One day, The Body was walking along, and Miss Foot got a thorn. “Aauuuwww”, wailed Foot.
“Shut up, Foot”, admonished Mr. Mouth. “You are a woman. Women should be silent in the body of believers!”
Miss Foot send the pain message along to Mr. Nervous system. “I wish”, thought mr. Nervous System, “that she’d shut up. She can’t teach or have authority over a man!” Read the rest of this entry »
The new issue of JUIG and JOY are on the magazine racks. JOY contains the short letter I send them, with a link to this post. JUIG, the Afrikaans sister, do not contain my letter, or anything of the sort, at all.
JOY contains three letters on the matter:
> A letter from “Minister Kenneth Emmanuel sr.” , complaining about their “underhanded feminist tactics” and how even their article photo next to the “gender hierarchy in the home” article puts the woman in the centre. According to him, he can see JOY want to put women in the centre. He attack JOY management for being all white too, although the article was written by, according to him, a black person. (Huh? Errol Naidoo is not black, neither am I – I wrote the letter Errol responded to.) He then say: “If you do not repent … you will have a lot of blood on your hands on the day of Judgment.”
JOY responds to him by saying they do not have a feminist agenda, and some of the things he quoted in his letter – prior to it being shortened for the magazine – was my words, not those of the JOY article writer.
(I actually agree with the title-loving Minister Kenneth Emmanuel sr. about one thing: To put one gender at the centre, and marginalize another, is something that should be repented before God. It is sin to twist the Bible to suppress others. Speaking of blood on people’s hands, a sense of entitlement whereby some men believe they have the divine right to rule their wives, contributes to domestic violence.)
> Ted and Jessica Farrish wrote an intelligent letter in which they say “Genesis is not clear that men were to lead.” They rightly call patriarchy idolatry, mention that patriarchal teachings have been responsible for the death of at least two children (I seem to recall a warning about blood and hands and judgment day, from another commenter just before the Farrish couple?), and explain the meaning of head/ kephale, and mutual submission.
JOY responds to them by saying JOY appreciates their thoughts, does not advocate for patriarchy, and “we hope that our readers took away the Biblical truths we were explaining in this instance.”
(I am glad that they are against patriarchy. And I plead with JOY/ JUIG: If they are against patriarchy, they should please, please educate themselves on what ideas, promoted in JOY, comes from patriarchy – and stop promoting those. )
> The third is a short letter by me: Head, as in “the man is head of the woman”, does not mean leader. The letter then links to my article.
JOY did not answer me.
The Afrikaans sister magazine do not have anything on the matter, although I sent my letter to them too. How will their Afrikaans readers know that women are not supposed to just accept suppression under the name of male headship?
I know that some Internet friends of mine wrote letters to JOY concerning the matter too. I did not ask them. I only linked them to the JOY article, and told of my frustrations. (Up until now,) their letters appeared neither in the magazine nor on the letter page on their website.
Please, fellow Christians, help us get the message out: God does not want one gender at the centre, and the other marginalized. The very passage that is most often twisted to get hierarchy, starts with “everyone should submit” and ends with “God is no respecter of persons.”
(Many complementarians claim that marriage is a symbol of Christ and the church. Here is how I think such a marriage, symbolic of Christ and the church, will look like.)
If marriage was symbolic of Christ and His bride, then …
> The groom has to leave marvellous wealth and power behind, and live in squalor like the very poor bride, before asking her to marry.
> The groom would have to accept any whore who wanted to be His bride, and regard her – from the day of marriage – as clean and never, ever, bring up her past again.
> While accepting any whore as bride, he himself has to have a spotless past, never marred by any sin.
> The bride will sometimes be the provider – Luke 8:3, for example.
> The groom has to die and get raised before getting the bride.
> The groom will trust the bride enough to go away for a long time. (The time between His ascension and his second coming, about 2000 years and counting now.)
> We could spend everything on the most lavish wedding ceremony imaginable (second coming) – there is no tomorrow that our earthly resources have to be saved for.
> The groom will never be selfish, and never make a bad choice.
Now a man could ask himself: Does he really want to be Christ, with his wife as the church, in such a picture? Does he want to be judged by God for not living up to all that? When we tell him that the Bible do not call marriage a picture of Christ and the church, (it is not) should he be relieved or disappointed?
According to complementarian restrictionists, women could only teach women and children at church, not men.
That, in practice, mean that men have, at first, a wider choice of ministries available to them: Anything which is not gender-specific and reaches a cross-section of people, is only meant for men. Meanwhile, there is only two roles for women, to use all those gifts of prophesy, teaching, discernment, leadership, etc. which God, who is no respecter of persons, may give out to them: 1) Towards other women and 2) towards children.
The picture of available ministries looks like this:
I made the last block bigger on purpose, as most churches have more recipients of ministry involved here, which includes the Sunday morning sermon.
Now, assuming the church has an equal number of men and women who want to get involved, and each get involved where he/she is called to, involvement would look like this:
For the sake of this argument, I called complementarians right. I assumed no woman was called to teach a mixed gender group, or a group of men. Therefore all the women are in the first two boxes. But God never restricted men from doing those, so I will put some men in these boxes too.
Now, you may notice a very interesting thing: There is a much bigger women’s ministry and children’s ministry than men’s ministry. Why? Because God gifts women equally much, and her gifts for building up the church are used solely there.
With a bigger women’s ministry than men’s ministry, women will be reached better. This would mean that more women than men are effectively discipled. It would mean more women in church.
Also notice the children’s ministry block. Of course, a boy in Sunday School will get the impression that the church is feminized. Almost all his Sunday School teachers are women! And the unchurched man will see the church has an abundance of ministries to women and none/ few that reach out to him.
What can be done to solve the problem?
I can see these potential solutions:
1) Deny that God gave gifts to all to build up the congregation. Say God gave gifts mostly/ only to men. Or that women’s gifts should not build up the congregation. That will equalize the picture:
But it would solve the problem by contracting, not expanding the work of the church.
2) Eliminate any group-specific ministries, and make the church “family integrated.” That will eliminate anything where those “weak”, “easily misled” women could use their equally big gifts:
Once again, this decreases what the church does, and how effectively it uses gifts. Half of the congregation’s gifts still are not used to build the congregation.
3) Allow women to use their gifts as widely as men, and preach so that they know their gifts are as many and as varied:
Which of the following philosophies have the bigger influence on abortion? Choose one:
a) Patriarchy
b) Feminism Read the rest of this entry »
I said in part 1 that much of what we regard as God’s patriarchal bend, is actually either a) the patriarchal bend of the society, reported and not endorsed in the Bible, or b) in the patriarchal-reading eyes of the beholder. That is also demonstrated in something I read today.
Here, Eric Pazdziora explains 1 Peter 3:7:
Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
No, God is not p
atriarchal in what is really said there. Read Eric’s piece, and you will understand.
This word picture is beautiful. (The picture is not mine. If I could find who originally said it, I would have attributed it):
When hearing “the weaker vessel”, think of a strong mechanical hand, handling a valuable crystal glass so delicately that the glass don’t break or slip from its hand.
“It’s the feel of a great, majestic God who is by His redeeming work in Christ inclining men to humble Christ-exalting initiatives and inclining women to come alongside those men with joyful support, intelligent helpfulness, and fruitful partnership in the work.” – John Piper
Okay, to recap: Men, so say Piper, should not merely lead in a way someone else may have led before, but come up with “humble Christ-exalting initiatives.” The man who comes up with this “Christ-exalting initiative” can have no “joyful support” or “intelligent helpfulness” from another man, but only from women.
And since there is such a clear difference between the helping people (leaders have male genitals, helpers do not.) and the lead person, nobody could ever start by following and get groomed for leadership. And no male leader could ever Read the rest of this entry »
(Note: When I refer to patriarchy on this blog, it usually refers to the ideology of Vision Forum, Bill Gothard, etc. In this post and others of this series, patriarchy will refer to the word’s broader meaning.)
A question posed to me on another blog (I was defending that Christians should hold the Bible in high regard) was:
What about the possibility that patriarchal cultural views slipped into the Bible? The Bible is full of things that is impossible for a loving God (if he exist) to say.
I think that we often read patriarchy into the Bible when God did not intend it, or fail to see the patriarchal bend of Bible characters as theirs and not God’s.
As a case in point, here is the story of Zelophehad’s daughters. (Numbers 27)
Here is the common version:
God made a rule that only males could inherit. (How patriarchal of Him!) Then some young women whose father died came to Him. Mahlah and her sisters, Zelophehad’s daughters, asked if they could inherit.
Although Moses know God already ruled against them, he took their case to God. In Mahlah et. al vs. God, God as judge ruled in favor of the plaintiff. (Why did he not make fair rules from the beginning?)
And He decreed girls could, in future, be second in line for their father’s inheritance, but boys should get favored. (Again, that would be patriarchal!)
Here is apparently the more accurate, measured by the Bible, version:
God wanted to divide the newly acquired land between the Israelites. So He ordered that everyone should be counted by father. (26:2) This command is not about inheritance laws in general, but about practical rulings for dividing the land.
In fact, God make no rule, anywhere in the Bible, saying only males should/could inherit. It just isn’t there. (I will withdraw this statement if anyone points out such a rule to me.)
They listed the people by father. (26:3-51)
God said to give land to each family: Large pieces for large families, small pieces for small families. (26:53-56)
Mahlah and her sisters came to Moses: God said to list people by father and give land accordingly, but their father was dead! Would these orphans go uncounted, and not get land, even shared with family, anywhere? Or would the five of them get counted with some cousin or uncle’s family, and enlarge the land he will get by the large-piece-of-land-for-large-family rule?
Anyway, they wanted what God already said (26:2&53-56) in his general instructions: To be listed by their father, and inherit land for the Zelophehad family.
This paragraph is speculative, but these unmarried girls were probably teenagers or younger. It is very unlikely that five adult women would be unmarried in Ancient Near East society. I think that not just their portion of land, but also their independence may have been on trail: If five unmarried girls could get their own land, they could probably live on it. Without a father or guardian in sight? Their not needing a guardian is alluded to in “They could marry whom they think best.” (36:6) Usually, the father/ guardian gave girls in marriage.
Whether it was independence or just inheritance at stake, the patriarchal society did not want to give these unmarried (strike one) orphan (strike two) females (strike three) what God said all Israel could have.
I could just imagine a stiff-necked Israelite leader saying: “God did make this general rule of giving to each family, listed by their father, but this can’t count for unmarried orphan girls! How could these waifs handle land ownership? Moses, take this back to God. I’m sure He did not mean this rule should count for girls!”
Even Moses was not sure how he should rule, and took it back to God.
The court case was Israelite rule enforcers vs. God, Mahlah, et al. God ruled for these orphan girls – They should get their land. His justice, giving to each family a share, goes for fatherless girls too.
He then made what seems to be the only rule pertaining to inheritance in general:
Numbers 27:8 If a man die, and have no son, then ye shall cause his inheritance to pass unto his daughter.
Note that He did not say, sons first, daughters second. He said that if you are so inclined as to favor someone over your daughter as your heir, he forbids you from it being anyone except your son.. (God in the Bible never forbade people from favoring one of their sons over his brothers either, so I am unsurprised that he does not forbid favoring a son over a daughter.)
Where is the patriarchy in this story?
It is in the attitude of those who did not want to give Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah their piece of land. It is in the eye of the reader who assume God was unjust towards women, and had to change His rules for these daughters to get anything. Like in many other allegedly patriarchal stories in the Bible, God did not endorse human patriarchy here.
Acts, Chapter 8
26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, a writer for CBMW: “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” 27 So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, … Read the rest of this entry »
I (Daughter’s Name)’s Father, choose before to God to war for my daughter’s purity. I ackno
wledge myself as the authority and protector of my daughter’s virginity, and pledge to be a man of integrity as I lead, guide, and pray over my daughter and her virginity – as the High Priest of my home.
For Virgins
I (Name) pledge my purity to my father, my future/husband and my Creator. I recognize that virginity is my most precious gift to offer to my future husband. I will not engage in sexual activity of any kind before marriage but will keep my thought and my body pure as a very special present for the one I marry.
For Secondary Virgins (those who have engaged in promiscuous behavior) and wish to recommit themselves to lives of purity)
I (Name) re–pledge my purity to my father, my future/husband and my Creator. I now recognize that virginity is my most precious gift to offer my future husband. I deeply regret and will never again engage in sexual activity of any kind before marriage but will keep my thought and my body pure as a very special present for the one I marry.
– Wording of the pledge signed at purity balls.
Just to make sure you understand me right, I will tell more of myself than I usually find necessary. I am a few years past 30, and a virgin. I find it wrong in God’s eyes to sleep with a man who is not my spouse. Someone like me should probably be the heartiest endorser of purity balls, right?
Wrong.
No, because:
1) Purity balls worsen what they try to solve: Read the rest of this entry »
