I Can’t “Go Home” – a response to John MacArthur

You may already know what this blog is going to be about. There had to be one. I haven’t written on femininity since August because, to be honest, I haven’t thought about it much since then. I am not overly concerned with my rights as a woman or the oppression of the patriarchy or whatnot. I am concerned with the calling God has placed on my life, and if I had my way, I would only ever write about the wonder he has showered on the world and how we should respond to it.

“Go Home!”

Unfortunately, sometimes when people follow God’s calling, other people get in the way. Other Christians get in the way, and in doing so they demonstrate a lack of discernment, maturity, and love that is difficult to ignore. Such is the case with John Macarthur’s recent comments about Beth Moore (available here).*

Amidst laughter that might be referred to as “jeering,” when asked about this female leader, he responded with the words, “Go home.” He accused the Southern Baptist Convention, the denomination I have belonged to all my life, of taking a “plunge headlong” into liberal heresy by giving Beth Moore a platform to speak in public.

If you Google this event, you will find many articles on this subject. Most of them are scathing – towards Beth Moore. She speaks to mixed groups of men and woman, we are told. How dare she! She is twisting the truth of God for her own evil ends, rebelling against his will, and the Southern Baptists are supporting her.

Today, I am proud to be a Southern Baptist.

A Question of Doctrine?

I don’t have space here to go into the Scriptures that supposedly oppose women speaking to the church. I don’t have space to explain why the Greek context of the “let your women be silent in church” passage means it’s probably referring to marital relations; I don’t have space to explain that when Paul says women “should learn in silence and all submission” he is speaking of submission to God.

I don’t have space to explore the ludicrousness of extrapolating this out to mean that any woman who speaks to a Christian group in public is committing heresy. I barely have space to remind you that the last time the church built a broad-spanning power structure on a few misinterpreted verses, it took the Protestant Reformation to set things right again.

I leave all that aside, because that is not really what this is about. This is not about interpretation of a few verses, because that would allow reasonable people to disagree. It is not about whether women should be senior pastors, because I agree that they should not, and because Beth Moore has never claimed to be one. This is about the human heart and the ugly attitudes that eat away at the church from within.

The Heart of the Matter

John Macarthur accuses me of wanting power as a woman. Very well. I accuse him of wanting power as a man. Power isn’t inherently bad, and it has to belong to someone; it isn’t going to disappear. It is all a question of who has how much power over whom, and I happen to think Dr. Macarthur should have less power over me than he thinks he has a right to. I think I ought to be able to be a leader of God’s people, in a non-church setting, for the advancement of the kingdom. But this level of power and valor in a woman, as I have said before, makes many men uncomfortable.

Why does it make them uncomfortable? Is it really that their biblical conviction is righteously offended? Perhaps they have convinced themselves that is the case; it is easy to buy into prejudice when it comes cloaked in the garb of tradition and authority. But the attitudes on either side – the patient graciousness of Beth Moore and the smug, self-important derision of her detractors – tell another story. True conviction comes with gravity and grace; its words are seasoned with salt, and its heart is broken. Not so here. This ugly dismissiveness does not come from above. As I have said before, so I say again. This is not a question of differing doctrinal convictions; it is a question of the prejudice and arrogance of the human heart.

Beth Moore has spoken about this before. Her words were compassionate, grieved but gentle. I will be less gentle. John Macarthur has scathing words for those who would twist the truth of God to increase their own power. I would tell him to look in the mirror.

Go home? I am home. My home is where the Lord wants me to be, and that is here. I don’t care about the cause of feminism per se; my sole aim is to fulfill God’s purpose for my life. And if anyone, man or woman, stands in the way of that, we are going to have a problem.

Testing God

In Acts we are told of Peter’s revelation that the gospel is for the Gentiles, not just the Jews. At first Peter refused, citing scriptural conviction, but was told, “what the Lord has called clean, do not call unclean.” After preaching the gospel to the house of Cornelius and seeing them saved, Peter attended a council of the then all-Jewish church that was divided over whether to allow in these new members.

I am sure the attendees of the council felt their refusal to allow Gentiles in without circumcision was a sincere doctrinal conviction. I am also sure that it stemmed, at bottom, from prejudice and the desire to maintain a position of privilege. But Peter had something to say about that.

 And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test…?”

God has, in the Scriptures and in the present day, raised up strong female leaders to do his will. They have had the Holy Spirit and the calling of God upon their life as much as or more than many men who call themselves ministers of the gospel. In this setting, there is no distinction between us and them. Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test?

*There were a number of other issues in this clip I don’t have space to address here, among them the idea that awareness of the #MeToo movement is a worldly corruption in the church, that women who want to be in government are power-crazed, or that seeking more diversity in church leadership is doctrinal suicide. Those will have to be addressed at another time.