Critical thinking—biblically.
Like you, I experience hard seasons in my Bible reading. Instead of those mountain top moments of epiphanies, my Bible scrolling can be more like a desert trek searching for water, or shade, or any seat of comfort during life’s extreme trials.
The answer, I know but sometimes avoid, is a critical-thinking approach to Scripture. Not reading the Bible for the sake of having read it—which makes Bible reading more of a duty than a discovery—but to dissect verses and consider the history and future of each story or, as in the Psalms and Proverbs, each truth I am to internalize.
If all Scripture is profitable for my teaching and training (2 Timothy 3:16), I need to move from the mindset of a student (or boring professor for those of us who teach), to the heart-set that when I open the Word, I am on the greatest quest of my life—to intimately know the most powerful force in the universe. He is the maker of all things including desire and it is His desire that you know Him.
WHERE TO START THE DISCOVERY
The familiar is often the most overlooked. Verses we’ve known from the early days of AWANAs or passages from the most preached books of the Bible are planted deep in our souls, but have, over time, become dull with familiarity.
I decided it was time for me to sharpen the sword that fits the most comfortably in my hand. I decided it was time to rediscover what had, to me, become common. Could I take a well-known verse of Scripture and look at it differently, asking God to rip the veil of familiarity and open a treasure chest of truth for me? Get me out of the desserts and back on the mountain?
Today, this happened. The dust clouds (the New Mexico desert winds blow dust through the air and crevices of my windows) parted and I saw into the deep waters of His Word.
HERE’S HOW IT HAPPENED
Reading through Joshua Ryan Butler’s book, Beautiful Union, I felt prompted to read Ephesians 5, the familiar verses about husbands loving their wives and wives respecting their husbands … you know the words. Most all pastors cover Ephesians at some point, and these verses in chapter 5 offer straightforward direction that make for good sermons. But this time, I stopped and reread verses 25 through 32.
I probably put on the brakes at these Scriptures because I’ve been on a long-term quest to help women understand their true power—the God-given gifts they received when our Maker fashioned the original woman as an ezer. As you’ve all heard me say (or read me say), ezer is the word the Lord used when he told Adam that he, Adam, needed a helper. This Hebrew word has been translated as helper in the English language. Somehow, in our current culture, helper has come to be understood as a secondary position or as the role of an apprentice. Go help your mother with the dishes. Help our team meet our goal!
There’s nothing wrong with being a servant-minded helper. The Bible encourages us to submit to one another and to serve. But if we limit ourselves with the idea that the woman was created to be that extra pair of hands Adam needed in garden tending, then we miss a powerful truth about a woman’s role in kingdom affairs, which, I believe, is exactly where Satan wants our understanding: limited.
In the original Hebrew, God repeats the word ezer several times and most references are in describing Himself as rescuer of Israel. Not in the call if you need a hand, Israel kind of way, but in a I am God, and you are my people, and I’m going to save you kind of way. The ezer-helper isn’t the cook and cleaning lady in the compound, or the bring-a-dish coordinator for social gatherings—although she can perform these roles with perfection. But the ezer-helper has the power to protect, to rescue, to rush in and save the day—a warrior’s warrior who is at the ready, sword on her hip.
A WOMAN A WARRIOR, REALLY?
God is love and the ezer-warrior was made in His image. God’s love is gentle, sweet, powerful, without judgement and without condition. God’s love is fiercely protective.
If you’re a female believer in Christ, I just described the heart of who you are. Gentle, sweet, with more love to share than you know what to do with. But you’re also a protector in the scariest of ways. Nothing lights your fire like an injustice or innocence harmed. When you understand the power of your love, and what to do with it, then you, me, and the warrior women we serve beside can join our warrior men in changing the world for the better. Next to Christian men, we play an equally important role in God’s kingdom affairs.
I have a dream for you. And it’s a big one.
BACK TO THE SCRIPTURES–MY SWEATY PALMS
So considering my personal platform and passion, the above-mentioned verses from Ephesians can sometimes make me sweat. Let’s be honest, many teachers have taken these verses about women submitting and taught from a human perspective. If only women would learn to respect their husbands and submit … as if we’re the problem at the heart of man’s troubles.
We must move towards the spiritual truth we’re being shown here.
So today, with some biblically critical thinking in tow, I looked at these verses which I’ve heard all my life but never really understood and the lights flashed on. Or the jewels sparkled, or the clouds parted, pick your metaphor. But though I’d had inklings that some unearthed treasure lay beneath the subject/verb structure of these simple do this verses, today I dug deep and hit paydirt.
WHAT PAUL TEACHES HERE …
Paul is interesting to me. His translated words come off as matter of fact and rather authoritative. Paul does take ownership of the church bodies he shepherds, which is a very good thing. But when I approach anything he wrote with the idea that he is revealing a truth instead of writing New Testament rules, then I’m critically looking for more than what the black ink on the white page indicates. I’m approaching Paul as someone with insight, not clergy-type authority (although Paul was given authority to mentor the budding church—again a very good thing).
Try looking at these verses through the lens of discovery. We’re on a quest to understand God’s ways and plans better. Not just memorize the Christian rules and try to keep them.
Here’s the verses from Ephesians 5, starting with verse 25:
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are parts of His body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.
I believe Paul fills the Ephesians in on some deep, spiritual stuff here. True, the entirety of chapter 5 seems to be a list of dos and don’ts for new believers, but what Paul reveals is the truth of his readers’ positions. They, as new creatures (and you and me included) reflect their maker. We are the earthly representation of God.
Think about that.
The verses I stopped to reconsider take this truth to an even deeper place.
Ponder this part of the underlined Scripture– “For this reason … “
Here’s is the critical question: For what reason? For what reason has Paul explained that Christ loves and nourishes the church body as His own body?
Through verses 25-30 Paul compares the depth of Christ’s sacrificial love to the husband’s role in a marriage. And now with for this reason—for the reason of all Christ has done for the body of Christ, a command is about to follow.
Hang with me.
The next part of the sentence: “ …for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
This is a big-gulp-size truth to drink in. Remember, Paul is referencing Christ’s love, sacrifice, and nurturing of the church when he writes the above line. So it is for this reason—Christ’s love of the church–that a man shall leave his father and mother and become one flesh with his wife.
Let me state it another way: A man leaves his father and mother and joins his wife in marriage because that’s what Christ did for the church. He left there to come get you.
I really want to scream this out but my editors have urged me to never use all caps when writing a sentence. (Eye roll here) I’ll just write it again so you know I’m excited.
A man leaves his family and joins his wife because … that’s what Christ did for the church.
A man leaves all he knows and becomes one flesh with a woman because this demonstrates Christ’s plans to the world. We do what we do in ceremonial and intimate marriage because Christ did what he did.
We don’t marry because we’re lonely. Or because we want children (though kids are a bonus and that’s another lesson). We don’t marry because we want to have sex, and not because it’s considered a normal next-step in life. But we join flesh with the opposite gender because Christ joined flesh with you. The spiritual joined the opposite when He joined the material. Worlds collided.
Remember, we are God’s made-in-his image representatives on earth, and in marriage, we represent the beauty of Christ’s sacrificial and nurturing love for the church. As women filling this wonder-of-the galaxies role, we represent the responsive, love-smitten and very protective bride.
I don’t think I’m far off here, as Paul’s next sentence underscores the revelation:
This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church (vs. 31).
Marriage is so much more than a partnership with benefits. Marriage is a sacred enactment of a God’s other-worldly love.
As I read a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, I realized that when Jesus left His father to come as a sacrifice, there was a component of his leaving heaven I’d never thought about. While the miracle of his becoming a man and dying for our sins are acts greater than we’ll ever fully understand this side of the glass darkly, there was more. He left His heavenly family to seek a bride for the purpose of holding fast to her. To cleave to her; to link to her permanently. To join His spiritual but earthly flesh to her earthly flesh.
Did your lights just flash on? Your clouds part?
Jesus cleaves, holds fast to, and has become one with you. You.
THE BRIDE’S RESPONSE
Our response should be to play the faithful and protective Bride of Christ just as we fulfill this role in our earthly marriages. For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, our union with Christ is displayed in our unions with our husbands.
I realize that not all Christian marriages, probably most, are not reflective of this beautiful union of Christ and the church—the one-flesh sacred love. But all the more reasons to pray for your marriage and marriages across the world. Our spiritual enemies work hard at distorting the reflection marriage is supposed to be.
Don’t give up. Love and fiercely protect the act of marriage. It’s in you, Ezer Warrior!
And add some critical thinking to your Bible time. You’ll find treasures for your poor-in-spirit self.
BTW, He’s coming back for the bride. And that’s another truth to critically ponder … on another day.
If I perish, I perish,
Laurie
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