Lona (@lonathecat),
I deliberately wait several days between responding to this thread to ensure that I don’t just respond in the heat of an argument, but that I think through what I say and how to approach this topic. It is planned pacing and there have been some very deliberate statements that I have made because I sensed where this conversation was going when you first decided to challenge every nuanced point I made with respect to the topic. I have no hesitancy debating your perspective, but I am concerned that something has been lost in this discussion and that is that it has ceased to be merely a speculative debate of ideas, and has rather become a personal struggle with you.
I feel that I must point out that a person’s perspective more often arises out of experience rather than out of immutable truth. What I mean by that is a person who has suffered under some form of abuse, whether that be physical, mental or emotional can sometimes view their wider world from the perspective of the their own pain and scars, rather than from an objective viewpoint. This is not to say that from another viewpoint there is any legitimacy in the evil actors who caused you to suffer. Objectively all “evil” should be judged from God’s perspective and from His revealed Word and that is part of reverencing God and walking in what the Scriptures call the “fear of the Lord”.
Here are a few verses referencing that:
The fear of the LORD [is] the beginning of knowledge: [but] fools despise wisdom and instruction. [Proverbs 1:7 KJV]
The fear of the LORD [is] to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate. [Proverbs 8:13 KJV]
The fear of the LORD [is] the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy [is] understanding. [Proverbs 9:10 KJV]
In the fear of the LORD [is] strong confidence: and his children shall have a place of refuge. The fear of the LORD [is] a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death. [Proverbs 14:26-27 KJV]
The point is reverence for God is paramount in all we do or think.
We cannot get an accurate perspective even of our own sufferings if we rely on our own feelings and perspectives alone. God’s viewpoint sees all things and what they will manifest to. He knows what was meant for evil, can be turned for your good if you yield your pain and suffering back to Him to repair what in you was broken or treated with contempt.
But when we double down in the pain of the past, and hold fiercely to our suffering experience as a means of trying to protect ourselves from future assaults on our personhood, or even our bodies, eventually that inner pain sheltered, will turn to bitterness and will cloud our judgment and leave us blind to ever finding God’s truth.
Part of the temptation we have when holding that secret pain is to impugn God’s character, because we secretly believe, though we may never admit to it, that God wanted us to suffer and that He may not be as kind and loving as our religious leaders make Him out to be.
Reading scripture through the tinted glasses of our secret fears, then causes us to couch our discussions through that filter.
Some part of you may secretly believe that the idea of God referenced as He/Him/Father/Son means that He is aloof and distant and cannot understand your suffering as a female might. So you look for references where the God you want to believe in might be misconstrued by those masculine labels, and you seek to associate His identity with something more suitable to your own. Doing this replaces the God as He defines Himself to be by His revealed Word, into a form you wish Him to be. Essentially, whether you are cognizant of this or not, you are trying to make God be in your image, rather than recognize that even as a female, you were created in His image even though you were formulated out of a man. Resenting the abuse of men, you reject the association with men, when you are seeking to find your meaning, place, and purpose.
This identity crisis is very common. We grapple with the idea of how God can be the Sovereign of all and be equipped with full omnipotence, yet permit and allow evil to exist and even to be done to us.
The ultimate questions, whether we acknowledge them or not, are: “Is God good? Does He desire my good? How can I know that God loves me if He lets bad things happen to me?”
One of the things that reveal what we are truly thinking and grappling with is what manifests in our speech and attitude when we are presented with challenges and conflict. I knew there was something deeper to the views you were expressing, but you were not fully being honest about them, and would only do so if you were faced with resistance, and not just gentle appeal.
Typically men of this “modern age” will tip-toe through a conflict if a woman is involved. They think they are being chivalrous, or simply they have become accustomed to the idea of “agreeing to disagree” as a means of disengaging and de-escalating a potential argument. They think to avoid conflict is good, but I am not of that opinion. Sometimes conflict is the very thing that will bring a matter out in the open. Ironically, it also is revealing of the differences in the two sexes, for I believe that men and women approach conflict differently. (More on that later.)
Jesus did not avoid controversy. Neither did the disciples for the most part. Jesus violently overthrew the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple. He drove them out with a hand-fashioned whip. He didn’t politely ask them to leave. Jesus call the Pharisees who were deceiving the people by adding their own rules and skewed interpretations to the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible inclusive of the Torah) a brood of vipers and whited sepulchers full of dead men’s bones. The Apostle Paul dealt in vehement rebuke of those people who tried to introduce false doctrines into the churches and sow compromise into the lives of those he witnessed to on his missionary journeys.
Here are a few choice phrases from Paul:
For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. They must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach. … This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth. To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work. [Titus 1:10-11, 13-16 ESV]
Doesn’t look like he is backing down from anything when it comes to the purity of the Scriptures, does it?
If there is any censure that we as Christians must own and admit to as a bad trait in the modern church, these indictments must convict us:
1. Christian have become conflict adverse, and as such, deal cowardly with world arguments against our faith, rather than boldly counter them and unmask them for the harmful deceit that lies at their core.
2. We have compromised when it comes to the biblical doctrines and we seek to make emotional appeals to our culture rather than reasonable and logical and proven arguments that have stood the test of millennia. (Rev. 3:15-19)
3. We have created “seeker-friendly” social clubs that pass as “churches” rather than doctrinal powerhouses and learning centers that hold forth and engage the culture and hold them accountable for the evil done under the guise of tolerance and equity. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)
4. We have failed to teach the younger generations how to counter the cultural river of evil that seeks to overwhelm and encapsulate Christianity and redefine it into a form that fits “modern” sensitivities. (Ephesians 4:14-16, 1 Timothy 4:1-8)
Now here’s to the test of toughness and some ideas that I must insist be understood.
God is not a misogynist.
Neither was the Apostle Paul in his inspired writings. (1 Timothy 2:11-12)
God does not demean women, even though He does not give them the same role as men.
Every good and perfect gift comes from God, even His choice for your birth gender. (James 1:7)
God will not hold innocent those who abuse you.
Telling you what the Scriptures say, even those things which you may disagree with or not be ready to hear yet, is NOT abuse.
By presenting an unyielding front in my reasoning and assertions, I am in no way diminishing you as a person. (You are not merely the sum of your views, but if you are in Christ, your identity and value is secured in Him and these are external to those present perspectives which will be reshaped as you come to know more about His character.)
Here is a good article link on the term “Ezer” that you posed.
Word Study: “Ezer” is a helper, nothing more, nothing less.
When Adam was given a “helper” he was still sinless. He had no need of being rescued or saved by his “helpmate”. To suggest such is non-biblical.
Helper is a role that God adopts as a title become we humans (male and female) are “helpless” without Him and are inadequate to save ourselves from our own faults and sins.
In my opinion, there is more to this whole thing than just “God created woman for man and she is under him because that’s how things work best”.
This statement is naive. It doesn’t always work best, but it is important because God made this assignment. It is His design to assign a greater consequence to the male and that is part of the role. In the fall of Eden, God gives the male (Adam) the most severe consequence for his role in the Fall. He failed to intervene when Eve was being lured into deception by the (nâchâsh /serpent-shining one-diviner). Adam knew the command of God, and he was given it directly even before Eve was brought into being. Most likely, Eve knew the prohibition because she was told it by Adam. She adds something to the command, saying they weren’t even allowed to “touch it”. Speculating here, but I wonder where that additional idea came from: Adam?
Adam seems to be passive in Genesis 3, almost as if he is a spectator watching to see what would happen as a result of that exchange between Eve and Satan in disguise. He is not deceived by Satan’s enticement, but he avoids the conflict and any intervention. (Kind of like passive Christian men of our modern-day, who don’t want to “rock any boats”).
Because of the leadership/protector role God placed Adam in during the perfection of the Garden, God’s judgment involves the cursing of everything (Non-human) under his provenance. (Genesis 3:17-19 & Romans 8:19-23)
If a woman takes a God-appointed role from a man (excluding natural succession by death or absence) such as the headship or a family or church leadership over the entire congregation (eg. an elder “husband of one wife” Titus 1:5-11, overseer or deacon 1 Timothy 3:1-13), she is refusing the scriptural guidance and asserting her own definitions because she thinks she knows better than God about what should be.
Could it be that a female taking these roles over a church has some hidden scorn for the Apostle Paul’s writings? Perhaps she believes they are not to be considered as scripture, simply because they don’t fit her “modern sensibilities”.
This ideology is what I am calling out and rebuking as a sign of distrust in God’s order, and an insinuation that He doesn’t know what He is doing and needs a woman to correct Him.
I am also sure that such a sign of contempt is not limited to Paul’s writings alone, but would also extend into the Old Testament scriptures and would be very resentful of God’s template for both the Tent of Meeting and the eventual Temple constructed by Solomon. It would seem she might be also willing to chastise Moses and Solomon both for their misogyny in daring to prevent women from serving in the priesthood, and daring to relegate them to a “Women’s Court”. Such indictments of biblical writings would not be limited to these cases alone. Surely at some point she might even try to insinuate that God has no business referring to Himself with gender pronouns. Surely all writers of the biblical text must have been misogynists, so in the end, we can merely dispense with the entire bible because if it has made such egregious errors in these points, surely everything else contained within it must be suspect, and Gog must really despise females by daring to make them suffer on a planet populated and ruled by patriarchy.
See how it all unravels when we question God’s decisions and assignments?
God does not make the assignments so that He can authorize oppressive behavior, but so He can hold mankind accountable for their obedience or disobedience in the roles He assigns to them. This is the point I felt it necessary to make.
God needs make no accounting to us humans (male or female) for why He does things and assigns roles as He does:
For [as] the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. [Isaiah 55:9 KJV]
We are merely called to trust that He does all things well and has a good purpose for them. That is what is missing. Going down the gender discussion of who is less than or who is favored is as meaningless as the disciples arguing over who will be greatest in the coming Kingdom (Matthew 18:1-4).
Jesus very clearly points out that being a humble child trusting in His parenting decisions is a position of Kingdom honor.
Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. [Matthew 18:4 KJV]
So the next time you find yourself lamenting over not having one of the roles biblically assigned to males, reconsider, that the position you are responsible for is a role of being obedient to Him and trusting in Him to raise you to a role of honor. Don’t follow the valuation of the world’s standard. Gain a kingdom focus, and trust that God designed you with good intention. Your value is not in the role you are given, but in your conduct and relationship to Him.
Strength is not limited to muscular might, but inclusive of several forms of endurance, awareness, teachable openness and your ability to trust in the One who holds tomorrow and has overcome the world present at your feet.
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” [John 16:33 NIV]
I had to push you out of your reticence to engage fully, and bring you into a conflict with your own ideas being challenged.
Do a biblical study yourself to see if what I am telling you is true.
Consider your viewpoints in light of the scripture:
For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it. [James 1:23-25 NLT]
This is tough love, I know, but it is honest, even if it had to be bluntly delivered.
Your value is not in your gender, or your feelings, or how others perceive you. God loves women. He designed them not as a second thought to Adam’s creation, but as a deliberate act delayed to show Adam the importance of their being. A gracious gift that showed God’s love and intention for humanity and human relations. Eve was called “life-giver”.
Then the man–Adam–named his wife Eve, because she would be the mother of all who live. [Genesis 3:20 NLT]
Brian Stansell (aka O'Brian of the Surface World)
I was born in war.
Fighting from my first breath.
