Elyse Fitzpatrick: Gender and the Bible

Sometimes women are treated like throw pillows. You know, they're nice, but they're not necessary. Oh, yes. They're pretty to have around the church. I mean, if you have one.

If you have one. Yeah. But what God is saying in Genesis 2 is, this cannot be, that the man would be alone. Mm hmm.

And so that means she's necessary. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

And I'm Dave Wilson. And you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. So when we started speaking for the Family Life Weekend to remember marriage getaways, I was young. I had only been married 10 years, but I started looking at the material that we were going to teach. And what I was looking at was Genesis 2. And I was at the point where it said, and God made a helper suitable for Adam. And I remember stopping there.

Now, remember, I wasn't raised in the church. And so I looked at that and I thought, I have to be a helper. Where's my helper? Why don't I get a helper? And so I was kind of mad about that. I remember you came to me and you're like, okay, you know, you started discussing this.

I was only 29. And so then I think I'm just going to look up the word helper in the dictionary. I'm not looking up Hebrew. I'm just looking at, let's just see what helper says in the dictionary. And it says a gopher, a person who does the dirty work. Someone important tells them what to do. And I throw my hands up in the air. It's like, I can't teach this. Is this my role as a woman?

Is this what I'm supposed to do? And so that was the beginning of my wrestling and my struggling and my yearning to know what does God have for us as women? Yeah. And obviously, you know, you're looking at a dictionary and it wasn't even close to what that word actually means when God, you know, wrote that down. So it was the beginning of a journey. Most women, I think so many of us are wondering, like, what is our role? What does God expect and want and what does he call us?

And so I think today is going to be a great day. Oh, yeah. There's a question that's critically important for us to understand in the community of Christ, in the church. It's this question, male and female, man, woman, husband, wife, father, mother. And I tell you what we have in the studio, Eric and Elise Fitzpatrick, Eric Shoemaker in the studio. Welcome to Family Life Today. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. You know, as you sit over there, I mean, I know, you know, we have a unique pairing of, you know, Eric, your pastor in Iowa. Elise, you're a prolific author who's written a few more books than Eric, right? Yeah, a few more. Just a few.

Like, what are you on now? 25? Yes. Eric always says 24.

What's he doing there? One of them's really bad. Pretty sure more than one. Yeah, but obviously written a lot of books, married, kids. You have a podcast that we actually had the privilege to be on called Worthy. And that was a book that you two did together. We had you in Family Life Today a couple of years ago talking about Worthy, which is a book about women being worthy. And Elise, you've been on Family Life Today many times.

So we're excited to have you guys back. And your book, Jesus and Gender, the subtitle is Living as Sisters and Brothers in Christ. So this is a big topic. And I would start right here.

How did you two end up connecting and talking about the worthiness of women? Well, it all started with Twitter, where all good things start. It started with Twitter?

It did. It started with Twitter. I'd been in a season of listening to stories of people who had been marginalized or abused, stories that for a large part of my life I would have just blown off and not listened to. And so as the Me Too movement started, I decided I want to listen to women and hear about what they're experiencing.

And then as it moved into church too, I definitely wanted to listen. So I wrote this string of tweets that were the women in the Bible who were the first human beings to do certain things. And an organization asked me to turn it into an article, which I did. And Elise saw both and invited me to be on her Family Front Portrait, the Fitzes podcast, which was a lot of fun. And she said, you should turn this into a book. And I knew no one knew who I was and wouldn't publish me. So I said, you should write it with me. And a few months later, we were working together on an outline.

Yeah, I was kind of in the same place he was. Not that I needed to all of a sudden discover the value of women. But I think that I was listening more carefully to women's stories, to marginalize people's stories. And so I was already primed to want to do something about that topic. And then when I saw that Eric was doing that series of tweets, which really became the foundation for the book that we wrote, I thought, oh, this is really great.

This is something I've wanted to speak into. So that's the genesis of Worthy. I've been reading through your book, Jesus and Gender, for a week now. And then last night, we're sitting down to prepare for this day. And I'm thinking, man, it's so interesting that God is using Eric, a he, and Elise, a she, to elevate all the shes in the world to understand their worthiness. And again, I don't know why last night those were the words that came with, I thought of Eric, I thought he, I thought Elise, I thought she.

And I thought of all the women as shes. And so every once in a while, I get this song in my head, and I feel like God sort of gave me one for you two. So he wrote you a song, basically. Wow. Wow. And he seems to do this when, Eric, you lead worship and you write music. Yeah. I've actually heard that you write parodies and sort of fun stuff. I do. Yeah.

So this is, I thought that's what this was going to be. We've never been serenaded before. What? You haven't?

This is wonderful. No. Here's the thing. Well, we should wait till afterwards to see whether it's wonderful. Yeah, you will. You will have to say if it's worthy.

But Family Life will decide if they even keep this in the broadcast. So this is like an audition because I don't really sing. Do you have your words? So, you know, just again, last night sitting there, this is what came to me. And it's not funny. It ended up being more serious, because I think what you're doing is powerfully elevating the dignity of women.

So this is sort of what happened. Eric and Elise have been called by God. He and she bringing dignity to the she's.

They are revealing God's heart. For she, they are free. All she's to feel worthy. She is worthy.

And God says, I see you. I hear you. And I want you to feel worthy. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. That's so wonderful. We need to get that for our podcast.

We do. Now you're being just patronizing. No, that was wonderful.

No, I mean, honestly, as I sat there with my guitar last night, I thought I'm going fun. I'm going to be like, I'm going to call Eric the woman guy, you know, but I felt like you two are like a gift to the church, especially for the she's, the women of the world that often have felt devalued and lost their dignity in the body of Christ. So let's talk about, I hope women will really draw close because it's such a confusing time. We've heard so many different things, and I think it's good to know biblically. What does God say about us? You're saying because of what Christ has done, we are sons and daughters of the king. We are worthy. So help us understand.

Where do we start? We start talking about male and female from God's perspective. And I love what you've done because you've said we need to bring the gospel to this conversation.

And I'm thinking, I'm guessing, right. You feel like that's sort of been missing? Yeah, very much so. First of all, Dave, thank you. Thank you for that encouragement. It means a lot.

You're welcome. I think that in the discussions of gender and what roles women should play, men should play, it seems to me that the topic that's been missing is the gospel and in particular the incarnation. So when you start at Genesis, which is fine, talking about how men and women should relate, that's fine. But then if you start at Genesis and then don't remember Philippians 2, you're going to miss something.

So I'd like to read just a short passage from Philippians 2, 5, and I'll just read 5 through 9. Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus. There's the imperative.

There's the command. We are to have this attitude. And what we wanted to do in Jesus and gender was say, we want to bring this attitude into our relationships as sisters and brothers.

So what's the attitude? Who existing in the form of God did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. Christ had preeminent authority, but perhaps I have some sort of authority or Eric, you have some sort of authority.

I don't want to exploit that authority. So who existing in the form of God did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. Instead, he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, the fullness of God becoming has a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. So what we wanted to do was say, okay, let's talk about relationships between men and women, but let's base our discussion on what should happen, on how I should think about how I should think about Eric as my brother, how I should think about you as my sister.

Let's start that conversation with this. I'm going to empty myself and take on the attitude of a servant. That's what the gospel has to say, I think, to gender relations. And instead of that, what does it look like?

What do you see? Well, what it looks like is people staking out territory on both sides. And that's, I think, one of the things that we wanted to say in this book was we're not staking out territory on either side. So if you're very, very conservative, or if you're more progressive, we're not saying, hey, we're with you. What we're saying is if you're asking the question, who gets to be in charge? Wherever you happen to be asking that question from, you've missed the point.

Because Jesus, over and over and over again to the disciples, kept saying to them, it's not about who gets to be the best, or who gets to be the highest, or who gets to be the ruler, or you want to be called the benefactor. No, actually, if you're going to follow me, what you're going to do is you're going to lay down your life, and you're going to give it up for the lives of others. And that's got to be the rubric that informs how I think about my relationship with men and women, with brothers and sisters.

Yeah. And we think the reason that that's important is that passage she just read from Philippians 2 is Paul's command to both men and women have this mind, the mind of Christ. There's not a female mind of Christ and a male mind of Christ.

There's one mind of Christ for both. Both men and women are being conformed into the image of Jesus. And in fact, the author of Hebrews says that he had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every respect so that he could be a merciful high priest.

And it's not that women go to some different source for a model of who they're supposed to be. Jesus is the perfect human being. And so both men and women can look to him to learn how to live. And when you look through Paul's epistles, there's a few places where he speaks to fathers, to husbands, to wives, but for the most part, his letters are full of commands about what it means to be sanctified. And these are not given to us as male traits and female traits. They're given to us as traits of what Christ is like. And there's not a female way to put on Christ and a male way to put on Christ.

We're called to put on Christ. And so we wanted to start not with Genesis, though Elise said, that's a fine place to start. You read a book from beginning to end, but you understand a book by reading it from the end back to the beginning. Because once you've reached the end, you know what it's about.

And now you interpret everything through that light. And Christ is the end of all things. And so we wanted to start with him in order to understand men and women. And not only that, you know, the Gospel, the message of Jesus Christ, who doesn't exploit his deity, who takes on the form of a slave, lives a perfect life on our behalf, dies as our substitute under the wrath of God, he serves us, and then he's raised from the dead so that he can justify us and raise us from the dead. From beginning to end, from beginning to end, Jesus is a servant. That Gospel, that message is the power of God for salvation. That message is the only thing that has the power to transform us as men and women to be people who are like Christ.

And if we're not starting with the power of God for salvation, what's going to come of it? I think that's a really good place to start, because I'm just thinking back in my younger years, I'm kind of a strong woman, more of a leader. She understated that a little bit. It's one of the things I love about her.

My mom was an amazing wife, but if I had to categorize her growing up, I would have said, my mom is a doormat and my dad takes advantage of that. And so growing up, I thought I will never be that. Then I give my life to Jesus and I'm faced with this decision, what will I do? And I like this because I am willing to lay my life down as a woman, knowing that Jesus has done that, and that Jesus isn't going to ask anything of me that wouldn't be good for me. And even as a woman listening, have you laid down your life and saying, Jesus, I'm willing to give you everything and I'm willing to follow you?

And I think as a woman, if you don't know the word, that can be scary because all of these pictures come into your head of what it means to be a woman of God. Am I a doormat? Am I someone that can use my gifts of leadership or serving? Do I have a voice?

Do I have a voice? But I like where you've started. One of the things that I love about what you just said, Anne, is that I want to make a decision to lay down my life. And one of the things that I think has really been missing in some ways is the understanding that as women, we have agency to freely lay down our lives.

Yeah. And what that means is not that I become a doormat. What that means is, is that I am doing that from a position of strength.

So from a position of strength, then I say, because Christ has done this for me, I am now free to give my life away. So as a woman, then, you talked about being a helper and that definition. Those words in Genesis about being a helper, those are not weak words. Those are powerful, almost militaristic words. Yeah, that word ezer in Hebrew, you guys write about that. Explain what that means. Well, it basically means a strong ally, someone who comes alongside you to assist you in an important assignment. Most of the time it's used of God in his relationship to Israel.

God is the helper of his people. And so we dare not define that word to mean subservient, weak, optional. Like one of our friends says, sometimes women are treated like throw pillows. They're nice, but they're not necessary. Oh, yes. They're pretty to have around the church. I mean, if you have one.

If you have one. Yeah. But what God is saying in Genesis 2 is, this is really bad. That's what that not good means there. This cannot be that the man would be alone. And so that means she's necessary. And what we see in Genesis, as God creates the woman from Adam's side, presents her to him, his first exclamation is, this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.

He'd been presented animals before. They're not the same flesh. What he's saying there is not, this is someone different than me. He's saying this person is the same as me.

She has the same nature as me. And then Moses adds, this is the reason that a man will leave his father and mother and cling to or bond with his wife and they will be one flesh. And it's interesting because in the culture of that day, it wasn't the man who left his family.

The woman left her family and came to be part of his. And I think we get a glimpse of the gospel right there, that this man is going to be willing to leave his family, the protection and security of a family, to pursue unity with his wife for the sake of cooperating together in this creation mandate that God has given them. And that's what it ought to look like today, that as brothers and sisters or husbands and wives, we ought to be willing to sacrifice for the sake of unity. I mean, that's even what Paul says to husbands, lay down your lives because she's your flesh.

And we want to sacrifice for the sake of being unified as brothers and sisters to cooperate together in fulfilling the great commission of Christ. Yeah, I tell you, I want to get into that conversation about marriage next. We don't have time right now, but just listening to you two, and even Anne, as a husband and as a man, I have a vision in my mind of women totally different. Honestly, I think I already had this vision.

I understood Ezzor. I've studied that from the journey Anne talked about from when we thought it was just help her and help meet and to that equal partner to that equal partner and confidant. There's a part of me that just, I saw a vision of women being so valuable and worthy that I don't ever want to look at Anne.

When you said throw pillow, I'm like, Oh my goodness, that has been so often what we've done. And you have just given us God's vision for men and women from Philippians 2. What a perfect place to start to say, give it our way. Surrender. And have you done that?

Have I done that? Because it's something that we don't just do one time, but it's an active obedience of doing it over and over. Jesus, I lay down my life for you today.

And how do you want to use me today? The topic of gender can often make us feel a little bit confused or even sometimes a little bit scared to engage in the conversation. But when we look to Jesus himself, the suffering servant, the gentle and lowly example of what it means to lay down your life and give it to others, things start to become very, very clear.

David and Wilson have been talking today with Elise Fitzpatrick and Eric Shoemaker. They've written a book called Jesus and Gender, Living as Sisters and Brothers in Christ. By becoming more like Jesus and coming to Jesus, women and men can find rest.

Men and women are allies in God's mission. You can find Jesus and Gender in our Family Life Resource Center by heading to our website, familylifetoday.com and order a copy there. Or you could give us a call at 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word today. Now, many of you know that the Ministry of Family Life Today is listener supported, so when you head to our website at familylifetoday.com and make a donation of any amount, we're going to send you a copy of So Long, Normal. Laura's story was on our program earlier this week, talking about what it means to process the trauma of the loss of our normal. We believe in this resource so much, so when you make a donation of any amount at familylifetoday.com, we're going to send you a copy of Laura's story's book, So Long, Normal, as a way of saying thank you for helping to support this ministry. Again, you can find us at familylifetoday.com, or you could call us at 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word today. If this conversation today or any of our Family Life programs have been helpful for you, we'd love for you to share today's podcast with a family member or friend, and wherever you get your podcasts, it could really advance the gospel effort of what we're doing at Family Life if you'd scroll down and rate and review us. Now tomorrow, Dave and Ann Wilson are going to be continuing their conversation with Elise Fitzpatrick and Eric Shoemaker about readjusting our mindset when it comes to men and women, centered around specifically God's great commission. That's coming up tomorrow. We hope you can join us. On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.