What's Wrong With Hierarchy?

In Which I'm Not Convinced It's Such A Bad Thing

File: Adam and Eve after the Expulsion MET DP818811.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Ok, maybe just one more post about Households of Faith: Practicing Family in the Kingdom of God. Overall, the book is filled with good points, like that Christians shouldn’t be family-centric so much as church-centric. When you think of households, rather than mere families, you can stretch a little to include those who need a family but, for whatever reason, don’t have one in the traditional sense. Moreover, Jesus reordered the biological family in relationship to himself. He comes first over your father, mother, siblings, and even spouse and children. I don’t know many Christians who would flatly disagree and refuse to accept what the Bible says on this point, but of course, it’s hard to live out. The church needs families to come and so often programming will be developed to accommodate them, or the general shape of the ministry will incline in that direction. It ought to be that families allow their lives to be shaped by the church, but often the church lets itself be shaped by the families that come. It might feel like we’re all going in a circle round and round, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying to put it in the right order.

One of my biggest problems with the book is how McGowin takes her preferred reading of a text and asserts that it is the best way and only to read it while ignoring other points of view and texts that might shed light upon the subject. One such place is in her discussion of Genesis 1 and 2, that well-traversed exegetical ground. And I thought it was suitable to bring it up today, in light of all the IVF stuff in the news, given one or two claims she makes. Let’s work through her argument and see where we land.

Some Christians find in the creation stories of Genesis 1–2 a divine model for gender and marriage. They find prescribed gender roles where, for example, men are made to create and conquer, while women are made to receive and nurture. They also find a prescribed, gender-based structure for marriage. Husbands are to be spiritual leaders and rule their households sacrificially, while wives are to be capable helpers and serve their husbands and children cheerfully. This interpretation of Genesis 1–2 is very popular in my setting, but we need to ask: Does this interpretation coincide with how Jesus interprets Genesis 1–2? No, I don’t think it does.

I’ve got to interrupt right here and point out the reason why men are thought to be the spiritual leaders of their households, and how Genesis 1 and 2, in particular, lead many to that conclusion. McGowin forbears to notice this, but Adam has more information about how things are supposed to be because God spoke to him and told him before Eve was created. Adam then either garbles the words of God, or changes them on purpose, but by the time Eve is tangling with the Devil himself, what she says is not precisely what God said. The fact that Adam was with her and did nothing, but let her fall into sin, is why Paul holds him responsible for the fall of all humanity. It’s curious to me that McGowin doesn’t bring any of this up.