Equality As Jesus Revealed It

Excerpted from my book, Leaving and Finding Jesus

When I wrote the book, God Is (Not) In Control, I juxtaposed the broken paradigm of sovereign control with the sovereignty of cruciform love to highlight how the teaching of sovereignty through control has undermined trust and access to intimacy within the church today.

The End Of Hierarchy In The Church

Excerpted from my book, Leaving and Finding Jesus

“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

Those are the NIV-translated words of Jesus found in John 15:15.

But the Brian Simmons Passion Translation of that verse is my favorite, and I think it’s infinitely more accurate—not based on my academic prowess but on what I know about love.

It reads, “I have never called you ‘servants’… But I call you my most intimate friends….”

Trust Is My Throughline

Excerpted from Leaving and Finding Jesus / Chapter Seven: Retribution

I interviewed William Paul Young, author of The Shack, a couple of years ago. During the conversation, he asserted, “Trust is my throughline.” I loved the statement. It resonated deeply.

A “throughline” is a central theme on which a writer focuses, holding the whole piece together.

Trust is the central theme of life here on earth. Trust is our throughline and the evidence of heaven coming to earth. Trust is eternal life in the ever-present now. Trust is a Triune God perfectly revealed in the God-Man, Jesus. Trust is discovered in Jesus’ prayer that we would know union as He did—first with Him, our heavenly Father, and the Holy Spirit; then with each other.

Trust is defined in Jesus’ rebuke of Peter’s swung sword and revealed at a cross through the sovereignty of Greater Love.  1

Trust is the goal for every human interaction on this often broken and divided planet, and, because it is an often broken and divided planet, trust is our most valuable commodity. And it is a commodity: it’s both earned and traded.

I’ll say it again. Trust is earned through faithfulness over time by those who lay down their lives. When it comes to this world, without trust, there is no eternal life, no heaven on earth, no family of God—only corporations, institutions, and systems for the purpose of control and power grabs.

Trust looks like Jesus. He earned our trust. He laid down His life to prove it. On His way to the cross, a Triune God rebuked the violence of Peter’s sword and gave His very life so we could fully and truly trust.

No one can experience union without trust, and only Greater Love can be fully trusted. Jesus is where trust can be placed, He is what trust looks like, and how trust works. Outside of the model Jesus gave us on a cross, reconciling the cosmos, not counting our divisions against us, trust is fleeting.

And, sadly, when it comes to much of the church today, trust is fleeting. Why? Because, instead of revealing God’s measurelessly reconciling love, we have become obsessed with retribution.

Consequently, like my angry Christian friend, much of the church doesn’t seem to understand how trust works. Trust can’t be coerced, controlled, pressured, compelled, manipulated, or forced. There is no arm twisting, shaming, or condemning, no fear of retribution or punishment. Trust is only available through participating in mutual, other-centered, self-giving love.

Trust is earned through faithfulness, demonstrated over time, by those who lay down their lives. Period.

And trust is lost when love is presented through the faithless hypocrisy of a good Father who looked away, a punishing God who throws spears, a condemning God who swings swords, and a people who do the same.

Thankfully, Jesus took the trust-compromising, retributive God lens to the cross. God in Christ stepped inside the cruel and fallen belief of retribution and blew up the whole thing. Cruciform love reconciled the world. Then, He rose from the grave, met Peter on a beach, reconciled him in love, and has been building His church upon the Rock of reconciling love ever since.

And only upon this Cornerstone can the church be trusted to feed His Sheep.

1 John 17:21

Karen Wouldn’t Say “Obey”

Nearly twenty-nine years ago, a few months before we married, Karen let me know she’d edited out the portion of the vows where the bride promises to obey. You know, “for better for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and obey, till death us do part.”

I was surprised. Not that she wanted to amend the vows, but by the fact the word obey was only in the woman’s vows. Until that conversation, I’d assumed the vows mirrored each other.

I was naïve for three reasons: First, I was 20 years old and had spent little time thinking about wedding vows.

Second, I wasn’t a woman.

Third, I’d grown up in a home where my parents modeled greater love and equality.

When I realized “obey” was only in the woman’s vows, removing the word was easy and obvious. I agreed wholeheartedly.

While we may not have fully understood the power of our agreement at the time, we knew the foundation of our relationship would not be built on obedience. It would be built on trust and intimacy. There would be no hierarchy in our marriage. We were two becoming one. We desired to know union and intimacy. And so, our marriage would be built on greater love, mutual surrender, submitting one to another—equality.

I love the word obey. I wrote a whole book about radical obedience titled Untamed. Obedience, inside relational trust, is powerfully beautiful, but outside of mutual self-giving love, it can be a deceitful word, a religious obsession that enslaves us. When it comes to marriages, a hierarchal understanding of the word can really mess things up.

I have counseled many fractured marriages where husbands don’t feel respected, wives don’t feel loved, and closeness or intimacy hasn’t been experienced in years. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat dumbfounded as the husband, in an attempt to defend his controlling actions toward his wife, quotes Ephesians 5:22: “Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands….”

And I’m heartbroken and a little angry when, on more than one occasion, the wife, sitting in tears next to her confused and controlling husband, has said, “I am trying to.”

I’ve had to stop myself from cuffing the fella on the back of the head as he uses the word submit like a gun to manipulate and control—to get what he wants. When submit is used to support hierarchy, it’s a dirty word.

I have seen this hierarchal lens used to compromise trust and undermine access to intimacy. And insecurity and distance are always the fruit of this transactional master-servant relationship.

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her….” That’s Ephesians 5:25, and it’s the essential part of Paul’s instruction to married couples. Unfortunately, this verse is not quoted nearly as often as the “Wives submit to your husbands” verse that comes a few sentences earlier.

Jesus best explained what the word submit means when He said, “No one takes it (my life) from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” 1 Then, Jesus revealed what submitting looks like by going to a cross and laying down His life for us. Jesus rejected the gun, the very idea of hierarchy and control.

Intimacy is impossible in a hierarchy; oneness can only be experienced through equality.

Jesus modeled the way to intimacy through self-giving, other-centered love. And Paul’s instruction to husbands and wives in Ephesians highlights that connection. The fact is, intimacy between a husband and wife is discovered in mutual submission—true equality, greater love.

You see, intimacy can’t be experienced in a relationship where one person exercises control over the other. Two becoming one—union—occurs between two trusting people who surrender, submitting one to another, laying down their lives for each other of their own accord.

There are two types of surrender, forced or voluntary. Greater Love never forces and always volunteers. It’s why we can always trust Him, and it’s how we discover union.

And it works the same way in a marriage.

If you want a transactional, “What am I still lacking?” relationship with your spouse, keep playing the master-servant control game. If you want trust, friendship, oneness, and an ever-growing intimacy, it’s only found in Greater Love.

I’ve shared that thought with both husbands and wives—but mostly while looking at the husband.

And I’ve shared that thought with many Christians as well—but mostly while looking at the leader.

Control is the antithesis of intimacy and oneness. A hierarchal understanding of submission is what’s wrong with this world.

By removing the word obey from our vows, Karen and I took the gun out of our marriage and created a safe place to discover union, intimacy, and an ever-deepening friendship—oneness through true equality.