13: EXPERIENCE TRUMPS SCRIPTURE 123house. Mr. Smart went downstairs to investigate. Whereupon the the-
ologian hit him on the back of the head with a crowbar.
Though she hit him two more times, Mr. Smart, bleeding, fought
her off, made his way upstairs, and called the police. When they
arrived, they found Ms. Brown on the front lawn. In the basement,
they found a Wal-Mart bag containing a large trash bag, three pairs
of latex gloves, a washcloth, and a butcher knife.
Investigators determined that Ms. Brown had planned to kill her
lover’s husband, dismember his body, and dispose of it, so that she
could have Mrs. Smart all to herself.^11What happened to Judy Brown? I expect that she probably had a
deep love for God and a strong spiritual gift of Bible teaching. If she had
continued to use this gift within the bounds of Scripture and decided she
would teach the Bible only to women, she likely would have had a
remarkably fruitful ministry with much blessing from God throughout
her life. But she stepped outside the bounds of appropriate women’s min-
istry as described in Scripture. And then she became a leader in the evan-
gelical feminist movement, forcefully advocating her position through
her speaking and writing. She became the pastor of a church, a role that
Scripture reserves for men. And then it appears that God simply with-
drew his blessing and withdrew his hand of protection from her life. She
tragically lost the ability to make wise judgments, and disastrous con-
sequences followed.
Someone may object to my bringing up the examples of these
women, and say, “But what about the hundreds of male pastors who
have committed great sins, bringing reproach on themselves and their
churches? Why pick on these two women when many more men have
sinned just as badly?”
I agree that many male pastors have also fallen into very serious sin.
And I do not doubt that in many of those cases God also withdrew his
protection and blessing from them. But in their cases the reason cannot
be that the Bible forbids men to become pastors! Surely nobody would
(^11) Ibid. Veith also points out that Judy Brown had contributed a chapter called “God, Gender,
and Biblical Metaphor” to the egalitarian book, Discovering Biblical Equality, ed. Ronald W.
Pierce and Rebecca Merrill Groothuis (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004), but when
IVP heard about Judy Brown’s prison sentence they withdrew the book from publication and reis-
sued it without her chapter.