To the reader: I wrote this letter to the editor when I saw an article profiling a female police officer in the Clarion, a magazine in the Canadian Reformed Churches. I was a pastor in the Canadian Reformed Churches until about a year ago when I was called to ministry in Fort St. John with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.
My letter was not received by the editing board of the Clarion and will not be published in the Clarion. However, I still wanted to publish this, because the problem I am dealing with is far broader than just the Canadian Reformed Churches. It is a problem within Conservative Reformed Christianity. Therefore, the parts that are more confrontational, ought to confront us all. I thought it would be helpful to share this letter then, with a broader audience. I removed some details as they are not necessary for a broader audience to be aware of. I hope this will be helpful for the church. It’s not exactly an article that will make me popular with certain groups, but regardless it is a necessary article.
Letter to Editor
I was disappointed to see the article “______________________” in the ___________ edition of the Clarion. There were in fact many good things to say about it: ________’s witness in her life is wonderful to read about. She obviously takes both her faith and her job seriously and does a lot of good for the community. She is a testament to what a Christian should look like in a world that is full of evil and the hatred of God. It is wonderful to hear of her work in the prevention and response to domestic violence.
My concern is with the profession she has chosen and even more with the Clarion’s choice to highlight and therefore normalize female police officers among reformed folk. The name Clarion suggests a desire to give clear warning against the lies of this present age. Not only does the Clarion fail in truth and clarity here, but it aids and abets the egalitarian spirit of this age.
Scriptural types
I argue that there is enough in the patterns of scripture, and the general teaching about male and female in scripture that should at least make us very cautious about women in the role of policeman or soldier. There is enough in scripture that while we might permit it, we will not openly condone it whether explicitly or implicitly. I am not one to draw strict lines on the question of sex and occupation, but as we go into the arena of the warrior, we ought to be very careful. The depictions of female acts of war are exceptional in scripture.
The opening passages of scripture teach that man is primarily called to the role of guardian. While Adam and Even are together called to take dominion, it is Adam who is called to guardianship of the garden; to care for and to keep the garden. This is God’s description of Adam’s role before Eve is in the picture. Genesis 2:15, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden to work it and to keep it.” The word for keep is also to guard. It is failure to guard against the serpent that results in the fall. Eve assists in that guardianship, but primarily that role belongs to the man. The woman is called to work side by side the man in the work of dominion, but she is not called to guardianship.
Even that work of dominion is differentiated in the sexes. Rich Lusk gives further insight:
“The different roles assigned to the man and the woman in marriage are not arbitrary but are rooted in our creation design. Scriptures show us there are deep differences in men and women, going back to the way the man and woman were created. The man is to be the protector and provider. His wife is his glory and his helper. The man is made from the earth and is oriented to the earth and therefore to dominion over the earth. The woman is made from the man and therefore oriented toward the man and relationships.”
The big takeaway in the issue we are dealing with is that man is called to be a guardian. Police are a type of guardian. Soldiers are a type of guardian. Elders and Pastors are a type of guardian. Women take guardianship roles when men fail in those roles, in exceptional circumstances. I argue, not that a woman may never take the role of guardian, but against the normalization of women as guardians.
Deuteronomy 22:5
Now of course, I hear the response ready-formed: the police officer of today is not necessarily involved in combat roles and presumably a woman can choose such a role among the police. I will answer that in more detail in a moment, but to establish some groundwork for that response, I want to go to Deuteronomy 22:5. God’s teaching here fills out the patterns of the Adam and Eve’s creation. In fact, the exposition of that verse should itself be enough of a response to such a claim.
Deuteronomy 22:5 says, “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.” There are some difficulties in interpreting these passages, but it is amid a transition in the text that moves from laws about murder to laws about sexual immorality. Verses 6 and 7 deal with care for the survival of animals and verse 8 deals with the care of your neighbor. These are positive applications of the sixth commandment, care for nature and care for the life of your neighbor.
This would suggest that verse 5 also has something to do the sixth commandment as well. We may think that this is to do with the seventh commandment, cross dressing, and the attenuating evils of those actions. Certainly, that is there, but there is more going on here.
Examining the translation is revealing. While the translation “woman’s cloak” is good for it refers to a woman’s garment, the translation of “man’s garment is not necessarily a good translation. The Hebrew word refers to a word, matter, or thing. This would be a word, matter, or thing that is associated with man. And clearly in the scriptures matters of war are associated with man. The word for man is also unique, a word that we might translate as “strong man,” again the emphasis on man as warrior. This would suggest that the things of man that a woman ought not to wear, are the gear of a warrior, the apparel of a warrior.
This is parallel to the following verse, which talks about preserving the mother bird or we can think of another verse, “do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” These all present something similar. Do not use the source of life as a source of death. It is improper for a woman to take on the role, the job, the appearance of a warrior, to wear the clothing of one that is associated with death.
So how does this apply to the policeman? Police are the executive arm of the ministry of vengeance. Even if our society wants policemen to be social workers, that is still what they are. If God gives the sword to the civil magistrate to punish evil and protect good (Romans 13), then in our society the police are the sword. In a sense it doesn’t really matter if they do a lot of social work, their order is established as an arm to carry the sword of vengeance. Wearing their gear is associating oneself with that calling. So, they like the military are associated with the work of death. To wear their uniform and their gear is to associate oneself with the sword of vengeance.
A comparison: men are exclusively called to ordained office. They are called to use the keys of the kingdom, as the Catechism puts it, preaching and church discipline, and that is central to their authority. Women can fulfill any number of functions that a Pastor or elder must do. She can provide counsel. She can visit. She can encourage. But she is not to, as Paul says, have spiritual authority over a man. If the policeman is a physical guardian, the pastor, or elder, is a spiritual guardian.
This makes me wonder: If the reformed normalize female warriors in our streets, will the reformed eventually normalize female spiritual warriors in our pulpits?
Exceptions and Normalization
Considering other passages of scripture, such as the story of Jael and the woman who killed Abimelech, I think that God’s concern is the normalization of these attitudes. Some women in scripture are praised for participating in acts of war. God does not want this normalized, however, which is the very thing our society is trying to do today, and it appears that the Clarion is trying to do it as well. While there are exceptions, the normalization of these things is an abomination.
Confirmation in the New Testament
And if we think that this is just a matter of the Old Testament, try to guess at Paul’s cultural assumptions in passages like 1 Corinthians 11 and 14, as well as 1 Timothy and Titus. Particularly, we can look at 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul assumes the good of symbolic distinctions between men and women in the church. While I do not argue that women ought to wear head coverings, the substance of symbolic distinctions in our dress still applies. In that passage, Paul seems to assume the very same prejudices that characterize Deuteronomy.
Yes, we can talk about cultural differences, then versus now; too often that way of reading scripture tends to lead us to be very thin or even cultureless in any mores we have, rather than the thick culture that scripture patterns. We tend to minimize and undermine these patterns, rather than take them seriously. In Western society, to please the cultural elite, Christians then make the exceptions the rule.
Who to Blame
Now I want to be careful here because of the confusion about gender in our society. I am not quick to condemn young women who go into the police profession. They still have responsibility in this, but God is patient with those things done in ignorance. Neither will I suggest that my one voice is enough to break this ignorance. Though I am convicted by scripture in this matter, the church must speak together for this ignorance to be broken. Sadly, we are far away from such a moment, but in the meantime, I must still speak the truth. And yet, however true, I am not quick to condemn for several reasons.
My experience suggests that these passages are not clearly taught among the Reformed, generally speaking. In fact, it took me a while to work through this issue, since I wanted to respect contemporary work on this issue, and I didn’t want to respond in a reactionary manner without a careful grounding in scripture, reason, and tradition.
Further there is a lot of pressure from our broader society for young women to be like men. Due to this reality, in my own office, I would give counsel, and then allow for a degree of Christian freedom in this matter. As a pastor I cannot control people so that they will not make any mistakes. I trust that the Word will do its work.
Finally, the church body has adopted a lot of the egalitarian beliefs of our society. Many are functionally soft complementarians: a doctrine, promoted by the words of Kathy Keller: “a women can do anything an unordained man can do.”
It is hard to blame young woman who do this, because of the lack of careful attention to these issues in reformed churches. And the equal lack of courage to address feminism in the churches.
Clearly then, the leadership of the reformed world bears blame for this as well. And now the Clarion. This article simply assumes the culture of the world around us. We live in a world where the distinctions between man and women are being erased, where any sort of boundary is broken down. Scripture presents something different in both patterns and instruction, where there are not only differences between men and women, but also cultural distinctions, even symbolic distinctions. In this matter, the Clarion assumes the culture of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, while continuing to write many fine articles about Christian life and doctrine. It is a contradiction that cannot last.
Let me end with a clarion call against reformed apathy. I would warn the Clarion and its readers: you cannot culturally imitate the CBC while holding to reformed belief. The culture of the CBC is opposed to the culture of Christ. The Clarion does a disservice to all young Christian women in its implication that there is nothing wrong in pursuing the vocation of police officer.
In Christ,
Rev. James Zekveld
Fort St. John, BC.