Cheryl

Don,

Yes I am “inhistime”. My goal is a paradigm shift but I am not expecting this on the board. The biggest paradigm shift may be with me learning how to understand how complementarians think and learning their objections so that I may be prepared to give an answer to anyone. You see, I am nothing less than a truth lover. If I take my views and make them public and then get raked over the coals for my arguments, then can be used by God for good. If my teaching is truth it WILL stand the test and it will be better because I will learn to see all the arguments against my position and be prepared to use these very arguments to witness of Jesus and his desire for the women in his church. What won’t kill me will make me stronger. Yet at the same time, if I am wrong in anyway, I can be corrected so that my position again because stronger.

I am believing that some day God will bring someone high up in the hierarchical movement to me who would be willing to dialog even if the reason is only to try to correct me. I want to be ready to answer respectfully and give reason for my faith in a gentle and effective way so that God can use me to reach someone who inside loves truth as I do, but who has been caught up in wrong teaching for so long that it would be hard for them to leave the “comfortable” teachings of hierarchy. If God does give me the desire of my heart to reach with love even one person like this who could then greatly impact the complementarian part of the church by their leaving, I would be so grateful to God.

The biggest problem I have is that complementarians will not talk to me. The friend that I had who caused me to research the bible to find out God’s view of women in ministry would not allow his complementarian view to be challenged and he left my friendship. I have asked CBMW to provide someone for me to dialog with and they too have refused. I have sought out complementarians in the past on the internet and tried to start a dialog with them and all I got was verbally attacked and judged as a sinner. Although I have very little time to put into boards like Worthy Boards, it is my way of trying to dialog and to hear the complementarian reaction to the understanding of scripture on the women’s issue that God has given me. I believe that if one has the truth on any given subject, and one is strong enough to be challenged, then one is better grounded if their faith is challenged. In the end truth is provable and will win. Error will need to attack the other person personally because error has no solid foundation in scripture. Test everything. Hold fast to that which is good.