Dusman

Don,

It’s sad to see that some Christians would launch an ad hominem your way by accusing you of falsely portraying a male . . or worse, knowing that you are a male, yet making fun of you instead and calling you a name instead of actually intelligently and courteously interacting with your position. Your testimony got me thinking. In my case as a pastor, some folks have been pretty surprised to learn my views re: women in the church because to them egalitarianism = liberal feminism &/or an effeminate disposition.

They get a little confused because they know that I like hard, sin-killing, convicting, preaching & teaching from the Scriptures, they know that I have a very high view of the sovereignty of God, they know that I believe in the absolute necessity of contending for the faith once for all handed down to the saints (Jude 3), and they know that I dogmatically believe and defend the full, verbal, plenary, inspiration of the Scriptures and hold that the autographs were inerrant and that the copies we have today are sovereignly preserved copies that faithfully represent those autographs.

They also are aware that I am what could be called “a man’s man”. That means that I thoroughly enjoy shooting guns/target practicing for fun (like many Christian men), love hard workouts and the martial arts (like many Christian men), don’t mind having a fat beard and enjoying a good beer with my pizza (like many Christian men), and believe in the importance of hard work and mental or physical “sweat” for the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31) over and against a soft, lazy, and sluggardly disposition (like many Christian men).

More importantly, they know that I believe in the absolute necessity of striving to love my wife like Jesus loved the church and gave Himself up for her. I strive to demonstrate this daily through being the head of my wife in our marriage relationship *through providing a consistent and faithful spiritual example* to her and exhorting her by my actions as well as my words as to what it means to be an incurable God-lover (Eph. 5:22ff). I also see the absolute necessity of a godly woman submitting to such a spiritual example.

To me, the view that the husband must provide spiritual headship in the marriage relationship is also conducive to promoting a correct understanding of women in church.

Nevertheless, most folks see these things as mutually exclusive to an egalitarian understanding of Scripture and I think that nothing could be further from the truth. They believe that “head” should = “authority over” and this is nothing but a blatant eisegesis of the text of Eph. 5 and a convenient ignoring of the husband/wife “authority” issues of 1 Cor. 7:4. Sadly, what most folks don’t understand is that I believe the way I do about women in the church *because* I believe in the verbal, plenary, inspiration of the infallible Scriptures and not in spite of it.

Yes, the truth of the Scriptures have been muddled and distorted by god-hating feminist, religious liberals. However, we need to be sure that we encourage those conservative complementarian brothers and sisters who unjustly call us names to be sure that when they reject our biblically faithful understanding of women in ministry, that to be consistent, if they are going to reject us because we are supposedly liberals, then they need to reject the other things that feminist liberals practice as well; things like Scripture reading in church, baptism, singing hymns, participating in communion, and pastors without wives and children. Isn’t consistency grand? 🙂