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The Dawning Restoration of Masculine
Spiritual Authority
VIII. Pitfalls of Primary Gender
The limitations of our revelation according to gender as seen in the preceding discussion lead us to comment on the pitfalls of primary gender. Unless we recognize the limitations on our spiritual gender, we will not be able to overcome into the third dimensional perfection to which God is calling His people.
It is said that our greatest strength is our greatest weakness. This is true of primary spiritual gender. The downfall of each is not so much due to its lack of having obtained the qualities of the other, but due to each’s own strong traits leading to a hyper-gender that breeds grotesque extremes and aberrations.
We have already considered the extremes of spiritual femininity as seen through the Word of Faith movement. The attendant weakness of femininity is to overdose on its strengths in the grace and mercy of God, appreciation of God's goodness, and involvement to reach the world by identifying with it.
It’s the feminine Church that has produced all the aberrations we have come to know as compromise with the world, "positive thinking/confession," man pleasing, feminine control (Jezebel), and undisciplined, self-indulgent enjoyment of present life. The feminine Church's awareness of God's love leads it to an over-inclusiveness in its relationships with men and its understanding of God's plans for mankind (everything from “the whole world may be saved" to “the whole church will be raptured.")
But the masculine Church is beset by the weaknesses that mirror its strengths of judgment, purpose, and separation unto God. The desert Church overdoses on its own sense of uniqueness breeding pride and arrogance. Their excessive spirit of discernment breeds hypercritical judgment and cynicism. Their devotion to holiness produces a monkish (buddhist) asceticism. Their experiences of evil produce heaviness and discouragement in demeanor. Their devotion to principled truth breeds unforgiving personal legalism.
The masculine propensity for pressing on produces personality burnout, unreachable aloofness, insensitivity to the genuine emotional and physical needs of others, and ineffectiveness in the earth. Devotion to futuristic revelation renders them irrelevant to the present generation. Finally, awareness of God's selectivity in dealing with men leads them to an over-exclusiveness in relationships with men and understanding of God's plans for mankind (everything from "we alone are the true saved church" to "we alone are the manifested sons of God to be translated.”)
IX. Overcoming the Knowledge of Good and Evil: Key to Gender Perfection
The great hindrance to our perfection is our knowledge of good and evil. All our perception of spiritual gender is filtered through our false human sense of right and wrong. Consequently, we stumble at partaking of the qualities of the opposite gender because we don't see them as parts of the same whole. Instead, we cut ourselves off from certain traits we assume to be wrong because we have become convinced of the exclusive rightness of the traits native to us.
For example, if we are primary feminine, we will become persuaded of the exclusive rightness of believing in God's goodness, grace, and mercy. Our knowledge then forces us to conclude that to believe in God's justice, severity, and implementation of evil must be wrong. We know it is right to be in a body. Therefore it must be wrong to be a “loner.” We know it is right to confirm the voice of the Lord through others. Therefore it is wrong to believe one can hear God for oneself without need of body confirmation.
Masculinity suffers oppositely. Desert knowledge of God's confrontational hatred of sin leads masculine ones to conclude it is wrong to speak conciliatorily toward sinners. Knowing it is right to hear directly from God, we conclude it wrong to have to confirm God's voice through others. Knowing the rightness of our pioneering nature, we conclude it wrong for any Christian to settle anywhere in a stable visible body of believers for any long period of time.
Knowing it is right to find identity in Christ alone, it must be wrong to have any kind of ministry labels to distinguish believers by spiritual function or office. Since we are aware of the rightness of developing internal holiness and futuristic vision for heaven, we conclude it wrong to be involved in earthly affairs to change the present world.
The stumblingblock is multiplied when we discern the abuses of the opposite sex. When feminine saints drown in pollution through over development of their strengths, it confirms masculine saints in their hard knowledge of the evil of feminine gender.
When masculine saints give way to spirits of hypercriticism, hyper-separation and asceticism, it confirms feminine saints in their hard knowledge of the evil of so-called masculine "discipleship." This mutual offense between the genders is the power of skandalon. This is the power by which the faults of others harden us in our own knowledge of good and evil.
If we would enter perfection, we must overcome the knowledge of good and evil. That knowledge stands between us and the attributes of the other gender we must yet receive to grow in perfection. At every season, in every generation, the knowledge of good and evil and the power of skandalon keep individuals and bodies of saints from submitting to the next oscillation in gender development toward spiritual wholeness. If we would enter perfection, we must dethrone the knowledge of evil with its fear that prohibits us from receiving the next impartation of opposing gender.
The point at which we fail to overcome this knowledge is the point at which we fail to qualify for further development in the plan of God for our generation. We become consigned to overdosing on our strengths which we believe to be right, from whence we make an extreme of them whose stench then makes us a skandalon to someone from the opposite side of the gender fence.
If
we can see all this: if we can perceive our primary spiritual
gender, if we can perceive our present season of gender, and
if we can see through our knowledge of good and evil to get a
glimpse of the whole picture, then our final commitment needs
to be to say an unqualified yes
to God. We must say yes
to His specific plan for developing our perfection. We need to
say yes to His
challenge to jump the fence of our knowledge to submit to
learning the qualities of gender opposite from our present
position.
Every day, every month, every year in every season of church and personal relationship, we have to discern when we've been long enough where we are, and then say yes to moving into the opposite camp. We must commit to embrace the whole, to absorbing all the attributes of God mirrored in the traits of spiritual gender. Such unqualified commitment will insure our defeat of the knowledge of good and evil, insuring a clear, straight (albeit narrow) road to perfection (Mt. 7:14).
Chris Anderson
written from Merrimack, New Hampshire
First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org
02/92
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