One of the convictions that has grown stronger in me over time is that God reveals Himself in words that human beings can bear, but that those words often contain more than any one generation first sees.
That is not a claim against scripture. It is a claim for its depth.
God accommodates. He speaks into culture, into language, into history, into the limitations of those receiving the revelation. He is not handing a physics textbook to Bronze Age shepherds or a systematic theology to frightened tribes trying to survive drought, war, childbirth, kings, exile, and the ordinary chaos of being human. He speaks in ways people can receive. And yet the treasure remains there in the field, waiting for later generations to dig again, ask again, and see again.
That was one of the things I most appreciated in my conversation with Amy Peeler.
We spent some time talking about language—Hebrew and Greek, translation, the way scripture reaches us through words that are never simple and never exhausted. Amy was careful, as good scholars are careful, not to make cheap claims about one language being superior to another. But she affirmed something I care deeply about: that later generations can sometimes see treasures that were always there, even if earlier readers did not draw them out in the same way.
That matters to me because my own goal has never been novelty for novelty’s sake. It has been to improve my understanding of God’s intent as revealed in His Word. Not to force the text to say what I want it to say, but to keep returning to it with enough humility to admit that there may still be more there than I have seen.
Amy Peeler’s work is a good example of that.
She came to biblical studies not through skepticism but through love—love for scripture, love for the church, love for learning. She discovered as a young woman that one could devote oneself to rigorous study of the Bible, and that discovery became, as she put it, a kind of heavenly match. From there she pursued Greek, New Testament studies, Hebrews, and eventually one of the most difficult and important intersections in Christian theology: God as Father, women in scripture, and the meaning of Mary.
What struck me most in the interview was not merely that she had answers to hard questions. It was the path by which she got there.
Her work began in Hebrews, where she noticed how often God is the direct speaker and how central fatherhood language is to the book’s presentation of God’s character. That became one line of inquiry. At the same time, she was reading feminist critiques of Christian language about God—especially the critique that calling God “Father” has often been damaging to women. She did not dismiss those critiques. She took them seriously. But neither did she surrender the riches she had found in the biblical witness. Instead, she stayed in the tension and kept digging.
That is the sort of work I respect.
Not reaction.
Not ideology.
Not slogan against slogan.
But patient wrestling.
And where that wrestling led her is what I found most illuminating.
The gender conversation changes when we take Mary seriously
Amy said something in the interview that landed with great force. When God chose to save the world, He chose to come among us through the full human process beginning with pregnancy. He invited a woman to be the first one to say yes to the salvation process.
That should be obvious, and yet it never occurred to me.
It certainly has not been emphasized in many Protestant settings. As Amy admitted, and as many of us could admit, Mary often gets attention at Christmas and then fades quickly into the background. But if the center of the Christian story is Jesus, and if Jesus is not an abstraction but an actual human being who entered history in an actual body, then we cannot even say the name of Jesus without already invoking the reality of Mary.
That is no small thing.
Amy’s point, as I heard it, was not sentimental Mariology for its own sake. It was something more basic and more powerful. If a person fears that Christianity does not value women, then the incarnation itself stands as a profound rebuttal. God did not save the world at a distance. He did not bypass womanhood. He did not merely make use of female biology as a temporary vehicle and then move on. He chose a woman, honored her consent, entered the world through her body, and then allowed the incarnate Son to be formed in the ordinary and extraordinary ways sons are formed—through gestation, birth, nurture, presence, voice, face, touch, instruction, and maternal care.
At one point in the interview, I said something that almost struck me while I was saying it: I had never really thought about the mother of God being the mother of God after His birth.
That sounds almost absurd once said aloud. Of course she was. Of course she mothered Him. Of course the child Jesus learned His earliest human identity looking into her face. Of course the mother is, in the ordinary course of life, the primary educator in those first formative years. Of course God, if He chose this path, chose all of that too.
That is where Amy’s work becomes not merely corrective but revelatory.
Mary was not a decorative extra in the salvation story. She was central to the way God chose to tell it.
Jesus changes everything, including the story of male and female
One of the things I keep seeing in scripture is that Jesus does not merely continue old patterns untouched. He fulfills them by transforming them. He flips the script repeatedly.
He does it in parables.
He does it in moral expectations.
He does it in power.
He does it in judgment.
He does it in mercy.
And in my conversation with Amy, I could feel that same pattern opening around the question of men and women.
In Genesis, woman comes from man. That is the first movement. But in the incarnation, the script turns: now the man, Christ, comes from woman. Amy immediately saw the force of that and said, in essence, yes, exactly—that is part of the balance, part of the completion, part of the beauty of what God is doing.
That matters.
It means the old story is not erased, but neither is it left in static form. The relationship between male and female is not a frozen hierarchy defended by prooftexts alone. It is caught up in the redemptive movement of the gospel itself. God begins one way and then, in Christ, completes the pattern in another way that restores balance, honor, and mutuality.
Amy also made an important distinction that I appreciated. Her goal is not female triumphalism. It is not “women on top now.” It is partnership. Men and women working together for the good of the kingdom. That aligns with what I have increasingly come to believe myself: not sameness, not rivalry, not compensation through reversal, but a real honoring of difference ordered toward unity and life.
In my own faith community, this has long been captured in the image of the two wings of a bird. A bird does not fly with one wing. And it does not fly well by pretending the wings are interchangeable in every respect. Distinct, yes. Unequal in worth, no. The whole life of the creature depends on both.
Amy’s work on Mary gives that image fresh theological depth.
Because the honoring of women is not an afterthought. It is embedded in the way God chose to enter history.
Why fatherhood language for God still matters
The obvious objection then arises: if all this is true, why does scripture still so often speak of God as Father?
Amy’s answer to that was one of the most memorable moments of the interview. She said, drawing on a colleague’s formulation, that Jesus did not call God “Mother” because He already had one.
That is both simple and profound.
It means that fatherhood language for God, properly understood, is not a denial of womanhood or motherhood. It is part of an incarnational logic. Jesus reveals God as Father precisely as the one who Himself has a mother. The family language is not abstract. It is grounded in the story of the Son who came through Mary.
That does not solve every abuse of the language, of course. Amy was very clear that feminist critiques are not to be waved away. Fatherhood language has been used badly. It has harmed people. It has been pressed into service of patriarchy in ugly and dishonest ways. But abuse does not abolish right use. The answer is not always subtraction. Sometimes it is fuller context.
And the fuller context here is the incarnation.
God as Father.
Christ as Son.
Mary as mother.
Human beings as children invited into the family.
That is not a crude patriarchy. It is a theological drama.
Scripture is deeper than our first reading of it
By the end of the conversation, what I most felt was gratitude.
Gratitude for scholars who do not merely deconstruct. Gratitude for people who stay with the text. Gratitude for those who let hard questions drive them deeper rather than farther away. Gratitude for the reminder that scripture may unsettle us, but if we keep pressing in, blessing is often waiting on the other side of the struggle.
Amy said near the end that she has never come to a hard passage, wrestled with it honestly, and walked away without a blessing. I believe her. More than that, I think that testimony explains the shape of her whole vocation.
And perhaps that is what I most learned from her.
God accommodates.
But the treasure remains.
The words are ancient, but they are not exhausted.
The questions are difficult, but they are not dead ends.
The tensions are real, but they need not drive us to despair.
Sometimes they drive us to Mary.
And there, unexpectedly for many of us, we discover that the center of the Christian story has always contained a more profound honoring of women than many Christians have known how to say.
Not by abandoning the fatherhood of God.
Not by flattening the text.
Not by denying complexity.
But by seeing more fully what God has been doing all along.
Sneak Peek: What’s Coming Next on Created in the Image of God
Because these conversations are never isolated, but part of a larger search for truth, healing, and the recovery of our shared humanity, I want to close with a quick look at what’s coming next.
On Sunday, September 13 at 7:00 a.m. US Central time, I was joined by Mark and Jill Savage—authors, speakers, and marriage coaches. They shared how a crisis that nearly ended their marriage became a journey toward healing, forgiveness, and restoration. From rebuilding trust after brokenness to the hard-won lessons that can help couples build stronger, healthier relationships, it promises to be a deeply human conversation.
Then on Tuesday, September 15 at 8:00 p.m. Central time, I’ll be speaking with Candace Lynn Talmage—author of high fantasy and nonfiction on spirituality and emotional healing. We’ll explore the intersection of storytelling, spirituality, and inner transformation through worlds shaped by conflict, mysticism, power, and awakening. From otherworldly battles and questions of justice to the deeper realities that shape how we understand ourselves and the world around us, it should be a rich and imaginative discussion.
If this conversation with Amy Peeler stirred something in you—about scripture, gender, incarnation, or the way God still has more to show us in His Word—I think these next two conversations will carry that search forward in meaningful ways.
I hope you’ll join me.
