I’m prompted to address something that may not be obvious.
As always, I don’t take myself that seriously. For now, I’m the senior elder for a small community of people who identify with the label “Radix Fidem”. The vast majority of what I say to that community is just my own convictions and echoes of my experiences and education.
The community is defined as people who seem interested in what I have to say about faith and religion. When I die or simply quit writing, someone else can play the role of elder and shape things to match their convictions, experiences and education. God forbid that what I taught should become law.
If you should ask how much authority I have, the answer is, “however much you give me”. I have neither the ability nor inclination to spank anyone in the community, as I did with my children many years ago. It should be pretty obvious: If I sense you aren’t listening, I’ll stop talking to you. That also answers the question of how much authority I ought to have.
When I read stuff around the Net, I keep running into this unspoken assumption that religious leaders should be engaging society from a position of authority. I call that “idiocy”. It’s not a question of whether I have answers that might work for some problems. God always has the answers, and I’m quite convinced He has given me some that work for me. Apparently they work for others, which is how we have a community.
But the whole point is that a very essential element of His answer for me is to withdraw from the society at large as much as possible. Anyone who wants to join me will have to do the same, because I’m not a part of that world. There’s that business of “in the world, not of it”. My withdrawal is more a matter of moral principle than literal distance. I’m walking in the Covenant, and that’s very different world, invisible to everyone outside the Covenant.
As far as I’m concerned, the world outside of my covenant boundaries is marked for destruction. It’s built on sand, not on the rock of Christ. Even if I devote myself to serious academic pursuit of God’s revelation, the result is something the world cannot use. The world at large cannot even understand it.
When someone representing the world asks questions, it’s highly unlikely they’ll have any use for my answer. Sometimes I honestly don’t try to answer, but on occasion I’ll feel moved to give some partial answer that they might be able to grasp. There’s always that business of using a common language, and my Lord does seem to like helping me express His truth in terms people can understand, even if they would never have the power inside of them to use it.
Part of the reason for doing that is much like that time Jesus spoke of Bread of Life (John 6). He ended up polarizing His audience that day, and the circus ended. The time had come to finally alienate those who could never understand. The principle is more important than the specific answer.
I cannot pretend to ignore: There’s a whole world out there filled with nonsense. Most of the questions they seem to ask are the wrong questions in the first place. I’m working from the Bible and my convictions. Neither of them addresses what defines “man/male” and “woman/female”. If you struggle with that, you are the problem. The Bible presumes that the answer to this question is already obvious. And it doesn’t recognize any other genders. Thus, I don’t need to address any of that.
What should we do with a woman who feels driven to be more than just a mom and housewife? What if she has talents and interests outside the home? Well, her male covering decides what she can do about it, not me. Talents and human ambition don’t count for much in the Covenant. Oh, wait; I forgot to state the obvious that the Covenant presumes a feudal tribal household arrangement as the norm. But the answer is the same for men — their talents and ambitions don’t mean much, either. You live in the context and seek to glorify His name.
If a man dealing with a restive wife/daughter asks my advice, we’ll talk about it in the context of how he lives. In the final analysis, he has to decide what he will do. As previously noted, the Covenant generally denies the concept of human equality when it comes to making decisions about life. Feudalism is wired into Creation itself.
The vast majority of the world has no interest in such answers. The world cannot imagine that God designed human existence that way. Well, that’s my answer. If you want my spiritual covering, you’ll have to embrace it. Otherwise, there’s not much I can do for you.
