by Dear brethren, I’d like to share with you a modern parable.
As some of you may know, I work in local government waste management, and part of my job is to manage a busy household waste recycling centre. Unfortunately, a minority of people who use the civic amenity site don’t want to abide by the rules – they drive the wrong way round the one-way system, they throw their waste in the wrong skip, and they’re rude and aggressive to my staff. In extreme cases, I have to ban people from the site. You can see where this is going, can’t you?
Yesterday, a local politician came to the site. The operative at the gatehouse asked him to fill out the usual paperwork, to which the politician replied, “Oh, I don’t need to do that, I’m the So-and-so.” The operative politely contradicted the politician and told him that, actually, yes, he did need to complete the paperwork. The politician then began to complete the form, and as soon as my staff-member’s back was turned attending to another site visitor, he proceeded to dump the waste in the wrong place and quickly drove off, leaving my guy to clean up the mess.
So, imagine, in our parable, that CAC is the household waste recycling centre. Most people obey the rules quite happily, even though some of us make the occasional mistake – it happens, we’re only human. Imagine that the site staff in the HWRC are the moderators at CAC – they’re there to help, to keep things moving, and occasionally to step in and say, “Excuse me, but you can’t put that there.” So far, so good. Then we have the politician – someone who thinks, because they occupy a certain place, that they’re above the law and the rules of the site, and they don’t have to listen to the moderators. Let us compare this politician – who doesn’t think they need to listen to some local government employee in steel toe-cap boots and a high-vis vest – to men at CAC who don’t think they need to listen to a moderator because she is a woman.
We have to be clear that a moderator of a forum is a secular position – just as being an attendant at the civic amenity site is a secular position. In both cases, a woman can do the job just as well as a man can, and women do that job both at my work and at CAC. If my female member of staff – let’s call her ‘Janet’ – tells someone that they’re throwing their black sacks in the wrong skip and to stop it, then the site user has to respect Janet’s authority, regardless of whether that user is a man or a woman, or an ordinary member of the public, or an elected representative. The message is plain: when you’re on our site, you respect our rules, and you respect our staff. Recycling centre or Christian forum, there is no difference.
Now, I would be the first to leap to the defence of what I consider to be the Biblical position regarding women teaching and asserting authority over a man. My views on that are well known. However, we at CAC believe the following:
- CallingAllChristians is not a church, but instead is a curated conversation – therefore women are as free to share their spiritual thoughts and impressions as they would in ordinary Christian company.
- The position of moderator here is no different to the position at, say, The New York Times website – therefore when women use their authority as moderators, this is in a secular capacity, and does not violate the Biblical principle.
Some might contest that last point – isn’t application of the rules of a Christian forum an exercise of spiritual authority? I would ask, are the rules of engagement at CAC any different from, to use the same example, those at the The New York Times? Courtesy, politeness, not using strong language, etc.
Some might also argue that women are making spiritual judgements, and on the basis of those judgements, banning men. Both at CAC and The New York Times, there exists what we might call an orthodoxy – although orthodoxies which are very different from one another in origin and result. However, in both places, if you violate that orthodoxy your heresy will see you cast out into the outer darkness. At the last examination, it matters not one bit whether the person who makes the decision to ban someone from the site for teaching heresy is a man or a woman. All believers, brothers and sisters, are called upon to withdraw from iniquity. In a church setting, no doubt those who are overseers would be consulted and take action regarding heresy, but here it is really a matter of removing the evil from amongst ourselves as rapidly as possible.
These are just a few thoughts which came to me in the wake of the recent controversy. I trust that the brethren will find them useful, and that the Lord will bless them if they are right in His sight.