Paula

Yes, it’s a cult.

And this scripture is still true:

4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5 They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. ..

20 If we say we love God yet hate a brother or sister, we are liars. For if we do not love a fellow believer, whom we have seen, we cannot love God, whom we have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love one another. (1 John 4)

It is the spirits we are to test (1 John 4:1), and the teachings we are to examine (Acts 17:11, (2 John 1:10). The male supremacists are showing no concern for our spirit and cannot refute our teachings. “But Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will have nothing to do with us.” (3 John 1:9)

[Hmmm, in searching for scriptures to describe them, wonder why the verses mostly come from John, “the beloved disciple”?]

Maybe what we’re seeing now is God “hardening hearts”. When people keep pushing Him away He eventually gives them a boost in the direction they want to go.

Cindy K,

I lifted this quote from your article:

Evangelicals who promote “outbreeding the competition” over evangelism of the unbeliever. We are to retreat into little monastic communities and withdraw from culture, partly through fear and partly through piety.

Hey, that sounds like the Amish, who have been withdrawn for generations. And any fool can see how this approach “overcomes the world”, eh? 😉

Good thoughts.

May there be repentance from this divisive work before it further harms the body of Christ.

Call me a pessimist (I’ve been called far worse), but I don’t think any of us are holding our breath till this happens on any large scale.
There is no possible Biblical wiggle room out of “not so among you”, or the Golden Rule, or “love does not demand its own way”. Those who deny these basic principles taught by Jesus and Paul are not fit to be leaders or teachers, and should be severely reprimanded and told to be silent until they learn the truth.
Oh, for the day when the proud are finally humbled!

Good points, Don. But I’d like to add a few more.

It is one thing to have separate fellowships based upon personal convictions, but quite another to hound, harass, condemn, slander, and even physically abuse those who disagree with those convictions. That is what many followers of comp. teachings do to egals.

While human pride and sin account for this, it cannot be denied that the theology itself, male supremacism, is the justification used for it. So it is more than a personal conviction, but an aggressive attack upon half the Body of Christ. It is this theology, this teaching, that we must strongly oppose and not “dialog” with. It is to be strongly opposed as per the example of Paul against legalism.

I too have no delusions about winning over people who subscribe to these supremacist teachings. That is why I try to focus my efforts on simply making my personal convictions known (which in itself is seen as a crime by many).

There are many issues in Christianity based upon those “gaps”, and you’re absolutely right, what we put into those gaps is very telling, as is how we treat those who disagree with us. And sometimes how we treat them is out of self-defense, to be fair. But as long as we only attack the teachings and not get dragged into a personality war, we have nothing to be ashamed of.

(Disclaimer: I’m not talking about Cheryl meeting Slick. She’s sticking to scripture and making it all about attitude and faithfulness. At the same time, however, most Christians should not attempt what she’s doing, myself included. I’d fight. And that’s why I don’t debate them anymore, I just write in my blog.)

And of course Isaiah 9:6–

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

We have to be careful not to equivocate on terminology. If we can call Adam and Eve “perfect” before sin, then we need to always add the part about not claiming divine perfection but more on the order of “flawless”. A flawless diamond can be marred so it wasn’t “perfect” in the sense of being impossible to ruin. The concept is the same in the NT, where all believers are to strive for “perfection” and it carries the meaning of completeness or maturity.

The reason for this nitpicking is to not leave ourselves open to criticism. Just as women have to work twice as hard for the same pay, egals have to be twice as careful just to be heard.

As I commented in the other post, there is also no witness to Eve having been mistaken or confused. A child today can accurately remember a simple command, and Eve was undoubtedly intelligent, fully adult, and there were not a multitude of God’s commands to remember.

If we allow that Eve was mistaken, especially since there is nothing in all the Bible to hint that she was, then we must also give this excuse to Adam for not guarding. It could be inserted anywhere there is something we don’t have a clear Biblical statement about something.

But I agree that there is no reason for Eve to be mistaken. How many commands had God given? Did He create her with a faulty memory, to the point of forgetting something so simple even a child today could remember it?

But I disagree that she was “perfect”. Adam and Eve are never called perfect, but clearly they were created “innocent”– they did not yet know good from evil. They were also intelligent: their progeny could not have exceeded them, and look in the following chapters of Genesis for what they invented, especially knowing it was all truly new. So being innocent, intelligent people and with nothing to distract or confuse them, Adam and Eve could hardly be mistaken about anything God had expressly stated. We have to be careful not to project current conditions onto the pre-sin environment or people.

Again, since there is no hint anywhere in the Bible to the contrary, we must conclude that Eve accurately stated God’s command. All else is pure speculation, and largely motivated by attempts to put blame on Eve.

Sorry, Pink. 🙂

But there are actually two parallels with Cain and his parents: the one about not being a guardian, and about sin’s “desire” (lit., “lying in wait”) to have him, just as “a lying in wait” increased Eve’s sorrow.

Lin, yes they spend too much time on “role playing” and too little on the important things. Like any cult, they take one thing out of proportion and build a whole new religion out of it.

That same word is also used by Cain when God asks him where his brother is, and he says “Am I my brother’s **guardian**?”  (Today we might say, “It wasn’t my turn to watch him.”)

It almost sounds like Cain had the same attitude as his father.

And they, like Adam, are really blaming God. They judge Him and say He shouldn’t ever talk about sin or justice, that it is IMMORAL for God to put restrictions on people in any way, or to hold them to account. They call the Bible “hate speech” and speaking out against sin “phobia”.

It’s very much like the move “Omega Man” or “I Am Legend” (original  title of a 1954 sci-fi book by Richard Matheson about a future last survivor of a global disaster). The rest of the people have become “monsters” through disease, but as the only one immune to it, the main character is now the “monster” to them because he kills them. In the same way, when the majority of people worship God, evildoers are easily seen as what they are, but now, with the majority rejecting God, they see Him and us as the “monsters”.

Of course, in the book/movie the fact remained that only the immune man was truly human, and in real life, God remains God and His followers remain faithful, regardless of how we are perceived. But we have become monsters to them.

We are not to be like Adam.  When God gives us truth, we are not to say nothing as the enemy takes our children by their hands and walks them away.  The alarm needs to go off and as Christians we all can be faithful watchmen.

This highlights a grave situation in the churches today.  It is practically considered a sin to warn; it’s too negative and divisive. It’s as if the serpent is still beguiling, only now it isn’t just to Eve. He whispers in the ears of all believers, “A loving God wouldn’t want you to say such bad things about those nice people. ” His strategy is still the same: take out the guards.

Tech note:

This text editor offers underlining and lists, but it’s stripping out pretty much everything except bold and italic and blockquote.

I would add a third: the sin of rebellion. Both Adam and Eve ate the fruit, and only Adam failed to guard. But after God demanded explanations from both of them Adam blamed God, and it was only after that when God cursed the ground.

Adam sins by omission in failing to keep the serpent out of the garden.
God says it’s not good for him to be alone so He makes Eve.
Adam sins again by omission in failing to stop the temptation.
Adam and Eve both eat the fruit and “die” in that day; Adam sins by deliberate choice, but Eve by being beguiled.
Adam blames God and Eve.
Eve reports on the serpent’s trickery.
The serpent is cursed because of what he did, and the Savior is promised through Eve’s seed.
God predicts that Eve will follow Adam out of the garden and only then will he rule over her.
God curses the ground because of what Adam did, and drives only him out of the garden.
Eve follows Adam out, as predicted.
Adam was clearly the repeat offender. That’s why Paul puts all the blame on him.

Cheryl,

That is certainly a plausible scenario. But the point I seem unable to get across is that scripture doesn’t say what Adam may have presumed about the forbidden fruit. If we build anything on a presumption, we weaken our own argument against the mountain of presumptions heirarchialists use against Eve.

The indisputable facts are these:

it was not good for the man to be alone
the serpent tempted the one created to help the man
the man witnessed this temptation and neither said anything nor did anything to stop it
neither Adam, nor the serpent, nor even God challenged Eve’s statement about what God had said
the man was not beguiled
Eve spoke truthfully and accurately when confronted by God
Adam passed blame to Eve and God, and never mentioned the serpent

And so on. If we stick to these sorts of indisputable facts and only use conjecture for our own curiosity and not to build arguments, we cannot lose. The hierarchialists rely upon conjecture to a great degree; it is 90% of their platform. They cannot stand against the plain facts of Genesis.

Right, but my point is that Adam only knew one thing: not to eat the fruit. Scripture doesn’t say he knew if it had seeds or not, or whether he assumed it didn’t.

So whatever theories we have about why Adam stood silently and watched as Eve was beguiled are all on the same level: conjecture. But we can say with assurance that scripture states he did stand there and silently watch, and that the serpent did not beguile him.

PS:

What scripture tells us Adam knew whether there were seeds in the fruit? What scripture tells us Adam had faith in God about it?

I realize we aren’t told his motives, but then again, the scenario I presented can’t be ruled out.

I’m not presenting it as something scripture can directly support, but I simply offered it as a possible explanation for Adam’s silence and inaction.

I’m saying that there must be some reason why Adam stood silently by as he watched the serpent tempt Eve. Perhaps he wanted to get her to open the fruit so he could inspect it without getting into trouble.

Just a hypothetical scenario:

Serpent: “I’ve got to bring Adam down, but how?

God: “It is not good for the man to be alone.”

Serpent: “Ha! God has made a blunder in creating someone to help Adam, as if that will stop me!”

Serpent: “Yo, Adam!”

Adam: “Yeah, what?”

Serpent: “So you’re supposed to inspect the fruit but there’s one you can’t even touch, right?”

Adam: “Yeah. Bummer.”

Serpent: “I’ll show you how to inspect it without touching it! Are you game?”

Adam: “Sure!”

Serpent: “Here’s the deal. You take Eve over to that Tree, and I’ll trick her into opening it to be inspected. Then she’ll get in trouble but you won’t, but you’ll still get to know what’s inside the fruit!”

Adam: “Sheer genius! Let’s do it.”

I think the issue here is over an argument from silence.

To say why Eve said what she did is such an argument, because scripture is silent about it. There is absolutely nothing to go on for this. And this is precisely the kind of argument that the hierarchialists use extensively.

In contrast, for example, Adam’s alleged failure to keep the serpent out the garden has at least something to go on: his having been told to guard it.

There is also a lot LESS to Genesis than people have been told.

Good point, Don. Most of what people believe about Genesis isn’t there, and they don’t know what is.

Yes, there is a lot more to Genesis that people have been told– and this lack of proper teaching has gone on for centuries! I wonder how many teachers have seen these things but kept silent, like the story I read somewhere about a priest before Luther who made the same discoveries but hid a paper he wrote about it in a wall because he was afraid of persecution.

FWIW, I just blogged yesterday about two layers of sins and consequences in Gen. 3.

http://www.fether.net/2008/07/20/death-plus-interest/

I never did like soap operas. 😉

But seriously, has “Christianity” been so shallow for so long that people can harbor bitterness, slander, lying, hypocrisy, and pride and think nothing of it? How can this be compatible with the most basic tenets of the faith: love, the Golden Rule, the example of Jesus’ sacrifice for others?

No wonder Paul could be so sarcastic at times! Carnal Christians can drive you right up the wall.

If Paul could rejoice that the gospel is being preached no matter who does it or why (Phil. 1:18), then nobody can tell women not to teach correct doctrine or spread the gospel to men.

I no longer care what The Institution thinks. If we put all our efforts into beginning new congregations without heirarchies instead of dancing this endless dance with the control freaks, we can truly change the world.

And I’m really appalled at that “TUAD” for throwing around logical terms without a clue, accusing Sue of every fallacy in the book while completely ignoring those identical fallacies when committed by comps– which they do with alarming frequency. Sue, more than any of the amateurs there, knows which word to pick from a semantic range, and backs it up with references to other Greek literature of the time. Her opponents, however, since all that goes over their heads, simply defame her and declare themselves winners.

I guess I’m glad they didn’t respond to my post, because I have no time for such juveniles.

Lin, I posted in that site what I posted here in #12 (and they have completely ignored it), and I agree, Sue is being accused of exactly what the comp crowd does: twisting, misquoting, misunderstanding, spinning the meanings of words to suit ideology. She backs up everything with sources and quotes comps verbatim, yet they squirm and then tell her what her motives are. It’s just a pathetic mud-flinging contest on the comps’ part.

Truthseeker,

Since you have a comp husband, I’d be interested in his answer to what Jesus said about hierarchy in Matthew 20:

25 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 26 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— 28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

These words of Jesus tell us point blank that believers are to be different from the world, in that the leaders are the servants. Jesus, as the Cornerstone, is not on the roof but in the basement– and he told us to be like Him. And as He said, if He, being God, could come down to the lowest level, then so must all of us who claim to follow Him.

So my question would be, What would Jesus say to anyone who claims priority over another believer?

And if the truth be known, what they teach is exactly what God advised Eve NOT to do: follow their husband and go “through” him instead of keeping that direct relationship with God.