I sat in my college room in Boston and stared at my Bible in dismay. I had just read 1 Cor. 14:33b-35 (RSV):  ‘As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.’ What was I to do with this? It shook me to my foundations.

To understand why this Bible passage so disturbed me, you need to know a little about my background.

It was the autumn of 1971 and the Jesus Movement, a religious revival among hippies and young people, was sweeping the USA. A few months earlier I’d gone to a Bible study at a well-known charismatic church in Philadelphia, and had been ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’. It transformed me. I was a shy child, but became more outgoing and confident. I’d always been a Bible reader, but now the Scriptures seemed pulsing with life and I devoured them eagerly. My ‘baptism with the Holy Spirit’ had had a surprising feature, for a child whose teachers had always commented ‘will not speak up in class’. Instead of beginning to speak in tongues, as was expected, I had stood up and begun to expound the Bible – much to the consternation of the rest of the group and my own surprise.

I had been a Christian for nearly 8 years when I went to the Bible study that summer night, having ‘given my heart to Jesus’ at the age of 9. I’d attended church all my life; my father was a conservative evangelical and a well-known preacher. We were surrounded by theologically literate evangelicals.  I’d imbibed a very high view of Scripture; I had been taught that God’s will is revealed in the Bible and that it is impossible to please God without obeying its teachings. I knew the Reformation principles that the Bible has a plain meaning and does not contradict itself. I had also absorbed a fear of displeasing God by ‘going off the rails’ or ‘compromising’. Compromising what was never spelled out, but it sounded dreadful. As Rachel Held Evans wrote,

         ‘It’s a frightful thing—thinking you have to get God right in order to get God to love you, thinking you’re always one error away from damnation.’

These inbred attitudes co-existed with my new-found joy.

So here was my dilemma. It was not possible for me either to disobey Scripture or to ignore it. But in the past few months it had become clear that I had a gift for teaching the Bible; and only the previous week I had read in Rom. 12:1-11 that those with a gift for teaching should dedicate themselves to serving God with it. How was I to reconcile the command to use my gift for Bible teaching, with the command that women should stay silent in church?

I fell back on two more Reformation principles – that one text can be used to interpret another, and that the Bible should be understood as a whole. The only way out of my dilemma, I thought, was to get to know the Bible really well, so that its apparent contradictions were resolved. I set out on a programme of serious Bible study. For 12 years I read the New Testament through twice a year, and the Old Testament once. When I came to things I didn’t understand I looked them up in commentaries. I acquired a pretty good (though mainly conservative) reference library.

Quite a lot happened in those 12 years. We returned to the UK, I finished my degree in English literature and got jobs first in Christian publishing and then in bookselling; and I joined the Church of England. By 1982 I was on the path to ordination. My conflicts about women and Bible teaching had largely been resolved.

I won’t recount in detail how I came to understand the different kinds of literature in the Bible; the ways it uses imagery; the historical and cultural backgrounds of its writings; and the difficulties of working with translations. All of these helped me to begin the process of sifting first priorities from secondary issues, and timeless truths from their applications in particular times and situations – a process in which I’m still engaged. I expect it to last my whole life.

What is perhaps more relevant for this blog is the emotional and psychological difficulties of it. Although my discoveries about the Bible were sometimes liberating, and occasionally exhilarating, looking at the Bible in this way also felt scary. What if I ‘went off the rails’ and ‘lost out’, as I had so often been warned? Would God be angry? If so, what would happen to me? Just admitting that some passages could not be easily understood at first reading was a big step. And then, if some of it was skewed in translation, and other bits specific to 1st century Rome or Corinth, or 4th century BC Palestine – how was I to know which still applied today? I was not – and am not – prepared simply to say, ‘That was a long time ago and culturally determined, and we know better today.’

These fears and uncertainties produced at times a defensiveness which I often recognise among conservative Christians today. Sometimes, when I engage in social media discussions on BibIe teaching, I am told I need to read my Bible, or that I don’t follow Jesus, or that I’m apostate. This happens when I give alternative interpretations of certain Bible texts, or even when I quote other Bible texts with a different angle on the matter. I recognise the hostility as coming from a deep-seated (and often unconscious) fear that the Bible, their only shield from an exacting God, is being undermined. If they cannot trust its plain meaning, they are lost. I understand that and make allowances.

In my own journey, a breakthrough came when I realised that I became dogmatic on a point shortly before changing my mind. I learned to recognise the signs, and open my mind and heart to the Holy Spirit’s leading.

And now? I still find the Bible a source of life. It points me to a God who is love. And ‘There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.’ *

*1 John 4:16-18