August 27, 2007
Permitted
Some Pharisees asked Jesus about divorce and he said, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.” (Matt 19:8 NIV). Fast forward to Paul’s instructions on worship, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” (1 Tim 2:12 NIV). It appears that in both cases the ‘permitting’ is a result of leadership for a specific time and culture. I won’t argue with Paul’s prohibition for women to be silent in the church, but I can’t overlook the fact that God has gifted many women with the ability of teaching and public speaking. I wonder how Paul feels about women breaking their silence outside the church.
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Gail;
-----There seem to be several Biblical commands that have become culturally adjusted. Consider, for example, “But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat.” (I Corinthians 5:11) We freely allow young people shacking up -- test driving one another, so to speak -- to worship among us. There are even some whom we allow among us who are milking all the neighbor’s cows with no intention whatsoever of buying one and taking it home for his own and only. And our churches are full of the greedy, even in the eldership and ministry. Has some cultural adjustment made immorality and greed acceptable? I hear preachers continuously preaching about the idolatry that TV is, football is, the this is, and the that is, yet I do not see any of them escorting the idolaters out the door. Is it that the preacher has culturally adjusted to fellowship with idolaters, or is it that he himself is slandering these good folks for their entertainment choices and swindling everyone else to look upon them as idolaters? Either way, shouldn’t someone be escorted out the door? Then there is, “To the elders among you…Be shepherds of God's flock that is under your care, serving as overseers…not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.” One of the contemporary duties of the elders is to determine what the people are expected to think about this and do about that. Others are to determine where the people’s contributed money will be spent and where it won’t be spent, upon which project their contributed time will be focused, what they will sing at church and what they won’t, and which pieces of church furniture will stay and which will go. They pretty much invest themselves into everything of about control, and little about example. Another cultural adjustment, I am sure.
-----When Paul instructed the Corinthians that the women were to keep silent in the church, it was not because, “…the very nature of things…” (I Cor 11:14) teaches it. Instead, what lies behind it is the very substance of the relationships between woman, man, and God. Paul offends twenty-first century women worse at I Corinthians 11:3-9 by stating that man is the head of the woman, that she was created from him and for him, and that she is his glory. Paul appends his instructions to the Corinthians, including the one for women to remain silent, with, “If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord's command. If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored.” If Paul’s instruction at I Timothy 2:12 that women not have authority over men is based on cultural norms, then Paul himself reveals that it is based on the norms of the overall culture of all human-kind. For he himself legitimizes the demand by reference to the fact that it was the woman who was deceived. Even there at Genesis it is revealed that the curse upon woman would be that her desire would be for her husband, and he would rule over her. (Of course, notice that this condition is a curse, not a blessing.)
-----Understanding that there are many cultural nuances in the Bible, I do not believe that straight forward instructions in the Bible are culturally directed to any time or place. Especially those dealing with basic and fundamental theme such as the relationship between God, man, and woman. Like God, His Word remains the same and it is man who changes. And man has changed greatly. Women teach and even preach in the church everywhere. The church I now attend has several women elders. The other day a woman preached. Why am I not driving to push these scriptural anarchists out the door? Because I am a scriptural anarchist as well. We are all scriptural anarchists. None of us obey the Word to a “T.” Or even begin to, from the perspective of God. Oh yes, from our own perspective our righteousness is spiffy deluxe. But from His, He has told us, it is dirty rags. There are things I do in my own life that are misaligned with the Word. It is confession for me to admit that I am out of line with the Word. It is mercy that I see being the basis of my relationship with Him. It is by mercy that the myriads of other inconsistencies in the church do not preclude it from being His Bride. So I will sit and quietly think, “This is just as misaligned as so much of everything else people do,” when I am being preached to by a woman, or sitting in a woman’s classroom. And I will be thankful for learning from the points of view and intuitive insights that only a woman seems to have (dare I say, “That only could have been deceived,” uh, naw, I better not dare.)
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