A Couple of Men Weigh in on Challies

Yes, what women say about Challies is important.

But so is what men say.

Here's a couple good ones:

http://networkedblogs.com/rqtSo

http://www.wadeburleson.org/2011/12/trifling-with-subtleties-while-ignoring.html

Soft, Effeminate Christianity? ROTFLMHO!

I read this and all I could do was laugh.

The famous Tim Challies, who has caused a stir in the blog world by declaring that women cannot even read scripture out loud in the public assembly has decided to quote Horatius Bonar. In fact, he entitled and entire post "Soft, Effeminate Christianity" in order to quote Bonar. He says this about Bonar's quote that he reprints.

Tim Challies: "Bonar is warning against a kind of soft and, in his word, effeminate Christianity, that may come about when Christians are too afraid to fight for what is right and to protest against what is wrong."

http://www.challies.com/quotes/soft-effeminate-christianity

Why am I laughing at this?

Because of his hypocrisy and blatant hatred of the feminine. These pushers of gender roles force women down into a soft, submissive, subservient role THEN show hatred for such things in the church.

Well, let me tell you Tim Challies, who wants to turn women into little helpless lambs. Let me tell you this. You and your cohorts' relentless pursuit to dis-empower and bring into bondage, women, half or over half of the body of Christ... This pursuit is blowing up in you face.

More and more women are done with all the rules men keep making up for them.

I'll give you a few examples:

http://www.emergingmummy.com/2011/12/in-which-i-am-done-fighting-for-seat-at.html

http://rachelheldevans.com/daughters-will-prophesy

http://www.elizabethesther.com/2011/12/i-will-prophesy.html

http://thewartburgwatch.com/2011/11/04/tim-challies-deleting-both-scripture-and-hurting-people-a-request-from-sgm-refuge/

http://bwebaptistwomenforequality.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/industry-standards/

These are mother grizzlies and lionesses who are not afraid to fight for what is right and to protest against what is wrong. And your stance on women reading scripture in the public assembly and your support of C.J Mahaney are both dead wrong. These women are not afraid to declare it. They are very feminine. But they are strong and powerful, able to preach and teach men of their wrong. And yes, they are able to prophesy in the name of Jesus. No amount of Scripture twisting by you and others is able to take away from them the promise of Almighty God.

The real problem in all of this is your refusal to hear about the wrong that you commit against all of your sisters and many of your brothers.

The Book of Eli

While I was writing my, "Only for those who are not completely bored with..." post, I thought about linking this movie.

My son and I watch post-apocalyptic movies, and one we watched within the last year was, "The Book of Eli".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Eli

I probably liked this movie more than it was worth. But how could I help it. I enjoy the acting skill of Denzel Washington, and it covered a topic that I called one of my passions in my previous posts.

Nearly all the Bibles had been destroyed in this post-apocalyptic culture. And the villain of this movie was on the hunt to find any remaining copies of this book in order to use it to control and manipulate people. He wanted to use it to increase his power on the earth.

A true villain, indeed.

He is, of course, thwarted by our hero, Eli, well portrayed by Washington.
Hence, I like this movie because the good guys win and the Bible isn't misused by those who are corrupt.

So, anyway, if you haven't seen it, don't mind the grittiness and violence of post-apocalyptic films, and like seeing those who want to misuse the Bible thwarted, you might give this movie a once over.

Only for those who are not completely bored with...

...talking about Driscoll.

I understand that my obsession with Driscoll is not shared with most of my readers. Why the heck am I so obsessed? Well, speculating, I think it has to do with two passions of mine. And when you have two passions at work, it's hard to deny it.

Passion number one is my frustration concerning those who turn the Bible into a book for controlling others. Many branches of, so-called, Christianity do that. Driscoll does it. But he's not the worst at it, by any means.

Passion number two is my love of the book of poetry in the Bible called "The Song of Songs" or "The Song of Solomon". I love this book because of all the beauty and uplifting of the feminine contained within it's chapters.

My frustration with Driscoll, as you already know, is with how he has taken this uplifting book, stripped away all the uplifting, healing, and encouraging parts and turned it into a sex manuel to make sure that he and the men in his church get enough sex. In the past, he has even gone so far as to make claims that certains verses are commands from Jesus Christ himself, concerning what a Christian wife owes her husband in the bedroom.

So yeah, that really ticked me off.
And yeah, I'm sure I spend far to much time here on this little side issue.

Anyway, for the one, or two of my readers who don't mind following me down the road of my little Driscoll rants and comments, I have a link. Those who are bored with my rantings on Driscoll, don't bother following it. It is to WenatcheeTheHatchet's postscript on his guest series that appeared both here and The Wartburg Watch. It is interesting to those of us who are concerned with the influence of one of the most influential pastors in the U.S. I made a couple comments under his post:

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2011/11/lengthy-postscript-to-wartburg-watch.html

Conversation on Driscoll and SoS

I wasn't going to link this for two reasons.

It is a repeat of what Wenatchee guest posted here.
Anyone who checks out my blog roll would find it anyway.

But the conversations under these posts are interesting and I thought I should alert anyone who might be interested in the exchanges in the comment sections.

Here is what they have so far--
What hasn't been posted here:
http://thewartburgwatch.com/2011/11/11/an-insiders-perspective-on-mark-driscoll-and-the-song-of-songs-hallelujah/

And part of what has already been posted here:
http://thewartburgwatch.com/2011/11/14/alternatives-to-mark-driscolls-pornogrification-of-the-song-of-songs/

Sorry. MIA Again

My husband and I got some terrible news last week.
A man we both loved and respected committed suicide.
I could go on and on about how exceptional and wonderful this man is and about the hundreds and hundreds of people that attended his funeral, and might still do it in a later post. But instead, let me just say that I will miss him terribly and wish to God that he were still with us. In so many ways, he reflected all that is good and right in a human being. And I have to stop right now because I'll start blathering if I don't.
I keep his family in my prayers.

Addressing Misogyny In SOS Chapter One

I bet you didn't know that Song of Solomon Addressed Misogyny. Actually, it really only gives a picture of it as anger of brothers against a sister, the Beloved, and the Chorus's and/or Lovers drawing her away from it to a safe place.

First, the verses where the Beloved admits the anger of her brothers and their ganging up on her and oppressing her, making her their servant rather than their sibling or equal.

Songs 1:5 “I am black but lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, Like the tents of Kedar, Like the curtains of Solomon. 6 “Do not stare at me because I am swarthy, For the sun has burned me. My mother’s sons were angry with me; They made me caretaker of the vineyards, But I have not taken care of my own vineyard."

Her brothers are not treating this nobleman's daughter (SOS 7:1) as a fellow heir but as something less than themselves, a servant or slave, someone for them to lord over. Though she had her own inheritance, her own vineyard, she's not allowed take care of it. She is persuaded or coerced or forced, by her brothers, to take care of their vineyard, their vision, their calling. Her brothers do not allow her to own her own vision/vineyard. She's not allowed to develop her own talents or take care of her own business. And she's been burned by their harsh treatment.
What follows in chapter one, is the healing and protecting powers of the king working toward the beloved because those who should have been looking out for her well being were too busy taking advantage of her and stealing from her.
Her brothers are referred as her mother's sons. They can be symbolic of anyone who is abusive towards us within or without the church.

Poetry Threads.

[Edited to remove very long link. It was shutting down the blog.]

This very long link leads to a google image of a braid.
I picked this particular image due to the colors of the individual strands or threads.

One problem with the way modern, western civilization read the Bible is that they look upon it as an owner's manual or instruction manual. You can see this in their application of Ephesians 5 toward marriage and you can see it in Driscoll's application of the Song of Solomon.

I've got news for people. Poetry is so far removed from instruction manual material it is laughable. When the Bible was written, no one ever heard of an owner's or instruction manual. They didn't think in those terms. We think in those terms because we live in an age of technology and having to know how things work in order to get by.

But even in our modern age, do we feel the need to look at modern poetry as instructions for life? Why this compulsion to make Biblical poetry into such a thing.

What is poetry? It is many things, some of which are hard to pin down. One reason for this is that poetry can have many threads making up the whole. And the threads are woven together. Modern writers do this in both fiction and poetry. Why is it so difficult for some blockheads to see this?

WTH: "I have been convinced for years that Driscoll has the world's biggest tin ear for poetry. He doesn't think in poetic terms but in terms of propositional statements and formal arguments. This isn't just manifest in his approach to Song of Songs, it's also revealed perhaps even more tellingly in the fact that in fifteen years he's never done any substantial preaching from the Psalms. He did some okay work in the 2004 Advent series going through the songs in Luke but that was obviously more than half a decade ago." From a comment under his part 4b post.

I've complained in the past that the Songs have been mishandled by perverted men. I appreciate further understanding that another mishandling is by men who have no grasp or understanding where poetry is concerned. Men who try to shove poetry into an instruction manual mode have no business handling the poetry at all. They destroy and crush rather than teach and open understanding.

Song of Solomon is not a single thread of erotic and explicit, sexual instruction. Making it into it does violence to the text.
Rather it is a many layered poem with many threads, probably more than three, woven through out.
One of those threads is sexual.
Another of those threads is allegorical or typological.
Another thread is on healing.
Another thread is raising up of the downtrodden
Another thread is empowering the feminine against the anger of misogyny among men (supposed brothers).

There is much woven into this poem. It can be many things to many people. It can meet a point of need within a person's life. It can help with marriage. It can help with our relationship with the Almighty.

Smacking it down into one-size-fits-all is thievery and a great injustice. Glimpses of eternity can be found in it. Forcing it into a finite box is done by fools who rush in where angels fear to tread.

First and Last Overview of Song of Solomon

[This is a repost from 2009 for those who joined us after that time]

One of the reasons I see healing in Song of Solomon is through reading about the Beloved in the first and last chapters.

In chapter one it says:
Song of Songs 1:5 I am black but lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, Like the tents of Kedar, Like the curtains of Solomon.
Vs 6 Do not stare at me because I am swarthy (dark), For the sun had burned me. My mother's sons were angry with me; They made me caretaker of the vineyard, But I have not taken care of my own vineyard.

Above she confesses that she has been pushed into the position of a common laborer by her brothers who were angry with her. She worked for them because they made her do it. And they oppressed her to the point that she neglected her own property, her own vineyard.Elsewhere in SOS, the Beloved is referred to as a nobleman's daughter, so it is curious that she was forced to work as a servant by her brothers in the first chapter.

Now let's look at a couple of verses in the last chapter of SOS.
Song of Songs 8:11 Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-hamon; he entrusted the vineyard to caretakers; Each one was to bring a thousand shekels of silver for its fruit.
Vs 12 My very own vineyard is at my disposal; The thousand shekels are for you, Solomon, And two hundred are for those who take care of its fruit.

I read a commentary somewhere that said that the Beloved's vineyard was her face/appearance.
That she couldn't take care of her looks and became sunburned. I disagree with this since the last chapter also mentions her vineyard and the money she has made from it. So unless they had super models back then, thinking of the vineyard as being her face and her making money off of it... This might imply she was a prostitute, which we know is not true. So she must have really had a vineyard, like the Proverbs woman did.

But the difference in chapter eight is that she no longer talks about the oppression of her brothers or her sunburn. The Lover (whom she is married to at this point) has his vineyard but
does not require the Beloved to work in it. He has hired men for that.

The Beloved is now in charge of her own vineyard rather than being forced to neglect it. In fact, she doesn't work in her own vineyard but also has hired men that she pays to work in it just like her Beloved, Solomon. No longer oppressed, she is in the position to be generous with her Lover. And out of gratitude or love she willingly hands over money made off her vineyard to him.

Quite a change from chapter one to chapter eight. The Beloved has been raised from an oppressed servant to manager of her own affairs. From my reading, the progression from
chapter one through chapter eight, is a progression of healing and being raised
up from a lowly place to an exalted place by the love, care, and generosity of
the Lover.

And this, my friends, is why I hold that Song of Solomon is not just about... uhm... sex. It is about healing and is an allegory or picture of God's love, care, and generosity toward the church and
individuals in the church, working to raise them from the muck and mire of
worldly darkness and into His marvelous light.

This also goes directly against the assertion by Mark Driscoll that the Song of Solomon is not a progression and not in chronological order, an assertion that he makes as though it were fact though he gives no support whatsoever. And there are reasons that he makes this assertion. Because if Song of Solomon were a progression, then his teaching would have the Lover and Beloved engaging in fornication, sex outside marriage.

But enough on that. The point of this post was a first and last overview, where the Beloved started and where she ended up after just eight chapters of being showered with unbridled love and affection from the Lover of her soul.

Driscoll's Error Is a Thief

The Bible says that the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy.
It also says that we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers.

Part of me wants to accuse Driscoll of being a thief for stealing away the spiritually healing and empowering qualities of Song of Solomon.

But after reading WTH's assessment of Driscoll and seeing how important the marriage healing side of Song of Songs is to him, I have to back off and refrain from calling Driscoll, himself, a thief.

But his Peasant Princess series on the Song of Solomon and the error contained in it, this error is most certainly a thief.

There is healing and refreshing for the soul and spirit of the downtrodden in the Songs. There is also tenderness and a way of closeness to God, unparalleled anywhere else in the Bible. There is also the lifting up of the feminine from a low place from the muck and mire of this fallen world up to a high place of strength, maturity, and authority. I know it's there. I found it. It is a strong thread completely overlooked by Driscoll who is too busy looking for erotic, explicit sex under every rock and tree so his libido can be ever serviced.

The beauty and depth in Song of Solomon and the opening up of understanding of the Infinite is not something that should be brushed away lightly. Driscoll does the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, a great disservice when he mishandles the Songs as he does.

The healing, lifting up, and empowering of the Beloved by the Lover is a strong theme that shouldn't be sacrificed on the altar of Aphrodite and Eros. But I digress.

By now, any readers here will understand my concern over the thievery of Driscoll's doctrine. But with all my talk about him and the Songs, some of you may be wonder what sort of healing, empowering, and drawing near to God I'm thinking of. So I feel it would be good to repost some of my earlier writings on the Songs so that you may begin to see why the thievery and armed robbery of Driscoll's error bothers me so much.

Love Without Restraint

By now the massive audio library of sermons at Mars Hill church demonstrates that Driscoll has absolutely not problem at all invoking the biblical metaphor of husband and wife when it deals with the ancient near-Eastern AUTHORITY STRUCTURE within marriage. He can accept the part where the Groom dies for the Bride. He can accept the part, certainly, where the Bride must submit to the Groom, not least in his various teachings of male headship and the authority of church leaders. He's got problems if that conjugal metaphor ever breaks the bonds of propriety, service, and obligation to take on an element of ecstatic, self-forgetting admiration for the other. Driscoll may think he's secured himself from imagining a Jesus who wants to sexually penetrate him, but he may have done so at the expense of allowing the canonical compreshensivesness of the conjugal metaphor to have it's spirit-inspired way. Christ choosing to die for the Bride on the Cross expresses a love that has no sense of discretion or restraint. The love of Christ for the Church was so strong He embraced the Cross, scorning its shame, and He conquered death by death because of His love for us.

In Song of Songs we are told that love is as strong as death. We know what love that is most obviously and immediately talking about, even if we subscribe to an allegorical second meaning. We can see cases where an old spouse dies and the widow or widower dies within a year of the death. We all get that love is as strong as death in that way! But Christ's love is stronger than death.

By rejecting a typological approach as even possible in Song of Songs what we may be seeing is that Driscoll has granted the high flown poetic hyperbole as being legitimate for erotica love but shudders as the thought that a comparably powerful, or even more powerful love animated Christ to go to the Cross for us.
WTH first three paragraphs from WTH on Driscoll's part 4b
http://frombitterwaterstosweet.blogspot.com/2011/10/wth-on-driscolls-sos-part-4b.html

The problem with much teaching on marriage and gender is the hyper-focus on structure and roles. All problems can be solved by men and women playing their parts perfectly, Men leading as they are supposed to (even though the Bible never instructs them to do so) and Women submitting as defined by the teachers who over-focus on such structure.

As a pastor's wife counseling married couples, I kept running into, "Well if she would just submit to me likes she's supposed to then everything would be fine," and less often "Well, if he would just love me like he's supposed to all would be well" (and her definition of love rarely reflected what the Bible said.)

With all the obsession with what the other was doing and supposed to be doing and the obsession I saw among teachers to teach the roles according to Paul, I saw that the most important element was being left out. The bedrock of the Words of Jesus Christ.

I began to wonder if we needed to focus on what Jesus said about authority and love rather than what Paul said. And I began to wonder if we were over emphasising Paul's words in Ephesians 5 at the expense of Paul's definition of love in I Corinthians 13 and at the expense of pretty much everything John said in his epistles.

The structure of the relationships, the roles, the positions have taken up more importance than what Jesus came to do. And the power of the Love of Jesus has been lost in a limited and deeply impared understanding of the function of that Love.

Driscoll is all about authority and submission in marriage and in our relationship with Jesus. He's also all about wild-and-crazy, inhibitions-thrown-off sex in the bedroom. But he cannot grasp the even more powerful, limitless love of Jesus. A love more powerful than death and that is even able to conquer death. It's not about structure, authority, or roles. It is about Jesus throwing off all restraint, stepping down from His position (or role, if you will) to give all. On the Cross Jesus demonstrates for us this love without restraint, that love that is more powerful than death. It is a love that is not structured or limited to a role. It is infinitely beyond that. It is hard to grasp. And it will never be understood when the starting and ending points are shoved down into a box, the man-made structures, imposed upon it by Driscoll and others like him.

Song of Solomon, when seen as a type of the love of God for us, opens limits and displays infinity to the finite in ways that flawed and limiting human structures cannot touch.

God Speaking Tenderly?

There is no present-tense expression in any age of the Church this side of Christ's Second Coming in which unreserved adoration and praise for God's people is given. Jesus is the Groom who rebukes and cajoles His bride for Her continual failures and worldliness thus it is unsurprising that a man like Driscoll, in rejecting Song of Songs, can never ultimately have a vision of Christ's people that can exult in Her. It is only in Song of Songs where a husband and wife are shown speaking to each other with unbridled affection. It is only in Song of Songs where there is any "now" to the beauty of a marriage filled with mutual affection and by extension the marital metaphor for God and His people that Driscoll feels compelled to reject.

Thus a pastor like Driscoll only knows how to speak to the betrothed Bride as someone who isn't worthy of the Groom. She'd better clean up, get her act together and stop being so bad because her sins are bad enough that Jesus had to die for them... but it's not quite clear that Driscoll knows how to articulate the depth of the Bridegroom's love for the waiting Bride. Driscoll could preach for years on Hosea and mention the promise God makes to speak tenderly and winsomely to the wayward Bride. But where could we turn in the scriptures to see HOW God might speak in such a winsome and tender way to such a Bride.

Well, obviously NOT in Song of Songs as Driscoll expounds it because in it he sees only wifely stripteases and holy blowjobs. Driscoll's understanding of how a pastor should speak to the Bride is as a Hosea or an Elijah telling Israel she's a whore or an apostle telling the Corinthians they should be ashamed of themselves. In other words, at the risk of stretching the metaphors a bit, Driscoll is fine with the Hosea who says God "will" speak tenderly to His people but can't accept that Song of Songs could be where God DOES speak tenderly to the Bride of His people.
--WTH last three paragraphs from WTH on Driscoll's SOS part 4a
http://frombitterwaterstosweet.blogspot.com/2011/10/wth-on-driscolls-sos-part-4a.html

I hear a lot of reasons why people are falling away from the church. The Wartburg Watch has a post on why young people are turning away. Certain sectors of Christianity are worried about men not going to church and are blaming women and the feminization of Church and society.

But I have noted that many women are falling away because God has been presented in a, never-satisfied, hard-hearted, male-favoring light. God has been presented as a grumpy patriarch with no tenderness and little to no concern over the things that might concern women. God has been presented as one who is only concerned about women preforming their role of wife and mother and not even wanting to speak to women except through their husbands, fathers, and in some cases, even their sons.

I know women who are falling away from the church because of this presentation of God. Preachers and patriarchs in these circles are far more concerned with keeping control over their women and making sure their women are meeting the human standards that are set up than with the need of the woman for tenderness.

I know for myself, learning of this tenderness of God that exists but not mentioned much has greatly enhanced my relationship with God and has healed the hurt places. I had found it other place in the Bible.

Zephaniah 3:17“The LORD your God is in your midst, A victorious warrior. He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.

Luke 13:34 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it!

Matthew11:28 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS.

They are like hidden treasures where God expresses joy over us, or desire to gather us to Him or refers to Himself as gentle and humble. But even in these places, they are short at best, and as in the Luke 13 passage, it is mixed with sorrow over their sin.

But in Song of Solomon, it is concentrated, mutual adoration, a place where tenderness abounds.
It's not, "I love you, but you fall short, are sinful, etc." It is just, "I love you, no buts!"
No buts, no shaming, no pointing to flaws.

Actually, a couple of places in the Songs the bride points to her own flaws but the Bridegroom is right there to build her up and hold her close.