Every year we celebrate Love Your Red Hair Day for our beautiful red-head grand-ezer, Arden. As if we needed a national holiday to celebrate Arden or her little beautiful brunette sister Avery. They bring enormous joy to Frank and me. We thank God every day for them and not just on a National Day!
This year, against the backdrop of a tumultuous and toxic world, we are more profoundly aware than ever of the priceless treasure our children and grandchildren are and the joy of watching them grow up, learn, explore, and evolve into the ezers God created them to be.
May this day be a reminder to pray for the safety, health, and thriving of little ones throughout the world.
For years, friends of mine have been actively involved in ministry to and with Palestinians. Relationships they have forged and their understanding of the plight of Palestinians means they are personally devastated by the current crisis in Gaza. They too are outraged over the vicious October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and their horrifying atrocities against ordinary Israelis—men, women, children, even babies. They also grieve the estimated 200 hostages Hamas seized in this attack and are still holding—teenagers, young children and elderly people—and are praying for their safe release.
My friends are also grieving Israel’s retaliatory bombardment aimed at eradicating Hamas that is decimating Gaza and creating enormous collateral damage in the loss of innocent Palestinian citizens lives—men, women, children, even babies. Homes and entire communities are being destroyed. They know and love Palestinians, many who are Christians, but countless others others who are caught in the crossfire of a war they didn’t start and are helpless to end.
To help the rest of us understand both the Palestinian people and the ongoing conflict better, over the next 3 weeks, my friend, Rob Dalrymple of DetermineTruth, is hosting a series of livestreams (on YouTube and Facebook live). These livestreams will feature various Christian experts who are passionate about peace and justice between Israel and Palestine. They will help us understand more about this crisis and events leading up to it.
Eight livestreams are already scheduled; several more are in the works. Below are the links and a brief description for the first 3. The first one is already posted, with a second later today.
Rob will post updates on the DetermineTruth website daily to alert you of the next event and will also send out the links via email 2-3 livestreams at a time. He will also post these livestreams on his FaceBook account. These presentations will present a fuller understanding of the Palestinians’ and present information about the impact of this crisis on them that doesn’t always reach us or our church communities.
These friends of mine are passionate—as they should be. So buckle up and prepare to have your thinking challenged and expanded and your hope refueled in what God is doing through his image bearers to bring peace to this region. We all have a lot to learn.
In this livestream, Rob interviews Mae Cannon (PhD). Mae is the Executive Director of Churches for MiddleEast Peace. She is as deeply connected as anyone on the issue of Israel-Palestine. She is in regular communication with world leaders from the White House to Tel Aviv to Ramallah. This is a can’t miss interview. No one is better connected than Dr. Cannon. She speaks before the United Nations. She is in touch with the White House and other heads of state. And she is a really good person!
In this Livestream, Rob will interview Dr. Bruce Fisk. Dr. Fisk is a retired professor at Westmont College. He is the Senior Research Fellow for the Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East. This event will surely be informative and challenging.
It doesn’t seem to matter what chapter of world history our stories occupy or where we live on the planet. Every day the world over we are eye-witnesses to the never-ending abuse of and fight for power. Today’s “Breaking News” centers on Hamas terrorists’ brutal attack in Gaza against Israeli citizens that ignited fierce fighting and an escalating count of deaths and casualties of ordinary Israelite and Palestinian citizens.
Back home, the US government is embroiled in another (thankfully non-violent) fight for power within one political party to secure the next Speakership for their candidate.
But amid all this turbulence, we need to remind ourselves: This isn’t the whole story. Throughout history (and certainly in the Bible) we witness breathtaking examples of people using their power for enormous good, often at great cost to themselves.
Admittedly, the human story is fraught with power struggles of one sort or another. But power in itself is neither good nor bad. The more pressing question is: How does one use their power?
“The malestrom is the particular ways in which the fall impacts the male of the human species—causing a man to lose himself, his identity and purpose as a man, and above all to lose sight of God’s original vision for his sons.” —Malestrom, (xxiv)
Malestrom features men in the Bible who lived in a world defined by patriarchy—including what it means to be a man. These men appear in biblical narratives featuring women I was researching and writing about in earlier books. I was intrigued. In today’s world three of them—Judah, Matthew, and erstwhile religious terrorist Saul of Tarsus—would be behind bars. But God was in all of their stories. That changed everything.
The men whose stories appear in Malestrom led me to reexamine patriarchy and its impact on men and boys in every culture and generation from Genesis to the present. Each of the men in Malestrom reached a pivotal moment where following God’s call required swimming against the patriarchy’s currents and shedding their culture’s patriarchal manhood constructs.
Rejecting patriarchy demands freed them to live before the face of God and to follow Jesus, who never conformed to patriarchal rules. The manhood they came to embody looked a lot like Jesus. Their stories give reason for hope in the darkest evil and in the most desperate times.
Malestrom is good news for men and boys globally because the Bible—a story cast against a global darkness that still permeates today’s world—is great good news for men and for women. The dramatic changes in these men unleashed a new Jesus brand of power that fuels hope against the darkest evil and in the most desperate times—the kind of hope we need today.
“As someone who grew up in the church, was raised on the Bible, and taught to read it from cover-to-cover, I struggled as a kid and as an adult to get through parts of the Bible that made no sense or didn’t seem relevant to me. How I wish a book like Alex Goodwin’sthe Bible Reset had come along. Whether you love reading the Bible (or wish you did), the Bible Reset will forever change how you read the Bible. You’ll be drawn into the grand story God is telling that centers on Jesus. You may even get a bit of help from Hobbits.”
—Carolyn Custis James
“Goodwin’s insights are practical, digestible, and will go a long way in helping frustrated believers reframe the Bible as a rich and complex grand narrative rather than a collection of bumper-sticker quotes. The faithful will be inspired.”
—Publishers Weekly
The Bible Reset releases October 17, 2023 and is now available for preorder!
After you read Alex’s book (which I hope you will), check out the Institute for Bible Reading’sImmerse initiative which implements recommendation contained in the Bible Reset. Immerse is designed to encourage modern readers to take up and read the Bible for themselves. Immerse republished the Bible in multiple volumes, using the New Living Bible translation, which is based on the most recent scholarship in the theory of translation, and employs the format Alex recommends in his book.
Growing numbers of individuals and church congregations are re-engaged in Bible reading individually and in small groups. It has already become something of a movement. Goodwin makes a strong case that changing the Bible’s format, common reading practices, and perception of the biblical narrative can unlock Scripture for millions of Christians who struggle to read it.
I’ve never lost my early love of the Scriptures and long to see to see more people “take up and read” this powerful hope-filled story of God’s relentless love for the world he created and that Jesus came to rescue.
“Like electricity, running water, well-stocked grocery stores, and endless miles of smooth paved roads, easy access to the Bible and the ability to own a copy are privileges we take for granted. We’ve lost sight of what it took to write this much-neglected book and the price many paid to get it into our hands. We’re missing out on the life-transforming wisdom and the hope-filled good news it proclaims. Nothing should hold us back from diving into the grandest and best story ever told and to discover afresh the God who loves us and draws us into his story. I am grateful to be part of a movement that aims to help us do exactly that.”
What better follow-up to Father’s Day than to witness a dad’s heart for his daughters.
Discussions and debates over gender roles for women in the church can be fierce, divisive, and abstract, although the impact on women and girls is far from abstract.
That whole discussion takes on a whole new sense of urgency when it impacts someone you love.
The Following to Lead podcast gave me another opportunity to promote women and girls as ezer-warriors for God’s purposes—created to cultivate the gifts God has entrusted to us and to use them for his purposes. This is God’s calling on all of his daughters, from first to final breath, and we are indispensable allies with the men and boys in our lives.
When host Kevin East started the conversation, I had no idea this discussion would take on such profound personal significance for him. But Kevin is a dad with young daughters he loves. For him, our conversation was about them and underscores the indispensable role a father has in the flourishing of his daughters. We need more dad’s like Kevin!
Like I said, this is a great follow-up for Father’s Day.
“Warring Brothers” is an appropriate subtitle for the book of Genesis.
Fierce sibling rivalry among brothers dominates the entire Genesis storyline. Jesus warned that there would be “wars and rumors of wars” (Matthew 24:6). History has played out exactly as he said with warring brothers on a personal and global scale. Even America’s Civil War is often described in family terms as “brothers against brothers.” That reality is no more evident than in the book of Genesis: Cain vs. Abel, Ishmael vs. Isaac, Esau vs. Jacob, and the all-out-war among Jacob’s sons.
Tamar, a young Canaanite girl, enters the Genesis narrative during a dangerous time in redemptive history (Genesis 38). The covenant family of promise (only in its fourth generation) is in disarray — torn apart by a bitter rivalry between Jacob’s ten older sons and Joseph (son number eleven). Jacob’s fourth son, Judah, is the ringleader when the brothers plot to murder Joseph — the son their father loves best and the younger brother who inflamed their resentment by bragging of dreams in which his whole family bows down to him.
The brothers abandon their murderous plan, instead selling seventeen-year-old Joseph as a slave to a group of Midianites (Genesis 37:12-36). A cover-up follows. The brothers shred, then soak Joseph’s royal robe in goat’s blood, present it to Jacob, and let their father interpret the evidence.
Jacob is inconsolable. In Egypt, the Midianites sell Joseph to Potiphar, Pharaoh’s captain of the guard.
Literary Misjudgment or Tactical Decision?
Then, just as the Joseph story reaches a fever pitch and readers are on the edge of their seats, instead of following Joseph into Egypt, the narrator follows Judah away from his family into Canaanite territory and into a salacious R-rated story involving prostitution with his daughter-in-law Tamar. From a literary perspective, the narrator’s choice seems counterproductive — an irritating disruption. From a pastoral perspective, this sordid story is problematic, unsuitable for a G-rated family audience, devoid of any spiritual value. Pastors often skip it.
In his Genesis commentary, Walter Brueggemann explains the problem,
This peculiar chapter stands alone, without connection to its context. It is isolated in every way and is most enigmatic…It is not evident that it provides any significant theological resource. It is difficult to know in what context it might be of value for theological exposition.1
Recent Old Testament scholarship has produced evidence that, far from being a literary gaffe, the narrator’s decision to include this “enigmatic” episode is strategic — that Genesis 38 is actually the hinge that holds the Joseph story together. It bridges Jacob’s destructive favoritism and the searing father wound Judah suffers with the climactic meeting between Judah and Joseph in Egypt where warring brothers finally make peace. Events in this often-neglected chapter and Tamar’s role in particular actually hold the key to understanding the story it seems to interrupt.
A strong case can be made to vindicate Tamar and demonstrate she has been unjustly vilified. Not only does she play a heroic, redemptive role that benefits Judah and his immediate family, the impact of her controversial actions ripples out globally to advance God’s redemptive purposes for the world. The royal line of Jesus is at stake. Her story is one of many remarkable instances recorded in Scripture when God raises up a woman to advance his purposes.
Contrary to pastoral hesitations, Genesis 38 contains rich fodder for pastoral application and is especially relevant for today’s church and world.
Vindicating Tamar and restoring to her the honor she rightfully deserves as a courageous agent for God’s purposes begins by considering three questions:
First, what evidence does the Bible present that warrants us to reconsider Tamar’s story in the first place?
Second, how does the patriarchal cultural context of the Ancient Near East shape the Tamar/Judah narrative and the larger Joseph story?
Third, what pastoral and theological relevance and wisdom does the Tamar/Judah story offer us today?
Reasons to Reconsider Tamar
In the court of religious opinion, the word “prostitute” governs our view of Tamar as a loose, vindictive woman who stoops to selling her body for sex in her desperation to have a baby or to get even with her father-in-law. Interpreters and preachers alike find it impossible to see her in any other light. One pastor thundered accusingly from his pulpit, “Tamar corrupted the line of Christ!”
It should, however, give us pause to note that this isn’t how her descendants or other biblical writers view her.
First, Tamar is named in a beautiful blessing to honor the marriage of Boaz and Ruth. “Through the offspring the LORD gives you by this young woman, may your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah” (Ruth 4:12). At a sacred moment like this, it hardly seems appropriate to bring up a shameful skeleton out of the family closet.
Second, both King David and his son Absalom named their daughters Tamar. In the Hebrew culture, parents gave their children names to cause their children to aspire.
Third, in an unusual departure from standard genealogies, Matthew in the New Testament names Tamar in Jesus’ royal genealogy (Matthew 1:3) — along with three other women (Rahab, Ruth, and Solomon’s mother, a.k.a. Bathsheba) whose stories should also be re-examined.
But the fourth, and by far the most compelling reason to reconsider Tamar, comes from Judah himself. He publicly vindicates Tamar by calling her “righteous” (Genesis 38:26).
The Patriarchal Context
Contrary to Brueggemann’s assessment, Tamar’s story doesn’t exist in isolation. It is embedded within the Ancient Near East patriarchal culture and nested within layers of dysfunctional family history — both Judah’s family of origin and the family he fathers. Understanding both contexts is essential to make sense of her story.
The importance of patriarchy as a hermeneutical tool is hard to overstate. As Americans and Westerners, we interpret these ancient biblical narratives at a significant disadvantage, for we are culturally as far removed from the patriarchal world of the Bible as you can get in today’s world. The fact that patriarchy appears on virtually every page of the Bible has led to the mistaken conclusion that patriarchy (at least a softer version) is the God-ordained way for us to live. In my book Malestrom: How Jesus Dismantles Patriarchy and Redefines Manhood, I submit that:
“Patriarchy is not the Bible’s message. Rather, it is the fallen cultural backdrop that sets off in the strongest relief the radical nature and potency of the Bible’s gospel message. We need to understand that world and patriarchy in particular — much better than we do — if we hope to grasp the radical countercultural message of the Bible.”2
To understand Tamar’s story clearly, we must grasp the reality that at least three aspects of full-fledged patriarchy existed in biblical times and still have a pernicious hold on our cultural worldview today.
First, patriarchy (“father rule”) invests men with priority, power, and authority over women.
Patriarchy relies on female submission and deprives women of agency, voice, and legal rights. Women are essentially the property of men.3 This creates a chilling power differential between men and women. Marriage between Tamar and Judah’s firstborn makes Tamar the property of Judah’s family. Judah exercises life-and-death powers over her when he orders an honor killing for her prostitution. Patriarchy’s disempowerment of women puts them at risk and places an exclamation point beside Tamar’s audacious actions.
Second, primogeniture (“the firstborn son’s right to inheritance”) ranks sons by birth order.
The firstborn son is crown prince in the family with primacy and authority over his siblings, plus a double inheritance. Primogeniture intensifies the outrage of Jacob’s ten older sons beyond ordinary jealousy, when their father bestows firstborn privileges on Joseph, son number eleven. Jacob’s favoritism takes on physical dimensions when he gives Joseph a royal robe — hard evidence that Jacob “loved Joseph more than any of his other sons” (Genesis 37:3).
The Bible repeatedly overturns primogeniture — most often by God’s decree, choosing Abel, not Cain; Isaac not Ishmael; Jacob not Esau. Still, primogeniture is deeply ingrained in the Ancient Near East culture and in the Abrahamic family’s DNA in particular. It wreaks havoc in Judah’s family of origin and creates conflict among his sons.
It is entirely possible that Judah felt entitled to firstborn rights. His three older brothers disqualified themselves by dishonoring their father — Reuben by sleeping with Jacob’s concubine, Simeon and Levi by slaughtering the Shechemites. Judah, son number four, was next in line. This may explain Judah’s leadership among his brothers and also his intense hatred of Joseph.
Third, under patriarchy, wives were responsible to produce sons for their husbands.
It is not possible to overstate the pressure this obligation placed on women. A woman’s value was determined by counting her sons. Barren women in the Bible are desperate for sons, not daughters. The urgency of producing sons meant puberty signaled a girl’s marriageability. Presumably Tamar was a young teenage girl when Judah acquired her for his firstborn son, Er.
The greatest calamity for the ancients was for a man to die without a male heir. It was tantamount to being erased from history. This happens to both of Tamar’s husbands and is central to what motivates her deception of Judah. Levirate practices (later formalized under Mosaic Law) required the surviving brother to marry the dead brother’s widow to father a son to take the deceased’s place on the family tree, including his inheritance. It was a matter of family honor.
Tamar clearly felt the weight of family honor and was ultimately willing to risk her life to fulfill her duty to produce a male heir for her dead husband.
By the time Tamar enters the story (Genesis 38), Judah is in a spiritual nosedive. He has left the covenant family, moved into Canaanite territory, married a Canaanite, and is behaving like one. This dark, sinister figure was capable of murder and guilty of human trafficking and a cruel cover-up. Before the story ends, he will solicit the services of a prostitute — an evil act that reigns down judgment on Tamar, but for some reason, slides by Judah, although his present depraved moral state is evident.
The Patriarchal System of Primogeniture
Judah fathers three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. When Judah acquires Tamar as a bride for his son, her father placed her in the power of evil men. The Bible describes Judah’s first two sons as evil men who lose their lives in divine judgment. Thankfully, Scripture spares us the details of what Tamar may have suffered in marriage to her first evil husband. The truth comes out with respect to Onan, son number two, who marries Tamar allegedly to produce a son to replace his deceased brother Er. It is an objective Onan has no intention of fulfilling. Primogeniture (“the firstborn son’s right to inheritance”) reveals his motive.
Under a patriarchal system, a father would divide his estate by the number of his sons plus one. Judah had three sons, and so would divide his estate into four portions. Two portions (the double portion) would go to his firstborn. Each of his younger sons would inherit one fourth.
When Judah’s firstborn, Er, died, firstborn rights transferred to Onan. Onan’s inheritance skyrockets from one-fourth to two-thirds. Fathering a son with Tamar to replace Er will come at a major cost to Onan, shrinking his inheritance back to one-fourth. Clearly, Onan understood the math. It was a sacrifice he was unwilling to make. So he feigned loyalty to Er and family duty by marrying Er’s widow Tamar, allegedly to produce a male heir for his dead brother. But Onan repeatedly abused Tamar, using her for his pleasure, but spilling his semen on the ground to prevent impregnating her. God intervened. It cost Er his life.
Now bereaved of two sons, Judah sends Tamar back to her father to wait for Shelah (son number three) to reach marriageable age. Time passes, and Tamar realizes Judah’s promises are worthless.
By then Judah’s wife had died, the mourning period was over, and he was going to the annual sheep shearing — a festive time of food and drink. That was when Tamar, aware of Judah’s deception, posed as a prostitute and stationed herself in Judah’s path. (It says a lot about Judah that Tamar could count on him taking the bait, which he does.)The deed is done, and Tamar walks away with his seal, cord, and staff as a pledge of payment — the equivalent of his passport and driver’s license. No paternity test is necessary to identify the father of her child.
Tamar may even have been within her legal rights. Ancient Hittite and Assyrian laws permitted a father-in-law to marry his son’s widow if no brother fulfilled the family duty.4
When Judah and Tamar Collide
On learning that Tamar is pregnant with a child from prostitution, with blinding speed and shocking hypocrisy, Judah orders her to be burned to death (Genesis 38:24). Neither the horror of that moment nor his flagrant double standard should escape our notice.
Judah is a dark, violent, angry, utterly lost man. But that is about to change. The watershed moment for him comes when Tamar produces evidence exposing Judah as the man by whom she is pregnant.
Judah’s response has interpreters scratching their heads and fishing for explanations. Several translations [NIV, NKJV, ASV, ESV] depict a chastened Judah making a comparative statement, “She is morerighteous than I” (Genesis 38:26, emphasis added).
It strains credulity to imagine Judah exonerating himself as “righteous,” when Tamar has publicly exposed him as a hypocrite and a solicitor of prostitution.
Gordon Wenham’s translation reveals an absolute contrast: “She is in the right, not I.”5 Bruce K. Waltke, agrees, translating “She is righteous, not I” or “She is righteous, I am not.”6 These more accurate translations of the Hebrew text compel us to re-examine our assumptions of both Tamar and Judah.
This is the moment when the prodigal looks in the mirror, sees the man he has become, and comes to his senses. And Tamar is bold enough to hold the mirror.
The radical impact this has on Judah shows up in Egypt when he meets Joseph again during a devastating famine (Genesis 44). A terrible crisis erupts when Joseph’s cup is found in Benjamin’s sack, planted there by Joseph who is now tormenting his older brothers. Benjamin, Joseph’s only full blood brother, is now Jacob’s youngest, and newly favorite son.
Judah commands the spotlight in what is one of the most powerful scenes in all of scripture (Genesis 44:18-33). With a throbbing unhealed father wound, without realizing he’s talking to Joseph — the brother he wanted to kill and sold into slavery twenty years ago — with his father still playing favorites and talking as though Judah, his mother, and brothers don’t exist, and with Benjamin now heading for the living death Judah once chose for Joseph,
Judah stepped forward and said,
“Please, my lord, let your servant say just one word to you. Please, do not be angry with me, even though you are as powerful as Pharaoh himself.
My lord, previously you asked us, your servants, ‘Do you have a father or a brother?’ And we responded, ‘Yes, my lord, we have a father who is an old man, and his youngest son is a child of his old age. His full brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother’s children, and his father loves him.’
You said to us…’Unless your youngest brother comes with you, you will never see my face again.’
…Later, when [our father] said, ‘Go back again and buy us more food,’we replied, ‘We can’t go unless you let our youngest brother go with us.’ . . .
Then my father said to us, ‘As you know, my wife had two sons, and one of them went away and never returned…Now if you take his brother away from me, and any harm comes to him, you will send this grieving, white-haired man to his grave.’
And now, my lord, I cannot go back to my father without the boy. Our father’s life is bound up in the boy’s life. If he sees that the boy is not with us, our father will die. We, your servants, will indeed be responsible for sending that grieving, white-haired man to his grave.
My lord, I guaranteed to my father that I would take care of the boy. I told him, ‘If I don’t bring him back to you, I will bear the blame forever.’“So please, my lord, let me stay here as a slave instead of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers. For how can I return to my father if the boy is not with me? I couldn’t bear to see the anguish this would cause my father!”7
Genesis 38 may be the most neglected chapter in Genesis — but it is where the gospel breaks through to Judah, and is simultaneously the turning point in Joseph’s story. Judah’s transformation ultimately reconciles warring brothers, bringing peace to generations within the entire family.
Judah ultimately vindicates Tamar (Genesis 38:26), and Yahweh blesses her with twin sons who replace her two undeserving husbands (Genesis 38:27-30). Bruce Waltke describes Tamar as “a heroine in Israel because she risks her life for family fidelity.”8 Her courageous actions rescue Judah and her two dead husbands, bringing peace to Jacob’s family. Tamar also secures the royal line of Jesus which moves forward through her firstborn, Perez.
Reflections on Tamar’s Story for Faith Communities Today
Here are some final reflections for pastors pondering how to connect this ancient story with twenty-first century faith communities:
The power of hope — God loves the unloved and the unlovable. He has the power and desire to rescue, redeem, and radically transform prodigals.
The power of wounds — They can destroy or make us into people who reflect the God who redeems our stories.
God calls his daughters to be bold agents for his purposes— to do what is right, even if we have to do it alone. Tamar is far from the only biblical example of courageous females who shed patriarchy’s restraints to advance God’s kingdom and bless their believing brothers. Women and girls in the church desperately need to hear these narratives – and so do men and boys!
In the ongoing #MeToo / #ChurchToo epidemic, Tamar’s story gives pastors a call to courageously engage domestic abuse. Tamar is a #MeToo story.
1 Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, ed. James Luther Mays, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2010), 307-308.
2 Carolyn Custis James, Malestrom: Manhood Swept into the Currents of a Changing World, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015), 31.
At the risk of overdoing things, below are links to 3 podcasts I want to recommend. Recently, all three invited me to discuss my work and, in particular, Malestrom: How Jesus Dismantles Patriarchy and Redefines Manhood. All three were interesting, encouraging conversations—people and podcasts definitely worth knowing.
First, my good friend, Pastor Danny Cox, host of The Open Table Collective Podcast. Our first “encounter” was in a Fuller Seminary classroom, where Professor Wilmer G. Villacorta uses Malestrom in his classes and quotes it in his own book, Unmasking the Male Soul. Reading Malestrom raised Danny’s curiosity about my other books, which led to an invitation to speak on The Gospel of Ruth at his church in Troy, Michigan. That led to an ongoing conversation. Ever since, he’s been a great friend and a huge encouragement to me. His newly launched ministry, The Open Table Collective—is a welcoming place for any who may never enter a church door and, if they do, may find they don’t belong. Here, they will find a warm welcome, friendship, and the love and hope of Jesus.
Second, Mary Margaret O’Connor is host of Your Radical Truth Podcast. She is Catholic, seminary trained, and shares the kinds of struggles and concerns that are all too familiar to Protestant women. We had an intriguing conversation about Malestrom and patriarchy and God’s vision for his daughters titled “From First to Final Breath: The Role Women Truly have with God.” Our discussion also wandered beyond patriarchy into feminism, women’s true role in the Bible, religious scandals, and more. Struggles women face in this broken world are shared by women everywhere! Her own story is fascinating but also heartbreaking. I loved interacting with her and felt afterwards that I’d made a new friend.
Third was The Hopper Podcast hosted by two PCA pastors, William Spofield and Dave Baggett, who describe themselves as “Too progressive to be conservative; too conservative to be liberal. Politically homeless Christians, tackling LGBTQ+, Gun Control, Racism, Universal Basic Income, Abortion, Grief, Politics, Social Media, and more with nuance and respect. Taking God seriously, and ourselves lightly.” And now they wanted to talk about Patriarchy and Malestrom with me. I told them this wasn’t the first time I’d been outnumbered by PCA pastors, but I must say this discussion was refreshing, rich, and deeply encouraging. As their description indicates—these pastors are fearless in taking up topics that impact us all, but are all-too-often pushed aside because their either deemed “taboo” or the answer is set in stone.
God’s Spirit has a marvelous way of harnessing those painfully confusing stretches of our stories to take us deeper in our relationship with himself. Our struggles provoke new and different questions about God and life that we would otherwise never consider. Many of us are learning that we gain new clarity about his heart for us and for his world when the lights go out, darkness engulfs us, and we feel most wounded, forgotten, and lost.
One of the times that happened to me was when my story veered from the church’s roadmap I’d been taught was God’s calling on me as a woman. It made me realize I was not by far the only female for whom that roadmap was out of reach. That inevitably led me to ask bigger and different questions about God’s purposes for his daughters—all of us, from first to final breath—and eventually for his sons too. It led me to understand that God calls his male and female image bearers to forge a Blessed Alliance to advance his good Kingdom purposes throughout creation (Gen 1:26-28). In essence, men and women need each other to fulfill God’s calling in every point in history, every spot on the globe, and in every situation.
A lot is at stake—not only for women and girls, but also for men and boys, if we diminish or ignore God’s vision for his daughters.
I am still asking questions and am always grateful for opportunities to share what I’ve been learning. It has been life-changing for me and for countless other women. One unexpected outcome is that although my ministry originally focused on women and girls, it is proving crucial to men as well. They have their own struggles and questions. Many also are profoundly interested in what’s happening to their sisters and are ready to listen.
Rob Dalrymple and his partner Vinnie Angelo are in that group of men. Their DetermineTruth Podcast has given me another opportunity to share with others what I’ve been learning. My discussion with Rob that began as a single podcast segment has expanded into two segments. While you’re checking out Part 1 of our conversation (which I hope you will), be sure to take time explore other thoughtful segments Rob and Vinnie have recorded.
To hear Part 2 of this podcast discussion go here !
“Reading the signs of the times requires a church capable of standing against the legitimating stories of the day.
American Christians often think that if we had been confronted with someone like Hitler we would have been able to recognize that he was evil. Yet in many ways, the church in Germany was a church more theologically articulate than the American church has ever been; still the German church failed to know how to adequately challenge the rise of Hitler.
It failed because Christians in Germany assumed that they were German Christians just as American Christians assume that they are American Christians. Churches that are nationally identified will seldom be able to faithfully read the signs of the time.
Jesus’ condemnation of the Pharisees and Sadducees for their inability to read the signs of the times, that is, to recognize all that has been and all that is still to be must now be read under the sign of Jonah, remains a challenge for us.
Jesus has previously criticized the Pharisees for their failure to do what they profess. Indeed Jesus will soon recommend to the crowd that they should do what those who “sit on Moses’ seat” teach, but “do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach” (Matt. 23:2–3). Jesus demands, as we have seen from his Sermon on the Mount, lives of integrity. To see the truth, to recognize the signs of the kingdom, requires that we be rightly formed by the virtues acquired by following Jesus. To know the truth requires the acquisition of the habits of truthfulness. Knowledge and virtue are inseparable.
Jesus’s refusal to give the Pharisees and Sadducees a sign has profound implications for how Christians understand truth.
We believe that the truth of the gospel cannot be separated from the kind of lives required for the recognition of that truth. Because we are aware of the inadequacy of our faithfulness to Christ, we are tempted to separate the truth of what we believe from the way we live. But Jesus refuses to allow us to abstract our knowing from our living. The gospel is not information; it is a way of life.”
“If you’ve ever struggled to understand the story of Judah and Tamar from Genesis 38, I’ve got you!! In this episode, Carolyn Custis James shares a framework for understanding the stories of scripture. And why Tamar, who posed as a prostitute to seduce her father-in-law, is considered a hero…Wait, WHAT???”
Tamar’s story (Genesis 38) is one of the strongest ezer-warriorexamples in the Old Testament, and I loved discussing this powerful ezer narrative with Teresa Whiting. Tamar story is one of the Bible’s most overlook stories because readers and interpreters lock onto the word “prostitute” and can’t get past it. It isn’t considered suitable subject matter for a mixed audience in a Sunday morning church service.
But the Tamar/Judah story is the hinge that holds Genesis together and a story that can make a difference for all of us. Without understanding Tamar’s story, we can’t make sense of the radical transformation in Judah when his half-brother and his father’s new favorite son Benjamin faces the threat of being enslaved (Genesis 44). The Tamar/Judah story reveals how God used the courage of a woman to ensure a family’s survival and to transform Judah—one of the Bible’s darkest characters and hopeless cases—into a version of masculinity that shed’s patriarchy’s demands and instead reflects Jesus and his gospel. The end result is the reconciliation of warring brothers.
The story turns on Judah’s statement—usually mistranslated “She is more righteous than I”—when the more accurate translation according to Hebrew scholars is “She is righteous; not I.”1 That was when Judah looked in the mirror and confronted the kind of depraved human being he’d become.
Judah’s redemption should open our eyes to the powerfully wide reach of Jesus’ gospel and the hope-filled fact that no one is beyond the gospel’s good news.
Carolyn Custis James 