Maybe I had more faith when I was complementarian, and that's a bad thing

A rock with the word "Faith" on it. Image source.

Faith. What is faith? Way back when, I understood faith in this way: God tells us to do something, and we can't understand it and it doesn't make any sense to us, but we trust that God must have a reason, and it must be right somehow, even though we have no idea how, and so we obey.

And also, I believed in complementarianism: the belief that God made men and women with different talents and roles that "complement" each other, which in practice means that women are restricted from certain leadership roles in the church, and a man must be the "spiritual leader" of his wife and children. This is something that doesn't make sense. Never really did make any sense to me, as a women. But supposedly the bible says it, so surely God has a good reason, and so we have to obey.

And then I started reading Christian feminist blogs, which pointed out all the ways that complementarianism does actual harm to real people in the real world. These blogs also looked more closely at the bible verses that are used to restrict women from leadership, and showed that, no, it doesn't make sense to interpret them that way, and that actually the bible supports equality.

The Christian feminist blogs made a good case! But here's what I was stuck on: what about faith?

You can make the case that complementarianism makes no sense and is actually harmful, and that the alternative, egalitarianism, does make sense. Okay, sure. But doesn't "faith" mean "God commanded us to do something that doesn't make sense- something that seems to us to be a really bad idea- and we cannot possibly understand the reasons why, but God does have good reasons on some level, and so we have to do it"? Sure, it's always been obvious to me that complementarianism doesn't make sense, but that's what we should expect, right? We should expect that God commands us to do things that make no sense, like banning qualified women from church leadership. Otherwise, what is the role of faith?

I remember discussing this with other bloggers on the internet back then- how mystified I was at the idea that we can and should use our own brains to look at the real-world effects of our religion's rules, and not follow the rules which were obviously bad. What even is faith, then? Aren't we expecting that God will give us rules that don't make sense to us, with our fallible human thinking, but make sense to God?

The answer I got from Christian feminists on the internet back then was, when we say faith means "God tells us to do things that don't make sense", it means things like, being kind to someone that you feel doesn't deserve it. They gave some examples like that- all of which felt really weak to me. These weren't actually examples of God telling us to do things that made no sense. They were examples of actions which you could understand the reasons behind them, but you personally didn't want to do them because of your own feelings. That didn't feel like "faith" as I had always understood it.

(And also, please note that they meant "be kind to someone that you feel doesn't deserve it" only in a common-sense way. If you take this idea too far, and say that abuse victims should stay with their abusers in the name of being kind of them, well, these same Christian feminists would take a stand and say this is wrong. As they should. So yeah, my point stands. They were not *actually* advocating doing things that *actually* don't make sense.)

I finally came to the conclusion that no, this idea that "faith means doing something that makes no sense" is just not a thing. I just straight-up do not believe in that any more. Every command that God supposedly gives you can be analyzed and fact-checked.

If the church continues to believe that there are some roles that women just can't have, if we continue to discriminate even when we see how women in the church are suffering because of it, even when we see that it enables abuse, that it makes it harder for abuse victims because someone is going to say "well you still need to submit to your husband", even when everyone outside the church is shocked and horrified by the sexism- if the church continues to have these sexist policies, doesn't that show their faith is very strong? They believe God said this, so they just plow ahead, not caring what the consequences are. Isn't that what faith is? And the stronger your faith, the more you will ignore the real-world effects that you can see with your own eyes. The real-world effects that you literally are experiencing, if you are a woman.

That kind of faith is indeed very strong. And that's a bad thing. We shouldn't have faith like that.

When I changed my beliefs from complementarian to feminist, it wasn't simply a matter of "well these bible verses make more sense under a framework where God wants equality between men and women." I had to completely change what I thought "faith" was. I now believe in a Christianity which doesn't leave any room for this "faith" of forging ahead with something that clearly seems like a bad idea. Like Jesus said, a good tree cannot bear bad fruit. Use your own mind and fact-check your God.

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Related:

Men have no idea what it's like for women in complementarian churches 

"Women shouldn't preach" MUST mean "women can't preach"

This 93% Stat About Dads is Totally Made-Up 

"Faith" means "doing something that is a bad idea"

How long will you wait for your experience to match up with the bible?