We'll Guard Each One's Dignity

a few days as we ate dinner with another couple, our male dining companion brought up the teachings in the new testament regarding the role of women in the church.  he was referring to i corinthians 14:33-35 and and the second chapter of i timothy.  in both women are instructed to remain silent during worship, deferring to their husbands.  the passage in the first letter to timothy also teaches that women are secondary creations, since adam was created first and then eve.  in the fifth chapter of ephesians, verses 22-24 say this: " wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the lord.  for the husband is the head of the wife, even as christ is the head of the church: and he is the savior of the body.  therefore as the church is subject unto christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing."

both my wife and i strongly disagreed with these passages, and our companion, realizing he had touched a nerve, quickly interjected that he was not endorsing the content of the verses in questions, but merely pointing out what "the bible taught."  knowing he believed every word in the bible was literally correct, dictated directly by God to the writers of the canon, we were certain that he was letting us know that the practices of the church we all attended were antithetical to the teachings of the bible and therefore not acceptable to him.  in our congregation, and in the denomination as a whole, women serve as officers in the church, serve as ordained ministers, and are regarded as equals of men, a practice my wife and i support and believe to be consistent with the teachings of jesus, regardless of what the letters purported to be written by st. paul say.

this brings up the larger question of how one reconciles contradictory passages in the bible if one believes the bible is wholly inerrant and literally true from cover to cover, but i'll write about that another time.  what i am concerned with in this post is the idea that women are "subject" to men, that women are inferior creations who caused sin to enter the world by falling for the serpent's temptation in the garden of eden and leading the first man to disobey God.  for me, this concept is entirely without merit.  it is not reasonable for members of one gender to be considered superior to the other.  men and women are far more alike than they are different, and all of us are a blend of what we traditionally consider "male" and "female" traits, despite the differentiation that biology imposes on us.

to discriminate against women based on any teaching, including those of the bible, is wrong, having more to do with control and power than with logic.  in one of those contradictory bible passages, st. paul says in galations, "there is neither jew nor gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in christ jesus."  in the eyes of God we are all equal regardless of our backgrounds, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or social status, and our behavior towards one another should reflect this equality.

may we see each first as humans beings.  may we not seek power over one another for any reason, including gender.  may we look for our commonalities and relish our differences without regarding those differences as making one person inferior to, or superior to, another.  shalom.