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.
