think that was the issue (if I remember correctly) that finally made Pastor Freswick decide it was time to move on.
Of course :)
It's also interesting, Annette, that the CRc says we left over the women's ordination issue. But this is false. This was only a SYMPTOM of the one main issue---The interpretation of Scripture. Women in Ecclesiastical mOffice was ony 1 symptom. People also forget about the evolution issue at Calvin, homosexuality being allowed, etc.
Speaking of hiomosexuality---I received a newsletter from the AFA the other day. In it, it states that "A bill in congress makes it a crime for pastors and churches to speak against homosexuality. The proposed law would make it a crime to preach on Romans 1 and I Corinthians 6. Or even to discuss them in a Sunday School class." this is already happening in Canada. One of my seminary graduate friends has said that ministers there have been arrested for this very thing.
That's true Dave--about the issue being symptomatic of a deeper problem. And for Pastor F. and probably many others, this was kind of "the straw that broke the camel's back." I know that he is deeply concerned about the issue of homosexuality in the CRC as well. And the creation issue...
Scary stuff! Whatever happened to the constitutional right to freedom of speech?
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