Anita

“Podles thesis (from a sociological point of view) is that men are born with an attachment to women, their mothers. At first, the male is not aware that he and his mother are different beings. It is only later that he begins to realize they are different. When he realizes this, he is in the position where, in order to attain manhood, he must break with the feminine.”

This is a restating of Jung’s Individuation theory. Any time I see psychology being used to uphold some false teaching I get very agitated. Jung and Freud both forumulated the early ideas around which modern psychology/psychiatry has developed. Although many practitioners now debunk some of these ideas many of them continue to lurk and evolve. Human beings may well need to grow up and ‘put away childish things’. They are certainly charged to leave their parents and cleave to their marriage partner. If this is the case in biblical terms, how do these authors support the idea that men must separate from women. These men are supposed to be one flesh with their wives, yet women are not to be countenanced in the church.

If we are all one in the body of Christ, and if there is one Spirit who dwells within us, where is the submission to the Spirit of God who asks us to serve one another regardless of sex, or financial or ethnic background.

This is a very serious false gospel which is being preached here all on the basis of worldly divisions and conflicts. These men would like their churches to be their castles, their own piece of paradise where like the Mormons they will be served by women for eternity.

I am new to this discussion about the gender of God. To be honest, there was a bit of cognitive dissonance when I first came across the argument. I spent a long time in a religious cult which was very authoritarian I don’t think there was any question that God was male, and I certainly never thought about it. I hope the men in that group never get a hold of John Piper’s teachings, there would be hell to pay for all the poor women who are still in the group.

I have read some other blog posts discussing this issue, and I can see the argument that God is not human therefore he has no sex as such, however he does seem to talk in male terms about himself alot. He is a Father, Jesus is the Son, interestingly the Holy Spirit is also talked about in male terms, and this is something my husband and I have discussed with Jehovah’s Witnesses who believe the Spirit to be an impersonal force and not a person at all. We are so used to thinking of God, as a person, being a male person.

I would also like to bring up the issue of the book ‘The Shack’ which among other controversial issues in it’s pages has referred to God as both male and female, and with various ethnic origins. Frankly, I think this goes back to the idea that we are portraying God as a human again, since God has no ethnicity, that is purely a human trait, as much as sexuality is. I appreciate the reminder that the pagan religions had their supreme God sitting in heaven as an old man with a beard down to his feet. God is spirit and not flesh, and if anything, he dwells in unapproachable light, so we can’t see his form if he has one at all even if we can see Him.

I must look into this further. The longer I have been out of the controlling church, the more my mind is being opened up. It’s a bit scary, but I enjoy testing the waters and questioning things and allowing God to show me His truth.

Thankyou for the obvious work that has gone into this blog.

PS. I am not a feminist, as in the post-modern definition of the term, but I do believe in the liberation of women in Christ, and in humble submission to Him first and foremost, and to each other in Him.

Just saying.

I spent 15 years in a powerfully authoritarian and abusive church run by a group of men who were infinitely happy to proclaim that only if you obeyed them were you obeying God. My husband and three children and I have been out of that place for eight years now but during that time I have found that the place we went to and the ‘theology’ it practiced was not unique it was and is the thin end of the wedge.

In the last eight years I have undertaken a great deal of study and research into church practice and theology in America and Australia (my home) and have discovered that even in many so called liberal churches this idea of male dominance is really just a cover for the normal human bias. Whether in the world (just about every primitive culture and every civilized one has subjugated women) or in religion (every major religion in the world also subjugates women) this idea of women being ‘lesser than’ is fully realised. Why are christian men not recognising that they are not any different to their unsaved brothers in this pursuit of male dominance? There seems to be a spiritual blindness afoot.

Jesus introduced the idea of “no more division btw Jew/Gentile, Slave/Free, Male/Female” and humans just can’t get their heads around it. Of COURSE we have to keep those divisions. Religious, economic and social/sexual laws dictate that we must have these compartments otherwise how will the rich, Protestant/Catholic white male continue to have the upper hand – or the rich Roman/Jewish male as in Jesus time.

Unfortunately women, and christian women in particular, bear equal responsibility for female oppression. Yes, we were cursed at the fall to be in continual conflict with men, and men being bigger and stronger and more aggressive have simply bullied us into submission for millenia. We, being physically and socially given to pregnancy, breastfeeding and rearing small children, over millenia have accepted our positions as keepers of the home and servants to the men. We didn’t have the resources or inclination to start wars, and when you go through that much pain and effort to produce children, you are not going to make it easy to destroy them. Our propensity has been to nurture not destroy, so conflict, whether it is in the home or out, is something we go out of our way to avoid. If the big strong man wants to run the place, we will let him do it, mainly because it is that much easier. We have however been lazy, both spiritually and mentally.

But we also allowed our natural fleshly ways to assert themselves. We used subversion and manipulation. It is a shameful matter but it is something our sisters throughout history have had to engage in for survival. If you are physically weaker, use your intellect. Christian women are still invested in continuing the wordly status quo. I am continually disappointed to see how many women prefer holding to the ‘domestic goddess’ persona (transfered to the Proverbs 31 woman in christian parlance) and think its preferable to being – in their eyes – feminist. As an aside, the term ‘domestic goddess’ has a strong pagan element to it, and witches are condemned in scripture. Something to think on.

Their christian brothers, husbands and fathers also abhor the feminist, the ultimate female terrorist. Yet feminism began as Women’s Sufferance (by christian women no less) in order to be accepted as intelligent contributors to the democratic process. It took thousands of years for us to stand up to men – overtly – and realise that not only are we psychologically equal to them but spiritually so, and I thank God that women are showing their capacity to debate this topic intelligently on blogs like this one. Not only that, but many educated christian men are now joining the ranks of those ‘coming to their senses’ as the prodigal son did.

I know I was lazy. I believed the ‘big strong man/knight in shining armour’ myth even before I became a christian, and both Hollywood and the church have a lot invested in perpetuating that idea.
God has shown me that if I had pursued my concerns about joining an abusive church we wouldn’t have had to spend 15 years in it. If, instead of capitulating to the cosy idea that I was a perpetual child who simply had to do as I was told by either my father or my husband I had stood up for what I had truly believed, my family would not have suffered for all that time at the hands of abusive authoritarian religious dictators.

If we all recognised that the spiritually minded person is going to think differently to the fleshly-minded person then it will make perfect ‘sense’ to see that both Jesus and the apostles upheld the fact that women were no longer under the curse and free to live and move in the Spirit as much as their brothers in Christ. When we finally stop beating each other about the head with scripture and beating our chests in order to put down those pesky females who are so ‘easily deceived’ (yet how many women run cults?) it will be a much calmer, happier , and dare I say more powerful body of Christ.