From Risk to Resilience by Jenny Rae Armstrong

Author:Jenny Rae Armstrong [Armstrong, Jenny Rae]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-5138-0411-8
Publisher: MennoMedia
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

I could name off the top of my head several women who have had these verses used as weapons, of sorts, against them. In my experience, pastors are the primary culprits. What a miscarriage of justice, when the shepherds are more concerned with policing the sheep than with protecting them from predators!

In my church, I teach people that they need to ask themselves three questions every time they approach a passage of Scripture. What sort of literature is this? What was the author trying to communicate? And what would it have meant to the original audience? This requires some work, but if we don’t do our best to understand the Bible in its social, historical, and literary context, we risk seriously misinterpreting it. The Bible is not a cut-and-dried rulebook for life: it is a collection of narratives, and poems, and histories, and letters, and yes, rulebooks, that tell the story of how God has interacted with humanity over millennia. Oftentimes, the takeaway is not in the specifics of the stories, but in the principles underlying them—the spirit of the law, instead of the letter of the law.

The women Peter was speaking to didn’t have many options. They couldn’t file for divorce, and if their husbands divorced them, they had no way to support themselves, and risked catastrophic ruin. Compliance was the safest option, and Peter, knowing their circumstances, shored up their courage. But make no mistake: gender-based violence is a sin, and followers of Jesus should do their level best to oppose it, whether that means confronting perpetrators or refusing to enable them by acting as their personal punching bag. People will sin against us; that is inevitable. But we are not doing those people any spiritual favors by allowing them to continue sinning against us if we have another option.

Living as faithful disciples of Jesus in this world means living with a lot of tension, from within and without. Following Christ is not easy, or simple, or clean, and the more you engage with the brokenness around you, the more complicated it becomes. The question of how Christians should respond to violence against themselves, against others, and against the most vulnerable among us is one of those areas of tension. We can, however, address common patterns of thought and behavior that we know are contrary to the way of Christ, and begin there.

One of the most insidious problems in Christianity occurs when those with power encourage those with less power to carry crosses they have no business bearing, typically in a way that benefits the powerful at the expense of the vulnerable. We’ve been at it for millennia. Wives told to submit to abusive husbands. Enslaved people told to submit to the men who enslaved them. Girls told to forgive and forget instead of pressing charges. Oppressed groups enjoined to be peaceful by the very people who are violating them. It sounds good on the surface—pious, even—and a deep desire to please God can keep sincere people compliant in their suffering.

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