I Don't Have a Penis

There is a debate going on in our country about women being allowed to preach in Christian churches, to lead a congregation, to teach people what they believe in their hearts about Jesus and Christianity. 

Allowed. 

What a word! Women must be allowed to do something men take for granted. What year is it again? My calendar says 2021, but that can’t be right if we are still – more than 2000 years after the birth of Jesus – telling women what they are allowed / not allowed to do in the United States of America.

Women make up more than half of the USA’s population. 52.52% to be precise. Yet men and women who grew up in fundamental religion believe it is okay to tell women that they are not allowed to do something that Jesus himself never said they could not do.

Now, I could go on and on telling you what all I have learned about Jesus and women in his ministry, about the culture back then, about how God loves us all equally, and I could remind you that women wrote about theology and spirituality way back in Jesus’ day, just like the men did and the only reason their work did not make it into the Bible is because, well, the same reason we are debating a woman’s right to preach today: patriarchy. But why go into all that? There is a much simpler thing I could point out to you. 

I don’t have a penis. 

I have testosterone in my body, just like men, although not as much. Some days it feels like it when I’m plucking my whiskers in front of the mirror.

I have arms and legs, a head, a neck, fingers and toes, like men have.  

I have a heart.

I have a brain.

My body is not as large as a man’s; nor are my muscles, but I have them. 

My heart is capable of giving as much love as a man’s heart.

My brain is capable of holding as much knowledge as a man’s. I’d say that is quite amazing considering that it is physically smaller and lighter than a man’s brain. Wouldn’t you?

Ray was really good at math, but I suck at it, so I was always asking him to do math problems for me or to tell me how to figure out a math problem. That does not make me inferior to him. And there are many women who are great at math – even better at it than some men. I am better at language skills and writing, so Ray was always asking me how to write things or to communicate them in a better way. Did that make him inferior to me? 

Of course not.

We have women preachers in many churches across this country, so why is there still a debate in some churches? Are there problems in the churches where women are preaching? Are there scandals? Trust me, if there were, we would hear about them!

What are we afraid of?

There was a running joke between me and Ray for many years. Sometimes, when I asked why he did or didn’t do something around the house, just as a joke he would reply, “Because I have a penis.” Anytime I would wonder why something was the stupid, idiotic way it was between what women were not allowed to do and what men were privileged to get to do, he would reply, “Because we have the penises.”  Or I would say, “Oh, right. It’s that penis thing again, isn’t it?” Or we would both nod and say in unison, “Penis!” 

Because really that is the ONLY reason women are not given the same privilege or respect or opportunities or consideration as men. You can make any lame argument you want about the Bible and the roles not given to women back then by the men who were published in the Bible, but do we really want to continue that old exclusionary way of being in this world? We don’t have slaves now like they did back then. Societies moved from slave owners treating their slaves any way they wanted, to slave owners treating their slaves with some bit of kindness and compassion, to the realization that slavery is wrong. Societies moved from you accidentally poked my cousin’s eye out so therefore I am going to poke your eye out in the name of justice, to I realize it was an accident that you poked my cousin’s eye out, so I only require you to pay him X amount of money for his lost wages while he recovered. Societies moved from walking past the injured man on the street because he was what religious leaders deemed to be “unclean,” to realizing that an injured man deserves help no matter what his status is in other people’s eyes. Or did we? We at least like to think we have progressed that way. 

Societies must learn and progress to knew realizations of equality and fairness for everyone. Everyone includes women who are called to preach. 

The year is 2021 and the absence of a penis is not a good reason to keep women from sharing our wisdom as leaders of churches. It’s just not.

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