Category Archives: Book Notes

May 19, 2020 · 12:28 pm

Recovering with Aimee Byrd

In the past week, I read – among other books – two in particular that stuck with me. I generally tend to have several books going at one time.

The first book was Aimee Byrd’s remarkable book, Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

The second was Us Against You by my favorite novelist, Fredrik Backman. It is a novel about two rival towns within a few miles of one another; two hockey teams; two rivalries – us and you. It is a story of hate and enemies and how quickly hate burns into murder and destruction. It is an account of a politician who thrives on that hate, and keeping it stirred up. Hate is easy, inborn, natural. It is easily confused for righteousness and zeal. Beartown hockey against their archrivals: Hed hockey. Us against you.

The story begins with the star of Beartown Hockey raping the daughter of the General Manager of Beartown Hockey. And the hate begins.

Backman writes,

A boy, the star of the hockey team, rapes a girl. And we lost our way. A community is the sum of its choices, and when two of our children said different things, we believed him. Because that was easier, because if the girl is lying our lives could carry on as usual. When we found out the truth, we fell apart, taking the town with us. It’s easy to say that we should have done everything differently, but perhaps you wouldn’t have acted differently, either. If you’d been afraid, if you’d been forced to pick a side, if you’d known what you had to sacrifice. Perhaps you wouldn’t be as brave as you think. Perhaps you’re not as different from us as you hope. (page 2)

It is a hard read. Brilliant writing.

In one scene, Backman describes a hockey game between the two towns. The towns have hated each other as long as anyone can remember. The ice rink has a standing area and it is filled with the loudest fans of the rival team. As the game begins, the fans of the opposing team in the standing area search for the names that will bring the most pain, the most rage, the most degradation and start shouting those names. It makes one cringe to read it.

But then, something happens. One girl in the standing area gets up and goes to the seating area. Another one follows. Then another and another. Until, pretty soon, there are only a handful of haters left in the standing area. It turns out that those ugly, shouting, hateful people were not nearly as numerous as everyone thought. There were only a handful of them. But they knew what to shout to cause the most pain. And they were loud.

This calms everything down for the evening, and the two teams play hockey.

Aimee Byrd is not outside the Reformed Tradition. She is under the authority of the church. She subscribes to the Reformed creeds and confessions, and has never written anything contrary to her confession of faith. She is more orthodox that those who founded the Counsel of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. She is not a ‘feminist’. She is a sister in Christ, loved by the Lord Jesus and a member of his body, the church.

But she asks some very valid questions in her book. Do women have more to offer the church than what is generally assumed by the modern conservative church? Do women have the right and the duty to study theology? Do women have the right to sit at the feet of Jesus as disciples and learn from him?

And she writes and gently critiques from within the boundaries of Reformed Theology and the ecumenical creeds. She is direct, but gentle. Insightful and kind.

And the men lost their minds. Without even reading the book, shouts of “heresy”! “Disturber of the peace of the church!” “Feminist!” “Egalitarian!”

Shouting from the stands is easy. It is the cowards way. It avoids actually confronting our hate and our fear and having a rational discussion. Perhaps the men are afraid that the women will get uppity. Perhaps they are afraid that their wives will refuse to make them a sandwich and the might have to get off the couch and do it themselves. Perhaps they are afraid of love.

Because if you learn to love, you have to listen. To listen, means you have to quit shouting and admit that there might be something you are wrong about. To love one another means that you have to put the other ahead of yourself. To love, you have to respect and honor even those who might be different than you.

And that is very, very difficult to do.

It is far, far easier to tell a woman to make you a sandwich than it is to love her. But when we do that, how much have we lost of our own humanity?

I think what it comes down to is fear. In Beartown Hockey, Backman describes that fear behind the hate so perfectly. We fear losing who we are. What will we lose if we admit the truth?

Having been born and raised in conservative Reformed churches, I think I know something of that fear. If you let your guard down for one second, liberals get into the church. Next thing you know, you lose everything. The church goes apostate all because someone let their guard down. I think we are afraid of divorce, afraid of having to wash dishes and learn how to cook, afraid we might have to re-evaluate what we have been taught about men and women. If we let our guard down even for a second, the women take over. We can’t have that. Beartown has to win, otherwise, who are we? Constant vigilance takes the place of love and that means that shouting from the stands takes the place of honest engagement. We can’t be seen consorting with FEMINISTS!

But rather than thinking through the questions that Byrd raises, we are afraid of the answer. Most of those who reviewed the book didn’t even read it. They just shouted what their neighbors shouted. Hate is easy. Listening is harder.

I wasn’t a young man in seminary, at least not in years. But I was obnoxious. I thought I knew everything. It is easy to criticize everything outside of what we think is right, it is easy to pick apart and find fault. But we never grow that way. We never learn. We never put off the old man and put on the new. I wish I had listened more than I did.

Our traditions are deeply engrained. We have a very clear understanding of who the right thinking people are. Us against you.

And our debating too often turns into shouting from the stands.

I for one, am leaving those stands. I’m not a part of that. You won’t hear my voice shouting names and insults. I am going to sit in the stands and think some things through. I would invite you to join me.

Maybe we can all recover from the voices of the loud ones and learn a thing or two from our sisters.

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May 7, 2020 · 8:37 am

Thoughts on “Recovering from …”

Some books I skim. They’re pretty good. Other books, the really good ones, cause you to put it down for a while and think.

This is the best recommendation I can give for “Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood”, by Aimee Byrd. Of course, many are already so fixated on male and female roles that they won’t actually read the book, and this will be a huge mistake. Before you critique, digest it. Roll the ideas around the mind. Like a good wine, slurp it, slosh it around the tongue and think about it.

That way, if you do wish to critique, at least you will sound intelligent while you do so and not just a ranting puppet of the establishment.

So, that being said, there is one thing unique about the book. I don’t know what I feel about it. There are several repeating metaphors – one is explained in the introduction. If you don’t read the introduction, you won’t understand most of her references to yellow wallpaper, peeling it back, and other references to a rather obscure 19th century novel. It is a great metaphor and illustrates what she is saying quite effectively.

Another metaphor is found on page 133. As a pastor, I learned many years ago about the perils of using your children as examples, especially if you have not given them the previous veto right. So my first thought, when reading it, was “Oh, I really hope Solanna knew she was going to be in her mom’s book!!”

But that thought quickly passed. I am sure (!) that permission was granted and veto privileges allowed. That story is central to the metaphor of that chapter. Her point is a good one and the illustration holds up.

The reason that I am not sure about my feelings on it, is that it makes it rather difficult to pull out quotable material. There is so much that I would like to quote and to discuss, but in the middle there is an odd reference to wall paper or pizza or taking it out of the oven – which is illustrative and apt – but doesn’t translate into a quotable book.

But that is a quibble. There is so much that I would like to discuss about the book!

Back to my thought at the beginning, before I got sidetracked by wallpaper or pizza (you see how difficult it is??). There is a section (among many) that caused me to put the book down and follow the rabbit trail of my own experiences. Here’s a quote:

Disciples of Christ are initiated into a covenant family. We are baptized within the covenant community of our church, and this marks the church’s responsibility to teach us – not some – but all Christ commanded. It also marks our responsibility to learn as disciples (p162)

She is exactly right, and I love her chapter on discipleship and what it is. Reformed and Presbyterian churches have emphasized the teaching ministry of the church since their inception. Calvin preached 5 times on Sunday and throughout the week to hungry parishioners, according to some historians.

Christ teaches it clearly in the Great Commission:

19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,

20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:19-20)

Byrd is on point and it really got me thinking in this excellent chapter. First of all, about pizza – and secondly, about the nature of the teaching ministry of the church.

There are pockets of people in my extended community who have bought the teaching of the extreme patriarchal teachers. These teachings almost always come with heavy doses of theonomy, reconstructionism, dominionism, and separationism. One aspect of what they believe is that Sunday school classes for kids and membership classes for kids are unbiblical, since God gave that responsibility to the fathers. It is extremely attractive to controlling and abusive men, to have no accountability – even in the church.

In our congregation, our tradition is to do what is called “confirmation”, where I as the pastor spend several years with pre-teen and teenage baptized children and teach them catechism, bible history, theology proper, and just talk about everything on their minds.

These patriarchal types have argued with me about that frequently. There is a movement called “Family Integrated Worship” that teaches that the father is the covenant head, and therefore responsible to teach, to open and close the Lord’s Table, and lead worship. Effectively, it bypasses the church in favor of the family. One man hesitated when I mentioned catechism class, and finally reluctantly agreed, but only if he could participate. It didn’t last long.

One of the most dangerous things about it is that it sounds almost right – until you peel away the wallpaper. It is true that the father and mother have the responsibility to teach their children (Deut. 6) and to bring them to worship, fulfilling their baptismal vows.

But Byrd’s point is an excellent one. According to the great commission, the responsibility to disciple and teach is given to the church. Parents receive that authority as members of the church and are to carry out their duties to their children as members of Christ, not as tiny little popes. But the Great Commission was given to the church, not the heads of families.

The same is true of the sacraments and the ministry of the word. The apostles were NOT chosen because of their status as heads of families. In fact, their marital status and amount of children they had is not mentioned at all. The last genealogy in scripture ends with Christ, which speaks volumes.

Ideally, the pastor, elders and parents all work together. The church making disciples of Christ and teaching them everything that Christ teaches us; the parents bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

The goal of the discipling of the church is that we all grow together, “until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ.” (Eph. 4:13)

In the context, God has given the church its officers (pastor – teachers being one) and has given them their commission. Teach. Teach and teach some more. Make disciples of Christ.

To a certain extent, God has given this ministry to the whole Church. As members of Christ, we are all “prophets” and called to rightly confess his name. But the commission to make disciples is given to the church.

This is a forgotten doctrine that needs to be recovered today.

And, of course, the church is not to teach whatever comes into their heads. They are to make disciples of Christ, not disciples of men. We use a catechism that goes back 500 years and has been used by churches all over the world.

We don’t create new doctrine, we teach the “faith once for all delivered to the saints” – but that is another blog.

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October 4, 2019 · 8:25 am

Beyond Authority and Submission–answer to critics

I endorsed this book by Rachel Green Miller and would do so again. I am not so sure that anyone cares about that. But it is a great book and it should be engaged slowly and thoughtfully.

Unfortunately. she has received an avalanche of ugly, hasty and unthoughful pushback from those who claim the name of Christ. The hatred shown on social media reminds me of the Heidelberg Catechism QA 5  “…I am prone by nature to hate God and my neighbor.”

The dogma of Total Depravity is alive and well in Reformed circles when it comes to engaging with intelligent women.

But that really isn’t the point of this post, though I did want to mention it and caution those who claim the name of Christ.

The purpose of this post is as a bookmark and a reference to point you to three brilliant responses to one reviewer, Mark Jones.

I know that many will dismiss these voices because of their sex, but I would caution you not to do that. Remember that the disciples first thought that the women were just joking and were rebuked by Christ for not believing them.

I will not add a “man’s voice” here because these women are perfectly capable and able to slay this dragon.

First, here is Aimee Byrd:

As Mark is perplexed as to why Rachel didn’t get into theological anthropology or doesn’t address certain passages, so too I am perplexed that he doesn’t really even engage with the main thrust of her book, as if it may all be dismissed by her inferiority. In fact, he uses the title of her book as an insult, as if the whole idea of looking at the relationship of men and women beyond the categories of authority and submission is an ontological error that is in opposition to all of church history.

Second, here is Kerry Baldwin:

There is a continual problem in these discussions and unfortunately Jones is not immune from making them either. It’s all too common for Complementarian/Patriarchalist advocates to misapply feminism as a counter argument when feminism isn’t being argued for. Jones’ review illustrates this problem precisely. He opens with two terms: “radical feminism” and “toxic masculinity.” Why?

And finally (in the order that I read them, not in order of priority) here is Dr Valerie Hobbs:

The issue I take with Mark Jones, beyond his (quite frankly) arrogant writing style is that he does not grasp just how thoroughly Biblical Rachel is encouraging us to think. In this sense, his attempt at scholarly engagement is poor.

That’s it. These writers are thoughtful, biblical, confessional, and should be heard. Not because they are women, not in spite of the fact they are women, but because they are right.

Before you dismiss them, prayerfully and humbly consider what they have to say.

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September 26, 2019 · 7:47 am

Beyond Authority and Submission

Rachel Green Miller has written a remarkable book. But learning new things is scary.

The Heidelberg Catechism asks concerning God’s law, “Can you keep all this perfectly?” And the answer is, “No. For I am prone by nature to hate God and my neighbor.” (Q&A 5)

We inherited a certain way of looking at the world. It is a way based on hatred, rather than love. It is a way of control and power rather than mutual respect and deference. It sees the world through a lens that taints everything. It always asks, “What’s in it for me?”

It is a mindset that sees in others only potential enemies, or potential tools to be used

It cannot see beauty, for it is trained to see fault.

It cannot see love, for it is trained only in the language of authority and submission. The world is made up of slaves and masters.

We think this way automatically. Husbands, like the Pharisees of old, fear “losing their place and their nation” (John 11:48) if the women aren’t kept under tight control.

Like Ahasueras, Vashti must be taught a lesson or all wives will rebel. Society will collapse.

And the fear of losing “our place and our nation” has taken Christianity and wrapped it in layer after layer of hedges and traditions; an entire movement of added rules and regulations concerning men and women and family and society. And it is all based upon our natural distrust and suspicion of one another.

Is “hatred” too hard of a word to use? I will leave that to the reader to decide, but a quick glance at the twitter-sphere towards anyone who might agree with Miller’s book reveals an ugliness that should never been seen in the church. We’ve been taken over by bullies, boors, and cretins, who will stop at nothing to protect “their place and their nation.” These are the teachers of the law, who know nothing and enforce that nothing through trolling and bullying.

But our natural way of viewing things must be conformed to scripture. We naturally twist the scripture to fit our own views and this must be turned the other way around. We must conform our thoughts to God’s thoughts. Ahasueras must repent and start agreeing with God, “Husbands, love your wives.”

And this change is hard. We change our thinking by the power of the Holy Spirit – from the inside out. And sometimes we do it kicking and screaming, through much fear and trembling. But if we do not learn from Christ, we are none of his. We can either guard our self-delusions and protect our societal biases, or we can follow Christ and conform our thoughts to his. There is no middle ground. There is no treaty we can sign. We surrender our thoughts to his, or we perish.

Miller has undertaken a monstrous task. She writes, “We have ended up with layers of unbiblical and extrabiblical beliefs that obscure and cover up the beauty of what the Bible actually teaches about men and women.” (Miller, Beyond Authority and Submission, pg. 257).

With the meticulous art of a careful scholar, she respectfully and honestly documents layer after layer after layer of these beliefs and teachings, and then she compares each layer to scripture, calling us all to repent of our false beliefs and conform our thoughts to God’s thoughts.

And we will either repent of our false beliefs and know the beautiful, glorious, freedom of the gospel; or we will continue to live in hatred, distrust and anger, continually fearing that we will lose our place and our nation.

I would urge you all to get this book. If you were raised in conservative circles, it will make you very, very uncomfortable. If you were raised in more liberal circles, it will make you very uncomfortable.

Because the truth is this. We are prone by nature to hate God and our neighbor. Even when we become Christians, we have a whole ugly suit of armor that we were born with. We resist the truth, we fight for those things we are comfortable with, and we hate, I mean we REALLY REALLY HATE to examine whether or not what we were taught from youth is actually true.

But if we don’t change, the only alternative is to stay the same, and that we cannot do.

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August 8, 2018 · 4:30 pm

Reading notes and a remarkable book…

I am doing something quite rare for me. I am reading slowly! I am reading through Why Can’t We Be Friends (Aimee Byrd) and I am actually taking my time through it. It is really quite remarkable. Normally, it takes me a few hours to read through a book, but I find myself reading one or two sections at a time and thinking deeply about it.

Here are some things I would like to say. If you do not understand the relationship between faith and works, read this book.

If you do not understand what purity is, read this book.

If you are unclear about the gospel, read this book.

Aimee has done something very rare here. She has written a book about the relationships between men and women and has applied the Reformed Doctrine of the Holy Spirit and our sanctification to the relationship of the sexes. I have never seen anyone do that before.

Every other book I’ve read is EITHER about sanctification, OR it is about the rules on how to keep yourself pure through the law – but to connect purity with the GOSPEL?? and the work of the HOLY SPIRIT??

It is almost like she knows something about theology and the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit!

You can tell she is on the right track because modern Pharisees are apparently ready to string her up for it. When the gospel is taught, the Judaizers always light the torches and sharpen the pitchforks.

But she is absolutely right. Our purity is in our relationship with God, not in outward, extra biblical rules. In fact, the extra biblical rules, like the Billy Graham rule, simply give the appearance of purity without dealing with the more difficult problem of the heart. The gospel goes to the heart.

At any rate, I haven’t finished yet. I am still thinking through her brilliant chapter on purity, and thinking about what Jesus said,

“Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean.” (Matt. 23:26 NAB)

Go buy this book. Read it slowly, and then read it again.

By the way, this isn’t a book review. I haven’t written one of those since college and don’t even remember how. I said that I would never write one again, and I have kept my promise to myself. This is simply a note of my thoughts so far and my recommendation to you.

Fabulous book, so far. (If she gets goofy towards the end, I’ll let you know – but I’m not expecting her to).

Thank you, Aimee, for writing it.

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