Epilog: A Parable of Out of Focus Interpretation

By current evangelical standards, I was raised in a fairly conservative home. And when I took to dating in college, my conservative conscience kicked in. The girl I was interested in did not look like my conservative sisters. My sisters and mother only wore dresses--she wore slacks and pants as well. My sisters and mother had no jewelry, not even wedding rings--she wore earings and rings. One of my sisters never even trimmed her hair because of 1 Corinthians 11--the girl I was interested in had longish hair, but trimmed it from time to time, including the bangs.

So my conscience struck. I really wanted to date the girl, but if I loved the Lord more, shouldn't I discipline myself and not date her. I couldn't ask her to change if it wasn't in her heart...

Well I'll skip the details, but a year of dating followed. She changed. But eventually, she wisely broke up with me to let me do my therapy on my own time. A few months later, her rings came back and the pants, which she had unwisely forgone to feed my conscience. It felt personal, although it wasn't.

So my internal struggle continued. On the one hand, there were those Bible verses:

1 Timothy 2:9: "I want women to dress with modest apparel, with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothes..."

1 Peter 3:3: "Do not let your beauty be outward, arranging hair and wearing gold and fine apparel."

1 Corinthians 11:6: "if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut or shaved off, she should cover her head."

Deuteronomy 22:5 : "It is an abomination for a woman to wear that which pertaineth to a man [insert pants]"

I was fixated on these verses. My mind told me, it's clear as can be. Women shouldn't wear rings or gold. "Pride goeth before a fall and a haughty spirit before destruction." Girls wear jewelry because of pride, how couldn't they given how those rings stand out?

I've both experienced and heard stories of how BIG the rings seem when you get so focused on them. I have a family member who once asked for my wedding ring and then proceeded to waltz around the room with it on her finger saying "Look at me, I have a ring." The implication was that I must wear the ring out of pride or defiance, as if the ring was something I was always conscious of and wore as a statement of how great I was. Surely a person couldn't wear a wedding ring without it being a really big statement.

Keith Drury tells a story of how he went to speak at a conference in the early 70s in a place where they didn't believe in wearing wedding rings. He said as he spoke, he could see the eyes in unison following his left hand. As his had went up, the eyes went up following the ring. When his hand went down, their eyes went down. He was startled that no one was paying the slightest attention to what he was saying because they were so focused on the ring. He finally stopped in the middle of the sermon and said, "Would it help if I took this off and put it in my pocket?" He told me there was an audible sigh of relief when he did.

Why am I saying all this? I'm saying it because I believe a hefty portion of conservative American Christianity is fixated on 1 Timothy 2:12 in a way that is massively out of focus, just like the people who couldn't see anything but the ring. Even though this verse occupies such a small space in the Bible, so many currently can't hardly see anything but this verse when it comes to the matter of women in ministry. How could this verse not be the statement on women in ministry, even though it is really not that clear that it even has anything like ministry in mind and is in one of the more peripheral books in the NT (how many sermons do you hear regularly from 1 Timothy?).

I well remember a day in college a few months after we had broken up. The girl was in the library with her rings back on. It hurt my feelings, it angered me a little. It felt like she was shoving them in my face. But after a few minutes of wrestling, the ridiculousness of the whole thing just broke through on me. She didn't wear the rings because of pride. She was a godly person. It was just a piece of metal, atomic number 79. How in the world could it really be as big a deal to God as it was to me. It seemed to mean about as much to her as a tie might to me.

I would suggest that such a moment of spiritual common sense is greatly in order with regard to women in ministry. The Bible makes it clear that there is no spiritual distinction between men and women. We should really be puzzed at the thought that it would matter to God. We know there is no mental or logical obstacle, certainly not for all women any more than for all men.

So if there is a woman who believes that God has called her, if she has the gifts and graces, how in the world does it make any sense not to affirm her? If you are ever around some of these women--some of our students current and former--you'll have the breakthrough on this issue that I had on rings.