Kim

Hi, Lin!

Again, taking one sentence to help get my whole point across.

“I know some very touchy feely emotional men as we all do.”

Actually, I’ve never met a touchy-feely guy in my entire life unless he was also the “female” of a homosexual pair …seriously. Jesus weeping doesn’t mean he was in touch with his “inner female” on a daily basis…my almost non-emotive and mostly silent husband cried when we lost our 4 year old, after all…and Jael doesn’t seem to me to be entirely applicable to what we’re discussing. Just because she eliminated a serious personal threat doesn’t mean she was Mrs. Rambo on a daily basis. Even I, Mrs. Nauseated-at-Roadkill, could most likely do some serious damage if need be, under the right circumstances.

One other thing to pull out and answer is that I don’t celebrate differences, really. They just “are”, in my view.

I appreciate that you’re trying to paint a new picture for me, and I wish I could get into it, but the “colors” aren’t really helping me envision an answer other than the one I’ve given–and so I’ll let my voice lapse into silence and let yourself and the rest of the wonderful scholars here resume the finer points of interlinear definitions at this time. As you suggested, love is the real answer anyway, and someday we’ll have a perfect understanding of all these points that vex us now.

Blessings!

chuckle…

“I have written the hideous” should be “I have READ the hideous”.

Kim 🙂

Hi, Lin!

“Where are these differences before the fall?”

I’m not ignoring the rest of your good post. It’s just easier to deal with this one point, because I can wrap the entirety of what I’m thinking into my answer here. The argument could be made that since God chose to make a woman to be Adam’s “strong help facing him” (my paraphrase), that God Himself created them to complement each other. They had commonality of course, but she had things (beyond biology) he didn’t, and he had things she didn’t.

I do understand that the argument for differences being a reason for subjugation has been made for eons…but is it a real argument, or merely an excuse for angry, cowardly little boys at heart to beat up the girls? What I’m hearing you say is that since the other team says differences exist and therefore that’s some sort of rationale for the general scheme of things being skewed in favor of the male (as God said would happen and is re-accelerating in our time), our team must therefore deny what’s been obvious to most anyone throughout known history.

I do have empathy for your point of view, because yes I have written the hideous things the “church fathers” (yuck) have said about females. However, the winner is always the one who writes the history books, as they say. It doesn’t make them– or their Talmudic, Muslim, Hindu or secular counterparts–right. It just means for now, they’ve largely won. It won’t always be that way.

I can be quite confident in the fact that yes, I function on a very different level from any man I know (thank God) and that a lot of my emotional function falls into stereotype. It does not bother me, nor does it bother me that it’s being used against me. It just “is”, and right along with all the other nifty excuses for putting people “in their place”, someday it too will be no more.

And like a “typical female”, I’m wishing we could all agree and get along [grin], but I knew I was going to have to take responsibility for my post, so here is my best answer, as unsatisfactory and frustrating as it probably is to you, for which I apologize.

Kim 🙂

Lin:

I have always enjoyed your posts, and I hope you don’t mind if I point out an opposite reaction to your thoughts that comp folks might take the idea of men and women being inherently different as being a strengthener for their particular viewpoint. I wanted to share what I see: inherent differences are actually going to weaken their argument, because everyone benefits when there is more than one viewpoint on any idea. Who hasn’t experienced hearing the same ol’, same ol’ on a certain topic–then someone comes at it from a completely fresh perspective and we sit back and go “Wow…now that was helpful!” It happens to me on a regular basis. It’s not about brainpower or personal needs…it’s about differences in perspective only.

And even if they do come at it with a vicious victory shining in their eyes, it’s because they twist the Scriptures to their own prideful designs. I’ve seen it coming for a while now…the renewal of violent male dominance in religion is simply a sign of the times, and now this same spirit is infecting an increasingly public portion of churchianity, along with a growing “men’s movement” in the secular realm that pretends they just want to be allowed to be men, but the barely-there undertone is that they’d like to see women put back into a socially and legally powerless state under their feet.

Satan does detest women, so it makes sense those who are being influenced by him (willingly or unwittingly) would, as well. All that can be done is to keep up the good fight, as Cheryl and everyone who comments here regularly is doing. I’m grateful for this blog–the education is priceless!

Kim 🙂

Hi, again:

Thanks to those who took the time to make a kind comment about my original post–this passage has long been one I’ve looked at with a furrowed eyebrow, so I’ve been watching the continued discussion, and while I cannot come at things with the scholarly point of view because that’s not my strength, I can share that the raw data of life experience tells me that when the dictionaries and study books are put back on the shelf, it all comes down to the art of truly knowing another person and voluntarily entering into those areas where they need supported, encouraged and helped.

In marriage, it’s all about what you and your earthly partner see in each other, and in love, rise to help meet (if weakness) or encourage (if strength) or guide (if the trail marker was obviously missed a few steps back)…after all, is that not what Abba does for each one of us? The real problem is that we’re human and therefore frail, prone to both misdiagnosing things as an observer and resisting needed help, usually causing gears to grind…and then someone writes another self-help book! 🙂

Kim 🙂

Hi, all:

Regular reader, but don’t post…I’d sent the below right to Cheryl and she thought it was worth posting in the comments, so here it is:

“That 1 Peter post was a terrific explanation, Cheryl, and shows me that I’ve been on the right track for a number of years now. As a brief testimony, I used to be a prairie-muffin wannabe and my household was falling to pieces as my husband grew farther and farther away from the God he was once marginally interested in. Through a series of truly severe trials, I realized that just letting hubby run the roost was doing some tremendous damage. So, I took “does him no harm” from Proverbs 31 into account and followed that, because I realized by not doing what needed done, I was doing him harm. I gathered my courage, stepped in and said “That’s it, it all stops–now”. Of course, the rigid women-squashers would have been hyperventilating, but Abba had already removed me from that to an extent so I was able to accomplish this. It largely became an unconscious trade-off of sorts on his part…he told me to dump the jumper-dress gig and wear some warpaint (makeup) once in a while. Once I did that, he began making every effort to clean up his act, too.

Guess what? We have a far happier, give-and-take marriage now than we did five years ago. He’s a community leader in several areas and often comes to me on things I have more ability in than he does. Unfortunately, due to a death in the family, my husband hates God worse than ever for “murdering” that person, and can not be made to see reason through any means, but he’s highly respectful of my strengthened faith through the same death. In the end, I realize his “act clean up” is solely in the flesh and anything could set him back, but so far the Lord has chosen to be very kind and keep him moving forward. For my part, I just keep showing him all the forms of respect he needs from me, and I of course pray for him–after all, it’s not over until the dirt gets shoveled!

Thanks so much for all your work…

Kim :-)”