“White men should learn in silence and submission”*

With uninterrogated power comes gross culpability

A friend and I sat next to each other in a gathering of around 500 young people from all over Southern Africa – we were part of the intercessory team and were waiting to pray with anyone who wanted it after what promised to be a time of rich testimonies of God’s liberating love. It was near the 3rd anniversary of the horrific murder of my friend’s dear husband: he had been one of the first to die in the Westgate Mall shooting in Nairobi in 2013. We sat with goosebumps as two former leaders of opposing gangs shared their testimony of discovering God’s deep love for them and of reconciliation: even after one had barely lived through a hit ordered by the other. Greatly moved by this story of reconciliation and with despair that she would probably never be able to meet and offer love and forgiveness to her husband’s murderers, my friend asked if I could ask them to come and pray with her. What followed was perhaps the most appalling spiritual bullying I have ever directly witnessed. Without even pausing to ask God for wisdom or words of guidance, they launched into rebuking and binding unforgiveness and bitterness, declaring all sorts of things in strident tones over her “unrepentant heart”, agreed with each other in “high-fived” amens and left…

We sat in stunned silence…eventually I hesitantly (in question form, not wanting to frame the entire story from my point of view) offered that I believed she had just been bullied. She had probably also been waiting to see whether it was just she who had experienced it like that and, with my affirmation of her experience (“you did not just imagine that in your grief”), we turned to our beautiful Creator and prayed with each other for a long time. We prayed for the two men who had clearly experienced great liberation, but with very little discipleship into a new way of being; for people who have been “prayed” for in this way and might not have recognised the abuse; for deeper and deeper discipleship of all people in the likeness of our Jesus who, being in very nature God, consistently emptied Himself of all power. This Jesus who was Good News to the powerless and marginalised and such a threat to the powerful of this world (human and unseen) that they sought to kill him and who, even in that moment, laid down any power he had at his disposal (an army of angels, disciples of a Kingdom which was so not of this world that they would not fight with swords) and was crucified. This kenotic, self-emptying, self-sacrificial love is not only the way (and being) of Jesus, but the way of all who seek to be disciples of His…to follow Him, to embrace Him as the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Ah, I became preachy…but I do get so excited about seeing the Kingdom established on earth as it is in Heaven and us following the way of the Lamb who has been slain in aligning with that vision and reality.

Why do I tell this story? I want to talk about bigger patterns and more systemic stuff (as well as  – perhaps foolhardily, but hopefully helpfully – bring in some scripture which I think speaks to this), but wanted to start with an individual story as an illustration. In my take of the situation, the two beautifully transforming men had both experienced leadership and authority in a gang set-up. With a misformed, uninterrogated and undiscipled view of what these meant and how these played out, they had been paraded out onto the “testimony circuit” and, when an opportunity presented itself, they had fallen back on the old ways that they knew: violence, bullying and strange displays of “strength” which were not aligned to the way of Jesus. The fault was not their own – they had only just come to faith and had lots of “unlearning” to do, but I do believe the fault lies with our lack of commitment to deep, long-term discipleship and our deeply entrenched blindspots to power – how it is acquired, how society gives it and how it rears its head in the ugliest forms when it remains uninterrogated.

Where else have I seen this?

• A white, male church leader posted something on facebook which was meant to be speaking up for a group of marginalised people with whom he identified. A few comments in, he was screaming (all caps) at a younger women of colour (a lay member of the church) who dared to question some of the assumptions he had made using her own experience as a lens. While he thought he was courageously standing up for others, he hadn’t interrogated the places he held power and ended up bullying someone who had far less worldly power than he.
• A group of older, white, Afrikaans theologians who had played a pioneering role in leading their denomination to repent of apartheid heresies and find new ways of honouring all people as created in the image of God, met together during the  #feesmustfall movement on their campus and crafted a theological response to it – a response so full of cultural, class, racial and generational blindspots that it very quickly elicited a far deeper response by an intersectionally diverse group of theologians. These original men were no doubt earnest in their desire to follow God and had done some really good interrogation of their power in some areas of life (and had probably taken some severe knocks for it in their denomination) but had failed to do so fully and, as a result, hadn’t even noticed or questioned how a group came to be made up solely of white, older men. As a wonderful (white, male, older, Afrikaans, theologian) friend of ours once pointed out: when we read and interpret the bible and context with a homogenous group of people, culture will trump the Gospel every time.
• An older, more educated female theologian lambasted a young man who, in speaking his second (or third) language, referred to something as male which, in English, is gender-neutral…correctly sensitive to the structured patriarchy in the world, but completely unaware of all the other aspects that rendered this young man far more powerless than she, she turned a chance for gentle discipleship (or silent humility for the conversation having to be conducted in the only language she speaks!) into one of verbal violence and individual identity bullying.
• Just in this last week I have heard of two unrelated white people who have been on journeys of discovering their own white privilege and the power that they need to lay down, completely unconsciously using other aspects of power in their grasp to put other white people asking questions “in their place”. So “woke” to how their whiteness plays out in race relations, they are still completely ignorant of other power dynamics and again fell back on using what power they have to diminish others. (You can read this post on intersectionality if you want to understand some other power dynamics which are at play).

I also see this story playing out in both Paul’s first letter to Timothy and in the reading of this text which I believe has been used to keep half the church from exercising their gifting, identity and calling fully. Recognising the dangers of spelling out the connection I see where other people might see two completely separate issues, I am still going to try and illustrate for you why I think they are related.

Paul penned this pastoral letter to Timothy while Timothy was stewarding the church of Ephesus. In his circulated (if not published) “Letter to Harriet”, Duncan McLea describes the context in this way: “Timothy was leading the church in Ephesus – a city dominated geographically, economically, culturally and spiritually by the Temple of Diana (“Artemis” in Greek)…Diana was the goddess of fertility and was depicted as a many-breasted figure, and the temple dedicated to her was run by virgin priestesses assisted by castrated men. One can but imagine what influence this had on Ephesian culture and how it fashioned their worldview and influenced their understanding of gender roles…and what having spiritual authority in the hands of virgin women priestesses and castrated men did to their understanding of leadership in society. No doubt these influences spilled over into the church.” In this context, newly converted and undiscipled women were being taken in by false prophets and using the power afforded to them in the prevailing culture to assume “authentin” – a type of authority which was self-appointed, usurped, dominating and even sexual – over others, spreading false teachings and gossip. In his letter to Timothy, Paul is encouraging Timothy that these women should first be discipled in the new way of being: “women should learn in silence” – in exactly the same way as students of the Talmud (only men up until this point in history), women were to learn in humility and silence, to be instructed so as to be able to distinguish truth from lies, to exercise humble authority, to understand their identity and giftings as rooted in Christ, and not in gender or the created order, and then, eventually, like all who learn, to teach, instruct and disciple others in these ways…but first to learn.

Just like those of us who have been afforded huge power by the structures and systems of this world – in our whiteness, in our class, in our grasp of a global language which happens to be our mother-tongue, in our level of education, in so many ways – have to learn to be silent, to be last, to refuse the microphone, to listen humbly, to lay down power, to decentre our experiences and our opinions, to learn new ways of being which promote the equality of all people, so too these women needed to learn a new way.

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So, why the title of this blogpost? I believe people have taken the teaching of Paul and, with hermeneutical goggles fogged over by uninterrogated power, have used this scripture to build and maintain an unhealthy and deformed body of Christ.

Let me try and illustrate:

I believe that those of us who wield a great amount of structural and systemic power have a particular need to interrogate the huge amount of power which society has given us and, in following the way of Jesus, to learn to lay down this power at each and every opportunity afforded to us. I believe we need to listen in humility, I believe we have to learn in submission to those who are not like us and who bring another way of seeing the world and I believe we need to stop assuming authority in a space, a process or a dialogue because we believe somehow we have been given special authority and anointing as leaders for those spaces and times. I believe the discipline of submission and practice of learning is imperative to our discipleship in 2018. In my longing for a world which resembles Heaven more and more, I might even give this advice to people stewarding church spaces in our decolonising world as a prophetic word: “White men must learn in silence and submission. At the moment, in the spaces I steward, I generally don’t let white males frame the dialogue, hold the microphone or interpret world events. Don’t let them assume authority over any person, process or narrative. They need to do a lot of unlearning of worldly power and domination before it is safe – for them and for others – to have them teach the ways of Jesus.”

However, I would be horrified if I ever imagined that, 300 years from now, people had stuck religiously to my advice, believing it was meant for all time, in all places and within all power-dynamics…I would be horrified if it meant that white men were unable to speak, to teach and to exercise leadership in their churches and all white boys were told from an early age that there was a specific way they had been created which meant they would never be able to play the same roles as girls…we don’t know why, it is a mystery, but we must accept it because Wendy said it.

I would also be horrified if entire groups of people had never taken the time to interrogate their own power because it was clear that white men were the ones most in need of that and we had instead built up another system of intersection power which needed to be demolished.

We need to hate the assumption and abuse of power, not because it is wielded by a specific gender or skin colour or language or class or weight or marital status or age or orientation or academic standing or [insert intersectional category of your choice and experience], but because we love equality, we love Shalom, we love each person as an image-bearer of our Creator, we love mutuality and servanthood, we love the Oneness which we are given in Jesus and we are working together to see the reign of the One-who-is-called-Love be established on earth as it is in Heaven.

I believe we can and we will do so much better!

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*It has come to my attention that not everyone lives in my brain (!!) and so many people are not aware that the title of this blogpost is a play on a well-known and worn piece of scripture. This is what a certain passage in Paul’s first letter to Timothy says, “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.” Apologies for the assumption that, just because it was “ingrained” in me, it would be so for everyone else. (eye-roll here)

Can a Mother forget…?

“Can a mother forget the infant at her breast, walk away from the baby she bore?” – Isaiah 49:15 (MSG)

There is an unmistakable moment when you become a parent – something shifts in you on a tectonic level which changes your foundational identity for ever. For some, this is when they see the first heartbeat of their babies on the monitor*, for others it is when they hold their baby after birth, for others it is when our kids are brought home for the first time – at a few days old, at a few years old – for others it happens later…whenever it happens, the moment is the same: you are no longer the person you were the second before that fundamental shift.

The isiXhosa culture and language has a beautiful way of symbolising this shift. It led to a cute moment this week where a friend and I greeted each other at the same time, “Molo, Mama kaThulani” (“Hello, Mother of Thulani”)…the people with us laughed with joy as they were reminded that we both have first born sons with the name Thulani, and so now we have the same name too: we are identified first and foremost by those that make us “mother”. As we create or adopt our children, so they in turn create us.

(The highest compliment I was ever paid for an item of clothing was, “When you wear that skirt, you look like the mother of Thulani and Zizi and Masi”.)

I don’t want to limit this experience only to mothers or to parents – there are many people who carry children and other people in their hearts in ways which have fundamentally shifted who they are and how they perceive and act and “be” in this world. But I am a mom, and so will write from that perspective.

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I walk the earth in my pale skin and have benefited from a deeply violent social system which has perceived me and treated me as something better because of that pale skin…and people who look like my children as at best less valuable and, at worst, less human, than me. This is vile and I am committed to destroying this system.

As a mom of image-bearers of Christ with a darker brown skin than I have, I also walk the earth with a heart which carries my children as a foundational part of who I am – and so everything I see and hear and read and do is experienced through this identity. In a world dominated by the pale-skinned narrative – and everything which has been constructed around it to prop up its superiority and survival – I have spent years navigating this fragile journey of bringing my children up in a country where the minority of people are pale-skinned, but where my children would still be viewed as less-than or suspect because of the colour of their skin.

This past week, I have joined others in extreme levels of heartache.

I reeled at the results of the US election and swore that neither my children nor husband would ever travel there, while at the same time I mourned with friends and strangers who call the US home, that their very identity had been attacked, or at the very least diminished (which I think is attack)**, by those who voted in this man.

I have read people’s commentaries and comments on the proposed vote of no confidence in President Zuma – commentaries which are, not always but so very often, tainted with an undertone of racism, which people would deny, but is so evident to those with brown bodies.

In addition to this, through other conversations and happenings this week, I am recognising a sharp increase in some groups of people of colour shutting down other groups, or telling them that they have no right to speak because, while they have too been oppressed by the colonialist and apartheid systems, they have not been as oppressed as others. I have seen factionalism grow as people fight for who has the greatest right to speak of, and act in response to, oppression – a fight in identifying who the true revolutionaries are, and who, by inference, are then the sell-outs/colluders/house slaves/new oppressors, etc.

Where once I only feared for the warped perceptions of some pale-skinned people and how they would treat my children, I had now become fearful for my children’s safety (and that of my husband’s) should our country continue on the path of violent white privilege (make no mistake – this system is violent!) being met with violent black pain…but where more and more people in brown skin are being viewed as “not black enough” to be on the “right side” of the revolution.
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“Can a mother forget the infant at her breast, walk away from the baby she bore?”

This was read in church on Sunday morning. In that moment, I realised all the pain, confusion and fear which I had been carrying this week. With those words, my heart broke open – a yawning chasm of pure horror – a resounding NO!!! as this most rhetorical question suggested that this could ever even be considered a possibility…my face, which had held together relatively “well” for the days before, followed my broken heart and crumbled in weeping.

And then, having broken open my heart and shown me the depths of my fears this week, God was able to pour the words that followed like a balm into the chasm:
“Even if mothers forget [which I need to reiterate is entirely impossible]***, I’d never forget you – never.”
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This is NOT meant to be one of those posts which says, “God is in control – don’t worry about Trump/racism/xenophobia/sexism/fill-in-the-blank-ism” or “God elects the leaders, so all you must do is pray for them” or any of the other ways people have tried to comfort or pretend we are not responsible for the world we live in.

It might be saying more, but what it definitely IS saying is: which mother, knowing their children were hurting, being scorned, being crushed, being assaulted, would stop at NOTHING to protect them and work to establish a world in which this couldn’t possibly happen to anyone’s children ever again? Which of us would not put our bodies, hearts and souls on the line for our children? How much more would God – who poured out everything to take on flesh and walk among us, who put body, mind and heart on the line for us, who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow – stop at nothing to protect all those who have been created and born in God’s image, and work to establish a world in which everyone, everyone, is treated as precious, precious, precious children and siblings?

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“See: I have engraved you on the palm of my hands…” v16

In the same way as our children create us as parents, through deep, unfathomable love for us, God also chooses an identity which is inextricably bound to that of Parent…what stronger way is there to show this than this image of us being engraved on the palms of our Parent’s hands?

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And we are called to be God’s hands and feet, and heart and head, and eyes and ears and mouths in this world.

“I form you and use you
to reconnect the people with Me –
To restore the land
And to resettle families on the ruined properties,
To say to captives, “Come out,”
And to those huddled in fear, “It’s all right. It’s safe now.”
Isaiah 49: 8-9 MSG/NIV mash-up

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Footnotes…(because I use brackets too much already!)

* Which is part of why miscarriages and still-births are so foundationally painful and can’t be dismissed lightly – there has already been an identity shift – one which centres our entire identity around that little being.

** I know a lot of people say they voted for Trump, but don’t agree with his views on people of colour, immigrants, women, LGBTQI persons, Muslims, etc – but if they could see ANYTHING else as more central to the vote than that (giving licence to these views), it feels like they have chosen other issues over people’s actual identities, so it still feels like attack to me.

*** (barring mental illness and huge brokenness which we need to acknowledge because some of our children are carrying that pain)

This wasn’t footnoted anywhere but, because Hillary is not the only one who feels like she has failed girl-children this week, I want to point out that God used the image of a mother to describe the nature of the love which is given to us through the Godhead. Jesus referred to God as “Father” – which is beautiful, especially given the way gods (and even God) were viewed in those days and the fact that Caesar had declared himself “Father” over all the people under Roman occupation – and it is wonderfully true that God is our Father. It is also true that God is referred to in female imagery (“mother”, “hen”, “many breasted God” and others which I shan’t go into now) and in a time in which women were treated as accessories by men (just think about how RADICAL that is!) – and so it is wonderfully true that God is our Mother…as well as an eagle, a lion, a lamb and many other images which can help to explain the completely Indescribable and Uncontainable. We are invited to explore a far richer and more beautiful image of God when we explore all these metaphors, and don’t limit God (and each other) by limiting our speech to God as male-only.