'Redemptive Threads' in the Bible

One of the interesting things about the chauvinistic passages in the New Testament is that most of them contain 'redemptive threads' that work against the chauvinistic message the apostle is trying to communicate. The most famous of these threads occurs in Ephesians 5:21, where we read that husbands and wives should "submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." Even though the passage goes on to say that "the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church" and that wives should "submit to their husbands in everything," moderate evangelicals tend to grab hold of the phrase "submit to one another" and tug at it just enough to compromise the integrity of the rest of the passage. Of course, they are afraid to pull this thread too hard, out of fear that the whole shirt might unravel. Nobody likes to lose the use of his favorite shirt because he pulled apart the seams! In contrast to the timid tugging of moderate evangelicals, liberal Protestants are those who have pulled at the redemptive threads long and hard enough to realize that the whole shirt is constructed of such disparate threads, and that it shouldn't be taken too literally as a unity. Some of us have pulled longer and harder than others, and don't have much left of the shirt except a great big pile of threads, some of them of higher quality than the rest.

Everyone must ultimately decide for him or herself which redemptive threads in the Bible to pull, and how hard to pull them. I admit I felt a great sense of loss as I watched my evangelical faith entirely unravel before me. And yet I think it would have been a great act of cowardice to shy away from the pulling, and I have found that the redemptive threads themselves are so precious, especially now freed from their association with threads of lesser value, that I would not trade them for the unity that I lost. Perhaps, with time and help from like-minded people, they can be assembled into a new fabric, more precious and yet humbler than before: a towel to be used in drying the feet of our neighbors rather than a fancy garment to be guarded against worm and moth.