Biblical Womanhood?

I'm taking a plunge with this blog. I realize that maybe many or even most of the people who read this (all four? :)) are the choir and I'll be preaching to it. But yesterday, I started digging into the Driscolls (it's about time, eh?) and now I can not keep silent.

Mark Driscoll is the well-known founder and pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Membership at MHC numbers into the thousands now and both the church and Mark and his family have received a lot of press coverage (for example, check out the article from the NY Times this past January: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/magazine/11punk-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all). Among the evangelical community he is simultaneously applauded and reviled. The MHC website is a masterpiece of graphic design wedded with practical efficiency and links to a handful of outside websites/organizations, including the Acts 29 Network (http://www.acts29network.org/).

Having heard some...provocative statements about Mark and Grace (his wife) Driscoll and their views about women, I started poking around and it was on the Acts29 website that I found Grace Driscoll answering the question: "Is the Biblical view of women applicable in our culture today?" I will copy and paste her opening statements here:

"Does what the Bible say about women really apply to us today in this culture (submission, can't be a pastor, weaker vessel, more easily deceived, etc.)? Doesn't it make us too vulnerable to our husbands? Doesn't it limit our ability to demonstrate our gifts? Doesn't it make us less of a human to just stay at home with the kids or take care of our husband? These are the questions I hear over and over from women. They are wrestling with how a loving, all-knowing God could possibly think that such antiquated ideas would work today.

The answers to these questions are clear in the Word, yet so seemingly unclear when compared to the yearnings of the culture around us." (You can read the rest here: http://www.acts29network.org/article/is-the-biblical-view-of-women-applicable-in-our-culture-today/ )

I'm not gonna lie. I cried through the whole thing. Let me try to explain why.

1). Mrs. Driscoll went on to use Ruth as the paradigmatic example of a godly woman. She used basic Bible study methods to arrive at her conclusions: observation, context of the story, asking questions of the text, etc. Kudos for getting that far! However, she ended up concluding that a) Ruth's submission, b) God's sovereignty and c) Christ's redemption were the focal points of the story. I am not going to get on a soapbox about her conclusions as they were obviously personally meaningful and encouraging to her, but I do want to point out that they were reached with poor understanding of how to approach, understand and explain a Biblical text (i.e. Naomi is more of a focal point than Ruth; Boaz is not a type of Christ--He is never mentioned once in the New Testament in connection with Christ; etc.)

2). The "Biblical" view of women, according to Mrs. Driscoll is this: submission, can't be a pastor, weaker vessel, more easily deceived, etc. This then leads to her faulty understanding of Ruth. She does not explain where the "Biblical" view of women came from; indeed she assumes that no explanation is needed. She further expands a couple of these phrases at the end of her piece when she states: "God created us to submit, not because He hates us, rather because He loves us enough to protect us. Doesn't it make us too vulnerable to our husbands? As daughters of Eve we are more easily deceived, but like Ruth under the security of our husband and our God we are safe." a) The second half of the first sentence sounds more like an Americanism than an actual truth from the Bible. Please correct me if you know where to find this in Scripture. b) Women are then ontologically (i.e. inherently) inferior to men rather than co-strugglers under the Curse if what Driscoll says is true. c) What about women who do not have husbands? How do they define themselves in her schema? Where do they get their protection from? Who do they submit to?

3). Thousands of people listen to, watch and read what is coming out of MHC every day. And many of them, because of the way it is presented ("hellfire and brimstone" is one description, cf. the NY Times article) will not question the validity of what they are taking in. As a student of the Word of God, almost nothing could make me more sad--how many women (and men!) have read that piece since it was put online three years ago? How many of their questions were silenced? Or how many had their presuppositions reinforced? How many walked away from the Church as a result? Or stated in a different way, what if a person, a woman let's say, who did not have a relationship with Jesus, read that piece. Would she walk away thinking, Wow, no matter how many questions, how much sin and failure, how much disbelief I have, Christ took it all on Himself, was punished for me, died in my place and rose again to offer me a new and abundant life as His daughter! I can do nothing but fall on my face in trust and awe.

Probably not. Blanket judgments against culture and its "yearnings" (ironic given Acts 29's statement that they "won't attack the culture in the name of Christianity") and poor scholarship (Mrs. Driscoll blames disintegrating marriages, children and churches on the lack of teaching these biblical "truths" among women) would most likely alienate any thinking woman between the age of 18-40.

God has used and will use that article as He wills, and I thank Him for that! But I think Mrs. Driscoll's piece had a different affect on me than she was intending....