Yes, Jesus loves me

The Bible tells me so

This man has no idea.

Next month, I’m presenting at Humble Gathering, a lecture series for the organization Christian Feminism Today, an inordinately supportive group of smart and soulful people who take their theology seriously.

I first met the group back when they were the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women’s Caucus, and I wrote a book about growing up fundamentalist. When you write a book that throws rocks at your own church, well, let’s just say no one wants to sit by you at the next church picnic, and really, can you blame them.

I couldn’t have found a more radical welcome among EEWC/CFT members, and though I’m not a particularly active member, I pay dues and keep up with the goings-on long-distance.

My topic is the title of this piece, because it’s taken me years to convince myself that yes, Jesus loves me, despite the fact that I am a woman, a weaker vessel, a help-meet. That’s what I was taught growing up and those lessons are difficult to shake. Perhaps you heard nonsense, too, from your faith group. My Sunday school lessons were sprinkled with admonitions that I keep myself confined to a very small space, submissive to the menfolk, which never sat well with my tomboy, up-yours vibe.

But then, can a tomboy, up-yours vibe get you into heaven? I figured no, so I retained the vibe, but read my Bible closely and memorized large portions of it because that was rewarded in that time and in that place. If I couldn’t act the part of a submissive woman, I could at least argue my point, sola scriptura, using scriptures alone (which is about as effective an approach to Christianity as being an originalist with the U.S. Constitution is to being a citizen — but oh well). You can’t convince a fundamentalist unless you have mad Bible skills, so that was my goal. I’d convert the whole lot of us to a kinder, gentler Christianity — maybe something more akin to what Jesus proposed.

Well, that didn’t happen. The problem comes when someone says X and you know the text says Y, and you speak up and you’re a girl in an orthodox, patriarchal world.

So I took my tomboy, up-yours vibe and left the church, and spent years looking over my shoulder for the first sign of Judgment Day, when I would be thrown into hell.

I am over that now, thanks.

I’ve been building my presentation this week. As I’m writing it, I realize that I am a different person than when I wrote the book mentioned above, “Dating Jesus.” I certainly didn’t stop studying my Bible when my book was published, but I’ve recognized over and over that for all my mad Bible skills, I am still playing catch-up with context. Context is everything, but context doesn’t sit well with sola scriptura. Knowing the target audience of the epistles, say, is context. Understanding the fervor of the new convert is, as well. A little history helps, too.

I realize now that I’m no longer angry at Paul, who is the traditional author of so many clobber verses used to keep women in the pew — or tending to the babies in the nursery because that’s what girls do. Given context, Paul might have been welcoming women more than I was taught. Given context, Paul might have been telling women not to sit silently in the assembly, but to wait their turn to speak, which is only right. This is Paul, after all, who held up Phoebe, a deacon of the church, as an example to all, and Paul, who greeted as many women as he did men at the beginning and closing of his letters.

It has taken me years to admit this but: I may have been wrong about Bro. Paul and I’d like to apologize here, as if he gives a rip, but there you are