Where...Twitter has baited me. Again.

***I am on sabbatical right now, and I’d promised myself that the only words I would write were in my journal, or working on ‘the book’, but as I lay in bed last night, tossing and turning, I couldn’t let these words stay inside my head. Maybe they should have, but here they are nonetheless .***

 

 

Oh, twitter, you have baited me.

I should know by now not to click on that link.

I should read the name and know that no good will come of engaging with this.

I should leave it and click on that link that leads to funny cats,

or a boy demanding a cupcake,

or movie stars remaking something about Charlie biting a finger.

But…

///

People have been making lists again:

of rights and wrongs,

behaviour and belief,

thought and heart.

 

I survey the words and they read like poison – destructive and harmful and life depleting.

 

My blood pressure rises and my spirit screams out against these missives from men who claim to love and yet sow seeds of discord.

 

These seeds that take root in the hearts of those who don’t feel strong enough to challenge; of those for whom this is just another in a long line of messages which state that they are not ‘enough’; of those who have been under oppression of one form or another for so long that words which should bring life and health – words like Jesus and Scripture, like Spirit and Truth – bring a slow death to hopes and dreams and truth of beauty that is incarnated in ways which cause heaven to rejoice. 

 

Anger rises.

 

Anger for the ones who will be shamed and silenced and corralled in to spaces small enough for them to be controlled within – spaces that are too tight for their chests to expand and take in the deep full breaths of life that Pneuma, Ruach, Spirit, invites us to take.

Breath on me, Breath of God and fill me with life anew.

All too easily words spill out and occupy that 140 character world where:

enough is said, but not enough;

emotions expressed but meaning unclear;

arguments started but nuance denied.

 

And some give challenge.

 

They say, ‘What does it look like to the outsider when all that is seen is the infighting between people who declare that they are followers of Jesus?’

 

‘Is there not more power in words that bring life and truth and beauty and grace, in words that are civil and allow room to disagree without dehumanising and name calling and demonising of the ‘other’?’

 

‘Doesn’t scripture tell us,‘they will know that you are my disciples when you LOVE one another,’ not, ‘they will know you are my disciples when you have spats and fights and disagreements in clumps of words too short to allow for grace’?’

 

But, scripture tells me also that ‘perfect love drives out fear,’ and, whilst the writers of the words that so disturb would never claim that their love is yet perfected, their ‘love’ does not drive out fear.

 

It instils it.

 

Your words do not bring life.

They do not bring freedom.

They do not bring hope and joy and peace.

 

You see, you have a choice.

You do.

 

You can choose how to read and interpret and frame the words in scripture that appear to so define for you the rightness of your gender and the wrongness of mine – whether you would state your intent as boldly as that.

The ‘fit for all purposes’ nature of those bedecked with male anatomy, and the narrow parameters within which I, with all of my magnificent femininity, must operate.

You can choose to embrace a narrative which is bigger, which leaves space, which does not deviate from truth and life, but which enhances and brings harmony.

There is space for that within the words of God.

Believe me, there is.

You do not have to move from underneath the authority of Scripture, you do not have to stretch any points, you do not have to ignore any of the very few passages which talk about the role of women within the church.

You can choose.

And yet, you do not.

You choose systems of oppression.

But you won’t like me calling it that - ‘oppression’.

 You will make statements about Biblical Truth and God’s ordered way of life.

You will make statements filled with erroneous statistics about the decline of churches that are led by women, about the erosion of family values that happen when a woman’s role is enlarged beyond the already incredible realm of homemaking, about what happens to little boys when they see women in charge and what happens to women and their God given femininity when they are ‘forced’ to step up to the plate in leadership – presumably because the men have not been ‘man’ enough and left some kind of leadership vacuum only to be filled with ‘the ladies who lead because no-one else will.’

 

You might even go further and make declarations about women who will suffer the wrath of God for daring to operate in roles which are outside of the tight parameters that you choose to interpret from scripture. Doling out scare stories that are so preposterous, I almost want for you to continue as it so clearly shows the dark heart of what it is that you are saying.

 

But if something looks like oppression, talks like oppression and smells like oppression, then it most likely is oppression.

And, if this oppression is in the light; if it is public; if my friends who are intrigued by the life of Rabbi Jesus are coming across this stuff and drawing conclusions about what it means to be a Jesus follower from YOUR words, before deciding that they do not want a part of a system of belief that is obsessed with keeping women in the places that certain people deem appropriate for them?  

 

Well, you’d better believe that I count it as an act of LOVE to challenge you.

I will rail against and pray against your words. I will cry hot tears of anguish over them and write words of my own that flow from my fingertips like fire.

And I will do it all from a place of love.

A place of love for a Jesus who hung out with hookers and harlots, sinners and saints, bleeding women and weeping women.

A place of love for a Jesus who met a woman at a well and transformed her from the social outcast into one who led the whole town into the presence of Messiah.

A place of love for a Jesus who knelt in sandy ground before a group of men with rocks in their hands and challenged the legal system of the time, ensuring the freedom of a woman whose life was in the hands of men who would rather kill her than confront the reality of the fact that ‘it takes two to tango.’

I will do it from a place of love for the Jesus who, eschewing all social normity, first revealed his resurrected self in the garden to a woman.

Jesus chose that a woman whose testimony would be considered invalid in the courts of the land should be the first to speak the truth of the conquering of death and hell, of life everlasting, of the empty grave and the turning back of death itself.

She was the one who got to tell the tale.

Apostle to the Apostles.

A woman.

And so I will challenge.

I will do it in love.

I will do it in sentences of 140 characters if I need to.

‘People will know you are my disciples when you love one another.’

Sometimes love looks like calling you out on your crap.

 Because, my friends, half of the sky belongs to me and my sisters, and you do NOT get to put out our Sun.