Waneta Dawn

I added a comment. (see #129 above) Why did the Jackie O writer put all the emphasis on Jackie? If Jackie made that marriage so perfect, why wasn’t President Kennedy satisfied? To hear the writer tell it, Jackie was the perfect Stepford wife, yet John F Kennedy was NOT satisfied. Yet the comp promise to women suggests if wives meet all their husband’s needs, are agreeable and submissive, the husband will be so happy with his wife, he will cherish her. Kind of like President Kennedy cherished Jackie, right? Perhaps he preferred a woman with some spunk, with her own opinions and ideas–like Marilyn Monroe. Do husbands actually value wives who “shut up and do as I say?” Not according to JFK.

Pinklight (102),
“‘They also break the first of the 10 commandments: Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Compism is men’s shrine to themselves, and they bow down to the god of husband authority…’

So that I understand what you are saying here on this point, could you elaborate?”

(sorry for the delay in answering. Life has been a zoo around here!) Actually, you answer the question quite well yourself! But it may be helpful to go into more detail for those who have not given this much thought.

Any person, place or thing that is more important to us than God, becomes a god to us–a god that we are placing ahead of the triune God Almighty. There are many scriptures that tell us what behaviors indicate a true love for God. As you mentioned, treating others as we would like to be treated is one, laying down our lives for others is another, love is not self-seeking, it is not proud and does not consider itself superior, it genuinely seeks the best FOR OTHERS instead of the best for ourselves. (in spite of the comp denial of husband superiority in their teaching, the dictionary meaning makes it clear that authority includes superiority, or “ascendency.” So the comps are claiming that husbands and wives are equal, but with different roles. The husband has the role of superiority, and the wife has the role of inferior second-fiddle. Their denial is all semanics.) When we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, there will be no room for other gods. Because God is love and His influence on us causes His love to infill us as well and also to flow out to others, we will love others and will not seek to be preeminent.

Both the husband authority teaching, and many of the husbands who practice husband authority insist on husband preeminence over their wives. Although some claim the “job” of final decision-maker is not one they want to do, those who beat the husband-authority drum DO want that final say-so. Furthermore, the teaching tells wives to only give their view once and at the most twice, and then to shut up. Wives are not just talked to, preached to, advised to, but they are also pressured to take the lesser, the second fiddle position, and even to push their husbands into the preeminent position. Yet, the Bible tells us only GOD is to have the preeminent position. Pushing husbands into the preeminent position, when it is against so many scriptures, puts husbands ahead of God. Comp husbands are insisting on taking God’s place in their wives’ lives, as well as in their own. Because enforcing their authority is more important to them, they don’t have to be kind, loving, gentle, peaceable, forgiving, good, or patient with their wives, but the wives MUST show all these evidences of the Fruit of the Spirit. By ignoring the scriptures they don’t want to obey, excusing or explaining away other passages–like claiming Ephesians 5:21 “Submitting one to another in the fear of God,” means some submitting more than others–they have indeed put themselves above God Almighty. They have imposed their own bias upon God’s Word, and made themselves and their own desires superior to God’s Word.

“Compism is men’s shrine to themselves, and they bow down to the god of husband authority…'”
In other words, they have put their own teaching above scripture, and the whole complementarian doctrine is aimed at keeping themselves in the king/god position, even while they deny this is so. Any scripture they can twist to bolster husband-authority, they teach with frequency and fervency. They’ve established an entire group, Christians for Biblical manhood and womanhood, to pressure others to elevate men and husbands. Any scripture that would show their husband-authority teaching to be false they ignore or explain away. They’ve even twisted their teaching on the trinity to resemble their husband-authority doctrine, in spite of the fact that the trinity involves a 3rd “member” and therefore is a poor symbol for a 2-person relationship, even if the Father did expect subjection from the Word who became His Son, which there is no indication that The Father did, except when the Word became flesh. Their misuse of the trinity would suggest a dominant husband with 2 second-fiddle wives.

Indeed, the discussion about Christ always being submissive to the Father is being used to argue for wives always being subject and secondary to their husbands. And that is why they are so adamant that Christ was always Christ and always secondary to the Father, even though the Bible says that The Word’s subjection has to do with the incarnation.

These male complementarian teachers are not ignorant, they are twisting scripture purposely. (That is a VERY difficult charge for me to make! Everything in me wants to believe this is not so, but the evidence says otherwise.) They are college educated, and have many resources at their disposal. Yet a very brief look at a concordance by someone with no divinity degree makes it clear they don’t have a leg to stand on. Most of the OT uses of the word “God” refers to a plural God, including Genesis 1:26 “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” So the plural God, the triune God, apparently in unison said “Let us make man in our image.” Genesis indicates the triune God was 100% submitted one to another! The Father was just as submitted to the Holy Spirit and to the Word as those 2 were submitted to the Father. Genesis 1:26 is not God the Father telling the rest of the trinity what to do, nor is it God the Son or God the Holy Spirit making a meek suggestion to the dominant Father.

Similar to how Nebuchadnezzar defended his statue, commanded everyone to bow down to the statue, and punished those who did not, the male complementarians are defending, commanding, and punishing in support of their god. Only in this case, their god is themselves. And they claim a large portion of society’s ills are the direct result of both men and women who refuse to bow down to the men’s shrine of husband-authority. If husbands just made sure that wives made themselves into their husbands’ personal whores, did everything their husbands want, effaced themselves and made sure the families revolve around the wishes of the husbands and made the husbands the centerpin, the top dog, the kingpin of the family, then families would stay intact, husbands would be loving, children would have their priorities straight, and generation after generation would be decent God-fearing people.

But how can we end up with a God-fearing people, when the heavy focus has been to teach wives and children to be man-husband-father fearing people? The depravity in our society comes from centuries of elevating males above God, and teaching, pressuring others to do the same. Yet God says we are to fear Him, not man.

Wow! I wasn’t expecting to end with that conclusion! But it’s as if more of the puzzle has snapped into place in my mind. 2 concepts that I thought were unrelated are actually very related, and our “fatherless,” man-fearing society is caused by doctrine that elevates males-husbands above God.

Pinklight,
But a comp would argue that husbands are to be loving leaders. My response? The “loving leadership” they teach, has pastors and husbands leading wives into the ditch (where the husbands have their way with them). Actually, comp teaching directs both wives and husbands into the ditch.

Your comment about breaking the second commandment, gave me a lightbulb moment. With husbands usurping God’s place, (while they claim God told them to do it, and they deny that they are actually asserting themselves as higher than God by claiming a commandment that isn’t there and that is the opposite of what is there) they are breaking BOTH the first and the second commandment. They are loving themselves, not God, with all their heart, soul mind and strength, and their love for neighbor-wife has more to do with what she does for them, and how they can obtain obedience from her and dictate how her life shall be, not for how they can serve her.

So they not only teach men to break the second commandment, they also teach men to break the first one. They also break the first of the 10 commandments: Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Compism is men’s shrine to themselves, and they bow down to the god of husband authority…

“The idea of being God to the wife is completely backwards, and that is scary!!”

I agree, it is scary. It has taken me years to acknowledge just how scary–that it is so scary I shouldn’t trust these folks. Right now, I won’t even give money to “Christian” organizations who teach compism. If they can take a scripture and teach that it means the opposite of what it says, what else do they teach that is the opposite of scripture? And what do they teach that misses the narrow way and walks in the ditch instead–while they claim it is the genuine path to God? It took me 15-20 years to finally see what was wrong with their teaching on marriage, and now I am beginning to see other teaching, like about the relationship between God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit that are also false, and are used to shore up their anti-biblical marriage doctrine.

“I can honestly say that I really didn’t grasp the fact that this issue ran so deep so thank you both for helping me out here. I’m definately interested to see where the rest of this discussion goes and to learn a bit more about what I once considered to be something of a “side-issue”.”

Dogmadekate, many people think this is a side issue and just nit picking on the egalitarian’s part. But it isn’t a side issue at all. To say that Jesus must subject himself to the Father throughout eternity, and that wives must have the same subjection/obedience to their husbands ends up effecting nearly every aspect of the life of every Christian. We are so interconnected. Since our society is so male-led, it effects nearly everything without our being aware of it. For example, who decided that houses should be square/rectangular and “square with the world?” If houses were first built by women, would we have different houses today? Who decided that taking advantage of others is power? Why didn’t the concept of serving others (like they did in Tibet, as shown in the movie “7 years in Tibet”) become the societal norm? Both of these touch all of our lives every day, yet we are mostly not aware of them. How many more doctrinal details effect our lives daily because of the pro-male power structure they teach, yet we are (or I am) unaware of them?

Oops, that was last year–in April of 2010. I feel so out of the loop; I thought I saw his comments more recently than that!

Off topic, not sure where else to put it. Are you aware that Internet Monk passed away earlier this year? I ran across this info on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Mere-Churchianity-Finding-Jesus-Shaped-Spirituality/dp/0307459179/ref=pd_sim_b_17

“Ryan takes Eph 5:24 and proposes the meaning “in everything the wives should be willingly submissive out of love”.
(quoted from Charis #14)

The problem with Ryan’s statement is that the focus is one-sided. Ephesians 5 balances out the “in everything” with “gave himself.”
Complementarian teaching skims over what Jesus gave up for us, what He did for us. 1st, He left the comfort and continual praise He was used to getting. 2nd, He gave up His status, privilege, and rights, and became subject to pain and discomfort, 3rd, He could have regained some of the comforts of life by being called “Master” and through domination and getting the praise of men, but he didn’t. Even here, He did not claim the rights of authority. People followed Him because they sensed He had innate authority and He used that authority to set them free rather than to dominate them. In spite of the fact that Jesus was not dominating, The only time his disciples resisted His teaching and direction was when he washed feet. (With the exception of Judas, of course.) 4th, He gave himself in both life and death. He suffered big time for our sakes. He loved us so much that he gave up all status, became lower than the angels, and suffered the most horrible beating and death for us.

THAT is the example husbands are to follow. When they focus on “in everything” for wives, they seem to give themselves permission to ignore the depth of what is required of husbands. NIV says “In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives.” So should we say OUGHT TO LOVE, OUGHT TO LOVE, OUGHT TO LOVE, like the comps do when they focus on in everything? Isn’t in everything implied in “ought to love?” At what time do they stop loving and cherishing their own bodies? That is how frequently they are to not love and cherish their wives. So it is “in everything” for husbands, too. Or as the KJV puts it, “Even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it.” So why aren’t they emphasizing “Even as Christ loved and gave himself” as much as they insist on woman submit?

Retha,
“That is not a command, say Charis, but more like being subject to gravity. It is a statement that your man have an influence on you, wether good or bad.”

I suspect Charis is right. I also suggest that when husbands became Christians and began serving their wives, like Christ served the Church, the knee-jerk response of wives would tend to be similar to Peter’s when Jesus knelt to wash his feet. It would seem so out of place, so unusual, so inappropriate, so shameful to the wives that they would protest and actually refuse to allow their husbands to serve them. It would be like the planation master scrubbing the kitchen floor while the slave sits down to eat. Paul was telling husbands to stop acting like the plantation master, and serve their wives, giving up their privileged status, like Jesus did for us. And wives are not to resist submitting to the husband giving up his status. Once the wives got over that first knee-jerk reaction, and got used to the new order of husbands being sacrificial instead of domineering, then the wives would again return to submitting the same way they submit to gravity–it just is.

I recently had an insight on what Paul meant by telling wives to submit in everything, and spell it out on my Dec, 16, 2010 post http://submissiontyranny.blogspot.com/2010/12/peter-models-church-wife-submission.html. Because Paul knew he was going to tell husbands to love their wives and give themselves up for their wives, he knew that wives were likely to have the same response Peter did when Jesus knelt to wash his feet. (John 13) Paul was telling wives to submit to their high status husbands-become-servants, even as Peter submitted to Jesus washing his feet. Just as it was seen as terribly inappropriate for Jesus, the high-status master, to wash the feet of his lowly disciples, so also it would be seen as totally inappropriate for wives, who are normally of servant status, to accept the service of their high-status husbands. The “in everything” Paul was talking about wives submitting to, was the sacrificial servanthood of the husbands; wives were already submitting in everything else.

By this teaching, Paul was continuing Jesus’s own teaching of the great reversal: those of high degree shall be brought low, and those of low degree shall be lifted up. Mary speaks of it in Luke 1:52, “He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.” Jesus uses the great reversal when he uses his death to bring life and defeat Satan, and James speaks of this in James 1:9-10 “Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted: But the rich in that he is made low.” These are only a few of the places where the great reversal is referred to.

Craig,

“I think comps would argue (without any reason from Gen 1) that although Eve did have authority over the animals, it was not “equal authority” with Adam. Adam still had authority over Eve. So in their minds, Adam naming the animals and Eve shows his authority over both.”

Sorry for not making my comment clear.
I was simply adding that comps could claim (and probably do) that since Adam named the animals before Eve came on the scene, that he was the one with authority, that even if she also had authority when she arrived, that she never used it to name the animals because Adam had already completed the job. However, they don’t see Eve’s late arrival as the reason for Eve’s not naming them; they see it as a male-authority principle. I guess they think/assume if she had the same authority that Adam did, that God would have made sure she was there in time to name the animals with him. Therefore, (since Eve didn’t name the animals) it appears they assume that Genesis indicates only Adam had the authority to name animals, and even his wife.

Didn’t Adam name the animals before Eve was taken from his side? So they were already categorized by the time she came on the scene–unless all her mental faculties and senses were already operating before she was taken out of the man, and she had some kind of mental telepathy input in the process of naming them.

A possible interpretation of I Tim 2:15 is that in the first half “she” does refer to Eve, and in the second half “they” refers to all women. My understanding is that people of the OT era were saved by looking forward to Christ, and they did this partly by wanting to be the person who bore the Christ-child. Hence, “she shall be saved in childbearing,” which refers to the bearing and birth of Jesus. Eve appears to have been looking for Jesus when she anounced the birth of her sons. Genesis 4:1 she says “I have gotten a man from the Lord.” (This could also reflect that she didn’t know that her husband had anything to do with the procreation of her child, and it could indicate both.)

If those in the Hebrews 11 faith chapter were saved by trusting in God and looking forward to Jesus, then all women of all time would also be saved the same way–through faith. Those before Christ by looking forward to His coming, and those after his birth, death and resurrection looking back and also looking to God in us via the Holy Spirit as well as looking forward to eternity with Christ. But since faith without works is dead, charity and holiness with sobriety are good descriptions of a genuine faith that brings forth works.

In the case of Eve, because Jesus had not yet come to earth, died, and rose again, the “shall” is necessary. Hebrews 11:13 “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” In other words, although they had faith, they were not saved until Jesus did His atoning work on the cross and rose from the dead. v 16 testifies of their admittance to Heaven: “But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.”

Notice Paul does NOT say that Adam was NOT in the transgression, which some would like to insinuate. Instead, he is saying that being temporarily deceived does not make you permanently damned. If you have genuine, works-producing faith in Jesus.

In Susanna Krizo’s book “When Dogmas Die” she says a certain passage could have 2 meanings, (I don’t have time to look for page & text right now, but I did read that recently, and found that so fascinating I reread it.) since the Hebrews loved using words with double meanings. Although the NT is in Greek, Paul is a Hebrew, of the tribe of Benjamin if I recall correctly, and could well have used a double meaning. If so, the “she” for the deceived Eve, could also refer to the deceived woman.

Could the authority word mean something like “deceptive authority?” The source I have does not give the date the letters to Timothy were written, but it does say the letter to the Ephesians was written about AD 63. (I later googled this and my info says I Tim was written AD 62-64. Not much help. I also found that many modern scholars believe Tim & Titus were not written by Paul at all, that they were written by someone much later. Here’s one reason: “For example, Norman Perrin analyzed the Greek used by the author or authors of the Pastoral Epistles, finding that over 1/3 of their vocabulary is not used anywhere else in the Pauline epistles; more than 1/5 is not used anywhere else in the New Testament, while 2/3 of the non-Pauline vocabulary are used by 2nd century Christian writers.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Epistle_to_Timothy. Me, WD, again: If this is so, it would help explain the use of “authentein,” a word that wasn’t used in other writing in Paul’s time.)

If this is a genuine letter from Paul and the woman had heard or read the letter to the Ephesians and took from Ephesian 5:21-33 that more submission is required of husbands than is required of wives (the reverse of what comps claim today) she could also have been teaching that and insisting that her teaching had more legitimacy than the everyone-submit-to-one-another doctrine.

If she was using Ephesians 5 as a reason why women have more authority then men do (similar, but opposite to how comps use the passage today) and using Paul’s letter to back up her statements (like many husbands and pastors do today) that would make sense with the reference to deception in I Timothy 2:14.

Without the use of Paul’s letter (which we today call scripture) as a tool to deceive, because the woman could claim God-given authority from it, verse 14 is illogical. One could miscontrue Paul to be saying it is more important to silence someone because they are prone to be deceived than it is to silence someone who is prone to sinning on purpose. But if the woman is using unsound, twisted reasoning that sounded almost right to her listeners, and especially if she had something of authority like Paul’s own letter to apparently back her up, verse 14 makes perfect sense. Satan, through the serpent, used half truths or even quarter truths to deceive Eve.

Notice how many centuries the church has believed that Ephesians 5 granted husbands authority over their wives, even though the passage never states that, nor has that in the application. If Paul & Timothy had not silenced the woman, our churches could be dealing with the problem of wives taking authority over their husbands and claiming God ordained it to be so.

I realize this is speculation or hypothosis. I welcome comments to either support or discredit. For example, if the letter to the Ephesians was written after I Timothy, instead of before, the whole hypothosis falls apart.

Also, although it takes us slightly off topic, I would like more discussion about Eve in I Tim 2:15. Although I agree this is not about a dead Eve, I do suspect Eve is included in the verse, and would like to know what you think. According to Hebrews 11 hall of faith, & other passages, which I won’t take the time to look up, people in the OT were saved by looking forward to Jesus. So although Eve is not listed in Hebrews 11, it is possible she was saved through looking forward to Jesus, and that she lived out her life in faith, etc. Because of his offering, it appears Abel was saved. Can we assume Adam and Eve also offered the “firstling of (their) flock and the fat thereof.”? We know Adam and Eve had coats of skins which God had made, which suggests that animals had already died/been killed or offered to God.

Jocelyn Andersen has suggested that Eve was saved via this route and that Adam was an abusive husband. God prophesied that Adam would rule over Eve, and that her turning would be to her husband. I take this to mean that she longed for him to be warm and loving like he was in the beginning, and that he ruled over her instead.

In Gen. 4:1 after Cain was born, Eve said, “I have gotten a man from the Lord.” Was this just a comment, an exclamation, perhaps aimed at regaining her husband’s love, or does this suggest Eve already knew that salvation would come through THE childbearing of a particular SON? (Note that God’s reaction to the offerings of Cain & Able suggest that they already knew what God wanted for an offering.) Does it suggest that she is already thinking Cain would be The Savior who would put things back to the way they were, bringing her forgiveness for sin, and get rid of the curse? Or does this suggest that she had no idea that a man’s seed is required to bring forth children, and thought this child was a miracle child from God?

As I consider this, I realize that comparing I Tim 2:15 with Eve’s story can actually add insight. Why would Paul bring up Eve, except that she was deceived, just like you said Cheyl about the woman in I Tim. A deceived person doesn’t get it. And the more they talk and defend themselves, the more they convince themselves they are right.

It is a detail Psychologists have discovered; a person tends to believe the words that come out of her/his own mouth–especially if they repeat them many times. A person can convince themselves that a lie is the truth, just by repeating it over and over. So when comps repeat the same stuff over and over, they convince themselves even stronger than before. Therefore, we need to speak to them in ways where they are not given prompts that cause them to insist on their view. (just a little info on the side.)

Paul recognized this truth in his day, and silenced the deceived woman, even telling her to not be in authority over her husband, that just like Eve, it would lead this woman to transgression. It could also lead her husband to sin, but both would be saved through Jesus if they continue on in faith.

“What you are actually proposing is that this woman’s salvation is conditional on what both her and her husband believe and do. This is not inline with other clear biblical teaching and therefore must be rejected. It undermines the gospel and salvation and the promise of nothing separating us from God. It undermines the very heart of the gospel.”

Mark # 87 “What has remaining in faith got to do with coming out of deception? What has love, sanctification and self control got to do with coming out of the deception?”

Craig’s illustration #109 Great illustration!

I am coming to this discussion rather belatedly, but thought I’d add my 2 cents worth anyway.
First, I am so sorry you had that robbery to deal with, Cheryl, but happy you got alot of the money back.

Next, I think Craig’s illustration, if Mark would simply have paid attention to it, would have solved his reservations.

I’d like to go further on that illustration. If the wife’s view against eating fruits and veggies was so strong she managed to convince her husband, neither of them would end up with good health.

In the same way, if the deceived woman convinced her husband that she was right and they both followed the route of deception, neither of them would be saved.

The husband’s influence–whether he remains a Christian, or yields to deception–is very important for his wife’s salvation. As long as he stands firm, she has a much better chance at salvation, especially if she, with her false view, is silenced, and she can hear the truth in church, too. If he folds, both of them will likely go at breakneck speed down the path to hell, and neither of them will likely be open to the truth.

While it is true that either one of them could be brought to the faith by the testemony and teaching of someone else, once they both believe a lie, it is that much more reinforced which makes it more likely neither of them would come to the truth.

Concerning Adam’s failure and treachery:
Adam was given the job of keeper of the garden. That included something like security guard. I believe Eve was also given the job of security guard. (Since “Adam” is used both for the man and for Adam and Eve together, it can be difficult to recall which is which, and I do not have the time to look it up now.) If the security guard of a jewelry store stands by and watches while the valuables are being taken, that is treachery. If he also helps take the jewelry, that is double treachery and totally inexcusable.

If the person who first took the jewelry was his security-guard partner, he would still have been required to say or do something to stop the theft. Doing nothing to correct a partner is also treachery–especially when he can tell his partner is getting misinformed, even if it is by a fantastic talking creature.

Today we’d call Adam’s action Embezzlement. We have little sympathy for those who embezzle from their bosses. We aren’t even sure if we can trust the spouse and children of the embezzler. (That is how we feel about a student whose mother embezzled from the school. Did he know about it? Was he complicit with her? Was the husband in on it?) We do, however, understand the horror and embarrassment one feels when they realize they have been hoodwinked by a con-artist. Thus, although Eve sinned, hers was not on purpose. Adam sinned twice; once by his silence when his partner was being conned and as a result chose to embezzle from the boss, and again when he also chose to embezzle from the boss. Or is that sinning 4 times, since he was silent as Eve was being conned and also when she was helping herself to the fruit, and then again when she gave him the fruit and yet again as he ate the fruit?

What was his motivation? Was he so deeply in love that he didn’t want to say anything? That is like suggesting a man is so deeply in love he says nothing as his love walks out in front of a speeding semi.

Perhaps he wanted to see what “die” means. If creationists are correct, there would have been no death up to that point. If teenagers cannot grasp the concept of death, how can we expect someone who is in a world where death has never happened to grasp what that is?

Could it be that Adam really didn’t believe God? I suggest he wanted to see if anything happened to Eve when she ate the fruit. When nothing appeared to happen, he ate it, too, in essence agreeing with the serpent that God was a liar and they would not die. Yet, the Bible does NOT say that Adam was deceived. I think Adam had been thinking of eating the fruit, himself, before Eve did, and that he jumped at the opportunity when he saw that Eve did not keel over, dead. Yet, the Bible doesn’t judge him for his pre-thinking. It condemns him for his ACTION.

Jocelyn and TL,
Thank-you for fleshing out my comment. Sometimes I forget that not everyone knows that self-defense is not considered violence, and forget to mention that police use a woman’s defending herself as another static to add to the supposed growing “women’s violence.”

“My attention has been on; Pastors, Clergy and Faith Leaders
as the #1 perpetrators of “Spiritual Abuse.”

In my experience…
Pastor/Leader = exercise authority = lord it over = spiritual abuse = always”

A Amos Love,
I, too, have seen it time and time again. When a pastor has the power, he abuses it.

Could you describe how you think churches ought to operate? More like the Quakers do? BTW, I know very little of how Quaker meetings are run, but I do know Quakers were the first to consider women as equals, and the women who started the women’s movement were Quakers, who already had practice with public speaking, etc–the jobs men normally hold in other denominations.

2nd, are you in such a church group?

Does a spouse who is carnal or not a Christian have any business leaving the country to serve as a missionary–even as a spouse to the head missionary? Isn’t that wanabe-missionary’s first job to nurture the unsaved spouse and children and bring them to Christ? Perhaps as the carnal spouse grows in faith, he/she will be mature enough to hear the call of God.

I am not saying Patton’s wife was carnal. She was pregnant and it was her God-given job to protect her children. Apparently Patton failed to understand how vulnerable a woman can feel when she is pregnant, or when she has young children. She has to have a strong sense of God’s calling to take those children into dangerous places.

Protecting one’s young children is different from “protecting” a grown spouse from serving God in a particular ministry, as complementarian husbands are prone to do.

What many folks do not consider is what kind of life the missionary spouse is supposed to live–when she does not feel called into foreign missions. If she is not called, she will likely be of little mission-type service. Her main job will be to serve her husband in a place where she has many handicaps that make her work take longer than it would in the US. She may have to learn to cook over a wood stove, for example, which can make cooking take all day if the wood isn’t dry enough. She may have to do laundry by hand, etc. While her husband gets the “glory” of and enjoyment of missionary work, her work is made 10 times more difficult than it need be, leaving her no time to be a missionary at all.

The result is a marriage where the husband gets to do the enjoyable work, and the wife is stuck with the never-ending maintanence work. Just like the widening gap between the rich and the poor, this would be a widening gap in the enjoyment of labor experienced by husband and wife. This would likely also end up widening the power gap between them, and the wife becomes her husband’s slave. Unless she really enjoys having everything go wrong day after day, a husband pushing her to go where she has not been called of God will end up taking her into depression or some other disease that will end up forcing them to return home.

If she also feels God is calling her to be a missionary, AND her husband and/or children help with the day-to-day tasks, she also can take the gospel to those who are lost, and have the sense that she is making a difference.

I would think the same applies if the genders are reversed. What business does a reluctant husband have to be in a foreign mission field? No matter what the gender, God may be calling them to do something meaningful at home.

A final note: The class teacher was using guilt and manipulation to get students to go to foreign fields. Often if it is God who is calling, He also gives a specific burden, like to go to Africa or Central America, or even to a specific country.

TL,
The info about clergy being the #1 perpetrators of domestic violence can be found on a you-tube clip on Hannah’s “Emotional Abuse and Your Faith” blog, March 17, 2009, the second Caryn Burton clip, which is 8.33 min.
http://eaandfaith.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html
Note that clergy and faith leaders includes all faiths. However, (my addition) Christianity is still the majority faith here in the USA.

The speaker, Caryn Burton, is the training director for the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Inc

Interestingly, if you listen to the first clip, you will hear that when women do abuse men, they often do more damage, because they have to compensate for the size/strength difference.

My comment: In spite of this, for the most part it is still women who end up in emergency rooms or dead. If I recall correctly, according to statistics, women are doing 15% of the abuse, while men are doing 85%. I bring this up for those who want to beat the “women are abusers, too” drum. Most of the time, the women who do abuse are doing so to protect themselves against an abusive husband/partner.

“You made some very absurd assumptions about John Piper: “a tendancy to control Noel? To abuse her?” and “Given his pattern of minimizing, dening and blaming, he is likely to blame Noel for his frustration at having nothing to do, and minimize the seriousness of his action, and deny that it is sin.” That’s ridiculous. You should be ashamed. The sounds of a clanging symbol.”

ChadH,
Mara’s response to you is indeed on target. Pastors, clergy, faith leaders are the #1 perpetrators of domestic violence against their family members–especially their wives. Law enforcement is 2nd. (Law enforcement used to be #1, but in recent years faith clergy have surpassed them.)

In addition, Piper’s own comments and advice in the u-tube clip showed him minimizing the seriousness of abuse calling it “verbal unkindness” and saying a wife should “endure it for a season” and when her husband smacks her one night, she should call her pastor in the morning.

In Piper’s statement, attitude and body language (a chuckle!!) it is clear he does not consider verbal and emotional abuse to actually be a part of domestic violence. (In fact, I found that in the writing of a CBMW member.) He also blames the wives for that “verbal unkindness,” and tells them they must submit to their husbands unless the husbands are demanding something that is “clearly sin.” The examples he gives are of “gross sexual sin,” which suggests he is saying that “verbal unkindness” doesn’t count as sin, and that a wife should submit to a husband who is calling her names and degrading her.

So he is denying to wives the guidance to help them deal with their husband’s sin before it grows so large and so entrenched that her husband will be unlikely to EVER stop being abusive.

Piper is also refusing to help wives deal with a life-threatening situation. Yes, LIFE-THREATENING! The best predictor of physical violence (which can be lethal with the first shove or blow) is verbal and emotional abuse. Men who use verbal and emotional abuse, increase the severity of abuse over time, and escalate the frequency of the abuse as well. To tell women to wait until they have been hit before they ask for help, is to deny the sinfulness of verbal/emotional/spiritual abuse. It also denies other forms of physical abuse. Furthermore, he should advise a wife to call the police, not her pastor, if her husband smacks her, and she should NOT wait until morning, but should call as soon as it is safe to call.

ChadH, I was a facilitator of a men’s group, called the Batterers Education Program, run by the department of corrections in my county. I learned that the men who defend the abusive behaviors of other abusive men usually abuse their own wives, or want to reserve the right to do so. In addition, men who show SOME of the traits of abusers are likely to have more of those traits show up in private.

The words out of Piper’s own mouth indicate he permits husbands to use abusive and controlling behavior against their wives. It is not a stretch at all to point out that Piper may well be abusing Noel.

Additonally, Christian women who have lived through abuse, myself included, have begun to realize that the “roles” complementarians assign to husbands and wives are the not only the seedbed for abuse, but are in fact abusive. Telling wives that they have no decision-making power to navigate their own lives, except the power to defer everything to their husbands, sets husbands up to abuse and sets wives up to allow themselves to be abused.

To see more on this subject, see my blog post @ http://submissiontyranny.blogspot.com/2010_03_01_archive.html, dated 3-24-10, titled “CBMW Uses Power and Control Tools of Abusers.” It was shortly after I posted this, that Piper informed his congregation he was taking 8 months off.

I am very concerned for Noel. As stated before, men who are used to finding their identity in their work can get quite testy and abusive during 3-4 day weekends, and even more so during an 8 month absense from work. Given Piper’s permissive attitude toward the abusiveness of other husbands, it is a very small step for him to permit the same behavior for himself–and do it.

My statement here is not so much to put Piper down. Instead, it is to hold him and those who agree with him accountable. It is to show that his beliefs, and the beliefs of the CMBW are dangerous for the whole family. Does a member of the CBMW have to get killed by a family member before they will bother to take a closer look at scripture? I hope not!

Concerning blame-shifting, sometimes looking at the meaning of individual words will get you a different meaning than you would arrive at if all the words are put together. The words Adam spoke give one a sense that he was also pointing a finger. “The woman thou gavest me, SHE didst give me the fruit and I ate.” The reader can hear the same type of blame and finger pointing children use. “See that boy that you said I couldn’t run off the playground? HE did it.”

Adam’s “The woman whom thou gavest with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” is not at all similar to Eve’s explanation.

For Eve’s explanation to be anywhere as responsibility shifting as Adam’s, she would have said, “The serpent thou didst put into the garden didst speak to me and beguile me, and the man thou didst put in the garden with me, he didst hold his silence. Therefore, I ascertained that the fruit was good to eat and would give wisdom that is pleasing to thee, and I ate.

This answer would have clearly been blaming God, serpent, and husband, just as Adam’s answer clearly blames God and Eve.

Notice that Adam does NOT claim to have been beguiled. When Eve said she was beguiled, she was admitting to feeling stupid. If you have ever been conned by a con artist, you know how a person thus conned feels so totally foolish that he she didn’t see through the con. Usually, people would rather not admit to having been so stupid as to have been deceived. Eve admits her stupidity, and admits what she did.

Although Adam says what he did, he does not admit to having been conned. He speaks as if Eve is his Lord and he has to do what she says. This, too, was a lie. He tries to shift the blame onto God and Eve.

Eve’s statement is more of a sheepish admission, while Adam’s is so defiant as to blame God.

Mark,
We know Eve’s motives because the Bible tells us what they were. The word for wise–what Eve was desiring–is Strongs #7919 (wise) “To be (make or act) circumspect and hence intelligent:–consider, ecpert, instruct, prosper, (deal) prudent…have good success, teach, (have, make to) understand (-ing), wisdom, (be, behave self, consider, make) wise (ly), guide wittingly.

Eve thought eating the fruit would help her be wise so she could be circumspect, intelligent and prudent, have good understanding. This is what I’ve been led to understand that Solomon wanted, and that God blessed him for that.

Actually, if you look at the wisdom Solomon wanted, the word God uses to say how he was blessed, is different. I Kings 3:12 Strongs #2450 “wise, (IE intelligent, skilful or artful):–cunning (man), subtil, [un] wise ([hearted], man).

The word is from #2449 to be wise in mind, word, or act x exceeding, teach wisdom…

The meanings are similar, except the one for Solomon is apparently for males only.

Given the similarities of the meanings, I find it difficult to say that what Eve wanted was sinful, but what Solomon wanted was good.

If you read the text, Genesis 3:1-6, it is clear Eve ate because she could see it was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and that it was “a tree to be desired to make one wise.”

Pam (#110)

Hannah has a copy of the Piper clip on her blog, dated 9-1-09, and it still works. http://eaandfaith.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-09-04T14%3A40%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=4&reverse-paginate=true

What is so odd about the motives of Adam and Eve, is that Eve’s motives are neve mentioned. Similar to Solomon, who God rewarded for such motives, Eve wanted to be wise enough to distinguish good from evil. The serpent told her she could have that if she ate the fruit. She protested, saying she was not to eat it, and the serpent told her God hadn’t been honist with her and that she would be wise if she ate it.

Now Eve was sinless. She knew nothing at all of sin. She had no practice with identifying a con artist, so she ate.

Adam, on the other hand, had no such good motives. His motives were closer to Lucifer’s. He was openly rebelling against God and wanting to take God’s place.

Both sinned, yet the comps neve seem to notice that what motivated Eve’s sin was to want the same thing Solomon did–wisdom.

In other words, we can have good motives, and that can lead us into sin. You could say Eve did the wrong thing for the right reason. However, I do not find the desire of male comps to rule others (which they wrongly attribute to women) to be a good motive. So they are doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason, as did Adam and Lucifer.

I wonder how far that “root of pride” goes? Does it include a tendancy to control Noel? To abuse her?

If so, taking 8 months off work is likely to make matters worse, not better. Men who are prone to abuse tend to increase the abuse during holidays and breaks from school.

8 months is a long time to completely stop work, especially when one considers that Piper has been putting out a book every month for at least a year, and has one scheduled for release every month until November 2010 (check Amazon’s search John Piper function.)

How is a person who has been so over-scheduled to deal with having lots of time on his hands? Given his pattern of minimizing, dening and blaming, he is likely to blame Noel for his frustration at having nothing to do, and minimize the seriousness of his action, and deny that it is sin.

If John Piper ever needed our prayers, it is NOW!

“They practice hardening their hearts because they do not want to see and do not want to hear what originates from a woman.”

You are so right, Cheryl! The exception is what I find so astounding, so horrifying. The comp “leaders” of the male gender reject nearly everything any woman has to say, but there is one glaring exception. That is the interpretation of Gen 3:16, which God apparently spoke to a woman. Somehow, they can see their way clear to believing that God told Eve that her desire was to rule her husband, (total hogwash!) but they cannot accept other interpretations that are much more plausible–like for Ephesians 5. It is so clearly a matter of the heart.

If you said that God told you that all women are to call their husbands “master” they would pick that up in a heartbeat. But they refuse to believe anything that has more logical and scripturally supported merit.

It is so sad. How can they handle sharing Heaven with women, when they think women are so beneath them? Do they think they have higher status in Heaven, too? So they won’t have to associate with us? Or do they believe something similar to those groups who think when they get to Heaven they’ll be rewarded with 70 virgins? (Wouldn’t that make it Hell for the virgins?)

“So if this man, for example, is calling her to engage in abusive acts willingly (group sex or something really weird, bizarre, harmful, that clearly would be sin),”

I notice that Piper’s examples are far out–things he thinks no “Christian” husband would do. What he doesn’t realize is that abusers do demand bizarre, weird and harmful acts. But those to whom wife submission is one of the top 10 biblical checkpoints, easily dismiss the fact that they are bizarre and focus instead on the wife’s supposed error.

My husband demanded something quite bizarre. When our daughter was small, she got the hand-held egg beater and waved it around in the living room, hitting the TV screen with it, and leaving a 2 inch scratch on the screen. My husband ordered that I had to get rid of the egg beater. (how bizarre and ridiculous and what poor stewardship! How many other items were there that I would have to get rid of if they my daughter did damage with them? We may have to empty out the house! And I would have to replace the item(s) later, which would be harmful to our bank account.) When I told my uncle this story, he looked shocked and took a few seconds to recover. When he did, he brushed off the fact that my husband had demanded something so bizarre, and proceeded to tell me that I was the problem, and that I should go home and submit to my husband.

Yet, I doubt this is the type of bizarre or harmful or sin Piper had in mind. From his example of group sex, he clearly is referring to actions that he the “pastor” would see as bizarrre, harmful, or sinful action. Stuff like a wife’s husband demanding that she pose for Playboy, or kill someone. The “big sins.” But the Bible does not differentiate between big and little sins. There is no such thing as a “little white lie” or a “little sin” in the Bible. Those “little sins” are just as clearly sin as the “bigger sins.”

According to the comment Nick made on Hannah’s blog, looking at “little sins” that a husband commits is simply an issue with “what the Word of God states about the difference between men and women’s roles.” Apparently, a wife not submitting to her husband’s “little sin” is a “big sin” as far as Nick and Piper are concerned.

I, too, am troubled by Piper’s chuckle and by his minimizing of bullying, which he calls “verbal unkindness.” With his minimization of domestic violence, would any wife in Piper’s “church” realize that being choked, pinned to the wall, kicked, scratched, restrained against her will, punched, threatened, and raped are also domestic abuse?

He seems to assume that husbands naturally love and lay down their lives for their wives, and that wives have a hard time submitting. What wife has hard time submitting to a husband who is laying down his life for her–sacrificing himself for her best interests?

What kind of men are in his “church?” They are given full rein to bully their wives, lie to them, slander them to their faces, steal their reputations by telling them repeatedly and emphatically that they are worthless–in direct opposition to the Bible saying those who are in Him are the Righteousness of God in Christ Jesus and Justified by faith through our Lord Jesus Christ, and worth more than rubies.

By allowing husbands to sin against their wives like this, isn’t Piper allowing them to proclaim they know better than God? Isn’t Piper “straining at gnats” to make the fault the wife’s lack of submission unless the husband is CLEARLY asking her to sin? And isn’t Piper “swallowing a camel” to justify the authority of husbands over their wives? Isn’t the “unkindness” clearly sin?

Why are Piper, Bruce Ware, and others of their group refusing to hold husbands accountable for sin? Oh yes, Piper will hold husbands accountable IF they smack their wives.

So, husbands, don’t smack your wives. You can do everything else to them, but as long as you don’t smack them, you have Piper’s blessing. After all, according to Piper, those other things are not CLEARLY sin, are they??

Reminds me of the song “Oh you can’t get to heaven on a pair of skates, cause you’ll roll right past those pearly gates.” It’s time to take your skates off, Piper!