RECENTLY, several highly publicized events of domestic violence have reminded us of the epidemic proportions of relational abuse. While the focus has been on athletes, abuse has taken place from the halls of Congress to the pulpits of churches. We have also experienced, particularly from church leaders, a vocal outcry against such abuse.
This outcry, however, remains superficial, shallow, and disingenuous if we are not willing to challenge some of our dominant theological assumptions that provide the conceptual framework for the maintenance of this abuse.
Many of the early church fathers affirmed the subservient and secondary status of women and even encouraged the “control” and “forceful instruction” of women in order to maintain conformance to what they saw as God’s “relational design.” Even today, some promise to affirm women only as long as they stay in their “God-ordained place.” In other words, women can expect “favor” only when they remain defined by and conformed to a “divinely” decreed order and hierarchy.
Tragically, this hierarchy is established by the curse and the culture—not the creation and certainly not the Christ. When the curse and the culture establish our doctrine, we embrace “snakeology,” not theology. This snakeology distorts the character of God, relationships, authentic manhood, and authentic womanhood.
The revelation of God in creation, Christ, and the Holy Spirit invites us all to experience the breaking of the bonds of the Fall and to celebrate the liberating truth in God’s self-disclosive expressions. The celebration can commence with a return to our beginnings.
THE TESTIMONIES OF the creative event recorded in Genesis provide a core principle related to God’s intent and desire for human relationships, the developing family, and the human community. Men and women are called into a relationship characterized by mutuality, reciprocity, and shared responsibility.
The creation testimonies reveal the true nature of power in relationships. Creation is an act of divine release for the living empowerment of all. Traditional approaches project a being creating life as an exercise of power and sovereignty, establishing control and demanding glorification. But the Christian testimony presents a God who does not control life, but gives life. In the combined creation narratives of Genesis, one encounters the Creator who releases breath and energy and who shapes and invests in the life of the cosmos. Being is birthed by the acts of God as the Creator offers life for life.
In giving for life, God establishes the authentic paradigm for powerful existence. Power is no longer a function of domination, control, and hierarchical superiority. Power is presented as the possessing of enough security in being that one can release life from one’s center to birth life in empty and lifeless space. The omnipotent God is so secure in being that God is not threatened by the giving of life to all life.
God’s power does not diminish, restrict, or limit life, but rather creates flourishing abundance. The power revealed in creation is not the power to be over, but rather the power to be with: life-giving power. Real power doesn’t destroy, kill, bind, take, or divide, but rather it fruitfully releases life force to create, heal, and restore.
In creating humans in the divine image, God calls us to life-giving responsibility. We are made in God’s image and commanded to be fruitful and multiply. To be fruitful is to be like God and to give of self to bring forth life.
Fruitfulness is breathing life and offering light to those places where the powers of death and darkness have staked a claim. “Be fruitful” is the original command and the identity of the faithful will be established by the fruit they bear. Fruitful existence will enable creatures claiming and celebrating the image of God to move into “dying” communities, relationships, and people and release life to bring forth life.
In this manner, humans become partners in creation. We are pro-creative. With the blessing of life comes the responsibility of guarding and cultivating the garden. To guard the garden is to value, protect, and care for the life given; to cultivate the garden is to work, invest, and give oneself in such a way that life continues to come forth. Death and separation enter the garden when we stop giving and focus on getting and taking power, positions, and possessions.
THE SNAKE PRESENTS a lie and paints a picture that is not in harmony with the God revealed in creation. The snake presents a God who is neither giving nor with you, but rather a God who is over you, trying to keep you down and limit your possibilities. The giving God becomes a withholding, threatened God. The snake not only lies about God, but also lies about the character of human creation. The value and flourishing of humanity is diminished and we are projected as denied, inadequate beings that can only experience real power by getting and possessing something outside of ourselves. Death and separation enter the world, and the abundant life of giving is diminished to taking and dying.
Succumbing to the lie, we are distanced from the God who is with us, and we hide from a God who is beyond us and over us. We are now separated from our true selves, and we are ashamed of the bodies that once glorified God. We are now in conflict and competing for place with those who once were partners and viewed as gifts from the creator. We now struggle with nature and destroy the garden.
We now play power games of coercion, manipulation, and control. By modeling the over-God, we now repress our bodies, compete with neighbors, and war with nature. Value is in what you get, have, keep, and control, not in who you are. Neither celebrating life nor giving life, we try to “be somebody” by getting something, using all we can, and then we die. Rather than giving fruit (be fruitful) and offering life, we take fruit (eat) and enter death. Rather than imaging God and giving life, we struggle to be gods, take all we can, and die.
This is the real tragic consequence of the Fall. Theology constructed from the logos of the Fall gives rise to snakeology. Perpetuating the Fall, snakeology teaches that God is the powerful ruler over you who is threatened by human self-expression and is glorified when you stay in your place. We exercise power when we can control in the manner of the supreme God. The more power you have, the more you can get, and the more power you get and keep, the more value you have. Domination is divinized, superiority is sacralized, and stratification is spiritualized.
As suggested in Genesis 3, this fragmentation has dire consequences for the family. Children become a pain, male-female relationships become hierarchical, care becomes irresponsible, and survival becomes a struggle. In the hierarchy, our moral responsibility to the “other” is diminished and our ethics is reduced to charity where we help, fix, instruct, and/or cleanse those who are deemed beneath us. The “superior” affirms the “good” by keeping the “inferior” in their place and helping them be “good”—by force if necessary. Any deviation in the service provided by the lesser to the greater necessitates a justifiable corrective response. We invite people to come to church to be cursed and encourage misdirected devotion by teaching them to give authority to fallen systems rather than to God.
The introduction of hierarchy in relationships was a consequence of the Fall and sin. Relationships modeled after hierarchal principles reflect neither God’s intent nor the vision of the family restored in Jesus Christ. In the beginning, and in the Christ re-creation, children are not “pains” to be abused, neglected, and objectified, but rather gifts from God to be loved, nurtured, and equipped. Women are not weak bodies to be possessed, pitied, and put on a pedestal, but rather creative, fruitful partners. Men are not controlling tyrants, but rather power-filled, caring lovers.
MALE HEADSHIP IS not about a position in a hierarchy but rather a deep commitment to presence and to radical investment in a relationship. Man-power is revealing the power of God by bringing forth life in all life. A powerful man requires no one to be in a place beneath him and needs no victim to substantiate his power.
Regrettably, much of what we teach, preach, and practice in the church provides the underpinnings for the reality of relational abuse. We ask for forgiveness, express our love for everybody, but then maintain the same theological framework that nourishes alienation and fragmentation. Deceived, we embrace as the truth the lies of the father of all lies.
While we can be deceived, the snake cannot alter the character of our God. God still releases Godness for the empowerment of all creation. God is still the power-filled giver who is so secure in and so full of life that the Creator lives to give. God still gives life where death tries to stake a claim. The living God is experienced as the one who so loved the world that he gave. Jesus Christ, the Son and the “seed,” exposes the lie of the snake, and provides the resources for the recovery of life’s authentic being and genuine community.
The Christ event challenges the categories. Beginning with the virgin conception, one can suggest how the Christ event offers a corrective to the distortion of the fallen paradigm. The manner of the birth of Jesus speaks to all fragmentations of existence spawned by the Fall.
Jesus comes as Emmanuel, “God is with us.” The distant over-God projected by fallenness is exposed as no God at all. God is with us and has neither left the garden nor ceased giving in the garden. We experience again the God who risks being with and whose power rests not in domination, but presence. This is good news. God is with us.
The virgin conception testimony reassigns value to human life, as Jesus is born of a woman by the power of God. This is not a biological statement to get humanity out of Jesus (Mary is human), but rather a theological statement to put God back into humanity. Birth is a holy and blessed event and human life is not filthy, ragged, or worm-like. This event also breaks down the hierarchy as little places, poor people, and women are elevated to full partnership in life-giving activity and the rich are not left out.
Godliness is lived here in relation to men, women, stars, trees, animals, and earth. In Jesus Christ, we get down to earth and the image of creation is represented and reclaimed. In his birth, we encounter a “new” God and a “new” humanity. We encounter a God who is present and giving and a humanity that is God-birthed, valued, and called to be fruitful. In the birth and person of Jesus, life is restored and from life flows life.
Jesus images the true God and true humanity and reveals the nature of a powerful, relational God. Jesus lives his life, in word and deed, giving himself for life and inviting others to abundant life. Life is not controlled by getting possessions, position, or power, but life is anchored in a living creator, a redeeming encounter, a secure self, and a sure promise. In Jesus, life is embraced, not controlled—and one experiences to the depths the presence of the life force of God. Hierarchies collapse and men and women no longer compete for control, but they live and flourish with God, each other, and all creation.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!