The Veritas Conflict (21 page)

Jo set her notebook and papers back down. The last few students were straggling out the door, leaving the three of them alone.

“Hey, Mr. Bible, go for it if you can. I don’t think there’s another class coming in after us.” She glanced over at Claire. “Do you want to hear this?”

“Uh … yeah.” Claire took a deep breath. “Actually, I agree with a lot of what Brad was saying, about the Bible and all. But I’m still curious to hear his thoughts on this issue.”

Even as she spoke, a thought came to her mind.
Don’t just listen. Pray
. As Jo gestured for Brad to take a seat, Claire did.

“Well, since you brought it up, let me go right to that thorny passage you mentioned.” Brad opened his Bible and read Ephesians 5:22. “ ‘You wives will submit to your husbands as you do to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of his body, the church.’ ” He looked up at Jo. “Is that the subjugation passage you were thinking of?”

Jo rolled her eyes. “Well,
yes
. How can you not say that that preaches the subjection of women?”

“Jo, my friend, I don’t know how to break it to you, but you’re missing the forest for the trees.”

“Look, Brad, I know you’re a traditionalist, an old-fashioned guy. I know what you’re going to say.”

“No you don’t. I’m not a traditionalist, not a women’s subjugationist, not a communist—not an anything other than a Christian. Let me read more of that passage, not just those two sentences.” He moved his finger back to Ephesians 5:18.

“ ‘Let the Holy Spirit fill and control you. Then you will sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, making music to the Lord in your hearts. And you will always give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

‘ “And further, you will submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. You wives will submit to your husbands as you do to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of his body, the church; he gave his life to be her Savior. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives must submit to your husbands in everything. And you husbands must love your wives with the same love Christ showed the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy.”

Brad skipped ahead a few verses, finger moving down the page.

‘ “In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man is actually loving himself when he loves his wife. No one hates his own body but lovingly cares for it, just as Christ cares for his body, which is the church.”

He looked up at the two women. “There’s more, but we’ve already hit the most controversial part. So what do you think, Jo? Still think the Bible preaches that men should rule over the little woman with an iron fist?”

Jo looked a bit confused. “Well, obviously I didn’t realize all that stuff was in there about husbands loving their wives as themselves. That doesn’t really sound like subjugation, no. But
still!”
She pulled the Bible out of Brad’s hand, jabbing her finger at the word
submit
. “It’s still based on the condition that the woman has to submit to the man. That is so infuriatingly chauvinistic! It was written by some man thousands of years ago in a patriarchal society—a man who obviously had his own hang-ups and issues. And you read that today and
agree
with it?” She slammed the Bible shut and tossed it back
on Brad’s desk, glaring at him. Then she turned to Claire and glared at her, too.

O Lord God, help! And forgive
my
unbelief. You know I have the same doubts sometimes.…

Brad calmly opened the Bible to the same passage. “Well, what is it actually saying that I’m agreeing with, Jo? Where is the first instance of the word
submit?”

Jo reluctantly took the book back. “Well—hmm. It says ‘submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.’ So, is that some sort of conditional statement?”

“The first condition is actually in verse 18, where it essentially says submit to God—God’s Holy Spirit—first and foremost. Then it says, in verse 21, that if they do that, then wives and husbands will be able to lovingly submit to each other. Those are both pretty important as the first two steps before it ever talks about a wife submitting to her husband. Any husband who is first submitting to God, and is
then
willing to submit to his wife as a partner, isn’t going to be keeping her under his thumb. Most of that passage talks about him loving her as he loves himself, and lifting her up so she’ll be holy before God—”

“Yes, but then it
still
says, when you come right down to it, that the husband is the head of the wife and she must submit to him! C’mon, Brad! You can dress it all up, but it still says it right there in black-and-white.”

“Yes, it does.” Brad took a deep breath. He glanced at Claire, who looked back at him, nervous. “Look, before I get into that you need to know that there are legitimate differences of opinion in the Christian community about certain passages in the Bible. Some people believe that some passages were limited to the culture and tradition of the day—that they are not supposed to be applied in the modern day. So keep that in mind here.

“But I think of the Bible as God’s inspired Word to us. I tend to think that if God is really God, he knew that our culture and traditions would change and wouldn’t have given us a Bible that would gradually become obsolete. So instead of excusing the Scriptures that I think are kind of difficult—like this one—I just decide to trust that God is conveying an unchanging truth and spend some time trying to find out what that message is.”

He tapped on the page in front of Jo. “I know that not every Christian will necessarily agree with me, but let me just tell you my opinion on this. Okay?”

Jo leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. She tossed her blond hair back from her face. “I can’t wait to hear this.”

Lord
,
give Brad Your words. Open her ears
—
and mine
—
to hear what You have to say
.

“It all revolves around the relationship between Christ and His church. And this is something, Jo, that you may or may not get, depending on how much you understand about Christianity and what Jesus did for us. How much do you know about the message of Christianity?”

“Just the usual, I guess. Jesus was born as a baby in a manger at Christmas. He preached that people should love one another. Um—He was put to death on a cross and supposedly came back to life at Easter. That’s about it.” Jo looked as if she were discussing a clinical biology experiment.

Brad grinned. “Not bad. Mind if I expand on that a bit? Because you need to know about the amazing thing Jesus did for us, His church, in order to understand what this passage is saying.

“See, the Bible says that Jesus—God the Son—came to us as a tiny baby because we were lost and in terrible danger. We were constantly choosing darkness over light, constantly trying to make
ourselves
God, and our sin separated us from the real God who loved and created us.

“And that holy God knew that the consequence of that sin could only be death—eternal separation from Him. It was as if He was on one side of a great chasm, our sin placed us on the other, and we could not bridge it on our own.

“But here’s the incredible thing: God loved us so much that He wasn’t willing to lose us. Like a dad whose children are in danger, He was willing to do anything to save us. So He sent His only Son to live on earth among us and bridge that chasm. That is what
Emmanuel
means—
God with us!
Jesus was fully God but fully human, and He lived the perfect life that the rest of us couldn’t. He fully shared our lives and showed us God’s love—love for everyone, not just the ‘good’ people. And then not only did He fulfill the requirement of perfection—He also bore the
consequences
of the sin of the whole world! He died for our sin. He carried all the sin of the world on His shoulders, and when He died, He fulfilled the penalty for all of us. And when He rose from that death—He
did
rise from the dead on the third day—He conquered sin and death forever.”

Brad smiled at Jo, who was looking down at her desk, not meeting his eyes.

“The Bible says that anyone who accepts what Jesus has done for them—who believes in Him and trusts Him as their Lord and Savior—will be saved. They just have to accept the gift of grace, forgiveness, and new life that has already been purchased for them at great cost! Then, when the heavenly Father looks on that person He will not see a child who is sinful and lost: He will see a child who is shining with the purity and the perfection of His Son. And those children will not only live in His abundant life here on earth—they will also spend eternity with Him in heaven.”

O God, what a beautiful presentation of the gospel. Help Jo to hear it, really hear it
.

Jo finally looked up. She seemed tense and a little exasperated. “Look, I hear what you’re saying. I do. Great story. But what does it have to do with this?” She tapped on Ephesians 5 with her pen.

“Well, to understand my point about husbands and wives, you had to hear that
whole story. Read verse—um—” he looked at the text upside down—“verse 25.”

“It says for husbands to love their wives like Christ loved the church.”

“Okay—so here’s my opinion of how to answer your main question. Yes, the passage does say that the wife should submit and that the husband, as the head, should love his wife as Christ loved us. So here’s the question for you, Jo: Knowing what you now know about the Christ story, who has the harder job? The wife who has to submit or the husband who has to love his wife like Christ loved the church?”

Jo stared at him, her mouth opening slightly.

Brad looked back and forth between Jo and Claire. “Look, if I were your husband, yes, you’d have to submit to me—but you’d be submitting to a man who was commanded to love you as sacrificially and as fully as
Christ
loves you. Give me a break! Which command is really harder, ladies? Which is the more servantlike? You’re afraid of the word
submit,
and understandably so, because it raises all those specters of being kept under a man’s thumb, losing your freedom, your equality, and so on. But that’s
not the
Bible’s model. If you submit to a godly husband—a husband who loves you so much that he’s willing to die for you—he’s going to be putting your good just as high or higher than his own. He’s going to be doing everything possible to serve you and love you. And all you have to do is submit to that—to accept his best heart for you and to honor his God-given desire to lead your marriage in the best and most holy way possible.”

Brad took back the Bible. He closed it gently, and Claire watched him rest his hand over the cover for a moment. When he looked up, Claire was astonished to see a glimmer of tears in his eyes. “God’s design for a godly marriage is wondrous. And that is why I think this is one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible—even today.”

NINETEEN

October

“O
KAY, GOOD EXAMPLE
. A
NYONE ELSE
?” Anton Pikes eyes scoured the room. “The trader must not have thought that his strategy was particularly risky, but it almost brought down his bank. What does this event tell you about the banks corporate planning process? Anyone?” He called on a male student in the back of the room.

“Well, the corporate culture encouraged traders and bankers to pursue high returns by all means possible, and they didn’t seem to have many checks and balances in place. So when this deal started to go sour, they didn’t catch it early.”

“Exactly, um, Doug Turner, correct?” The professor jotted a couple of notes on the board. “As we discussed in the last class, by definition high returns are given for high risk. What Mr. Turner is pointing out is that if the bank was urging it’s people to go for the high returns, it should have also planned for the high risk that went along with it. So, Doug, take it a step further. Why didn’t they do that planning?”

Doug laughed and ran a hand over his buzz cut. “Well, the bank was insured by the federal government and was also very large. The officers figured that if they took too big of a risk and got themselves into a pickle, the Fed would bail them out. The government couldn’t afford to let them fail. And that is what happened in the end.”

“Why were they willing to take that risk?”

“They figured, hey—they were playing with other people’s money after all. It’s the best of both worlds. You take the risk and it works out; you get a great return. You take the risk and it blows up on you; the government takes the loss. Let ’er rip, man!

Anton looked quickly over at Martin, who jotted a note by the name Doug Turner in his class roster. Neither saw the student’s derisive expression as he shook his head in disgust.

Ninety minutes later Martin and Anton casually watched as Doug looked over the lunch bill. Within a minute, he raised his eyebrows and looked up. “That’s funny …” He beckoned to the waiter. “Excuse me, sir, you forgot to add my meal to the bill.”

The waiter took back the slip of paper, grimaced, and inclined his head. “Thank you for catching that, sir.” The waiter looked over Doug’s shoulder and caught Anton’s eye. The professor smiled slightly and shook his head. Not this one.

Claire leaned against a tree and propped her biology textbook on her knees. The sun was warm and the spongy grass comfortable. If the Boston winters were indeed worse than those in Michigan, she’d better get in all the sun she could.

She was deep in a description of the human circulatory system when she overheard the sounds of an impassioned debate. Three people had stopped in the middle of a nearby walkway, their voices raised in disagreement. One of the three was Teresa.

“Look, Sam, I really don’t appreciate your judgments.”

A young woman was speaking to a genteel-looking male student wearing a sport coat and tie. Teresa was looking back and forth between the two students, fidgeting nervously with her book bag.