"You're Playing with Fire!"

"You're playing with fire!" 

Words from my pastor to me as were discussing cross gender spiritual friendships. 

By this point last summer, I had been involved in these kind of spiritual friendships for four years.  I was planning to write a book on the subject.  I love books.  When I want to know wisdom and what others are thinking about a particular subject, one area of wisdom is books.  When I first started down the path of cross spiritual friendships, I couldn't find any books out there on the subject.  There are still no books on the subject.  One Christian author told me that there's a great need for such a book or books to launch the conversation about intimate friendships between men and women.

Four years into cross gender spiritual friendships, my pastor sitting across the table from me said, "You're playing with fire!"

From my experience, it doesn't have to split this way conceptually, but in my limited experience, egalitarians are more open to intimate cross gender friendships than complementarians.  As far as I can tell, most contemporary supporters of cross gender friendships, those who have written articles in journals or chapters in books, are egalitarians.  I have met some egalitarians who don't warm up to the practice, but I've met many more complementarians who are against the practice than I have egalitarians.  I'm not saying that's the way it is, I'm just reporting my limited personal experience.

Most, if not all the arguments against intimate cross gender spiritual friendships are parallel arguments for why women should not be in ministry.  If you have encountered theological and social arguments as to why women should not be in ministry, you will encounter the same kind of passionate reasoning if you discuss cross gender spiritual friendships. They are two distinct positions with significant overlaps and similarities.  For those of you following the women in ministry thread over at Jesus Creed, the theoretical and emotional objections are parallel to cross gender spiritual friendships.   One could support women in ministry and not support cross gender spiritual friendships, however, precisely because the women in ministry is a socially complex issue, and equally so is cross gender spiritual friendship.   For me personally, if one supports women in ministry, or is open to women in ministry, then one has already worked through (at least theoretically) the same kind of substantive arguments involving cross gender spiritual friendships.

There is the standard Christian essentialist argument going back to the first two chapters of Genesis. It's a parallel argument to women in ministry--more finely tuned--but still rooted in essentialist reasoning.  After my pastor told me I was playing with fire, he said "Dan, men and women are hard wired for sexual union if we enjoy intimacy with another."  I was patiently listening.  He paused, "The exception is familial intimacy, a mother and son may be intimate and not be hard wired for sexual union.  But Dan, you have to see Genesis one, Genesis two, it's all there, we as men and women are hard wired for sexual union if we pursue intimacy with each other."  And, just as passionately as a complementarian would argue from a creation default position why women couldn't be in ministry, I heard the essentialist hard wired argument as to why I was playing with fire in cross gender spiritual friendships.

I was listening to an essentialist default argument and the powerful slippery slope fallacy all rolled up into one as I was listening to this man of God speaking to me sincerely and passionately.  I wanted to hear him out because I had such deep respect for him.  I loved him.  I genuinely loved him.  But I was at a much different place than he was.  I could be wrong, and he could be spot on, but I soon realized that we were coming at this from two different Christian paradigms of embodied spirituality.

That point should not preclude me from humbling myself and silently pray to God both in the middle of this conversation and afterwards, "Lord, I'm open to Your will is, and show it to me if I am off on my own narcissistic agenda here." 

This wasn't the first time I heard this kind of essentialist and slippery slope package.  Believe me, four years into this, you encounter the "onion layers" (perhaps a good metaphor) of this kind of position as you trust the Lord through "one layer" as a time as you walk into cross gender spiritual friendships.  Each significant "layer" I walked through, I did not walk alone but with my wife and with trusted and mature Christian friends.  I wasn't off on my own tangent, my own self-centered agenda.

Tucked into this paradigm against cross gender spiritual friendship is another similar posture against women who desire to be in ministry: their desire that they are being faithful to God and his gifting and calling them, and the against posture that they are going against God and merely fulfilling their own selfish desires. 

Susan recently wrote "When I have been involved in the gatherings of those in pastoral ministry, it has everything to do with the recognition that I, too, am filled with the Spirit and empowered to engage in the care of souls.  It is only fitting that women be included in the group of people whose hearts burn for the well-being of God's people, whose gifts are those that align with that passion and calling, and whose lives are marked by devotion to Jesus."  She was making a point about women in ministry.

Books like Living on the Boundaries: Evangelical Women, Feminism, and the Theological Academy and Evangelical Christian Women, and Discovering Biblical Equality depict this gender norm posture in evangelical communities where the "hard wired" logic paradigm stirs up the tension of legitimate desires are often pitted against submitting to faithful community paradigms.  No faithful Christian, who is seeking to be obedient to the Lord with their desires, wants to pursue their own self-centered agenda rather than God's desires for community. 

Comments

[Ted Gossard]

Interesting thoughts, and journey, Dan. Thanks.
I'm strongly inclined on your side. I think we're missing alot, by failing to see that relationships between genders, do not have to be romantic and sexually driven.

[Dan]

Thanks Ted,

It didn't start out this way, but I'm now "seasoned" when it comes to working through the social layers of cross gender friendship. :-)

This last post gives the background as to why my wife (who's been a firm supporter and--outside of being my wife--she's been my best friend thru all this!!!) and I ended up leaving this church to end up in an emerging church!