When I read Buddhist texts I see sexism.
When I read Islam texts I see sexism
When I read Jewish texts I see sexism
When I read Christian texts I see …
I read the Bible everyday and live by it, but I still must ask the question, “Can we honestly say there is no sexism in it?

Hi Jay,
Welcome to my blog!
As far as the Bible goes, it does record sexism just as it also records murder, rape and adultery. The question is not whether there is a record of man’s sexism, but whether God demands it. It is my opinion that God does not. What I see instead is God’s law limiting the extent of sexism allowed in a very sexist culture. It wasn’t until Jesus broke down the barriers through His death and resurrection that the death of sexism was fully dealt with by the indwelling Holy Spirit. Is there still sexism in the church? You bet! But God is changing all of us as we grow in Christ and the wickedness of our hearts are being softened and changed as we allow the work of the Holy Spirit to form us into the image of Christ. I speak here to include myself since I too felt that women were somehow inferior. There was a time that I looked with suspicion at women who used their gifts in public. God has done a miracle in my own heart and for that I give Him all the glory and praise.

What are you thoughts on the story of Jephthah, and the sacrifice of his daughter?

Hannah,

The story of Jephthat’s daughter is a very tragic story of a rash promise used as a bargaining tool to get what Jephthat needed. It is actually an example of the ultimate abuse. The righteous person in the story turns out to be Jephthat’s daughter who not wanting her father to suffer for having a failed vow to the Lord, willingly offers herself to be killed by her father.

Judges 11:35 When he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low, and you are among those who trouble me; for I have given my word to the LORD, and I cannot take it back.”

What is quite amazing is that after making a rash vow to the Lord and understanding the stupidity of having made his rash promise, he actually blames his daughter for bringing him trouble. It is an unfortunate event and one that should never have happened. However it is not a command by God for human sacrifice and there is provision in the law for the redemption of a sacrifice.

Lev 27:11 ‘If, however, it is any unclean animal of the kind which men do not present as an offering to the LORD, then he shall place the animal before the priest.
Lev 27:12 ‘The priest shall value it as either good or bad; as you, the priest, value it, so it shall be.
Lev 27:13 ‘But if he should ever wish to redeem it, then he shall add one-fifth of it to your valuation.

If a dog would have come out of Jephthah’s house first, the dog would not be considered a proper sacrifice as it was unclean.

The entire story is very unfortunate and a lesson regarding making hasty vows.

Concerning the extra time given for uncleaness for a female baby as opposed to a male baby I’ve had a couple friends who didn’t know each other come to the same conclusion. This is NOT based on the words of the Bible but on the inner prayer closet of a couple of women who also wrestled with wondering if God loved them less as women. So it should not be put forth as Bible fact, but as women wrestling with God and the conclusions they have felt impressed with in deep, sincere, earnest prayer.

Both these friends, independently, felt as though the extra time given daughters was an extra long bonding time that the mother and daughter needed in a culture that favored sons. It, as mentioned above, kept the father out of the picture to make impatient demands on his wife. It also kept out older brothers who might be favored over the daughter. Basically it set up a time for mother and daughter to just be who they were and bond as such outside the boundary of overwhelmingly male influence, in a little world of their own. Hopefully the bonding time would help and support them both as they worked to figure out how to navigate the sometimes choppy waters of a male-dominated culture.

AFA Jephthah. I don’t know if that has anything to do with gender. His daughter was simply the first one out to greet him and he was an idiot for making such a rash vow. Others most likely have a better idea of it than me.

What about Lot being called righteous by Peter even though he offered up his virgin daughters to the men demanding he hand over his guests for sex? How could he have been righteous?

Mara: I heard that story told one time to show that how a ‘male’ child was spared (Isaac) when he was to be killed, and the sacrifice was stopped. They compared it to the story of this poor girl, and I thought WOW people will twist all kinds of things to show their points.

The bible to me seems quite clear there is no favored gender no matter how much people wish to attempt to prove it. People are the ones that are sexist, and it sad that they don’t see it at times.

Your are right, Hannah.
That was way off the wall.
God asked for Isaac (then provided a lamb in his place). God never asked for Jephthah’s daughter, ever. That was all Jephthah idiocracy.
Who the heck said that? A Patriarch? Atheist? Feminist?
Who? And what was the point? Just curious since I have NEVER heard that comparison before.
That one is right up there with saying that Abigail was acting in an “independent spirit” (i.e. not submitted to her husband). Therefore the blood of her husband was on HER head. In other words, that teacher held Abigail responsible for the death of her husband because she wasn’t properly submitted.
(Forgive spelling errors, typos. Son is pressuring me off the computer. He has a paper to write.)

Lin,

What about Lot being called righteous by Peter even though he offered up his virgin daughters to the men demanding he hand over his guests for sex? How could he have been righteous?

David was called “a man after God’s own heart” yet he committed adultery and murder. Lot’s failure in offering up his virgin daughters was not what made him righteous. Lot failed in many ways just like all of the great men and women of faith did. However the Bible does not sugar coat the account to make them look better than they were. He was still a sinner who failed God and man at times.

Hannah,

People are the ones that are sexist, and it sad that they don’t see it at times.

This is the really sad part and that so many blame God for the sexism instead of humanity.

Mara,

It, as mentioned above, kept the father out of the picture to make impatient demands on his wife.

Someone dear to my own heart told me that he believed God told him why a woman had a period each month and he said that it was to give a woman rest from the demands of her husband for a period of time. I never thought of it that way before. I guess we will have to ask God these kinds of questions when we get to Heaven.

Mara,

God asked for Isaac (then provided a lamb in his place). God never asked for Jephthah’s daughter, ever. That was all Jephthah idiocracy.

I agree. What on earth was he thinking???!!!

“Someone dear to my own heart told me that he believed God told him why a woman had a period each month and he said that it was to give a woman rest from the demands of her husband for a period of time. I never thought of it that way before. ”

If true, it would mean there was likely no menustration before the fall.

I agree about Lot. I also think it illustrates how living in a culture of sin affects us all and how we have to be vigilant in prayer and study. Lot hated all the sin around him yet was tempted to compromise with it.

I also think it illustrates how God worked through sin for His own Glory.

Lin,
I believe that God changed the woman’s conception after the fall so who knows what the original plan really looked like. Another question that we can ask God when we get to Heaven.

To answer the question of your post – NO

A friend of a friend had one of those brought back from the dead experiences a few years ago and reported that the people she saw in what she was pretty sure was heaven were genderless. What would be the purpose of gender in heaven? Perhaps we make way too much of it here and try to base our opinions on Scriptures which can be understood in a number of ways.

Thanks Sam for the comment. It is a good question regarding what gender differences (physical sexual differences) would have for their purpose in heaven.

By the way your comment was stuck in my spam box as there appeared to be a typo in your email address and the software assumed you were someone new.

Hi everyone. I’ve really enjoyed reading through your blog Cheryl, and hats off to you. I think you do a great job. I guess you can say that I’m in the middle of the road. I have very “old-fashioned” beliefs as far as being a Christian is concerned. I believe the Bible is the perfect, inspired Word of God and I do believe that Jesus is the one and *only* way to the Father in Heaven and that you can only be saved and have eternal life through Him alone. A lot of my other beliefs tend to be strongly “conservative” I guess you can say. I’m strongly anti-abortion and I believe that marriage is between one man and one woman, etc. *But,* I also tend to be a real outsider in a way because even though I do have these strong beliefs, I do *not* have a lot of the traditionally comp beliefs that most others with these same beliefs tend to have. I do believe that Phoebe was very likely a deaconess in the early church and I do believe that Priscilla was a pastor of a home church, facts that a lot of comps like to try and sweep under the rug and overlook to suit their own purposes (which of course is what they accuse egals of doing, but I think the comps are a lot guiltier of it than they realize. I think that Deborah is a very strong example of God putting a woman in a position of spiritual authority over His people, and if God would do that in the stricter Old Testament days then why wouldn’t He do it in the New Testament days and the Age of Grace, right? I personally think that the thought of women being able to think and do things like earning degrees and having careers and being doctors or microbiologists or — gasp!– even ministers of churches, in *addition* to the fact that we have the ability to carry and give birth to children and bring forth new life, really intimidates the heck out of men, so they want to try to take our mental capabilities away from us and restrict them to crocheting and learning new recipes (*rolleyes*). If only more of them would remember that God made them physical protectors and gave them more physical strength than women and the fact that they have their unique gifts from God as well so there’s no reason for intimidation, but…oh well, we do live in a fallen world, *sigh.*

Anyway, I just wanted to introduce myself. I’ve been a lurker here for quite some time and I really love your blog, Cheryl. It’s a great place for someone “in the middle of the road,” I guess you can say, whose opinions of theology don’t seem to fit in too many places in the Church nowadays. It seems that the churches who do hold to truer Biblical beliefs are chauvinistic as heck when it comes to women being in positions of leadership, especially within the church, and the churches who *do* treat women as equals are apostate as heck and ridiculously liberal in their beliefs! *Facepalm!* So yeah, it’s really hard for somebody like me to find a place in the Church where she feels like she belongs. So thanks so much for this blog!

Okay, now that I’ve made proper introductions, I have a couple of issues about God supposedly preferring males over females that I really want to ask you guys about and find out your opinions, if you all can help me with this. As a woman, I’ve struggled with questions about these two things for a while now and have sort of wondered if God didn’t prefer males to females. The two things I want to ask about are:

1.) Whenever angels appeared in human form on earth, they always assumed male form. A certain minister I like to listen to (even though he’s strictly comp) does like to harp on this sometimes, I think when he’s speaking out against homosexuality. I think he says that Satan has had a lot to do with how “effeminate” pictures of angels have become nowadays and that that’s because Satan is trying to take away masculinity from men or something like that. It’s always bothered me that angels have always taken male form in the Bible when they’ve appeared to human beings. If females really *are* equal to God in His sight, why are there no female angels? When God talks about the angels appearing before Him in Job, why are they “the sons of God”? If God loves women equally to men, why can there not be angelic “sons AND daughters of God”? That kind of suggests to me that women are second-class citizens in God’s eyes, but I know that cannot be the case, so somebody please help me there!
2.) Whenever there were births announced by angels, why is it always the birth of *males*??? Why didn’t God ever send angels to announce to Mary’s parents, for example, that they would have a daughter who would be that one special woman that *every* Jewish woman wanted to be, who would be the mother of the foretold Messiah? John the Baptist’s birth was foretold. Most importantly, Jesus’s birth was foretold. Why couldn’t Mary’s birth have been foretold? Why was it always male babies that got to be foretold? That, too, kind of suggests that God doesn’t consider female babies to be as important as male babies.

Many thanks for your patience with the lengthy post!

Rose (BTW, “Rose” isn’t my real name; I’m just uncomfortable sharing my real name over the Internet and I love roses so I chose the nickname “Rose” is that’s okay.)

Much love to all my brothers and sisters in Christ here! 🙂

Cheryl, about women having to marry their rapists: I think to be cared for is half the answer. But some other points probably are:
Compare to Exodus 22:16-17: A girl’s family could also decide not to force him to marriage, but to pay money for providing for her. (Some commenter’s say this money was the price of a house.)
He may not divorce, nothing said of what she may and may not do. Does this imply that even if she chooses to live somewhere else, he still has to provide and keep up all his responsibilities?

Rose, welcome to my blog. I am sorry that I am slow in getting back to your original post.
You said:

I have very “old-fashioned” beliefs as far as being a Christian is concerned. I believe the Bible is the perfect, inspired Word of God and I do believe that Jesus is the one and *only* way to the Father in Heaven and that you can only be saved and have eternal life through Him alone.

If that is old-fashioned, then I too am old-fashioned.

I do *not* have a lot of the traditionally comp beliefs that most others with these same beliefs tend to have. I do believe that Phoebe was very likely a deaconess in the early church and I do believe that Priscilla was a pastor of a home church, facts that a lot of comps like to try and sweep under the rug and overlook to suit their own purposes

Praise the Lord!

I think that Deborah is a very strong example of God putting a woman in a position of spiritual authority over His people, and if God would do that in the stricter Old Testament days then why wouldn’t He do it in the New Testament days and the Age of Grace, right?

It seems unthinkable that the Old Testament women of God would have more freedom than the New Testament women.

Anyway, I just wanted to introduce myself. I’ve been a lurker here for quite some time and I really love your blog, Cheryl. It’s a great place for someone “in the middle of the road,” I guess you can say, whose opinions of theology don’t seem to fit in too many places in the Church nowadays.

Thank you for coming out and introducing yourself! It is SO enjoyable for me to “meet” the people that visit my blog, especially those who regularly come here. My other DVD projects do prevent me from being as fast to post and/or comment as I would like to, but I do love the community that this blog provides.

Rose, I hope you and others like you who are “middle of the road” feel warmly welcomed and feel free to contribute your own thoughts.

It seems that the churches who do hold to truer Biblical beliefs are chauvinistic as heck when it comes to women being in positions of leadership, especially within the church, and the churches who *do* treat women as equals are apostate as heck and ridiculously liberal in their beliefs!

This is the one thing that frustrates me too and one of the reasons why I want to have my voice heard as a conservative, God-loving, believer in “every Word of God as inspired” Christian. I do not want the issue of women in ministry to draw people to liberalism nor do I believe that it is necessary. I do believe that this is what sometimes happens only because there hasn’t been more churches open to the gifts of God’s women believers. I find this truly sad.
Now to your questions. I will answer right away in my next comment here.

Rose, (and I do understand your hesitancy to use your real name), here are my thoughts on your questions:

1. It’s always bothered me that angels have always taken male form in the Bible when they’ve appeared to human beings. If females really *are* equal to God in His sight, why are there no female angels? When God talks about the angels appearing before Him in Job, why are they “the sons of God”? If God loves women equally to men, why can there not be angelic “sons AND daughters of God”?

Spirits do not have body parts to they are not named as “male” and “female”. Yet they do appear as “male” when they come to earth. I believe that this is on purpose for a couple of reasons. The first reason would be that angels are seen as all in one category, so seeing them as “male” and “female” would divide them rather than keep them as one. Secondly those who are “of God” are ALL called “sons” so that even women are God’s “sons” and joint heirs with God. The image then is “sons” and not divisions between “sons” and “daughters”. Perhaps another reason would be that seeing angels as women might be too distracting to men.

Any thoughts about these reasons?
You also said:

That kind of suggests to me that women are second-class citizens in God’s eyes, but I know that cannot be the case, so somebody please help me there!

I do not think that this suggests that women are second-class citizens, but rather that we are all in one class. All of us as “sons” of God is a position of equality, not lifting the male as better than the female.

You asked:

2.) Whenever there were births announced by angels, why is it always the birth of *males*??? Why didn’t God ever send angels to announce to Mary’s parents, for example, that they would have a daughter who would be that one special woman that *every* Jewish woman wanted to be, who would be the mother of the foretold Messiah? John the Baptist’s birth was foretold. Most importantly, Jesus’s birth was foretold. Why couldn’t Mary’s birth have been foretold? Why was it always male babies that got to be foretold? That, too, kind of suggests that God doesn’t consider female babies to be as important as male babies.

I believe that John the Baptist’s birth was foretold because there was to be one forerunner of Christ who would be filled with the Spirit from conception. But Mary’s birth was not special. She was not filled with the Spirit from conception, nor was her birth anything of the ordinary. Her life lived out in humility was what brought her into the place of giving her consent to be the mother of the Lord Jesus.

Another thing to look at, regarding women as having equal importance with the male, is to look at Sarah. It wasn’t Abraham’s seed that was important except through her. God indicated that only the son born through Sarah would be the child of promise.

I hope this helps a bit for your questions. Please feel free to post whatever questions you have. Please excuse me whenever I am slow. I try my best to fit my time here on my blog, within all my other ministry responsibilities and sometimes I am much faster than at other times.

17 Retha,

As far as the term for rape, the same word is used in Lamentations 5:11 and 2 Sam 13:32.

The problem with rape in the Old Testament times is that the woman who is raped is no longer wanted for marriage as she no longer has her proof of virginity. In the case of Tamar, Tamar was raped by her brother, but after the rape she should have been given to her brother for marriage and his rejection of her for marriage was considered a greater wrong then the original rape.

blockquote>2 Samuel 13:16 (NASB95)
16 But she said to him, “No, because this wrong in sending me away is greater than the other that you have done to me!” Yet he would not listen to her.

When Amnon refused Tamar after violating her, she then lived in a desolate or destroyed, ruined and abandoned state in her other brother’s home.

2 Samuel 13:20 (NASB95)
20 Then Absalom her brother said to her, “Has Amnon your brother been with you? But now keep silent, my sister, he is your brother; do not take this matter to heart.” So Tamar remained and was desolate in her brother Absalom’s house.

So it appears that giving the woman to the man so that she was his responsibility to care for and looked after for her whole life, is a more compassionate thing to do rather than leaving her in the state of a victim ineligible for marriage.

What may seem irrational in our time, did have purpose in a strong patriarchal system of that time.

On the time length of uncleaness being longer after birth of a girl than after a boy, I recently read a very enlightening info on another sight that said that it is because that there are documented cases where, because of access estrogene in the some mother’s milk for a while after childbirth, the girl-childs body is tricked into believing it was time to menstrate!!! So, there is a very reasonable physical reason for the extended ‘unclean’ time. On Deuteronomy 22:25-22:29- if you would look up John Gill’s exposition of the Bible you will see that he explains that the original words used for the two different cases are totally different. Only the first means he used force, thus he raped her, while the word in the other case indicated that she willingly had sex with him. So, the 22:28 is NOT dealing with a rape case, but rather with two people being caught doing the naughty.

Oh, I totally do not believe that it is ‘compassionate’ to be raped again and again until death do us part by my rapist-force-by-order-to-call “husband”!!! I, personally, would prefer to forever live singly with my relatives or be homeless than live in such a domestic hell!!! So, that ‘compassionate’ interpretation is NOT compassionate at all. It is a hell-ordained mis-interpretation!!!!

I have read interpretations were it is strongly indicated that Jephthah gave his dauther to serve God all her life rather than killing her. This makes sense to me since God views giving killing humans for ‘sacrificial’ purposes as murder. If Jephthah had killed his daughter as a sacrifice, then he would be committiing the sin of murder, as well as desicrating the holiness of the alter! Murdering his daughter, weither she was willing or not, would be sacriligious and sinful, totally displeasing to God.

I am posting two comments that came through onto my old blog post address. They are from D. Marie

1

Love this blog and glad I found you Cheryl! I have another question for you. I too have been very disturbed about the seeming favoritism for men in the Bible. I see only men chosen as apostles, when both women and men laid down their lives for Jesus. I see women being tested for unfaithfulness “while under her husbands’ authority”, but why wasn’t the man tested too? I am referring to Numbers 5:11-31 here. Verse 31 says “moreover the man shall be free from his guilt but the woman shall bear her guilt? WHY?!!!! I am also sick up to my eyeballs of hearing men/pastors say that women go second because “Eve was deceived, but Adam sinned on purpose”. HOW IS THAT BETTER, I ask you? How is it better that a man sins on purpose (look all around you) but the woman is second because she was deceived? I look around at the world past, present and future and I am NOT IMPRESSED with how men have handled their authority. I am struggling to find peace in this area, because I have authority figures over me who seem to also favor men. GAG!

2

I also have a request for another post from you on the exact meaning of Biblical submission. Far too many people (men) seem to think it is absolute authority they have over their wives, and they get to treat their wives as though they were children. More gagging here! Just exactly what does it require of a woman to submit to her husband and pastor? I am hearing far too much about the rights of authority figures to “command” something from their ‘underlings’, and that just freaks me out. Are we required to be “yes” people? Are we free to stand up to them when they do wrong? Are we free to be free even though under their authority?

I am going to respond to D. Marie’s comments/questions on new blog post(s) as I have time. Please sign up to my blog on the sign up box at mmoutreach.org/wim to be notified when new posts are up. Thanks!