(Missed part 11?  Read it here.  Or start from the beginning.)

Outside of Church & Home

The final section of the book addresses women (mostly) and men “in society” — that is, outside of church and home.  Or, we might say, “in the public sphere.”  This may be the area where the church has added the most to Scripture, in part because this is the arena where the Bible gives us the least direct instruction (particular to men and/or women).  That means we have to operate more heavily on principles — and if the principles are faulty, the conclusion will be, too.

Again, Miller raises some important questions and pushes us to consider some assumptions.  But again, these are entangled with some straw men that make it somewhat difficult to determine what we’re really trying to correct.

Work

The first area of objection is to what I suppose you might call the focus of work.  She says that a woman is free to work “as long as the work supports her father’s or husband’s calling,” (p. 234) and that “unlike men, women weren’t created to pursue their own ambitions or glory.” (p. 234)

Now, I don’t know if people are making those precise arguments or not.  (I don’t have the books cited and can’t look up the references.)  I suspect that some are and some aren’t.  But getting back to the ideas of unity and interdependence, and of the right foundations for understanding family, I would say that these are both perversions of things that actually should be true.  A woman — or a man — should be free to work as long as that work supports the household’s calling (and doesn’t interfere with other responsibilities).  And neither men nor women were created to pursue their own ambitions or glory.

If any at all are actually attempting to make that argument, that forms a completely different basis for discussion.

Worth

She also argues that women are treated as possessions, defined “by their relationship to men and by how useful they are to men.” (p. 236).  She illustrates this by citing Doug Wilson as calling a wife “a man’s vessel” for “sexual possession.”  This is a gross misrepresentation of what Wilson actually said.  His argument was actually about treating a wife with honor, and used the quoted wording on the basis that it’s what the Bible uses.  (“…that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor…” 1 Th. 4:4)

It also isn’t clear whether that passage of Scripture is referring to a wife or to self, with the reference to “vessel,” a point which which I’ve seen Wilson articulate.  Either way, the point — in Scripture and in Wilson’s writing — has nothing to do with possessing a woman like an object and everything to do with a husband’s responsibility to exercise self-control  and love his wife rather than being selfish.  Surely Miller can’t object to telling husbands to not be self-centered jerks.

Miller also points out that “women made in the image of God have inherent worth regardless of their relationships with others.” (p. 236)  This is, of course, true.  However, we oughtn’t be so focused on this that we lose sight of the fact that God’s instructions for the roles we are to fill are virtually  always in the context of our relationships with others.  We aren’t generally told how to be “godly men” or “godly women”; we’re told how to be godly sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, church members, neighbors…  So our relationships to others, while not the source of our worth, are important elements of our identities.

Spiritual Danger

The concern is raised that “teaching that men represent Christ to their families leads to the belief that men are mediators for women and children.” (p. 238)  This would, indeed, be concerning.  However, it is not a common teaching that men represent Christ to their families (except insofar as all believers “represent Christ” to others).  What is a common teaching is that men represent Christ in and through their families (as they analogize Christ and the Church), which is very different.

Poisonous Fruit

The final point I want to address is that of “poisonous fruit.” Miller tells us that these traditionalist beliefs “create and maintain a system that provides cover for a particular kind of abusive man.  Ignoring this poisonous fruit isn’t helpful.” (p. 241)  Traditionalist beliefs do not inherently provide cover for abusive men.  Traditionalist beliefs encourage godly men to serve as protection from abusive men.  Some extremist beliefs cover for abuse, but they are not representative.

What is also true, though, is that, as Mary Kassian stated, “abusive men use whatever cover they can to justify their violent sinful behavior.” (p. 240)  Rejecting a thing that can be used as cover for wicked behavior does not eliminate the wicked behavior.  Snakes use trees and grass for cover, but getting rid of all the trees and grass won’t eliminate snakes — because that isn’t where snakes come from.

We absolutely need to carefully consider what we’re doing to expose and confront abuse, but removing mechanisms created to protect women against abuse because sometimes they fail is not a wise solution.

Next Steps

I believe Miller has asked some good questions and raised some valid concerns.  I, too, believe we’ve imported some traditions into our ideas of “biblical” gender identity and it’s unhelpful.  I believe there are certain types of men and women who are not being well-served by the Church because the Church is not equipped to help them find their place within the Body.

I think we’ve failed to recognize how our culture differs from the one in which the New Testament was written, resulting in misinterpretation of some key passages on these topics.

I think we’ve approached the exegesis of some other key passages with pre-existing bias — often a bias that favors men and devalues women — resulting in potential misinterpretation of those, too.

I think we’ve treated some methods as though they were principles and stripped a lot of valid Christian liberty in the process.

But I don’t think this book has done much to contribute helpfully to the discussion because it’s so bogged down in poor reasoning and misrepresentation of the current state of affairs, and because it doesn’t start at the proper starting point — with Scripture.

We need to get back to the Bible and re-examine our conclusions.  And we need to start by having an open mind toward passages we think we already know the meanings of.  I’m seeing passages outright misquoted, and that’s not a good start to sound exegesis…but people overlook these misquotes because those doing the misquoting are arriving at the conclusions they expect.  Maybe we need to be a little less afraid that we might find something we don’t expect.

At the same time, we need to be careful to build our ideas — whether old or new — on what we actually find in Scripture, not on reaction against other ideas we find uncomfortable.  Neither tradition nor novelty is a valid basis for a belief.  We need to be willing to embrace whatever the Scripture teaches, whether we find that it overturns everything we thought knew…or whether it reinforces the ideas passed down over years.