Jesus & Gender: Living as Sisters and Brothers in Christ w/ Fitzpatrick & Schumacher -Podcast Ep 101

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Welcome to the Got Questions podcast. On today's episode, we're going to be interviewing Elise Fitzpatrick and Eric Shoemaker, the authors of Jesus and Gender, Living as Brothers and Sisters in Christ.

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This has been a very interesting book for me to read, and a couple of our other staff members read it as well, and we've got some really good conversations.

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So, Elise and Eric, welcome to the show. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having us.

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So, what led you two to get together and write Jesus and Gender? What were some of the things that you've observed in Christendom that led you to believe that this book was something the body of Christ needed to have access to?

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Well, I think that one of the reasons that we wanted to write Jesus and Gender was because we co -authored

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Worthy, celebrating the value of women.

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We wrote that together, and it was kind of the next logical question, which was, all right, so if women have value, so what?

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What does that mean? Why should we care? And we saw enough, I think, and I'll let

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Eric speak to this if he wants to, but we've seen enough in modern

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American evangelicalism to tell us that maybe the way things are being played out in people's lives don't demonstrate that we think that women have value or should be celebrated.

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Yeah, and it's, like Elise said, it's sort of a... Oh, and by the way, thank you,

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Shay, for having us on here, and thank you and Melissa also for endorsing

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Worthy. We really appreciated that. And, like Elise said, this is somewhat of a continuation of that question.

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And I think, as we think about men and women and how we live together in the church, the home, the world,

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I know that, for me, one of the things that sparked writing Worthy was taking a look again at what the

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Bible had to say about women and just asking the question about the relationships between men and women is what

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I've believed based on what I think the Bible actually says, and how much of it is based on what

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I've come to believe and based on other people's teachings. And then sometimes it felt like how the relationships between men and women were playing out was based on someone might have a principle and draw out an implication, and then they draw an implication from that and then make an application off that and sort of became the norm or a rule.

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And I didn't really see the Bible speaking to those areas so much. And so I wanted to take a fresh look as much as I could at the text and see what the

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Bible said. And one of the things I think that bothered Elise and I in this conversation is that it seems like anytime we talk about men and women in a

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Christian context, people want to talk about quote -unquote gender roles, particularly like who can be a pastor, what does headship and submission look like, and there's a lot of books written on that.

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And we feel like sometimes the conversation's been overtaken by the question of who gets to be in charge and who gets to do what and not do what.

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And we both have opinions on that and our respective churches have stances on that. But when we look at the life of Christ, what we see there isn't someone who's necessarily asking about or telling us to be concerned about our authority, but telling us to be concerned about how we serve and love our neighbors in a manner that looks like him.

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Yeah. So full disclosure, not that this in any sense needs to be disclosed, but Eric was actually a good friend with my wife all through high school.

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It's all the way through kindergarten through high school. And Eric, I've been very grateful for your friendship at the high school reunions

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I've been dragged to when the only other person I knew was you and Melissa. So thank you for that.

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But no, I really enjoyed reading Worthy and this is an excellent follow -up, really thought -provoking and even still a few things

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I'm like, I don't think I've ever thought of it from that perspective. So I can't even say at this point that I disagree with anything, but there's still a few points that I'm still definitely noodling on.

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It's like, huh, that is definitely thought -provoking. If nothing else,

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Jesus and Gender is a very thought -provoking book. So thank you both for that. So what implications does the gospel have on being a man or a woman and our relationships together?

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What we wanted to do was ask the question, so what does the gospel have to say about gender?

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And in order to do that, we went to Philippians 2. And in Philippians 2,

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Paul says, adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus. And quite frankly, you know, and I can go on from there, you know, who existing in the form of God did not consider equality with God something to be exploited.

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I think that most of what we've seen when people are talking about gender roles, or what does it mean to be a man?

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What does it mean to be a woman? It's always trying to answer the question, who gets to be boss? And to us, that's the wrong question.

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If you're asked, if where you begin in your discussions of men and women, and who they are in Christ, in the church, in the faith, if where you start is who gets to be boss, it's the wrong question you've already lost.

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As a matter of fact, I was just noticing this morning in that passage in Philippians 2.

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In verse 3, it says, do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves.

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How can you do that and then spend your entire ministry saying you get to be boss?

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Wherever anybody lands on that question, fine, that's not our discussion.

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Our discussion is, if what you want to do is prove that one person or another gets to be the boss, you are forgetting the very ways that Jesus talked about people who wanted to be in power.

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And he always said, don't do that. There's several passages in the

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Gospels where the disciples had that very attitude. It's like, which one of us is going to be in charge?

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And his rebukes were very strong that that's not what his kingdom is supposed to be about. So I really appreciate how you pointed that out.

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So it got questions. I don't know if you two know this, but in our entire 20 -year history, hundreds of thousands of questions submitted.

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And if we kind of compile all the very similar questions into one, the question of can women serve as pastors is our number one question of all time.

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And it's very much the can women be in charge of the church is what a lot of people are asking or even some of the related passages.

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And it's fascinating. Even beyond that, then it goes down to, okay, if women can't be senior pastors over men, well, what about can women do this or this or this?

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Trying to break it down. Can women be missionaries? Can women be worship leaders? All these things. And it's so focused on roles that it can be limiting both in your mindset and what you can or can't do when you focus on what does the

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Bible say I can't do rather than how can we minister together in the body of Christ? How can we serve one another, worship together, proclaim the gospel together?

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How can we be most powerfully used for the kingdom of God rather than focusing on, okay,

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I can have this role and you can't. And that can be frustrating, but at the same time, I think these are important questions to discuss, but they shouldn't become an obsession.

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And that's what it seems like it's become for a lot of people. Yeah. And I think that question of what role does the incarnation play?

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One of the reasons that's so important is because at the heart of the good news is that Jesus took on human nature.

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The author of Hebrews says he had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every respect so that he could be a merciful high priest.

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And that wasn't just to atone for our sins. And I don't mean to say just atone for our sins as though that's anything small, but that's the heart of the whole thing is that Jesus died for our sins.

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But the author goes on to say that because he shared our nature and he was tempted in every way that we are, except he was without sin, that he can sympathize with our weaknesses and he understands what it is to be like us.

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And when we think about the fact that he took on human nature and he was sinless, that tells us he is the perfect image of God.

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What it means for us to be created as God's image bearers as men and women in Genesis 1.

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And we asked the question, well, what does that look like to live as God's image on earth? That's what we see in Jesus Christ as he lives on earth.

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And that's what Paul says in Romans 8 that God predestined us to be conformed into the image of Christ so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

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We're all being conformed into his image. And so what it looks like to be a mature

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Christian man, and I would say what it looks like to be a mature Christian woman, is the incarnate

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Lord Jesus Christ. That's what it looks like. And like you pointed out, Shay, in those passages where his disciples or sometimes his disciples' mom, one of their mothers is asking, who's going to sit at which side of honor and power in your kingdom?

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And he says, if you want to be great, you have to be a servant to everyone. And that looks like him laying down his life to ransom us from our sins.

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And so when Paul says in Philippians 2, everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others, it looks like crucifixion.

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It looks like dying for the good of other people. And that is what we want to say relationships between men and women should look like in Christ.

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And so no matter how you answer those questions of who fills what roles, if everybody's looking out for each other's interests and being willing to lay down their life for the good of the other, those questions, and I think they're really important, they really don't become as big of a deal in the sense that no one's exploiting that position over the other.

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Whoever holds it is using it in a sacrificial way for the good of the other.

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And that's what it looks like to model Christ. Yeah, absolutely. And I've been in churches where there's an abusive power structure.

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I've been in companies or ministries or organizations where there's an abusive power structure and it can be either men or women in these positions who are abusing their authority.

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And there's something about our human nature tainted by sin that just strives for control.

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We all want to ultimately, not everyone, I know a lot of people, my wife included, has no interest in being the boss of anything.

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But for a lot of us, that's a struggle. And it's like the first question we ask, it's like, okay, who's in charge?

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But that's not the attitude that Christ wants us to have. Another thing I really enjoyed about Jesus and gender was your focus that Christ's likeness is not to be couched in exclusively masculine or feminine terms.

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So elaborate on that a little bit. Yeah. The way that we wanted to define the discussion was to call it

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Christic, which basically Christic just means like Christ. And a lot of times what we hear is that Christic manhood is very masculine, he -man, shoot a gun, that kind of thing.

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That's what it means to be a Christic man. Whereas there hasn't been a lot of discussion about what it means to be a

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Christic woman, but femininity would be a person who's gentle and meek.

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And then you start thinking about that. And the way, for instance, that Paul talks in Galatians 5 about the fruit of the spirit, that list of the fruit of the spirit, if you're going to think in masculine and so -called masculine and feminine terms, those really look like feminine qualities, the way that things are presently being talked about.

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So in other words, women are patient and meek and kind and gentle.

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That's what it means to be a woman. But what it means to be a man is this other thing, you're the leader, you shoot guns.

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I don't know. What we want to do instead is we want to say, no, actually,

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Jesus Christ is the perfect man and the perfect woman. He perfectly represents us.

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And when we start thinking about what it means to be Christic, what we want to say is those qualities were seen in Christ.

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And we really need, I think in this time, to start rethinking what it means to be both masculine and feminine.

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That Bible doesn't use those words, but what does it mean to be a woman who's created in the image of God and also being recreated in the image of Christ?

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What does that mean for a man? And I think we've got to move past stereotypes, particularly the post -World

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War II white American stereotype of the wife stays home, the guy goes out and works and that sort of business.

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And that's all fine. I just don't think that that's what the Bible's talking about when it talks about being a male or a female created in the image of God and being recreated in the image of Jesus.

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Yeah. I love what Elyse just said there.

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And that summarizes so much. And it goes back to this idea that Jesus is the perfect image of God.

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And what Elyse just said might land on some ears strange when she said that Christ was the perfect man and the perfect woman.

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And she doesn't mean that Jesus was gender fluid when he lived on earth.

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We understand and agree that he was a man and he is a male. He's a male human being in his resurrected body.

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But what we mean by that is there aren't two separate natures, a male nature and a female nature.

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If the author of Hebrews can say he became like us in every respect, that means there's one human nature that we both share and that Christ assumed.

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And I just think that's so important to understand what it means to live as men and women.

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We ask the question, who do I look to as a role model in the Bible as to what it means to be a man or to be a woman?

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And as a male, it's easy to say, well, I look to Jesus as the perfect man. And someone says, well, who do

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I look to as a woman? It feels weird to not be able to say, well, you look to Jesus because that's who

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God is conforming our sisters into the image of. And it's just struck me for all that I've heard over the years and a lot that I accepted and taught about what manhood and womanhood looks like in Christ, I came to realize a lot of it came from American stereotypes about masculinity and femininity.

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And when we go and we look at the New Testament epistles and we see Paul's instructions for what it looks like to be conformed to the image of Christ, his instructions for discipleship, to put on this and put off that, we don't find him saying, there's a few places where he might say, to the women,

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I would say this, or to older men or younger men, I'd say this, but they're very small and short.

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And the bulk of it is given to all brothers and sisters. And it's not gender segregated discipleship in the

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New Testament. We're all given the same commands to put on the same Christ and bear the same fruit.

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You know, one of the things that's, I'm sorry.

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One of the things that's really important in this discussion, Shay, is that a lot of the discussion in the past has been that men have a certain nature and women have a different nature.

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It's kind of the men are from Mars, women are from Venus, whatever. That kind of discussion.

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Well, that has bled over a lot into the church as though there are two different natures.

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There's a male nature and a female nature. And what we're saying is that can't possibly be true.

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There has to just be one human nature. And yes, of course, it's mitigated through our bodies biologically.

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And we're not saying that it's not, but there's just one human nature. And the reason that's important is because if Jesus didn't assume my nature as a woman, then

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I can't be saved. And that's what the incarnation, part of what the incarnation means is that Jesus took to himself human nature and then lived perfectly as a human in his human nature and then died substitutionally in his human nature and was resurrected in his human nature.

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If there are two human natures, one male, one female, and therefore people draw from that, oh, this is why guys need to be boss or something.

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If that's true, then women, who is our representative?

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It's not just, who should I be like? It is that. But also who's my perfect representative?

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Who fulfilled the law on my behalf? Who died in my place? If there's two different humanities, two different human natures, and that I think is so important.

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The other thing is this. If males and females have, in fact, different natures, and you guys are very different than me, then it would be very easy for you to say, well,

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Elise is not like us, therefore I get to objectify her. I get to ignore her because she's not like me.

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And that also is so important, which I personally think is one of the reasons that we've seen some of the problems that we've seen in churches with women being ignored and objectified because they're looked at as beings that have a different nature.

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And we have to just push back against that as much as we possibly can.

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One nature, male and female, both created in the image of God. Amen.

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That's a very important point for us to consider to remember and apply to how we view each other.

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I just remember in the past couple of decades, the first time I met a stay -at -home dad where the wife was the primary breadwinner, for lack of a better term, outside of the home.

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And my first reaction, well, that's wrong. But the more I think about it, it's like, is that culturally abnormal?

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It's like, yes. Is there anything specifically in the Bible that I can point to that says that that's wrong?

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Or then even making friends with some of the couples who the wife and the couple is more, has more, quote unquote, stereotypical masculine qualities, and the husband is a little more feminine on some issues.

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And it's like, huh, it's really caused me to rethink what I think about gender roles.

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But to me, the most powerful thing in your book is the reminder that Jesus is the ultimate example for both men and women of who we are supposed to be like, that we're all to be conformed to the image of Christ with men and women equally.

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And that's that's paradigm shifting in terms of how we view ourselves and how we view each other.

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So maybe for my last question, in the book, you talk a lot about how men and women in the body of Christ can contribute to each other's flourishing.

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And how, what are some practical steps that both men and women in the church can take to support each other, encourage one another, and help them to understand what the

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Bible truly says about gender and how that impacts how we follow Christ together? You know,

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I think sort of following on the coattails of that, what you just said,

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Shane, I'm so glad that you said that. And thank you for being willing to say that, you know, when we see something that's out of the ordinary for perhaps a tradition we've grown up in or we naturally walk in, it's easy to simply say that's wrong without saying, what does the

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Bible actually say about that? And I think just coming from that, encouraging our brothers and sisters to be who

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God made them to be, it's remarkable that we'll all be conformed into the same image, but we won't all be identical.

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We have these different personalities and mannerisms and likes and dislikes, and the world would be a horrible place if everybody was like Eric Shoemaker.

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It would be a disaster in so many ways, and it'd be very boring. And praise

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God for his diversity. And one of the reasons I think that's so important,

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Lisa and I were just having a, recorded a podcast episode with Preston Sprinkle a few weeks ago, and he was noting from one of his books, a scientific study that was done on transgender persons.

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And he noted that, I want to say it was 80%. Is that right, Elise? 80 % of those in the

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US identifying as transgender come from evangelical homes.

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And so to ask, that just puts in me the question, why such a, we're not 80 % of America as evangelicals.

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So why are 80 % identifying as transgender coming from evangelical homes?

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And I have to wonder if our emphasis of these culturally defined stereotypical understandings of masculine and feminine that we so often see in our, sometimes men's ministries and men's and women's retreats.

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If people in our churches don't go to those and go, oh, I don't fit what the church is saying a

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Christian woman looks like. Or I don't, I talk to men who struggle with gender identity, college students who say,

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I grew up going to these retreats and it was all about eating meat and shooting guns and He -Man stuff.

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And I like the theater and I'm into this, that, or the other, nothing that's wrong.

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But they question, maybe I'm not really a man. Maybe I'm a woman trapped in a man's body.

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And it breaks my heart that maybe we as the church have caused this confusion with stereotypes about men and women that the

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Bible doesn't actually put forward. And so I think we can love one another by affirming the different strengths and interests and talents and skills that He's given us as men and women, even where they don't fit stereotypes.

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And in some ways, I think that doesn't just serve each other as brothers and sisters, but it helps our witness to the world.

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Yeah. No, that's an excellent point. And it's something I have observed as well. And the stereotypical male and female qualities or interests.

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And when you find yourself, I seem to have more in common with the stuff that supposed to be womanly or manly things, it can lead to confusion where it doesn't have to be.

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There's nothing wrong with men being interested in things that our culture typically ascribes to the female side of the equation and vice versa.

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So thank you for sharing that because I think it's something a lot of people really need to hear. So Eric and Elyse, thank you so much for this interview.

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And again, Jesus and gender, living as sisters and brothers in Christ. It's an excellent read.

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And if I were to try to describe it with one adjective, it'd be thought provoking. So thank you for,

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I know all the work that went into it and all the struggles that you two have gone through to lead you to this point where this is a passion of yours and that comes through very clearly in the book.

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So we'll include some links where you can learn more about Elyse and Eric and this book and also

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Worthy, their previous book. Again, well worth studying. So again, Elyse, Eric, thank you for being on the

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Got Questions podcast today. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Got questions?