Carolyn Custis James

If you haven’t yet read Half the Church, the article below is an excerpt on “The Blessed Alliance”—a term I coined in Lost Women of the Bible and a major theme in my books.

I hope this article will whet your appetite to read more.

Men and Women Working Together for Good

In the wake of the 2008 economic crisis, New York Times op-ed writer Nicholas Kristof reported that at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, financial experts were wondering out loud whether the economy would be in the same mess if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Brothers and Sisters.

What has the ring of something innovative and progressive is actually a remnant of humanity’s forgotten ancient past—an idea with primordial biblical roots that can be traced back to the Garden of Eden.

The notion that things work better and human beings become their best selves when men and women work together is found on page 1 of the Bible. When God was launching the most ambitious enterprise the world has ever known, the team He put together to do the job was male and female.

Adam and Eve faced a challenge of Mount Everest proportions that required a solid connection between themselves and their Creator. As His vice-regents, together they were charged with looking after things on His behalf—wisely to steward and utilize the earth’s resources. Their goal together was to build His gracious kingdom on earth. No square inch of earth is excluded. No arena of life is beyond the parameters of their joint rule.

Load-Bearing Walls

God designed the world to stand on two load-bearing walls. You don’t have to be an engineer or a building contractor to know not to tamper with load-bearing walls. Knock down the load-bearing walls, and you’ll bring down the roof.

The first load-bearing wall is God’s relationship with His image bearers. Without this vital relationship, we are cut off from our life supply—homeless stranded souls in the universe, left to guess at who we are and why we are here.

The second load-bearing wall is the Blessed Alliance between male and female. Having created his male and female image bearers, “God blessed them,” then spread before them the global mandate to rule and subdue on His behalf. According to Genesis, male/female relationships are a kingdom strategy—designed to be an unstoppable force for good in the world.

This means the enemy’s first assault in the Garden was beyond brilliant. One lethal blow and both load-bearing walls collapsed. God’s image bearers were cut off from their Creator and divided from each other.

God never abandoned His vision. Instead of washing His hands of us, God pursues His errant image bearers. Trillion-dollar bailouts to rescue a flagging economy are nothing next to what God has expended to recover the Blessed Alliance. Jesus came to rebuild both load-bearing walls. He is the connecting point between God and us. He is the glue that holds the alliance of men and women together. He mobilizes His male and female followers together to join this rescue effort. Given that fact, it should come as no surprise to discover flashpoints along the way where the Blessed Alliance shines like a beacon in a dark world.

Ancient Blessed Alliances

Two Blessed Alliances—one from the Old Testament and one from the New—offer wisdom for 21st century living. One story comes from the center of Gentile world power; the other from Israel’s heartland. The former story is of cousins—Esther and Mordecai; the latter, a husband and wife—Mary and Joseph.

Esther and Mary were Jewish and young, unmarried teenagers when we meet them. Puberty made them marriageable. Both were immersed in cultures where women embody powerlessness and men command power and authority over them. Neither of them dreamed God would call them to a higher role.

Esther and Mordecai were stragglers who remained in Persia (Iran) after many Jewish exiles returned to Israel. Esther was trafficked—rounded up for the king’s harem with all the beautiful young girls—and chosen (after he sampled them all) to be his queen. She existed for one man’s pleasure. For six years, Esther survived on standard feminine virtues—beauty and compliance—keeping her Jewish identity below the radar. All the while, anxious Mordecai (the authority figure in her life) was issuing directives from the sidelines to an obedient Esther.

Mary was betrothed to Joseph when she first appeared on the pages of the Bible. Legal arrangements were made between her father and Joseph, money changed hands, and a deal was struck that was as binding as marriage.

Both stories turn on a crisis that jars everyone out of the status quo. Overnight, existing paradigms for relationships between men and women become unworkable. These crises can only be understood within the context of their cultures. Both women’s lives were in danger because they had committed capital offenses.

For Esther, the peril was double. As a Jewess, her life was under threat because a plot for genocide against the Jews was moving forward. As a wife, her life was in danger from her husband. In Persia, an edict established the rule of men over their wives. By law, unsolicited meetings with the king were punishable by death. She was trapped by cultural conventions, the law and her own long history of compliance.

Mary had an out-of-wedlock pregnancy and a wild story to go with it. Her pregnancy was an appalling betrayal and an affront to family honor. In a shame-based culture, the immediate threat to Mary was death, divorce or being cast out. For both young women there appeared to be no way to wriggle out of these jams.

After calling the shots for Esther’s whole life, Mordecai called Esther to risk her life to prevent the genocide. To do this, she had to stand up to the two most powerful men in the world—King Xerxes and his evil prime minister, Haman. To top it off, Mordecai told Esther, “Who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14).

In an act of unprecedented courage, Esther threw down the gauntlet: “If I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16)—this in anticipation of a conversation with her husband. Drawing on God’s strength and everything she’d learned from six years as a palace insider, Esther strategized, summoned courage and acted. She took the lead. She directed Mordecai to call the people to pray and fast; Mordecai obeyed.

By the time Mary collided with Joseph, she already had thrown down the gauntlet. “I am the Lord’s servant, and I am willing to accept whatever He wants” (Luke 1:38). Pretty Christmas cards make it easy to think the problem Mary faced was the awkwardness of telling Joseph, knowing how the truth would hurt him; but this is to misunderstand her culture. In patriarchal shame-based cultures, a betrothed girl who turned up pregnant was in danger of honor killing, and the person Mary had most to fear was Joseph, for her presumed actions brought shame on him. Her fate was in his hands.

Matthew described Joseph as “a righteous man” (Matthew 1:19). This was not good news if Joseph bought into the Pharisees’ exacting definition of righteousness. However, this was where Mary’s story changed, for Joseph’s brand of righteousness foreshadowed Jesus, for whom righteousness meant doing right before God no matter the cost. Before the angel exonerated Mary, Joseph already decided to deal privately with her instead of publicly vindicating his honor.

I am not sure from our cultural context that we can grasp how radically self-denying this was for Joseph. It was certainly not the manly thing to do. Joseph didn’t stop there. When the angel finally corroborated Mary’s story, he shut down his carpenter shop, got behind God’s calling on Mary’s life, and adapted himself to his wife. These two Blessed Alliances changed everything.

The Blessed Alliance in Action

In both stories, members of the Blessed Alliance were kingdom minded—caught up in something bigger than themselves. Kingdom mindedness both compels and frees them to set aside their personal agendas to embrace a greater one. The magnitude and seriousness of God’s call on their lives outweigh everything else and demand an all-out effort from everyone.

Esther and Mordecai were called to rescue their people from genocide; Mary and Joseph were mobilized to rescue the world. Kingdom mindedness centers them on God’s purposes and summons forth from everyone a different way of living and different way of working together.

In both stories, the Blessed Alliance calls for gospel living, which means putting the interests of others ahead of yourself. Lives are poured out for the sake of others and for a greater cause. This is the gospel. This is the life Jesus modeled.

Esther and Mary put their lives at risk. God’s call pushed them out of their comfort zones. They had to defy the norms of culture and social conditioning to become bold risk takers. Both had terrifying encounters with powerful men. Both knew this could cost them their lives.

Both men had to give up the right to lead. If they didn’t, they would obstruct God’s purposes. Mordecai and Joseph put their full weight—their male authority and power—behind the women and God’s calling on their lives.

Huge role reversals were evident in both stories. Women took the lead and were the rescuers. The men were counting on the women to step out and succeed. Mordecai’s life depended on Esther’s leadership. Joseph’s salvation depended on Mary’s success. There’s no tug-of-war, no discussion of who was the leader and who was the follower. Leadership is everywhere. It is, after all, every image bearer’s calling to accept responsibility and take action.

No one was demanding equality or justice for themselves. Equality and justice are serious biblical concepts, but they are not the issue here. Deeper issues were at stake, which call for a different—a gospel—paradigm and a full effort from everyone.

Perhaps most surprising, the Blessed Alliance resulted in mutual flourishing. This wasn’t a win for the women and a loss for the men. Instead, by working together, all four flourished to become their best selves. I can’t fully explain it. It’s just the way God works.

Without question, the women shine. Scholars marvel at how Esther evolved from a passive, compliant member of the king’s harem to a courageous political leader at the apex of world power. Of course, Mary received worldwide admiration for her self-sacrificing choice; but the men flourished, too.

Mordecai was an adept politician in his own right, but he rose to prominence because of Esther. The win for Joseph was more subtle. We’ve been walking past Joseph for years—eclipsed by Mary and Jesus—but Joseph was the lead story in Matthew’s Gospel for embodying true righteousness. Joseph lived out Jesus’ gospel before Jesus was born.

God’s tactics were counterintuitive in our male-centered world, but therein lies the surprise for the enemy, for the world and for us. For when men and women are allied together, richer discussions result in better decisions, the elimination of blind spots and a greater kingdom force in the world.

Wall Street, banking and the financial industry are paying a price for the lack of women in their ranks; but the benefits ripple out in all directions when God’s sons and daughters unite to serve him together.

Originally published at Youth Worker Journal.

It only takes a phone call to turn your world upside down.

The first article I wrote for FullFill’s {Think} column (back in 2007) told of one of those dreaded phone calls—the one with Frank’s mom on the line, the strained desperation in her voice sounding like one of those frantic 911 recordings. Frank’s mountain climber brother Kelly was in trouble somewhere near the summit of Oregon’s Mt. Hood. We’d been fearing that call for years.

The roller coaster week that followed—broadcast on national television networks for all the world to see—left behind a grieving family and lots of “Why?” questions . With people praying all over the world and media cameras rolling, why didn’t God come through for us?

This past December, I got another one of those calls. This time the strained voice was my father’s telling me doctors had discovered a large mass in his lung. Anyone who has gotten one of those calls knows there’s no way to prepare for news like that. And so it began again—the roller coaster of erratic ups and downs that leaves hope soaring one day and dashed the next.

His first biopsy ruled cancer out. We were ecstatic. But joy was cruelly short-lived when more extensive tests proved the mass in his lung was cancer. The resulting emotional whiplash was tough enough to handle for myself. It was even worse to see someone I love go through it along with all the multilayered suffering that cancer brings.

When trouble strikes, I don’t need anyone to tell me how crucially important is every moment I’ve spent thinking about God, wrestling with those nagging why questions, and probing his Word to know God better. Trouble sends us into uncharted territory. Ignorance of God puts us in the untenable position of trusting someone we don’t know. When the lights go out and we’re feeling our way in the dark—faith needs to know the God who holds our lives in his hands.

Adults are forever warning children never to trust a stranger. We ignore our own advice when we don’t get serious about the call to love God with our minds. We’ll learn the hard way that there’s a world of difference between trying to trust a stranger and trusting someone we know can be trusted. The life-long pursuit of a deeper knowledge of God won’t spare us from struggling with doubt and fear, or experiencing the dark night of the soul. It means we have more to tell ourselves, and faith has more to grasp.

In 1939, at the beginning of World War II, England’s King George VI borrowed the words of poet Minnie Louise Haskins to reassure a worried nation as they faced a frightening uncertain future.

“Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!”

It only takes a phone call to prove King George was right.

[Originally published by FullFill in the Spring 2012 {Think} column and reprinted with permission here.]

For further reading:  When Life & Beliefs Collide—How Knowing God Makes a Difference
                               Also in Spanish and French!

Roy Ciampa’s eye-opening article on identity mapping (posted here) is a stunning real-life case study of the issue being debated by John Piper and D.A. Carson in this video. Just how important is the study of the cultural, historical, and social background of the Bible in our understanding of the Bible’s message?  Worded another way, How much time should a pastor or Bible teacher spend studying the Bible vs extra-biblical sources?

What may sound rather academic on the surface, is actually about as down-to-earth as a person can get and hugely important for those who preach and teach God’s Word. Based on the feedback I’m getting to Roy’s article (mostly on FaceBook and in emails), there’s no question that his historical/cultural research into first century marriage has brought a game-changing clarity to Paul’s instructions to husbands and wives in Ephesians 5.

Frankly, I think the Piper/Carson debate misses the point and, to be honest, actually borders on nonsense. They focus on how much time one spends studying the text vs studying the historical/cultural context in which the text was written and which it addresses. It is as though one approach is more spiritual than the other, rather than that the two aspects of Bible study go hand-in-hand.

In my opinion, Carson is on the right track and is wisely concerned about the neglect of historical/cultural study, but concedes too much ground to Piper. I find it disturbing that Christian leaders would do such a delicate dance around an issue that is costing all of us too much. Nowhere is that high price more evident than in the handling of biblical passages concerning women.

Isn’t the real issue what study is needed to more clearly understand the text? Does it really matter how much time we spend in the text vs digging into the history that will illumine that text if, in the end, we come closer to understanding what the writer actually meant? Who’s watching the clock, if the purpose of study is to unearth the writer’s meaning and making use of every available resource to reach that goal? What kind of preaching results when the preacher assumes they can understand and explain the Bible without investigating the ancient world they’re interpreting? With all due respect, a little digging into the cultural background (or even some recent commentaries) would have made a dramatic difference in the recent book John Piper wrote on the Book of Ruth. If you want to see the contrast, read The Gospel of Ruth—Loving God Enough to Break the Rules.

Roy’s article on Christian marriage underscores just how high the stakes are in this discussion. We are misguided to assume cultural research is incidental to the study of God’s Word. We are dealing with an ancient text from a world vastly different from our own. If we fail to investigate the past to find out what life was like back then, we inevitably default to our own American/Western culture. And for that, we pay a price that is too dear. At best, we drain the text of richness, power, and meaning. At worst, we completely miss the meaning.

Questions of culture are absolutely relevant to all of us—not only the first century culture, but our own cultural context. None of us is culturally neutral. Inevitably, we bring our own cultural assumptions with us when we study God’s Word. We need constant reminding (and this should begin a more humble approach to Scripture) that the Bible is not an American book. It is an Ancient Near Eastern book. And we are foreigners to that world, who have a lot to learn.

What about our culture drives our thinking and thus impacts our interpretations of the Bible?

What do you think?

When I submitted my very first proposal for a book that boldly asserts “all women are theologians,” I was hoping for a title that combined the words “woman” and “theologian.”  After all, the book is about the importance of theology for women and asserts without apology that we are all theologians!

I was cautioned by publishers and potential readers that something so direct might turn some women off. One friend told me even “Thinking Women” as a title sounded intimidating.

My goal was not to intimidate but to invite all women—seminarians, businesswomen, homemakers, college coeds, teenage girls—to take themselves and God seriously, not to depend on someone else’s theology, but to know God for themselves.

I didn’t want to give the impression that theology was all cerebral either, but embedded in the everyday messiness, brokenness, and heartaches of life. I knew from personal experience that it is risky business to try to trust God when you’re in trouble on the basis of what someone else believes or on the spiritual fluff we so easily settle for when we live in so much prosperity.

Life comes to women in stiff doses. When it does, and we are crushed or shattered or stretched beyond our limits, we need to surround ourselves with good theologians—husbands, pastors, and steadfast friends in fraying red chairs—who will encourage and help us. But at the end of the day, it won’t be their theology we will lean on, no matter how good it is. We will lean on our own. Adversity and adventures have a way of exposing the state of our theology. We may have heard a lot about God. In the thick of things, we will discover what we really believe about him. We ask too much of ourselves to wade into these deep waters with so little to keep our faith afloat.

—When Life and Beliefs Collide

As what was hoped would be a safe compromise, the book was titled When Life and Beliefs Collide: How Knowing God Makes a Difference—a modified version of a phrase inside the book, “when theology and life collide.”  

Twelve years later, here come the French!  Fearless. Direct. Unapologetic. Certainly not intimidated!

This morning UPS delivered a box containing When Life and Beliefs Collide translated into French—with a brand new title:  Tous théologiens! Vivre nos convictions (We are all theologians! Living our beliefs).  

I say, “Vive le français!”

There’s an Olympic story we’d be hearing more about if a medal was part of it. Before the London Olympics ended, The Guardian projected, “If the mountain biker Adrien Niyonshuti’s considerable legs push him to Olympic glory on Sunday, it will surely be the most inspirational story of the Games.”

He didn’t win a medal. But it’s to our loss if we mainly focus on the winners (who deserve our attention) and lose sight of other heroes who crossed the finish line against all odds, albeit not in the first three spots.

Adrien Niyonshuti, the lone Rwandan biker at the 2012 Olympics, is one of those inspiring stories. Medal or not, we need to hear his story.

Last April, when I was in Colorado Springs for the Generous Giving conference, I was blown away by a preview of Rising From Ashes, the documentary about Team Rwanda—a remarkable group of Rwandan youths who survived the genocide, but not without the catastrophic loss of family members and neighbors. Yet, instead of caving in to the traumas that have permanently scarred their young lives, these young men turned their energies to mountain biking. This is a powerfully redemptive story, not just for the young Rwandans, but also for the men who entered their lives as advocates, mentors, and sponsors.

Here’s the trailer:

Twenty-five year old Adrien Niyonshuti was the only one who qualified for the Olympics.

I’m usually trumpeting efforts to empower women and girls to rise from the ashes of suffering, trafficking, poverty, and oppression to lead productive flourishing lives and to discover God’s love for them when Christians are actively involved on their behalf. Experts document the difference now being made in their lives and how benefits to them change the lives of their children, their communities, and beyond. I intend to continue sounding the alarm and to highlight efforts to change things for women—for us to spread Jesus’ gospel in all of its fullness. 

Team Rwanda is a powerful reminder that boys and men, both here and abroad, need that same kind of advocacy too and that the benefits multiply when they are empowered to flourish. The Olympics may be over. But the ripple effect of Team Rwanda continues—giving Rwandans a renewed sense of national pride and hope for the future.

Here are before and after accounts of Adrien’s Olympic effort:

• The Guardian, “London 2012: Rwandan mountain biker rides to banish genocide memory”
  
• The Wall Street Journal, “A Long, Amazing Ride to the Olympics” 

If you have trouble viewing the trailer above, go here.

“By naming us as his image bearers, God has made a relationship with himself the strategic center of his purpose for humanity and for the world. Knowing God is as vital to us as the air we breathe. The image bearer’s relationship with God is our north star, the reference point from which we begin to understand everything else—including ourselves.

[This] places us at the center of what God is doing in the world—not as spectators, but as kingdom agents and as leaders with responsibility for what is happening around us. … Suddenly our mundane and often behind-the- scenes lives are invested with cosmic significance, for we are God’s eyes and ears, his hands and feet, his voice in this world.”

Olympic hurdler Lolo Jones has been in the news a lot lately for reasons other than her high profile role as a 2010 Team USA track and field competitor in the London Olympics. Her public statements about being a virgin at 29 (now 30), which she connects to her Christian faith, are at the center of this media storm.

Here’s the interview that caused a lot of the ruckus:

My article on today’s Huffington Post Religion Blog takes on the deeper issues surrounding the connection between Christianity and virginity and “Why Virginity is Not the Gospel.”

Check it out and add your comments!

© teejayfaust 2009 Flickr

I was mid-way through a weekend speaking engagement at Morning Star Church in Kansas last January when I got the call that my father’s battle with cancer had escalated. He was in the hospital with pneumonia and wasn’t expected to make it through the weekend. The Morning Star folks were incredibly supportive and encouraged me to go. I’ll never forget it! So I dropped everything and caught the next flight out to Portland.

It’s in desperate times like these that we long for God to show up in some powerful way.

I know that’s what I was praying somewhere in the skies between Kansas City and Portland. Then it dawned on me that the way he most often shows up is through his Image Bearers. No lightening bolt or voice from heaven. No glorious shining epiphany. No miraculous healing. Just the simple and ordinary loving acts of God’s children who arrive on the scene to do whatever they can think of to help in the agonizingly brutal battle against cancer. As his child I have the potential of being at least one way he shows up.

And yet, we are mistaken to think that in the silent darkness of our struggles we are ever all alone.

That’s the timely subject (at least for me in the aftermath of my father’s death) of the guest blog Rachel Held Evans posted on her blog today. “Just a Mediocre Miracle” by blogger Neely Stansell-Simpson is the story of three-generations of ezers—her mother battling cancer, her three-year old daughter Sophie, and Neely herself caught in the middle.

I hope you’ll take the time to read it.

Neely ends with this fitting and much needed reminder that it is actually in these black-out places, where we feel utterly alone and there are no hints of God’s presence, that he is most present and doing some of his best and deepest work in us: 

It was thousands of years ago and thousands of miles away, but it is a visit that for all our madness and cynicism and indifference and despair we have never quite forgotten. The oxen in their stalls. The smell of hay. The shepherds standing around. That child and that place are somehow the closest of all close encounters, the one we are closest to, the one that brings us closest to something that cannot be told in any other way. This story that faith tells in the fairytale language of faith is not just that God is, which God knows is a lot to swallow in itself much of the time, but that God comes. Comes here. “In great humility.” There is nothing much humbler than being born: naked, totally helpless, not much bigger than a loaf of bread . . . The world has never been quite the same since. It is still a very dark world, in some ways darker than ever before, but the darkness is different because he keeps getting born into it. The threat of holocaust. The threat of poisoning the earth and sea and air. The threat of our own deaths. The broken marriage. The child in pain. The lost chance. Anyone who has ever known him has known him perhaps better in the dark than anywhere else because it is in the dark where he seems to visit most often (italics mine).

– Frederick Buechner

Thanks to my friend, Scott Bolinder, for sending me the link to Chris Tomlin’s “I will rise!”  I’ve played and replayed it again and again in the raw grief over the loss of my dad when the victory of Christ is more precious than ever.

In his earthshaking Genesis commentary, Walter Brueggeman writes of the “Easter laugh”—the surprising joy of life-long barren Sarah at the new life that issues from her dead womb. Sarah’s  joyous outburst foreshadows the victory laugh of resurrection—the solid hope of those who follow Jesus.

This comforts me.

If you have trouble viewing this video, go here.