Strait-jackets
“Blessed is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at my doorposts. For he who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord.” Proverbs 8:34-35 NASB
Finds me– In the famous eighth chapter of Proverbs, Wisdom speaks. Actually, Woman Wisdom speaks. The gender is specific and important. According to Woman Wisdom, YHVH created all that is in conjunction, cooperation and consultation with her. Now we could treat this as allegory or metaphor to avoid the unpleasant implications for modern theology, but if we do we may unintentionally obscure a critical element of Hebrew thought, and consequently, of the whole biblical worldview. Jacques Ellul makes the point:
“Women are the most spectacular instance of [the rise of the church as an institution]. After a period of independence that came with the spread of Christianity, they were relegated to the lower order. This is all the more interesting because the gospel and the first church were never hostile to women nor treated them as minors, and the situation of women in the Roman empire (particularly in the East) was relatively favorable. In spite of this, when Christianity became a power or authority, this worked against women. A strange perversion, yet fully understandable when we allow that women represent precisely the most innovative elements in Christianity: grace, love, charity, a concern for living creatures, nonviolence, an interest in little things, the hope of new beginnings—the very elements that Christianity was setting aside in favor of glory and success.”[1]
Did you understand Ellul’s historical insight? The rise of Christianity as a religion and institution of society was accompanied by the deliberate suppression of precisely those qualities most notable in women. Why? Because the “Church” was interested in glory, power and success.
“[The church] preached morality in the place of freedom. . . It became necessary to replace the outpouring of the Spirit for preaching, prayer, biblical study, and the celebration of the eucharist according to well-established rites. It became necessary to set up some kind of order in the confusion by introducing liturgical prayers and reducing the place of free exposition of the Bible in favor of liturgies. The more ignorant the lower clergy were, the more necessary it was not to allow them to speak freely but to make them the officiants of a set cult created by others who had a better awareness of the faith and were trying to live in a stricter fashion. Morality and ritual are the great means of defense against the perversion of all order that resulted from the new entry of the masses into the church with no authenticity of faith.”[2]
“We thus arrive at an astounding situation that has lasted some fifteen centuries and is only just beginning to be questioned. People were being required to act as if they were true Christians when very likely they were not. This is the very opposite of biblical revelation.”[3]
Jacques Ellul died in 1994. Imagine what he would add today, twenty-five years later. I would venture to guess that you never heard his name mentioned in Christian circles, especially not from the pulpit. Recognized as one of the most brilliant Christian scholars of his day, his words challenged the very structure of the Church. And were ignored. How could they not be ignored? The “Church” would have had to be dismantled. As he noted:
“Hebrew thought had its own tools of knowledge that are fully set forth in the language. We should bow and submit and convert to these instead of forcing God’s revelation into the strait-jacket of Greco-Roman thinking.”[4]
And now we read about Woman Wisdom. But we carefully filter all the ancient Semitic elements from the text because of our doctrinal strait-jackets. We don’t hear her crying in the streets. Instead, we see billboards for Bible prosperity. Glory and success rule our thinking. There is no room for compassion, concern, humility and hope in the world of “mega-anything.”
The end of chapter 8 is frightening.
“But he who sins against me injures himself; all those who hate me love death.”
Do you really suppose you can continue to treat the Bible as if it were part of your Western thinking—and nothing will happen to you?
Topical Index: wisdom, Church, Jacques Ellul, Proverbs 8:34-35
[1]Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity, pp. 34-35.
The “fear of the Lord”, short and sweet Skip.
In the book Never Good Enough, by Carol Cannon (which is the best book I have found specifically addressing spiritual abuse in the church and the addictions it inevitably spawns), she suggests that the structure of the church itself could be an addictive structure. I know that when I went looking for the roots of my codependency, I realized that it was the church itself that had given me most of those tools. What surprises me is that God still can use terribly flawed people and systems at all, but apparently He can!
In concept 10 of the Alanon Concepts I was amazed to learn that authority must NEVER be separated from responsibility. Really? Um, that’s like the entire structure of the modern church! The design of top down authority invites abuse because power corrupts. She suggests that if we were to reduce the gospel back down to it’s only essential bottom, which is freedom from sin, the structure would be superflous. Amazing thought! AND, no room for abuse, either.
I think we could be getting sick from the top down in these worldly systems (including the worldly system of male dominance in general), with the women and children (victims) assigned the role of acting out the illness of the men, who have created all these ways not to have to listen to women.
Good TW.
The good news is that woman wisdom is still speaking and some are listening. Thanks for that….
I hear her crying in the streets. I cry with her. The partiers don’t understand or appreciate the tears.
To add to Lord Acton’s dictum: Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Holy powers corrupt… wholly. YHWH created women to be wise, strong and valorous but the Church desecrates His order and debases women to be foolish, weak and vulnerable in order to make man appear to be smart, strong and spiritual. If the Church has the authority to change bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ then they have no difficulty turning delusions into doctrines and deceptions into fact.
Forgive my perhaps silly question but the abtuse blindness of the digital realm prompts me to ask if you know
Arnella Rose-Stanley. If so I am most and sincerely glad for you both….
Know her? I’m 67 and I don’t yet know myself so how can I say I know a woman to whom I’ve only been married for 7 years?
Arnella often causes me laugh, dance, think, read, pout, love, eat healthy, write, cry, exercise and she generally makes me want to become a better man and more devoted disciple of Messiah, but then there are times she proves herself to be merely human. Know her? Not yet. Perhaps I’ve been too busy trying to know myself. Thanks for the marriage counciling.
It’s interesting to me to see that the cultural paradigmatic expression of Hollywood plays both sides of this. It portrays women as foolish, weak, ignorant and emotional captives on the one hand and as superior to men on the other. Neither is correct, but both sell tickets. What a mess of role models we have incorporated into our way of life.
Without Lady Wisdom, the Trinity is incomplete and this ‘eternal feminine’ Spirit has been relegated to a subordinate position when it is actually equal with the Father & Son. And consequently, I think that this feminine voice of the Spirit has been gravely overlooked in the gospel teachings, for example, not many have commented on the feminine gender in the Word and its implications, why the new covenant is represented as a woman or the significance of the ashes of the red heifer, the only female offering in the OT sacrificial system, just to mention a few. Speaking of Jacques Ellul, in his commentary on the Book of Revelation, he says that the woman & the manchild in Chap. 12 is the heart or axis by relation to which the total structure of the book is ordered. I’m convinced that this is one of the reasons for the lawless rise of homosexuality and gender confusion. Today, we have no true modern feminine image, Christian or otherwise, except the worn out icons of the madonna & child or the virgin mary. Perhaps when that image emerges within us, then will be fulfilled the scripture from Rom. 8:19….all creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God be revealed.
Humm to profound for a terse comment,consideration required. …thanks for this!
Mark, Sorry, my therapist probably probably drowned in the undertow as well. I wonder what the web equivalence is to the old phrase about someone who buys ink by the barrel?
Thanks for the additional note on Ellul. While I obviously think that the feminine orientation of a Hebrew worldview is crucial for a whole approach to the Bible, I am not ready to equate this with the Trinity as, I am sure you know, I consider the Trinity a later invention of the Westernized Greco-Roman Church. The idea of the feminine is certainly important, but even Trinitarians will have a hard time viewing the “Holy Spirit” as female.
Skip, Even though Satomi used the buzzkill word Trinity I hope you will follow her thread and knit us a sweater. Just because a Pope says it looks like a Trinity, swims like a Trinity, and quacks like a Trinity doesn’t mean the Westernized Greco-Roman Church gets to define the terminology and lay the ground rules for the discussion of nature of God. Follow the evidence, but think outside the…
duck.
I’m ducking with you, Michael. Meet you around the back side of the mountain of error….
I personally relate to the Trinity and was given such a revelation of what I call “The First Family”. As well, I do make a distinction between the Holy Spirit & Spirit (as referred to in the Book of Revelation) as two different dimensions of the same Spirit. In the NT the Holy Spirit is referred to as “He” but his role as Spirit can be feminine just as I can be a wife, sister, lover but still one person. I read a good example of this interchange of masculine/feminine in Is.45:8: “The masculine noun for salvation (yesha) describes what God does or has done for us. He saves us from above, out of sheer grace, consequently we jr. partners in God’s covenant love and grace are now called to bear the fruit of God’s saving love (still masc). But as a result of that, something happens to us. As Gen.1:26 puts it, the Creator God made us in his own image, meaning that we are to do what God does and so be creators also. God’s yesha, then, now rooted in our hearts, empowers us to show yeshu’ah (fem.) “saving love” to other people. Love here is an activity and not mere sentiment. The whole new way of life that god offers us when “he puts us ight with Himself (the verb tsadaq) is called by the second masc. Noun “tseqeq” translated unfortunately as righteousness. Having been given this new life of love, we who are in the covenant are empowered to pass it on as “tsedaqah (fem.)” to other people and so be God’s instrument in putting other people right with God. This is not done by force, or persuasion or by might. It is done by means of yeshu’ah (fem.), compassionate, creative love that a human being can show towards his neighbors and which is a gift of God by means of which he can brig his neighbour out of the chaotic power of sin into the joy and peace of God. Those who thus recreate their neighbors have earned the right to be called sons and lovers of God.”
Thank you Satomi.
“It is done by means of yeshu’ah (fem.), compassionate, creative love that a human being can show towards his neighbors and which is a gift of God by means of which he can brig his neighbour out of the chaotic power of sin into the joy and peace of God.”
Much good food for thought!
After reading Michael’s response, I feel like adding, “All creation waits in eager expectation for the sons — and daughters — of God to be revealed.”
and in support of this pondering, in Hebrew a room full of women where only one man is present would be a group referred to in the masculine. And if they were speaking, praying, or singing together, they would use masculine words (like “modeh ani” I am thankful (m), instead of “modah ani” I am thankful (f). This is lost in many “translations”.
Skip, I found this post so profound I spent my busy day yesterday being excited about it. Please pardon what follows as I share my story…
You see, 43 years ago I began my adult walk with Yeshua (knowing Him as Jesus then), but it was also the time when I was introduced to Israel in a good biblical way. I became overwhelmed with Yeshua, who told me from the word go, that I was coming to HIM, not to CHURCH. In those early young-adult years of my ‘deep inner insecurity’ Yeshua introduced me to His Father. I was brought into the security of the Father’s love, which also brought deep inner healing in me. My Father’s love has since then been the unwavering strength of my life. I learnt to spend time pouring over Scriptures and to allow Yeshua to lead me into His and His Father’s Word.
Being overtaken with the love of both Yeshua and His Father toward me, I found I had a desire to go to Their Land and to live among Their people! This I did for 5 years. When I left (incidentally, after the Gulf War), I was totally changed!
On my return home, another kind of walk began – teaching in churches but also resisting church! Why? What was it? Church had a lot of good but was altogether controlling!! Concern for power… but little concern, if any, for real change in individuals and in family life!!
Twenty years ago I began what I call, a Torah-focused walk – seeing Torah through the eyes of my Father and as taught by Yeshua, even as I have sat under many teachers. Eight years ago I had a revelation: ‘Church as an institution/religion is organized AGAINST the Kingdom of God’. It blew me out of the water! It also nearly cost me my life!!
Ellul knew this long ago… I am deeply appreciative of the way you are bringing this to our attention Skip. Also, through you, I came to understand whole dimensions, especially the Greco- underpinnings we inherited when we came to Yeshua. Thanks for being so open and for including us in your journey and your search.
Summary? At the risk of ‘teaching’…
So far on my journey, I have learnt that life seems to be pretty much about learning to walk with Yeshua and our Father while learning to walk with each other; allowing Yeshua to heal our traumas and brokenness (Isaiah 61:1 & Luke 4:18) – for we all have them – so that we can become whole; maintaining fellowship with Believers (only possible in the Spirit) while remaining free of Church- and any other -control including personal habits etc, which do not honor our Father; maintaining peace with all men where possible; remaining focused on Self-change, to become more like Messiah, not to change others but to love others; walking always in humility and without having a Spirit of haughtiness, especially toward those still blinded by what we have been freed of.
The last aspect mentioned was perhaps the way I failed most in my early years after returning from Israel and after beginning my ‘Torah-walk’. But Yeshua showed me how much that was HIS walk. He came DOWN to us in love and compassion, not in haughtiness or condescension…. Called to walk like Him, I find I am being enabled and also continually being transformed…
It is evident all the above (and more I’m sure others can add) are not at all possible without Wisdom. Messiah Himself needed the Spirit of wisdom (Isaiah 11:2)!!
Is it any wonder so many women ‘ran to Him’, the real Personification of wisdom, I myself being but one of them?!
Is it any wonder so many are leaving church – which rightly observed – cannot be changed without dismantling itself?!
What advantage is there to being a woman…? ?
Thank you Skip.
Arnella, THANK YOU for this. How beautifully and clearly you have expressed how we, too, have walked into and with Messiah along the Torah way…
Thanks Leslie. Yah has many of us out there. Our journeys are different but His faithfulness is unwavering and constant. In His own way He keeps us from the derailing pitfalls!! Baruch HaShem!
What Skip said about how Hollywood has role models all messed up-boy howdy to that!!
What you have penned is profound to me right along with Skip’s post this day! I am overwhelmed by the simpleness of what is required. “Faith like a child.” Contemplate that for a bit and then re-read this post.
I never thought of the church as controlling but it sure enough is. Put into plain, simple words it is impossible to ignore!
I find this astonishing-“We thus arrive at an astounding situation that has lasted some fifteen centuries and is only just beginning to be questioned. People were being required to act as if they were true Christians when very likely they were not. This is the very opposite of biblical revelation.”[3]
So simple and yet so very true today. Sad how much is lost by tossing Yah out for doctrines and dogma. Rules and burdens. Yet in spite of this messed up way of things, Yah still works today and time is progressing as He will have it be 🙂
Nothing new under the sun.
Why did it nearly cost you your life? The revelation.
Strait-jackets November 20, 2018.
‘There is no room for compassion, concern, humility and hope in the world of mega-anything.’ So common. Empathy or lack of. A huge problem. It was a problem in the Sodom and Gomorrah story that caused the downfall but the situation is different now and even worse. There still seems, however, to be more empathy in the States overall. Go Fund Me just wouldn’t work in Japan. Not that there are not caring people but as a country, it just wouldn’t happen. I could be wrong but I don’t think so. I don’t think a lot of people who are here (or have lived here) as missionaries would be very generous either even though some have lived in expensive homes (2,000 dollars/monthly rent), one-year all paid vacations, children’s tuition over 1,000 dollars a month and a whole lot of other perks. Totally supported financially though the hard work of others. Very unhealthy system. Skip’s talks on work on YouTube are very good! We all need to work (real work I mean).
Not working but receiving money is socialism (communism in disguise). Laurita Hayes said: The design of top down authority invites abuse because power corrupts. So true. The government is a perfect example. That’s why I highly recommend Walter E. Williams. Examples of talks on YouTube: American Contempt for Liberty, The Art of Legalized Theft, The Rise of Socialism, Suffers No Fools.
GO TO the web site insidermonkey and search for 10 best countries for off shore banking.
Dear Roslynn, I modified your post because putting a URL on the post itself causes future problems for this web site. Please use the kind of description I offered above next time.
Skip
Wondering what off shore banking has to do with my post!
Hey, I was wondering too.
Strait-jackets November 20, 2018. I wasn’t familiar with Ellul’s books so I started reading about him because of this TW. Wikipedia. Very, very interesting. PROPAGANDA is one of his that I would like to read:
Additionally, people become caught in a web of facts they have been given. They cannot even form a choice or a judgment in other areas or on other subjects. Thus the mechanisms of modern information induce a sort of hypnosis in the individual, who cannot get out of the field that has been laid out for him by the information. (58)
It is not true that he can choose freely with regard to what is presented to him as the truth. And because rational propaganda thus creates an irrational situation, it remains, above all, propaganda—that is, an inner control over the individual by a social force, which means that it deprives him of himself. (58). Ellul 1965 pg 87